Page 30 of Love Bites Extra Hard

I wasn’t supposed to obsess over them.

I heard something that sounded like grinding a moment later, and realized he was smoothing the edges.

Though that should’ve relaxed me, I couldn’t take my eyes off him while he was touching the scales.

I was officially losing my mind.

I forced myself to get comfortable on the bed, and slipped my hands into the pocket of my borrowed hoodie. When my fingers brushed the smooth, warm scales, it calmed me a little.

The room was quiet other than the sound of him grinding down the sharp edges. He was probably going to mess up the arrangement I had painstakingly created, but I forced myself to breathe anyway.

They were just fallen scales.

…and I could rearrange them.

The sound was rhythmic, and calming.

Grinding down the edges didn’t seem like a quick process. After a while, I finally started to doze off.

It had been a long couple of days.

And I’d used more magic in the past twelve hours than I ever had in my life.

I fell asleep with my palms against the scales in my pockets. The hunger gnawing on my stomach could wait.

It did wait—fora few hours, at least.

The pain of it woke me up in the middle of the night, and I clutched my abdomen, opening my bleary eyes as my face contorted.

Shit.

I hadn’t been this hungry since we had to hide in our safehouse for a month before Hale took us in.

I was going to need to find someone to drink from. Quickly.

If I went out into the hallway, I was sure I’d be able to find someone. Talon had said I was safe from everything exceptpropositions in Dragon Manor. And propositions were exactly what I needed.

After taking a few slow breaths in an attempt to steady myself, I finally slid out of bed. My feet were sweaty in both layers of socks, and it wasn’t comfortable, but I ignored it.

It was a problem for the satiated version of me.

I crossed the room slowly, gritting my teeth against the pain. The sound of scales’ edges being ground was dulled by the door, but I realized I could still hear it.

Maybe I hadn’t been out for as long as it felt like I had.

I pulled the door open, and stopped abruptly when I found a man.

In the doorway.

I blinked down at Talon. He was leaning up against the door’s frame, holding a scale in one hand. One of his nails on the other hand was shifted to a claw, and he was using the edge of it to grind the sharp side down.

His body was tense, and the button on his jeans was popped open. His cock strained against them, but he seemed to be ignoring it.

“Hungry?” he asked me, his voice gravelly

A shiver tore through me. “Yeah.”

I would’ve offered to find someone else, but he stood before I could. He picked up a nice, woven fabric basket off the floor when he did. I hadn’t noticed it next to him before, but it was pretty. The fabric was a warm shade of white, and when I peeked in, I saw more scales.

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