Page 21 of Licking Fire

“I found it in your bag,” he replied, and then crossed his arms over his chest.

“It’s rude to go through another person’s bag without permission,” she snapped.

“You think I was rude, you should have words with Timothy.” He shrugged. “Tell me why you sought me out.”

Her shoulders slumped, and she began to wring her hands. “I don’t know. I just started thinking a lot about the stories Grandpa used to tell my cousins and me when we were little. I mean, I started thinking about them after the first attack by the mayor’s men. Then I dreamt of coming to you. Dreamt my grandfather was alive and he was having tea with me, telling me to go to you, not to wait. That sounds stupid, doesn’t it?”

“No,” he said, putting a hand out to her.

She felt compelled to take it, so she did. “I stood outside of the building more than once over the past month, but I chickened out each time. It wasn’t until the last attack that I decided I had to do it. That I had to meet you.” She touched her upper arm lightly. “I don’t know why.”

He stared at her arm and then moved closer, his hands suddenly on the sleeve of the sweater he’d given her. He didn’t ask before pushing the sleeve up high enough to reveal the long, angry gash marks that were scabbed over on her arm. “Who did this to you?”

“I don’t know his name,” she confessed. “But I know the mayor hired him and the others to kill me.”

“I will kill him. That is what is within my rights—as your mate, I have the right to protect you from danger.”

“So you didn’t mean you could just force yourself on me?”

He looked horrified at the suggestion. “No!”

She nodded…and then thought about what it would be like to have Rayer take her then and there. Her cheeks heated and desire raced through her.

“I would never do such a thing,” he said. “But I will kill any who harm you. Know that. Know that I will risk your anger with me and risk never being able to have sex again, never being able to properly claim you, and I will risk never having a family with you, to assure you are safe and the men who hurt you are dead. I will risk all for you.”

Everything he said had her head spinning. When it finally sank in, she jerked and then pushed on his chest, needing space from him. He didn’t budge. She stared up at him. “What the plot-to-a-chick-flick are you talking about there?”

He appeared confused.

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Okay. The truth please, Rayer. What are you talking about? What do you mean, never have sex again? Not have a family with me? Not claim me properly?”

He watched her with a serious expression for what felt like forever. “How much do you really know about me?”

“I only know what I could read in the journal. What was in English. I don’t speak or read Latin. Grandpa did, and a lot of the journal is written in Latin.”

“So your threat to me about leaving was born from what?” he asked, looking slightly amused.

She blushed and then glanced away. “I don’t know. It just flew out of my mouth. I was scared you’d go off, kill the guy, and risk everything for me. I don’t want that. I want you safe. I want your secret safe.”

He touched her cheek with the backs of his knuckles. “And I want you safe, my love.”

His love?

“Alondra, I believe fully that you are what my kind calls the one. That you are my mate. A woman created for me and me alone. A woman whom if I do not bed and claim fully within the next few months, I will no longer be able to have sex again—ever.”

She blinked up at him. “What?”

“I did not make the rules. I am simply forced to live by them.” He bent, putting his face close to hers. “There was something that was confusing me at first, though. You smell human. Mates to my kind have never been human. Yet I know with every fiber of my being that you are mine. That you are my mate. I fight the urge to claim you even as we speak. As I said, I would never force you into anything. I fight the need to bury my cock in you and fill you with my child. And when Timothy told me of his connection to you, it helped it all make more sense.”

She was pretty sure her face was red enough to match the shirt he’d had on the day before. He wanted to do her? He wanted to have kids with her? She was so not ready for all of that.

She made the sign of the cross with her fingers and took a giant step back. “I’m a virgin!”

The minute the words left her mouth, she blushed more.

Rayer’s lips twitched. “I see. Well, that changes…nothing. It changes nothing. I’m still going to bed you. And trust me when I say, you will like it. And I will not take you until you are willing. Until you ask for it.”

She put her face in her palms and shook her head. “This isn’t happening. I’m not standing in some eccentric, reclusive billionaire’s foyer, talking about my virginity after having just watched him turn partially into a dragon. Nope. Not happening. I’m crazy. That must be it. Crazy just like my grandfather was. Clearly, it runs in the family.”

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