Page 55 of A Witch and Her Dragon
A brief moment of quiet passes. Then, without turning to face me, she asks, “And what did you think?”
My eyes narrow. I’m not following. “About what?”
Now she turns to face me. Her black-rimmed eyes are focused but soft, her crimson lips looking almost black in the cold moonlight. “About me.”
The way she looks at me is different from anything I’ve seen from her before. She’s not angry at me, isn’t putting on a polite show for those around her, isn’t showing me anything except her truth.
And what I see on her face makes me want to pull her close, to wrap her in my arms and never, ever let go. To hoard her like the precious treasure she is.
I draw myself up and take a breath.
“Truthfully?” I whisper.
Alina gives me a firm nod.
“I thought you were beautiful. Almost unnaturally so.” The mead helps pull the truth from me. I flex my jaw. “I tried to avoid you, actually.”
Alina blinks. “What? Why?”
“Because...”Because I can’t control myself around you. Because of the things I want to do to you. Because I want you so badly.“Because it wasn’t my place to find you beautiful. I had no right.”
Her lips tug up on one side. “And now? Do you feel the same way?”
That one’s easy. “I do.”
Regardless of the bond that draws me toward her, regardless of the way my dragon writhes whenever Alina catches my eyes, I’m still just a knight, and she’s the princess, the woman who will one day be queen. And I’m just me. I’m certainly no king.
“Then why kiss me?” She takes a step toward me, and my eyes flick toward her breasts. I have to force them back to her face. “Why touch me like you have?”
I take a step back as my beast reacts to her, straining against the magic holding me in my human form. “We’ve already been through this,” I grunt out. “You kissed me—all three times now, if I’m not mistaken.”
“But you wanted me to.”
She moves nearer still, forcing me back. My shoulders connect with the glass wall of the greenhouse, and there’s nowhere else for me to go. This is the second time she’s cornered me like this. My mentors would be ashamed. But my dragon vibrates with excitement.
“You may not have kissed me first,” she continues, voice low, “but you didn’t try to stop me either.”
“I’m a weak man,” I say, trying very hard to focus on her face and not the sinuous movement of her body beneath the tightly laced black dress.
“So, you admit that you wanted to. To kiss me.”
My heart pounds harder, and I curl my fingers into fists, pressing my fingernails into my palms, using the slight pinch of pain to keep me grounded in this moment.
“Don’t lie,” she whispers.
If only she knew how much I’ve been lying about.
I grind my teeth, then finally say, “Yes.”
“And you wanted to do other things too. You told me so yourself.” Alina is only a breath away from me now, the toes of her heeled black boots touching mine.
This time I don’t respond. I can’t. I’m trying too hard to force my dragon down.
“Raelan.”
The word is a whisper, a breath. It makes goose bumps rise along my skin despite the warmth in the greenhouse.
“What do you want to do to me?” she asks.
