Page 56 of A Witch and Her Dragon
I shake my head firmly. I can’t voice my desires out loud. To do so would be to breathe life into them, to allow myself to think they’re mine for the taking.
But they’re not.
Alinashouldbe mine. My dragon is insistent that she already is, and at times it almost has me convinced. But my beast doesn’t understand customs, rules, the hierarchy of society. It doesn’t understand that my mother and sisters need a roof over their heads, a stable life they can feel comfortable and safe within.
“Alina, I can’t,” I finally say.
“Why? Tell me.” Her words have a sharp edge now, like she ran them over a whetstone before they slipped off her tongue. “Why have you been so cold again? Why are you shutting me out?”
“Because of your grandfather. If he finds out—”
“Are you going to tell him?” she asks, tipping her head slightly to one side so her pale blue hair slips across her shoulder.
“Of course not,” I bite out.
“Neither am I. And no one else”—she casts a quick glance around the greenhouse—“is here to see.”
Slowly, I start to harden, my tight hold on my carnal desires beginning to slip. I shouldn’t have had that mead. It was foolish, juvenile. But perhaps, in a way, I was hoping for this. Maybe I wanted it to give me an excuse to do what I so badly desire to do.
To do with her. To dotoher.
“Careful,” I tell her, my voice dropping low as I try to force my beast into submission. Thus far, I’m failing.
“Of what?” Alina reaches out, placing her warm hands on my chest. I’m certain she can feel my heart galloping against her palms.
That single touch sends my dragon breathing fire through my veins. It snaps the tenuous thread of self-control I was desperately clinging to. And I can almost ignore the pain blossoming along my neck beneath my chain as I wrap my hands around Alina’s waist and draw her in.
And this time, for thefirsttime, I’m the one who kisses her.
Her mouth tastes of sweet caramel apples and honey-flavored mead. Her lips are soft and warm and a perfect fit for mine.
But it’s the sound she makes as I bite her lip that sends me to my edge. It’s part whimper, part moan. At the same time, her fingers curl into the fabric of my tunic, grasping at me as if I’m an anchor amidst a violent storm.
What she doesn’t know is that I’m not the anchor—I’m the storm. And I’ve been holding myself back for three years, since she first came of age and I realized who—and what—she is.
I want so badly to have my way with her, to claim her, to make her mine. But I can’t. And I remind myself of this fact even as I turn us about and press her against the glass wall of the greenhouse.
“I can’t,” I grind out after stealing my lips back from hers, “do this.”
“Please, Raelan,” she whispers, her hands finding my face, drifting along the stubble shadowing my jaw. “I want you. Don’t you want me?”
My cock strains against my trousers, growing so hard itmakes me wince.
Of course I want her. How can she even ask that? Doesn’t she see what she does to me?
Maybe I can do this. Maybe I can control myself.
I imagine spreading her legs, sinking into her, filling her pussy with my heat. Immediately, the chain binding my neck burns hotter, warning me, cautioning me. My dragon lingers just beneath the surface, coiling and uncoiling itself, waiting for its chance to escape.
Jaw flexed so hard it makes my teeth ache, I press my body against hers. “I can’t give you what you want,” I say, even though it’s excruciating to resist her.
She pulls back and looks into my eyes. “Then give me what youcan.”
Taking one of my hands, she guides my fingers to the place between her legs, like she did that first time we kissed in the darkened hallway.
I grunt, squeezing my eyes closed.
Like that first time, I’m overcome with pain, with heat burning along my neck and inside my veins. But this time, I’m prepared. This time, I won’t give in. I’ll withstand the agony for as long as I can, if only to feel her for one brief moment.
