Page 57 of Dragons' Bride
“Right.” She sounded exhausted. “Here we go again. Fire and ice. Let me guess. You are suddenly regretting rutting with me.”
She wasn’t wrong.
Kit pulled herself up into a sitting position. “So, have you decided?”
“Decided what?” He couldn’t look away from her bleeding breast. A few pearly beads of red were beading on the wound. He ached to lap them up. To lick the whole bite closed and then lap other parts of her. He was salivating. Quinton’s nails scraped against the floor in an effort to keep himself still.
“Whether you are going to kill me. That’s why you showed up here, remember?”
Whyhadhe come? Right. Ettienne’s orders.
“Quinton?”
“I’ve decided not to bother. You’ll probably get yourself killed all on your own anyway.”
“Probably,” she agreed. She brushed her hands through her hair.
He wished she’d stop moving. He got a new urge to pounce on her everytime she did. One more quick motion, and stars help him, he didn’t trust himself to resist.
“Don’t you need me dead on a schedule, though?”
He blinked at her. Did she feel nothing of what just happened? Maybe bonds didn’t work the same way with a human. If she didn’t feel the connection between them, maybe it could still be broken. She could still be free from him. Though whatever Ettienne did when he forced himself into her mind put them into new territory. Newer territory.
“Is the pain gone?” Quinton asked.
“The one in my ass is still here.” She rubbed her temple, her voice shifting. “But if you are talking about your heartbeat trying to deafen me, then yes, that’s gone. Thank you for… helping.”
“I didn’t do you any favors, trust me.”
“Do you know what that was?” she asked.
He really wished she stopped talking. And moving. And everything. The mating bond inside Quinton was so raw, it reacted to every whisper. He forced himself to remember the human’s question. “By the sound of it, your body mimicked my blood magic.”
Kit frowned. “How is that possible?”
“That’s a conversation for a magic scholar.” Quinton pinched the bridge of his nose, taking stock of how much of a mess he’d just made. After weeks of doing everything in his power to build an impenetrable wall between the human and himself, of getting within a hair’s reach of severing the dangerous ties binding her to them, he undid it all with a single bite. And he didn’t know how to tell her that.
Kit drew her ripped dress toward her, examining the ruined fabric as if she intended to dive into repairs right here and now. “Can we skip talking in circles? You let me see you on purpose. If you didn’t come here to kill me, why did you come?”
“To scare you.” Quinton rose, readjusting his clothes with more force than necessary. “Iwassent to kill you, just as I knew I would be. Spend long enough with Ettienne and you recognize when the order is coming. I’d hoped to scare you into returning to the human lands this night, and make it look like I executed the order.”
“And is this no longer the plan?” she asked.
He wished he could see into her mind. To know what she wanted. But she’d shut him out just as he had done to her. The fact that he deserved every moment of it was of little consolation. He raised his head, catching Kit’s gaze. Beads of blood were still rising on the bite. “There has been a complication.”
29. KIT
"There has been a complication.”
There is something strange about Quinton's tone, something I have never heard before. Uncertainty. Fear, even. His pointed ears seem to pull in toward his head, the tips of his silver scales shifting with emerald hues.
Not meeting my eyes, Quinton finds himself a chair and sinks into it. His head bows, every muscle in his body tense beneath sweat slickened skin. He looks like an odd mix of lethal grace and contrite puppy.
I sit on the bed and pull the sheet around my body. "Use your words, immortal."
He glances up at my jab, which is an improvement over the ringing silence. "I bit you."
"I noticed." I rub the bite mark on my breast, hidden beneath the clean white sheet. It is still tender, the skin around it feeling unusually hot. "In your defense, I bit you first." I touch the bite mark again. Now that it catches my attention, I cannot shift my mind away from the sensation. The puncture pulls all my body's skin taught. I swallow, a shiver of fear running through me. "Are your bites infectious? A stray cat bit a servant at the Agam estate when I was young. She lost her whole arm."
