Page 120 of Of Blood and Banes
My mouth parts as I cry, my climax ricocheting like a wave of echoes spasming my limbs. His fingers on my clit draw the rest of my pleasure out, his mouth still devouring my skin.
As the hazy tingling of my orgasm subsides, a heat flushes over my cheeks. Darian removes his hand from between my legs and my shirt. I lean up off him, and as I turn to face him, he smiles. Wicked and handsome.
Holding up a shiny key.
Guess I’m not the only one who’s using our sexual tension as a manipulation.
Gaping, I swing forward to try and snatch it from him before he evades me, chuckling. He unlocks the shackles and stands, before he adjusts the erection in his pants.
“Remember what I’ve told you?” He taps the key against the side of his head and slips it back between my brassiere and my breast. “Don’t let your emotions control you.”
He fucking pats my breast, kicks off his boots, and flops into the bed, stomach down.
Did I just get bested by a fucking thigh ride?
Shaking my head against the rolling wave of vexation at myself, I walk over to the other side of the bed and pile the pillows into a barrier between us. I shift down beneath the sheets as he lifts and turns his head to face me. His cheek is pressed against his crossed forearms underneath himself, a sly smile on his lips.
“Goodnight,” he chimes.
I take a pillow at our feet and pile it on the one already between our faces, blocking him from my view.
CHAPTER 39
THE EGO AND THE ANGER
Marge doesn’t come in the night to fetch me for training. And for the first time in a long while, I’m able to sleep uninterrupted for more than a few hours. Though, my dreams are still haunted by flames, blood, my mother and brother, and this time, Corvin’s bug-eyed gaze. The tendons in his throat bulging as he gasped for breath.
Lucky for me, when I wake sweating, Darian’s undisturbed next to me. One less thing he can taunt me about.
“How was the flight yesterday?”I ask Daeja in the Pinepoint community hall at breakfast.
Taking a bite of cheese, I glance up to where Archie sits a few seats down, bumping his shoulder into Melaina’s with a grin. Based on how she glows around him, she must know he loves her. And it would be foolish to think she doesn’t feel the same.
“Next time you commit me to a ride like an oversized show pony, you’ll be owing me more than two elk carcasses,”Daeja grumbles.
I grin, keeping a laugh to myself.“Would three suffice?”
“…”
“Come on, was it really that bad? You love Archie?”
“I’d argue he’s a better rider than you.”
“Going for the heart today, are we?”
“Fine. It wasn’t terrible. But tell him next time if he tucks a flower in one of my horns, I’ll bite his ass.”
“You temperamental, merciful thing.”
She snorts with a snide amusement.“Odd way to say thank you, but I’ll take it.”
The forest surrounding Pinepoint thins out to long stretches of plains. A snow-tipped mountain range quadruple the size of Dragon’s Back Ridge—the Serahaven mountains, Sethan explains—spans out across the northern horizon. Rather than flying on dragonback to Mossmead, Sethan instructs us to walk along with the horse-drawn wagons, since Mossmead is a town built on an old, shallow lake. While the water may only be hip-deep and well-trafficked enough the water dragons never venture to it, it makes the fire dragons uneasy.
As we come to the outskirts of Mossmead, the sunset bathes the waters around the quaint, stone town in golden ripples as small boats cut through the waters. Sethan leads us to the northwestern part of town where the streets and bridges are extra wide leading to the dragon rider sector. As we venture farther into town, I quickly realize why they call it Mossmead. Every stone archway, building corner, and bridge is dusted in moss.
Sethan mentions all of the Dragon Lands source their mead here, with Driftmond producing the most ale. And after I try a stein of mead at dinner, I quickly realize it’s not for me. We all turn in early with the buzzing anticipation of starting an early morning scouting Vitalis and, day after next, we begin the laststretch to the castle. We’re so close. The apprehension and hope stirs like an itch I can’t yet scratch.
After Gavin and Nolan deliver Darian to my room and secure his shackles, the door falls closed behind them.
