Page 60 of Dragon Fires Everywhere
But I am not a Pendell.
I never have been.
“Okay, then,” I manage to get out.
Because in this moment, where my entire life has been upended, I don’t want to ask the questions. I don’t want tofixanything. I don’t want to pore over thefactsand go drop this same bomb on my friends.
I want to be his. I want him to be right, and this feeling inside me to be true. For once, I want everything I feel to bethe only truth I hold on to. If dragons can exist, why can’t lifetimes? He was right about true covens and fabulae, so whyshouldn’t I let myself believe it’s possible he’s right aboutthis?
Now it’s my turn to reach out to him, to pull his mouth down to mine, to pour all this... whirling, confusingmessof mine into him.
And he takes it and turns it into wildfire.
Magic sparks against magic, desire against desire. We are nothing but flame—and I need it. Goddess, how I need it.
To sear off all these confusing things I don’t want to know.
I want it to roar through me and wash it all away.
I want to be purified in histhis is who we areuntil I believe it too.
His hands are as hot as his mouth, rough and deliriously mobile. Our mouths are greedy, until there is nothing but us.
An us that does not seem to be tethered to my outside body, but to something far deeper.
Then we’re in the air.
The stars press in all around us, and we’re not flying the way we did before. This is something else.
“How are we...?” I ask in part wonder, part desire. “I’m not a...?”
“Dragon magic,” he tells me.
Because I am flying with him, but my body is not my body. We are both smoke and swirling, rush and plummet. I stretch intoscales and stars, wrapping myself around him, my arms wide like wings. Maybe I really do have wings.
And everything is a building, blinding pleasure. Everything is magic.
“I don’t know what to do,” I tell him, and the heavens.
“You do,” he tells me, his mouth at my neck. “You have done exactly this too many times to count.”
And I know it’s true. I know it’s all true. I know it’s fate and longing, passion and joy.
His magic makes me a dragon in the air, just like him. Crafted specifically for him and the press of his immensity within.
There is no name. There is no time. There is onlyus.
And a dizzying culmination that is more than just any moment. It is every moment.
Souls meant to come together, no matter what time they find themselves in.
Then we land in my bed, breathless and pulsing, in the shape of a man and a woman.
“Now,” Azrael murmurs as he crawls down my body and settles himself between my legs, “dessert.”
And when the fire comes for me then, I arch up and cry out. It’s brighter and hotter and louder than any other I’ve known.
Azrael laughs. It’s a deep sound I can feel between my legs, into my skin, deep into my bones. Again and again, until we rolltogether and I climb on top of him. I prop myself up against the wide expanse of his chest.
