Page 49 of Bound to the Dorm Elf
The first touch of my lips to hers is tentative, almost questioning. She answers in the way she leans in, her breath hitching as her hand lifts to rest lightly against my chest.
I deepen the kiss slowly, letting it build. The faint chill of the night vanishes under the heat blooming between us. Her lips are soft but sure, moving with mine like we’ve done this before in some other lifetime. I taste the faint sweetness of whatever she drank earlier, mixed with something entirely her own.
Her other hand comes up, fingers brushing the back of my neck, and that single touch pulls something loose inside me. The kiss shifts—no longer testing, no longer restrained. My hunger for her is sudden, sharp, and not at all the controlled hunger I’m used to wielding like a weapon. This is raw. Uncalculated.
She meets me there, matching me with a fire I wouldn’t have believed she carried under all that nervous energy. Her lips part and I follow, deepening the connection until the world around us—the lake, the wind, the cold—is reduced to nothing but the heat between our mouths.
When I finally break away, it’s not because I want to, but because I need air. We’re both breathing harder than the moment warrants, our foreheads almost touching.
Her eyes search mine, pupils wide, lips parted like she’s trying to find words.
“What was that?” she whispers.
I let my thumb trace along her cheekbone, slow and deliberate. “Truth,” I say simply.
Her lips curve, but it’s not quite a smile. “That felt… dangerous.”
“Everything worth having is,” I murmur, and I mean it.
The air feels different now—charged, like the night itself is holding its breath. I can still taste her on my tongue, still feel the imprint of her hand against my chest. My glamour hums faintly under my skin, reacting to emotions I’ve kept buried for years.
I know, with a clarity that’s almost frightening, that nothing about this is going back to how it was before.
The cold sand crunches under me as I lower myself beside her, my armor-less body oddly aware of the grit clinging to my palms. She doesn’t hesitate before leaning in, letting her head rest against my shoulder. Her hair brushes my jaw, carrying that faint citrus scent I’ve started to associate with… calm.
We sit there, silent except for the low hiss of the water against the shore. The moon spills its silver across the lake, turning every ripple into molten metal. My gaze stays on the horizon, but my attention… my attention is all on the woman beside me.
Her breathing is steady now, each inhale warming the fabric of my shirt where her cheek rests. The cold bites at my exposed skin, but her presence is heat enough. I’m used to silence being a weapon — something to fill with menace or use to unsettle an enemy. This… this is different. It’s not a trap. It’s not a test.
It’s just… stillness.
And I realize I don’t hate it.
“You’re warm,” she murmurs, voice muffled against my shoulder.
I let out a low huff of air. “Dragons tend to be.”
She tilts her head, looking up at me with that half-curious, half-exasperated expression she wears so well. “Still not used to you saying things like that and meaning them.”
“It’s not my fault your people think the world is smaller than it is,” I reply, my tone dry.
She laughs — soft, genuine — and the sound vibrates through me like a strike on a war drum, shaking something loose I didn’t realize I’d been guarding.
We lapse back into quiet, but this time it feels full, heavy with things unspoken. My mind turns over the truth I’ve been circling for days: she’s no longer just a guide through this strange realm. She’s… something else.
The thought settles in my chest like an anchor, firm and immovable. Skylar is the only constant I’ve had since I fell into this world — the only one who’s looked at me without calculation, without asking what I could give her in return. In Protheka, loyalty is currency, and everyone keeps a ledger. Here, with her, the pages are blank.
And gods help me, I don’t want to fill them.
She shifts slightly, her knee brushing mine. “You’re quiet.”
“I’m thinking.”
“About?”
I consider lying. Deflecting. It’s what I’d do with anyone else. But the weight of her against me, the night wrapping around us like a cloak… it feels like a moment that deserves more than evasion.
“About how I ended up here,” I say slowly. “And how strange it is that the one thing in this world I understand is sitting next to me.”
