Page 91 of Wish of Dragons (Dragon Tails 3)

“But of course! You can’t possibly win in your human form! Not even with Sorin, me, and an entire army at your back.”

“The dragon doesn’t always come out.”

Ere narrowed his eyes.

“What do you mean?”

Kai shrugged.

“Sometimes, my human form is enough to win the battle or turn the tide. Sometimes I die before I turn dragon.”

“You’re not going to die this time!” Ere practically shouted, as if his pronouncement would make it so.

Kai simply nursed his tankard of mead, not bothering to reply.

“He will only die when I say so,” a new voice inserted from beyond Kai’s shoulder.

He didn’t turn to look. He’d already felt her movements before she arrived, as if her essence was tethered to his senses. He simplyknewwhenever she was near.

“We talked about this, Valkyrie,” Ere said, pointedly glaring at the woman standing just behind Kai.

“You’re not ever going to ‘say so,’ isn’t that right? Find some other mark to fill your quota for Valhalla.”

“Hmm,” she murmured noncommittally.

And then she startled Kai with an unexpected touch.

After five days and nights of withholding her words and touch from him, she wrapped her arms loosely around his shoulders from behind and leaned in to nuzzle the side of his face.

Helplessly, every particle of his being snapped to attention at this gentle graze. One hand squeezed the tankard hard enough to crack it with hairline fractures, and his other hand reflexively clenched into a fist upon his thigh.

“I have no need to mark him when he has done it himself. Proclaiming this body allmine,” she said with her lips against his jaw, making Kai’s lungs seize and heart pound.

How did she know? How had she seen?

The Viking runes he’d gotten the village artisan to tattoo into his skin these last few nights were hidden amongst the ancient symbols from eons past. One would never find them if one didn’t know they were there.

Kai shivered uncontrollably as she licked delicately just behind his ear where a tiny trail of runes entreated:

My love, kiss me.

“Go away now, brother dragon and phoenix mate,” she growled huskily to Ere and Sorin sitting across from Kai.

“I have wishes to grant and marks to own.”

She didn’t wait until Kai’s friends departed their bench before coming around to straddle his lap, her hands tilting his face back so that she could stare into his eyes.

He couldn’t avoid those piercing green orbs this time. They lanced into him, making sudden heat and pain bloom within his chest like blood from a mortal wound.

He swallowed once as he stared back at her, both afraid and exhilarated by what she might do.

“Are those words for me?” she husked softly, her fingers tickling along the runic tattoos.

He swallowed again, forcing his throat to move when it wanted to close up from cowardly fear.

But he was no coward. Even in this. He had nothing more to lose. And if she hurt him, if the pain killed him, he would never regret it.

Everything she made him feel…she made him feelalivemost of all.

---