Page 37 of Hoarded By the Dragon

When really, why would he want me?

“Do you want me to leave?” he asks.

“No.” The word is barely a rasp on my lips, but he hears it anyway. His body slides behind mine, his arm wrapping around my waist.

I gasp at the contact of his hot body against mine. The cold flees immediately. The pajamas I wear are flannel and act as a buffer, covering every bit of skin between us.

The instant relief almost brings tears to my eyes.

“Sleep, Rina,” he says. The words brush over the exposed skin of my neck and ear.

I don’t fight the command. I don’t snap at him not to call me a nickname if he’s the one putting boundaries in place. I don’t get mad at him for making it too easy to soften for him.

I give in.

14

KATARINA

Breathe in.Breathe out.

I move with my breath, enjoying the burn and stretch of muscles. I follow the directive from the instructor on the tablet to keep one knee bent and dig into the knife edge of my back foot for Warrior II. This is nice. Calming. I can almost forget the worries that try to flurry around in my brain and focus on the moment.

Stella’s gasping breaths beside me are distracting, but I don’t hold it against her. There are a lot of distracting things. Things like the grit of the yoga mat on the stone patio, the sun beating down pleasantly on my back, that it’s been a whole month since my world was turned on its head, or that my hair smells like campfire.

I shy away from that train of thought and the dragon it’s going to revolve around, focusing hard on the cheerful instructor’s words as she tells us to bring our feet together at the top of the mat before moving from our core to raise our right foot. Oh, a balancing move!

Stella topples with a shriek.

“Are you okay?” I pause the video and Stella stays spread on the mat, trying to catch her breath.

“I’m fine. Everything is fine… this was a terrible idea,” she says.

My lips twitch. “It was your idea.”

“Doesn’t mean it can’t be a bad one. All the research says that yoga is great for birth.”

I skip over the thought of birth and laugh. “That’s great to know, but you don’t have to do it with me.”

“I’m being supportive.” Stella’s face is bright red with exertion. “I thought this was supposed to be relaxing, not pushups and planks.”

“I’m sure it gets easier with practice,” I muse, hiding my secret smile that Stella is willing to go out of her comfort zone for me just to be supportive.

She glares at me, no doubt noticing that I’m not gasping or sweaty. “Why are you good at this?”

I raise a brow and point at myself. “Cat burglar, remember? Being able to balance is kind of important.”

“But you stopped doing that ages ago.”

I smile and shrug, unwilling to admit that I’d kept up my physical routines. The compulsion not to lose strength tastes like that life-and-death decision still. Sometimes moving my body lets me relax when the world and my conscience yells at me, and other times… it’s because I’m afraid of needing those skills again and not having them.

“Some things just stay with you,” I say.

“How did you get into that anyway?”

“I’ve just always had an aptitude for it.” It’s too embarrassing to admit the real reason I started trying to balance on everything I could and perfecting my cartwheels since I can remember.

Stella raises a brow at me. “Sure you have.” She takes a deep breath and blows a strand of hair out of her face. “I think I’m ready to finish it.”

---