Page 14 of Sugar & Dragon Act I: Temptation

“The journey would be more pleasant if something happened between us.”

Feeling her self-control shake under his intense gaze, she looked down at the table again. So he persisted in his idea…

“Do you want to eat something first?”

Hera shook her head. There was no point in making dodges. She’d known from the beginning what would happen.

Dago moved closer. When she didn’t cringe, he wrapped his fingers around her wrist. For some reason, their warmth surprised her. She thought they would be as cool as the color of his eyes.

When a moment passed and she still wasn’t pulling away, he said, lowering his voice, “Put your hands on the table.”

“Why?”

“Because of occupational safety and health.”

Involuntarily, her lips curved into a smile. “You think that you are made of gold?”

“Certainly not of sugar.”

A soft chuckle escaped her throat but faded when Dago moved to stand behind her.

“Hands on the table,” he reminded her, gently touching her stiff arms. “And be so kind as to hold your flames for yourself. If you burned my collection, I would be inconsolable.”

“Would you cry?”

“A whole night.”

She smiled again, amused by this vision. “That’s short for such a loss.”

He moved his right hand over her arm, up and down. “I could sit and cry, but that wouldn’t change anything. The time spent on rebuilding would be more rewarding.”

“That’s practical.”

“I am a very practical man.”

He stroked her skin again, using both hands this time. He didn’t stop, however, gradually lowering his hands. When his fingers wrapped around her wrists and tugged lightly, she gave in and placed her hands on the counter. The table was relatively high, so the angle at which she leaned her body was too shallow for her to feel embarrassed about her new position. When Dago moved so that her back was no more than two fingers away from his chest, his proximity made her more curious than afraid.

He moved one hand back to her shoulder but placed the other on her hip. “I think you’re ready for another level of fun,” he murmured, but since he was so close she could understand every word. “Am I wrong?”

The gentle but determined touch of his hands enlivened her skin, which seemed to vibrate under their warm weight. The uncertainty regarding his next move fueled her curiosity, and her curiosity crowded out her shame. Hera wouldn’t be honest if she insisted that she didn’t like it. She could withdraw, but why? It would be like stopping the experiment in the middle of the research.

Reasonless.

“No,” she said because she was a very practical woman. “You’re not wrong.”

IX Dago

Dago would be lying if he didn’t admit that he found a strange pleasure in watching Hera’s reaction. She wasn’t good at hiding her emotions. Actually, she was hopeless at it. He could read the truth on her face with such ease that it verged on magic.

But it wasn’t magic. It was a dazzling honesty that Galenos was imbued with to such an extent that she didn’t dare even touch the books from his collection even though she was… shethoughtshe was alone. Her expression when she was fighting with herself was like an illustration in a textbook for morpheuses who wanted to live in the human world but had trouble understanding them. “This expression means a human woman wants something very badly but doesn’t allow herself to reach it for some reason,” would be the caption.

In the version for nightmares, there would be an additional note: “Think how to use it.”

Dago stroked Hera’s hip in a gentle caress, then slowly moved his hand along her figure. He liked the shape his fingers felt through the loose fabric and would love to sate his eyes with it, but it was too early for that. The woman tolerated his touch but didn’t ask for it. There was still more curiosity in her than desire.

He had to change that.

He deliberately moved his hand to her stomach and waited a moment to give them both time to adjust to their deepening intimacy. After all, this situation wasn’t something ordinary for him, either. The thought of holding her in his arms still stirred a conflict in him. Hera Galenos, the embodiment of all virtues, held up as a model since childhood, always so diligent and willing to work… now allowedhimto touch her. It was so difficult to believe that he subconsciously waited for the woman to break away and call it all off. The fact that she hadn’t done that yet made him hard.

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