Page 23 of Sugar & Dragon Act I: Temptation

“No,” she said. Her head and legs took on a human shape. The rest of her body resembled a dress of fire.

He took off the cloak he’d thrown over his tunic and walked toward her. “You don’t like your room?”

“It’s fine.” She watched him warily like he was a snake that might be poisonous. Yet she didn’t move away when he got close enough to touch her. The flames streaking across her feathery dress cast wavering shadows around them. “Why haven’t you tried to touch me today?”

He didn’t expect this question from her, but he wasn’t overly surprised either. After all, it wasn’t the first time she’d behaved differently than he had imagined.

“I wanted to see if we could communicate without teaching aids.”

The corners of her mouth twitched, but she didn’t smile. “And what do you think the test result is?”

“Rather positive.”

“Rather?”

“I need to check something to be sure.”

He moved closer. He risked getting burned, but he was too curious about her reaction to worry too much about it.

She watched him for a long while. Eventually, the surrounding flames faded away and the feathers melted into her skin, but he could only see it out of the corner of his eye because his gaze was focused on her face. When she finished transforming, he crossed the distance between them and wrapped the cloak around her, but instead of buckling it and moving away, he stopped, holding the fabric with his fingers. They were so close now that she had to tilt her head up to look into his eyes.

“Is this how you seduce women?”

The moonlight wasn’t bright enough for him to tell what was hiding behind her gaze, but the quivering vibration of her voice told enough for him to guess.

“Why are you asking a question you don’t want the answer to?”

A hint of a smile danced on her lips, but it disappeared when he raised his hand to brush a strand of hair from her cheek. In a voice like the rustle of leaves, she asked, “Why are you so confident?”

“Because I’m not afraid of rejection.”

He more sensed than saw her surprise.

“That’s wise,” she said after some thought.

“Of course. I’m wise, so I say wise things.”

She snorted.

He leaned down and brushed his lips against hers. She tensed but let him repeat the caress. The third time, she parted her lips slightly, and he increased the pressure. Her breathing was uneven, as if she was struggling to remember to breathe. He ran his tongue across her upper lip, and when she twitched in surprise, parting her mouth wider on reflex, he slid it inside.

She stood frozen at first but eventually began to respond to his movements. Shyly, then with growing engagement.

Dago couldn’t pinpoint the moment when engagement turned into passion. All he remembered was that he liked what they were doing, and when he woke up again, he was in the center of an emotional tornado. He wanted more. Harder. Deeper.

He desired.

He craved.

He needed.

He must…

He pulled away and focused on steadying his breathing. One thing he knew about humans: women were not that different from men. The more often they were shown something, the greater the chance that they would remember it. If the presentation was accompanied by pleasant feelings, the opportunity became an event with a high degree of probability. If the pleasure was proportionatelyhigh butnotfulfilling, the obsession was almost certain. Add a bit of charisma to it and the belief that one couldn’t live without the object of presentation becamedeeplyrooted.

Scholars called it an advertisement. Dago preferred the term “teasing.”

“We should go to sleep,” he said when his breathing evened out. “We have only one day to find koralion, so it’d be better to gather strength.”

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