Page 43 of Guardian's Dilemma

I recognised the movement. It was his baffled look and I felt a flash of fondness for it and tried to squash that down.

“I was just thinking,” I said.

“About what?”

“About you.”

He kept looking at me expectantly, until eventually he asked, “What about me? At this stage, I can’t assume it’s good.”

My instinct made me speak before I had consciously processed that. I glared and said, “It’s good.”

The glare probably wasn’t ideal, but I didn’t like the idea that he was still questioning me. Questioning my word.

My breath caught in my throat as Glimmer smiled. It wasn’t the little smile from before and it wasn’t the slightly-okay-a-lot evil grin I’d seen before. No, it was the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen in my life.

His whole face lit up like the sun, the warm magic radiated out from him and his freckles seemed to burst across his face like sparks of fire.

This time, I knew I was staring. Drinking him in and unable to stop.

I knew he knew it, too. That smile stretched wider and the magic I could always feel like a low hum around him thrummed out, deeper and warmer. I was engulfed in the feel of him, in soft sunset magic. I felt warm. More than warm, I felt safe. Cocooned. Hot.

My body had started to react to those feelings and the sight of Glimmer’s body and his smile. I felt the tension in my stomach and the hardness of my cock.

Clearing my throat again, I tried to will away my arousal. Distract myself.

“What will you do now?”

The smile vanished. I should have been glad but a part of me reached forward, as though I could grab hold of it and keep it.

“I… don’t know.”

Dragging ice into my veins, I cast my mind back to what I’d been thinking about before. Glimmer was unique. A dragon who wasn’t evil. I needed to tell the Council that such a thing was possible.

“I need to go back to my coven.”

Glimmer stayed still and I waited. It must have been a minute before he commented.

“I understand. What will you do there?”

“I need to tell them about Leonard, for a start. What he was doing.”

The vaguely sick feeling that had been coming and going like the tide in my stomach returned. I couldn’t believe that anyone, let alone aridire, would drink a dragon’s blood.

“And then?”

“Then I need to tell the Council about- that not all dragons are evil.”

“You realise they probably won’t believe you.”

I nodded. “That had occurred to me, yes.”

And I was likely to be locked up as a madman if I suggested it. The thought didn’t appeal.

Glimmer surprised me by saying, “I’ll come with you.”

“You can’t.”

I spoke quickly and definitely. If there was one thing I was certain of, it was that a dragon near theridiretraining grounds was in grave danger.

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