Page 83 of Cowboy Dragon's Rose

It’s a simple question, but I’m grateful for it. I need the distraction. Something to keep my Dragon’s teeth from snapping in my skull.

“Well, you know I’m a Dragon Shifter?—”

Her head turns sharply. “Oh! So, are the others all Dragon Shifters too?”

I bark out a laugh. “Fuck no. They wish.”

I throw her a playful glare, just to watch her eyes light up.

And damn, it works. That sweet little giggle? It hits me dead center in the chest, unclenching something that’s been locked tight inside me since the moment I saw her place had been trashed.

“Max is a Jersey Devil,” I explain. “Dante shifts into a Grizzly Bear. Emmet’s a Demon Wolf—part Hellhound, actually. And that cow you saw strutting around by our cabin the other day?” I flick a glance toward her and smirk. “That was Kian in Bull form.”

She goes quiet then. No follow-up questions. No wide-eyed disbelief. Just quiet.

I glance over, wondering if I scared her. Dropped too many supernatural truth bombs at once.

But she doesn’t look scared. She doesn’t even look confused.

She looks—fuck. She looks happy.

Her big brown eyes shimmer, soft and wide and filled with something I don’t think I deserve.

“What?” I ask. “What did I say wrong?”

“You didn’t,” she whispers. Her voice is like wind through leaves. “You said our cabin.”

I nearly slam on the brakes right then and there.

“Shit,” I breathe, reaching over to squeeze her thigh. Her skin’s warm under my touch, and it grounds me.

“It might seem fast, Casey. I know it does. But to me, it is ours. I want it to be. You and me, Petals. From now on. Got it?”

She takes a breath, eyes locked on mine like she’s trying to read my soul.

“I want that, too.”

And just like that, the fire in my chest starts churning brighter.

Hell, it fucking roars inside me, bursting to get out. The rose on my skin pulses and sizzles. And I can feel my scales flexing beneath my skin.

But this time? It’s not fury that’s moving me so.

It’s love.

I lift her hand to my lips, her fingers trembling slightly in mine.

I press a kiss there—slow, reverent—a soft touch on sweet skin that’s already been claimed in ways she hasn’t even begun to understand.

Her breath hitches, but she doesn’t pull away.

No. She leans in, trusts me, lets me hold her like she’s precious.

She is.

Then I step on the gas, the truck roaring to life beneath us as we head back toward the ranch. Toward safety. Toward home.

And I know—as surely as I know my own goddamn name, carved into stone and fire and old magic—that I’d move heaven and earth for this woman.

---