Page 91 of The Breeding Cave
I didn’t know what took hold of me, but I reached for it in his pocket. I grabbed the gem. And then my hand started burning. It started burning and burning and burning, hotter than any dragon fire I had ever felt before.
But I didn’t pull my hand away. I couldn’t pull my hand away. It was like it was attached.
It was like my body wanted to burn. Like it had to burn.
I hissed underneath my breath, and Luciano suddenly grabbed the gem from me and stuffed it back into his pocket.
“What are you doing?” he growled at me. “I said it was nothing.” Then he dropped his gaze to my hand, which was burned, and he clicked his tongue. “Why must you always burn? I don’t understand it. You burn from dragons. You burn in your nightmares. And this gem? This gem has made you burn now too.”
“Are you mad at me?” I knew that if I made him mad, he might really bring me to the mountainside and drop me off there and never return. I couldn’t let that happen. “Please don’t be mad at me.”
After a long, low breath, he shrugged his shoulders forward and grabbed me by the waist. He rested his forehead against mine and gently closed his eyes. “I’m not mad at you. I’m stressed out. I fear that they’ll take you away from me. That this fire, whatever the hell it is, will take you away from me. I fear that it will kill you and our baby.”
“What are you saying?” I asked, my stomach twisting and turning and filling with butterflies from not his words, but how he had said them. Soft, vulnerable, desperate to keep me safe, not only because of the baby, but because he felt something deeper for me.
“What do you mean, what am I saying? I’m saying that I can’t lose you.”
“Because of our baby?”
“Not because of our baby,” he snapped. “Because I love you.”
My eyes widened as the words rolled out of his mouth. And then suddenly, he mirrored my expression, his lips parting. I thought he meant to say something more, to take it all back, but he didn’t. I stared at him, and my lips curled into a small smile. I didn’t know what to say. Did he really mean this … had the baby …
“I love you too,” I whispered.
At the moment, I didn’t care if he was lying. I didn’t care if it was all for the baby. I loved him. I really, truly loved him.
He stared at me as if he didn’t believe it, then shook his head. After a couple of silent moments, he grasped my face and pulled me in closer, placing a kiss right on my lips. It was hungry, filled with desire.
“I love you …” This time, his words were stronger. “I love you,” he murmured and mumbled against my lips over and over and over again. “I’ve never loved someone as much as I love you. I can’t explain it.”
Warmth spread through my body, and I slipped my fingers through his hair, tugging.
I didn’t know if this was usual for his kind—the innate desire. But I was sure it was. The beasts had spoken about mates before, right? Yes, yes, they had to have. I swore I’d heard them talk about it when we were with the Colossals.
Was that what this was? He loved me? Or was this just a thing? What were mates? Were they to be together forever?
Before I knew it, Luciano’s hands were all over my body, more than they had ever been.
In the beginning, it had just been lust when he brought me to that cave. I’d thought he was the handsomest man ever all those times that he walked into the coffee shop.
And now … this was something so much more, and it felt … better? It felt so much more intense, like nothing I’d ever experienced before.
Luciano placed me on his desk and slipped between my thighs, his mouth moving down the column of my neck. “Goddess, I love you.”
“If you love me, promise you won’t ever leave me. Promise you won’t take me to the mountainside without going yourself. Promise you will never die from the dragons, even if I do.”
“I’m not gonna leave you. I’m going to love you until the very end.”
CHAPTER
FORTY-NINE
YEOSIN
One moment, Luciano had told me that he would never leave me, and the next, his hands were finding their way up my thighs. I sat back on his desk, one that I doubted he would ever see again after today, and spread my legs.
I grabbed at his tie and pulled him closer to me. “Please, give it to me. I need it.”
