Page 45 of Flameborne: Fury
Donavyn was aweapon.The wisdom and experience he carried had left its mark—and refined him to honed steel. His thick arms bulged when he moved, his shoulders rippled with muscle. Yet his broad chest tapered to a trim waist, those lines that started above his hips, diving down, like arrows pointing the way.
I traced a finger down that line and he shivered. His cock twitched.
“You best be careful,” he rumbled with a lazy smile. “You’llstart the dragons up again.”
We were both exhausted, yet my bodyhummed.If he hadn’t been next to me, I would have fallen asleep in a heartbeat. But with him there, I couldn’t bear the thought of resting.
Even now, in this gentle quiet while the dragons napped, the coiling need in my belly was a sleeping lion. Deceptively idle. The moment he touched me the right way—hell, the moment helookedat me, my desire would roar into fury.
Donavyn’s smile pressed lines into his cheeks and crinkled the skin at the corners of his eyes. I let my fingers trail up his body again, following that ladder of muscles on his side to the little knot of a scar under his ribs. I touched it gently, wincing as I imagined what weapon had done it.
“A blade in the side, though thankfully not deep.”
“Who did it?” I asked, my heart hammering at the idea that he might have been taken away before now, beforeme.
“A footpad in Fyrehold. I was sent there when I was a Wing Lieutenant. A littlenothingof a mission to gather intelligence. But I was complacent. The man who did that wasn’t even aware I was a Furyknight. He was nothing but drunk and angry.”
“Why angry?”
Donavyn had been looking down at where I touched him, but his eyes jumped up then to meet mine. “Because a woman he wanted had flirted with me,” he said carefully.
That tiny churn of nerves started again in my belly.
He shook his head. “Never again, Bren. You have nothing to worry about.”
I nodded, but went back to examining his body because I didn’t want to argue with him about how Iknewwomen of all ages would pursue him into the grave. And I had no confidence I could compete with any of them.
I trailed a hand over his chest, circling his nipple with a fingertip, ignoring his eyes on me. Though I couldfeelthe heatbuilding in him. It made my belly tingle with anticipation. But I kept that finger on his skin, enjoyed dragging my nails through the smattering of hair at the center of his chest, then across.
There was another scar on the other side. A thin line across his ribs. I traced it once, then again. “This one?”
“A battle scar,” he admitted. “We were caught on the ground during a clash at the border. Ambushed in camp. Kgosi pulled me out. It bled like a motherfucker, but healed quickly.”
I continued over his body.
The crosshatch scar where he’d fallen off Kgosi as a Flameborne and been dragged against a tree on landing, scraping the skin off his hip because his jacket rode up and his leathers caught on a branch.
The line above his collarbones where he’d been held at knifepoint by an assassin while on a mission when he was a Wing Captain.
The nick in his ear where he first claimed Kgosi bit him, but finally admitted he’d gotten an ill-advised earring when he was young, and it was torn out while wrestling with one of his squad brothers.
There was thick knot where he’d taken a spear-head to his thigh when he was a Captain, and the twisted toe that was almost torn off the one time he rode Kgosi without shoes, and they landed among trees.
“Do you have any on your back?” I asked, letting my fingers trail up his thigh and over that spear-scar. I felt the muscle bunch under the skin and smiled when his cock leaped again, but after a reluctant grunt, he rolled onto his belly, laid his chin on his arms and sighed.
I stopped.
I’d been about to trace fingers up the back of his thigh and over his ass, see if I could make his skin goosebump the way mine did when he touched me. But there was a vivid scar, awicked, scythe-shaped, angry-red blight on his beautiful, rugged shoulder and upper-back that froze me.
“What isthat?”I laid fingers on it gently. “Does it hurt?”
“I can’t feel your touch there,” Donavyn muttered. “Only pressure, or touch on the unblemished skin next to it.”
I followed the edge of the strange scar, biting my lip. It looked awful. And so painful. “How did you get it?”
His back expanded as he took a deep breath, then turned his head, laid his temple on his crossed arms and looked at me. His eyes appeared light—almost gray in this light. “What are the rules about flying leathers on missions, or during wartime?” he asked in a quiet rumble.
I frowned. “Always full leathers, including boots and a head covering. Why?”
