Page 69 of Taken
“What? No?—”
“Don’t you want to be with me? To be mine? You can’t hide the way you react when we are alone,” I murmur, low enough for our ears only.
“Kael, I-I want you. I never felt like this about anyone, but you’re this powerful, important Demon Lord, one of the rulers of Nightfall—this magical place I never even imagined existed, and I-I’m just a girl from New Jersey. How long can I possibly expect to hold your attention?”
“You have no idea, Telya,” I murmur, and draw close enough so I can breathe in her scent.
Fuck, but I want to keep it inside of me, carry it in my lungs for always.
“Look tonight, we will rest here and feast. All I ask is for you to just be here with me. Talk to the people. Eat the food. Ask questions. I promise you and I will talk about all the rest when there is less noise, less audience.”
I let the promise stand like a small anchor between us.
She looks as if she wants to argue—wants to press for a clearer confession—but something in the back of her jaw gives way and she nods.
“Okay, I mean, this world is fascinating, and I do want to learn,” she says. “And I’m grateful.”
My heart squeezes. She shouldn’t be grateful to me.
I’m the thief who took her. The liar who keeps her in the dark.
But before I can dwell on that, bright as a startled bird, Phoebe says, “Oh my God—is that a dragon?”
The sky answers her before I can.
A shadow detaches from the cloud-line and falls toward the inlet like a living storm.
Wings chop the air with a sound that makes the salt in my mouth taste of iron.
Heat washes us in a breath that smells of smoke and old thunder.
Bloody fucking show off.
Still, I grin as Alaric rides low, his Dragon form a mountain of shadow and ember, scales flashing like struck ore in the last of the sun.
He lands with that easy, dangerous grace he’s always had—an impossible beast—and the whole world hushes.
His Dragon’s breath is a slow exhalation that sends a ripple through the banners. The music stutters and then finds a new rhythm.
“Fashionably late,” I muse, grinning as he raises his snout and breathes a stream of gold and black smoke into the air.
He eyes me, then Phoebe, and she grips my arm tight.
“Easy, Telya. He’s a friend,” I whisper before Phoebe could combust from nerves and novelty.
“Your friend with a mother-humping dragon!” Phoebe hissed, half scandalized, half deliriously thrilled.
Alaric makes a face like he’d been complimented and insulted with equal skill.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I reply.
I caught her eye, felt the little shock of her amusement ripple through me, and before I thought I let the word slip.
“Alaric, shift already and ease my viyella’s mind.”
The moment the title leaves my lips it settles into the air—soft and dangerous—and only I seem to notice the way it sounds.
The ocean inside me didn’t riot.
