Page 49 of Burn for the Dragon
“I have a job I need to get back to, and an apartment, and a cat. If Kohl doesn’t send me away, I’ll still have to leave eventually.”
“The cat is yours?”
She rolled her eyes. “Well, he may as well be. We’ve bonded.”
“What about your other half?”
Everly sighed and took a step back. She didn’t go far, but the chasm between them may as well have been the size of an ocean. “I don’t know what to do about that. And honestly, I’m a little scared.” She wrinkled her nose. “No, that’s a lie. I’m fucking terrified.”
“Kohl can help you learn to deal with that side of your nature.”
She laughed, the sound short and without humor. “I don’t know about that. I get the feeling he doesn’t like me very much.”
Hawke shook his head and reached for hand, needing some kind of connection between them. “It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s hard growing up with a foot in two different worlds. He just…never felt like he belonged anywhere. And he doesn’t want to take the chance of another going through that.”
“It doesn’t have to be two different worlds,” she said quietly.
Looking at her standing before him, with a smudge of dirt on her face and her red hair curling wildly around her face, Hawke believed that was true. It felt good to be around her. It felt right.
It felt like home.
He rubbed the dirt off her face with his thumb. “I’m beginning to believe you.”
She started to say something, and then she stilled. “Hawke, what are you?—”
Heart pounding in his ears, he cut off her words with a kiss. Just a brush of his mouth on hers, really. Everly moaned, her lips parting beneath his, and he sucked her full bottom lip into his mouth, biting gently until he tasted the sweet warmth of her blood.
When he released it, they were both breathing heavily. “Let’s go get that shower.”
Without another word, she led him to the bathroom.
Hawke watched as she turned on the water, appreciating the view of her strong calves and rounded thighs, then he helped her take off the wet lab coat and shed his shoes and pants and boxer briefs, shucking it all into the corner.
The hot water stung his back like a bitch when they got in. Hawke hissed with the pain, and quickly adjusted the temperature.
Turning so Everly was under the spray of water, he washed the remnants of the night’s horrors from her body, memorizing every slope and curve. Every spot that made her flinch with laughter and sigh with longing. Then they switched positions so she could do the same.
When they were clean, he pressed her against the tiles and kissed her hard. His hands roamed over silky skin and soft curves, lingering on the sensitive spots as he ran his tongue and teeth down her throat to taste her hardened nipples. Pulling one into his mouth, he flicked the tip with tongue and then bit down as he found the wet heat between her soft thighs. Everly cried out, her fingers twisting in his hair to hold him at her breast, her hips bucking against his palm. He drank in her cries, her blood, her passion like a man starved, feeling all of it heal him physically and spiritually. And when she came, he lifted her leg around his hip and slid into her so he could feel her pulse around him.
He came fast and hard, his cries mingling with hers. And then he pressed his forehead to hers, still inside of her, and waited until his heartbeat slowed and he caught his breath. Then he turned her around and fell to his knees behind her. Gripping her hips, he pulled her toward him and found her sweet core with his tongue.
When the water began to cool, and her legs shook with the effort to hold herself up, he dried her off and took her to bed.
More than once, he looked into her eyes to find the dragon inside of her looking out at him. But Hawke just smiled, and the dragon would smile back as she arched her body into his caress.
Hawke had no idea what would happen when this day was over and they had to come back to reality, but he planned to make it a day neither of them would easily forget.
Eventually, they slept, and he woke to the sound of her stomach growling under his ear. Lifting his head from her torso, he blinked awake as he reached for his phone, then remembered it was melted.
Leaving Everly asleep, he found a pair of Kohl’s jeans and slipped them on. They were a little long, but otherwise fit pretty well. In the bathroom, he checked out his injury in the mirror and was happy to see the burns were healing well, thanks to Everly.
It must be that dragon blood.
In any case, he was grateful.
