“You once told me I make you nervous. Tell me, do you find that—like the sprites—you are less…nervous, in my presence now?”
Maribel’s mouth went dry, the rumbling bass of Daman’s voice drawing her attention to his bare chest. It wasn’t until that moment that she noticed he’d removed his shirt—the clothing that he’d started wearing for her benefit—apparently to keep it from getting destroyed as he shot around on the ground after the invading sprites.
Now there was nothing to block Maribel’s searching gaze, nothing to hide the strange combination of unblemished human skin and glittering blue and green scales that traced the ridges decorating Daman’s face and chest before disappearing in the cascade of scales that composed his draconic lower half.
She followed the lines of sinewy muscle over his pectorals, up around his biceps and the sharp lines of his throat. The scales should have given him a monstrous appearance, but at some point in the last week or so, they’d become less foreign. Now they were familiar, a defining feature that only served to decorate the already handsome veneer of the isolated lord. She’d seen them shining in the sunlight during the long days he sat with her in the garden, seen candlelight play over them as they ate dinner together and she happily answered all of the naga’s questions about what ingredients she’d used, or what she was going to serve next.
The blue and green scales were warm, despite their icy appearance, slick under the pads of her fingers. She trailed a finger over one of the large ridges that traced Daman’s collar bone, turning sharply at the line it met and following it up his neck.
I’m touching him.
Every muscle in Maribel’s body seized at once, shocked and outraged at her own behavior. Tendons whiplashed, recoiling her hand with a speed surpassed only by creatures beyond the veil. She didn’t remember moving, didn’t remember reaching out to touch him. Dear gods, what had she been thinking?
His hand closed around her wrist, keeping her from retreating. She swallowed a squeak, her heart leaping into her throat.
“Maribel.”
His voice was a low exhale that caressed every inch of her skin, even through her clothes. A thousand words rushed up only to halt without leaving her lips, choking her with too many things she couldn’t say. She couldn’t think with his hand on her skin like that, could hardly hear anything past the thundering of her heart. Sparks crackled in the air between them like pine logs baking in an open fire. Dear gods, he’s going to kiss me.
Damn his eyes, his expression was unreadable, those silver orbs as good as mirrors, reflecting her own turmoil back at her without revealing anything about what he was thinking.
“Are you happy here?”
For a second, she would have sworn she’d heard some hesitancy in his voice, a slight stutter as if he’d been about to say something else and changed his mind in the last instant.
Would you let me go home if I wasn’t? That was the question she should ask, the question that needed to be asked. After all, shouldn’t that be her goal? Hadn’t she told the cuelebre and the…wardrobe, that she was only here to save her father, that if it were up to her she’d go home? Wasn’t that the truth?
The question refused to come out. Maribel’s heart pounded and for a moment she felt she was being split in two. If she had the choice, she would have to go home, wouldn’t she? It was the responsible thing to do, the right thing to do. Hiding here and basking in Daman’s appreciation of her cooking, his attentiveness, his willingness to spend all day outside with her, digging his own hands into the dirt right alongside hers… It would be selfish to stay.
And the moodiness. His appreciation of her cooking and love of basking in the sun aside, more often than not he was short with her, curt, abrupt, rude. What sort of woman willingly stayed with a man like that?
Don’t give me the choice.
“I’ve been having nightmares.” She shoved the words out, her hesitation to share the dreams with him overridden by her desire to stop him from offering her the choice she didn’t want to make.
The heat that had been burning steadily behind his eyes flickered, dimming like a lamp’s flame behind a sooty shade. “Nightmares?”
Maribel nodded, the movement too fast, too jerky. She took a slow breath through her nose. “Yes. For a couple of nights now.”
Daman studied her, his fingers still carefully wrapped around her wrist, claws held out so he didn’t accidentally draw blood. The heat remained in his eyes, a faint glowing silver. “I’m sorry you are ill at ease. What is the nature of your nightmares?”
“I think… I think it’s you.”
The grip around her wrist tightened suddenly, a flash of pain shooting through her as a fraction of his strength squeezed her so hard she gasped. Daman released her immediately, the muscles of his lower body contracting and releasing as he backed away from her.
“Me.”
It wasn’t a question.
Unease rolled through Maribel’s stomach and the hairs on the back of her neck rose in mimicry of her dream. She wanted to take her words back, stop this conversation from happening. It was only a dream, a nightmare. But as she stood there facing Daman now, she suspected he would not brush them off so easily.
“Perhaps nightmare was the wrong word,” she said, hating how pathetic her voice sounded. “It’s not a nightmare, not really, just a strange dream—a silly dream, there’s really not even a reason to talk about it.”
“Tell me.”
His tone left no room for denial. She wouldn’t get away from this conversation. She took a fortifying breath and told him about the dream, describing both the man and the dragon, including the chains and the man’s cryptic words. Daman visibly withdrew farther and farther with every word out of her mouth, and she felt the distance like a physical pain, as though there were some bond between them being stretched, thinned to the point of snapping.
By the time she finished, Daman wasn’t moving. More than that, his body had taken on that eerie reptilian stillness that no human could manage, a state so profoundly still that it was hard to believe he was still alive. Maribel’s chest tightened and she realized she was wringing her hands in front of her. She forced herself to grab a handful of her skirt to stop the nervous motions.
“Daman, it’s only a dream,” she said finally, unable to bear the silence any longer. “I don’t know what it means—”
Daman burst into a flurry of movement. A scream leapt from her lips, cutting off anything else she might have said. His tail lashed at the ground and he shot away from her like a bolt of lightning, his retreat so fast that by the time Maribel registered the movement, he was already gone. The air around her throbbed with lingering tension, her skin buzzing with emotion so strong her knees quivered and she nearly collapsed to the ground.
He was going to kiss me.
He was going to offer to let me leave.
Would I have let him kiss me? Do I want him to kiss me?
Would I have left? Do I want to leave?
Thought after thought swooped down on her, attacking her like screeching birds of prey, there and gone too fast for her to catch. She blinked at the spot where Daman had been, the spot he’d vanished from without a single word of explanation.
Anger cut through her confusion like a battleaxe, heating her blood with the desire to confront Daman, to challenge his retreat, demand answers. What did he think her dream meant? What had upset him so much that he’d fled, run away from…from whatever had been happening between them?
Maribel gritted her teeth. Her emotions were still chaotic, still a tangled web she couldn’t quite see her way out of, but, by the gods, she would not cower away from them. She wasn’t going to get any answers standing here alone. Daman was the one muddling her thoughts this way. It was his fault no one else would talk to her, give her any answers. She needed him to talk to her if she wanted to figure this mess out.
She glared in the direction he’d vanished.
You’re not going to get away that e
asily.
Chapter Nine
Daman dove into the lake, cutting through the water like a blade through the heart of an imaginary enemy. He could still feel Maribel’s delicate wrist in his grip, the frantic beat of her pulse beneath the pads of his fingers. He pushed his hands, open-palmed—through the water, trying to rid them of the memory of Maribel’s warmth. To think he’d been so close to…
“Are you happy here?”
His own words mocked him, ringing in his ears no matter how deep he dove into the lake, no matter how hard he tried to lose himself in the frigid water, the caress of the currents. What had he been thinking? What sort of question was that? What had he expected her to say?
So what if she was happy? What would that mean? Did he think it would be some sort of sign that he wasn’t too scary to continue his duties, to start seeking out changelings in need again? Or was he truly so foolish, so deluded, so reckless…as to think it would mean more? What had he been thinking grabbing her, letting himself be overcome by the taste of her excitement in the air?
Where could it have gone?
He fought through the water, swimming deeper and deeper into the blackness at the bottom of the lake. The icy chill hardly touched him through his scales, but his upper body felt the bite. The sensation was a welcome distraction—a needed distraction.
I am a damn fool.
Spending the past few weeks with Maribel, playing in the dirt, basking in her laughter. He hadn’t even tried to maintain the pretense with himself that he was trying to find her a new home, get her away from her witch of a sister. Every day it was easier to pretend she would stay here forever with him. That they would sit down together every night to eat a meal she’d prepared from herbs and vegetables she’d gathered right here on his land, with meat he brought her, he killed for her. It had been a pleasing and dangerous dream.
She dreamed of me as a human. Dreamed of the dragon as something separate, something terrifying—a nightmare.
What a fool he’d been to think she could be attracted to him in his current form. What woman would willingly come into the arms of a man more reptile than human?
Screams echoed in his memories, the screams of changelings he’d tried to help after the witch’s curse—changelings he’d very nearly frightened to death. What had led him to believe Maribel would be any different?
Anger scalded his veins. Anger at himself for daring to dream of a life he had no business dreaming of. Anger at Maribel for putting that dream into his head. He’d been resigned to his fate until she’d come along.
His temper spiked again and not even the chill of the lake bottom could ease the burn. He cursed and shot up to the surface, breaking into the air in a surge of falling water. The sunlight seared his eyes and he blinked away the pain.
“Are you going to talk to me like a logical human being, or are you going to run away again like a sulking child?”
Daman spun in the water, sending a wave cascading outward to the edge of the lake. Maribel stood there with her hands on her hips, glaring at him. Her blue eyes crackled with magic that he was more and more certain she had no idea she possessed and for a moment, he thought she might actually leap into the lake after him. A pleasant warmth curled up in his belly.
No!
“Go away.” He sent another arc of icy water in her direction, spattering the edges of her skirt. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I’m here because you’re forcing me to be here,” Maribel shot back, her chin jutting out in defiance. “You’re the one who sent for me, you’re the one who forced me to stay. And if you think I’m going to be ignored—”
“Go home, then. I release you.”
He snapped his teeth shut, but it was too late. The words were out, the offer hanging between them, her freedom hers for the taking. A sharp pain in his chest caught him off guard, but he fiercely ignored it. He glared at the woman who’d given him false hope, part of him hoping she’d take his offer and leave, even as he realized how much he wanted her to stay.
Maribel looked as though he’d slapped her. Contrary to what he’d expected, there was no relief in her eyes, no joy. Her face fell as she dropped her arms to her sides.
“You’re throwing me out?”
“Throwing you out? I’m setting you free.” He crossed his arms, his tail swirling in furious circles to keep him afloat. “You’re no longer my prisoner. Go home to your family.”
“So you want me to leave.”
Daman slammed a fist into the surface of the water, splattering more of his sensitive flesh with the frigid lake. “Why do you say it like that? As though I’ve hurt you in some way?” He shoved a hand through his hair, tugging on it in frustration. “You didn’t want to come here, didn’t want to stay here. Even in your sleep you know that this is not what you want.”
Maribel straightened at his last sentence and Daman swore under his breath.
“What isn’t what I want?” Her voice was barely loud enough to reach him.
“So like a female,” Daman ground out, the sharp claws on his fingertips drawing warm beads of blood from his palms under the water. “Searching for praise, needing to be told how wonderful she is. Wanting to hear a man beg her to stay.”
“You want me to stay?”
“I will not play these games with you. Leave!”
“I’m not leaving until you hear me out!”
Maribel set her shoulders, planting her feet more firmly on the ground. Daman clenched his hands into fists.
“What is there to hear? Your nightmares couldn’t be any clearer. You dream of the man without the beast. Well, I’m sorry I cannot accommodate you. I am trapped this way. But even if I weren’t, I would never be fully one or the other. The monster is as much a part of who I am as the man, and if that concept bothers you so, then leave.”
“The only person here who has a problem with your form is you.” Maribel suddenly dropped to the ground long enough to grab a pebble. She threw it at him, managing to bounce it off his shoulder before he could recover from his shock enough to move. “I don’t care how much of you is snake and how much is man,” she snarled.
The flicker of hope that flared to life at her words upset him more than anything else so far. Daman shot through the water, lashing against the bank until he stood only inches from Maribel. Her body tensed, but to her credit she refused to back down. The hope inside him flared brighter and he viciously threw it off. He grabbed her arm, digging his fingers into her flesh as he pulled her closer. She lost her balance and fell against his chest, her body falling flush with his.
He looked deep into her eyes as the scales of his lower body pressed against her, searching for the telltale fear or disgust he was sure he’d find. A muscle ticked in Maribel’s jaw, but she didn’t break eye contact. Water from his body soaked into her skirts.
“It would appear you have nerves of steel. But your mask won’t do you any good against someone who can taste your fear.”
Hating himself even as he did it, Daman opened his mouth enough to slide his tongue out, tasting the air. His forked tongue had scared her once, he was counting on the same reaction now. He was praying for that reaction now.
He didn’t get it.
The air between them heated and a slight hint of musk coated his tongue. Daman closed his mouth abruptly. Pink tinged Maribel’s cheeks, but her blue eyes were fierce, unwavering as they bored into his. Holding his gaze, she leaned more heavily against him.
Without giving him time to react, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down, standing on her tiptoes at the same time. Shock reverberated through Daman’s system as she pressed her mouth to his.
It had been a long time since Daman had kissed someone. And he’d never kissed anyone while in this form. Bestial forms were for fighting, not…anything else. It was a disorienting feeling, like sitting in a bathtub fully dressed.
But not unpleasant.
Raspberries. She tasted of raspberries and…strawberries. Fruit
that had ripened on the vine, warmed by the sun until they nearly burst. Sweet, and so very satisfying.
Maribel took advantage of his surprise and snaked her tongue into his mouth. Panic flared inside of him at the thought of her cutting her tongue on his fangs, chasing back the fuzzy cloud of desire that had eaten his good sense. He could imagine their mouths filling with blood, the horror that would cover her face, extinguishing whatever heat she was feeling now.
Scrambling to back away, Daman grunted as Maribel refused to loosen her hold. As he tried to retreat, she leaned closer, clinging to him like a stubborn coil of ivy. His balance wavered and they both fell backwards. Daman twisted his body, muscles straining as he fought to lower them gently to the ground. It was an acrobatic feat no human form could have managed, but was possible with the sinewy flexibility of his half-dragon form. Maribel didn’t appear to mind the commotion in the least. Her legs slid to either side of his serpentine lower body and she pulled back to lick gently at his bottom lip.
Dear gods…
Without meaning to, Daman closed his hands around Maribel’s hips, barely managing to keep his claws from pressing into her skin. He held his breath, giving in to the urge to kiss her back, if only a little. He chased that sweet flavor, rumbling deep in his chest at the wonder of it.
Maribel moaned in approval as he returned her kiss and he was careful to keep it shallow enough that his fangs didn’t threaten her. He slid his lips against hers, their breaths mingling as they tasted each other. Slowly, Maribel teased the crease of his lips with her tongue, probing for entrance. He sucked in a shuddering breath, but pushed gently against her hips.
“My fangs,” he warned, his voice hoarse.
“I’ll be careful,” Maribel promised softly.
There was a lazy weight to her voice that was nearly Daman’s undoing. He groaned in surrender, parting his lips to let Maribel explore as she would. She traced her tongue lightly over his, carefully avoiding his teeth. He returned her passion with his own, chasing her tongue back into her mouth and exploring the silky depths. A new heat seeped through him, clouding his thoughts until he could think of nothing but the feel of her body in his arms, the press of her mouth against his.
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