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She’s quiet for a moment, and my heart starts to flutter, wondering if she’s going to ask why I spoke about Elaria in the past-tense. I breathe a sigh of relief when she doesn’t, but my heart quickly lurches into my throat when her big, golden eyes lock on mine. It’s a silent plea, one my dragon is never going to let me live down.
“Alright. I’ll stay, but you’re staying on that side and a pillow–or two–is going in the middle. I don’t want your beast–whatever she is–deciding to cuddle. Deal?”
“And you’re worried about what I have to say? No… You should be worried about what Jesper is going to say in the morning.”
I don’t answer him, just arrange the pillows while she grins at me, so full of light it makes me sick.
I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this, but I suppose if she won’t let me knock her out, then at least this way she won’t wake up everyone else. That, and it’ll be easier to know if she gets up.
She lays on her side, wound facing up, hands tucked under her head. “How old are you?”
“You don’t want to know. Older than you.”
I make the mistake of stealing a glance. From this angle, and the way her nightgown sits, it hardly covers anything, not her prominent collarbones, the slender curve of her throat, the swells of her breasts. My stomach tightens, my mouth suddenly feeling dry.
I’m starting to kick myself for letting Vik change her clothes. Luckily, Calamity brought spare gowns, but I should’ve had Vik find her something else, something less revealing for my sake. However, being attracted to her and my dragon’surgeswere thelast things on my mind. I just didn’t want her to sleep covered in blood, and it gave me a moment to clean my own wounds.
The arm draped over her side is covered in goosebumps, but she tucks in under the blanket before I can think of a way to ask if she’s cold. “Are we talking centuries? Decades?”
I weigh my head. It’s pointless to avoid the subject. She’ll just keep asking. “About a century older.”
“So… One hundred and twenty five.”
“Close. Yeah.”
“You’re immortal, then?”
I squint, my eyes cast across the room but not really seeing anything as I think it over. “I’m not sure immortal is the right word. My kind lives for hundreds to thousands of years if we’re lucky, but we do grow old eventually. Whereas someone like Asmodeus is no longer aging. He’s a true immortal.”
“But you do heal? Magically, I mean.”
I can feel her eyes roving over my chest as if they were invisible fingers, but I nod all the same. She lifts her hand, reaching across the bed and I grip her wrist. A soft gasp escapes her full lips.
“Don’t get any ideas, princess. I’ve exhausted most of my magic to keep you out of death’s hands. You’re not going to use it to heal me. You need it, your throat and the chance of you bleeding out is a lot more important than me getting another scar.”
The way her lips press together tells me she doesn’t like the idea, but instead of arguing, she pushes onto her elbows and surveys the room, spotting the gauze wrapping on the bedside table. Vik had brought it in, but we didn’t need it, having settled to use magic instead. Gauze wasn’t going to cut it.
“You should probably wrap it, then.” She holds out a hand. “At least let me help with that. I owe it to you for healing me.”
“Fine.” I cave, handing her the ivory roll of cloth.
Calamity sits up and scoots closer. She begins binding my middle with the bandage, her hair tickling my skin like feathers as she reaches behind my back. I flex to stay still, holding my arms up and trying to focus on absolutely anything else…anythingto keep my mind off how sweet her hair smells. It might’ve been washed with Vik’s soaps, but it’s taken on a whole different scent on her. I hold my breath, hyper fixing my gaze on the doorknob as I wait for her to finish. Only then do I entertain the idea of breathing again.
She sits back, admiring her work with a satisfied glimmer in her eyes, casually drawing her teeth over her perfect bottom lip. It takes a monumental effort to tear my gaze away, stealing only a fleeting glance before fixing my eyes on the door again. I want to feel it for myself, to know if her lips are as soft as they look, to experience the gentle tug of her teeth against my own. The will to resist the urge to do just that is only held back by the thinnest of barriers, growing thinner by the moment.
Swallowing thickly, I clear my throat.Fucking dragons…This is his doing. The asshole dumped a fuck-ton of hormones into my system then conveniently decided to take a nap, leaving me to deal with the repercussions. He’s been so silent… He’s only ever this quiet when he’s up to no good. And I wish I could say it’s the first time he’s done it, but that would be a lie.
Calamity lies back down, and I silently thank whatever gods might be listening for the small show of mercy. If she kept looking at me like that, I’m not sure what I would’ve done. I knew being in this room alone with her would be a bad idea. It’s precisely why I stayed outside her door… which of course turned out to be a bad idea anyway.
“What was that thing? I’ve never read about anything like it.”
Oh, thank the gods… A subject change.
I settle back against the headboard, running my hands through my hair and pinching the back of my neck as if that canrelieve the tension forming lower…much lowerin my body. “A grimleer. It’s a demon fox that can shapeshift. It plays tricks and people can bind them to things they want to guard, like the book you had.”
“How does it know who to look like?”
“They feed off emotion and can tap into your memories. Mainly fear and desire. They’re the strongest, so they take the form of whoever they believe will cause the biggest reaction.”
