I shook my head. “You don’t know that. My father—he was like me. And people died because he couldn’t—”
“You’re not your father.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he didn’t have someone here, telling him to calm down and drink his tea.” His voice softened. “Did he?”
I thought of the stories: a lonely farm, no one around to understand him, his wife hating him, power growing wilder with each year of isolation. “No.”
“Then stop comparing yourself to him.” Cinder put his tea down, took my hand, removing the mug I hadn’t touched and lacing his fingers through mine. His warmth seeped through, and my dragon settled. “You have me. You have friends. I’m not going anywhere just because you sprout wings when someone tries to run us off the road.”
A sob threatened, and I swallowed hard. He squeezed my hand.
“I keep waiting,” I whispered, “for the moment you realize who you’re with. The danger. The secrecy. That you deserve—”
“Don’t.” His voice went sharp. “Don’t you dare tell me what I deserve. I’ve spent my life being told what I deserve by people who didn’t care about me. Not you.”
Silence spread between us, wide and trembling.
“I’m terrified,” I admitted. “Not of you leaving. Of you staying and me hurting you anyway.”
And then he was kissing me.
Fierce and unyielding, his mouth hot against my cold lips. He kissed me like he meant it, like he wanted me to know he wasn’t afraid.
When he broke away, his voice was low. “Lie back.”
I obeyed. He shifted until he was pressed across my hips, warm through our clothes. His palm settled on my chest, heat radiating inward like sunlight through ice.
“Your heart’s racing,” he murmured, just above a whisper.
“So?”
He smiled, soft and certain, the kind of smile that undoes you. “I want you here. Not lost in your head.”
“I’m here,” I said, wrapping my hands around his waist.
“That’s good.” He dove in with careful patience, his lips and hands exploring, thawing me grain by grain. I moaned as his mouth found me, the contrast of his heat and my cold igniting every nerve. I shivered—not from the cold. From the tenderness. From the way he looked at me like I was something precious instead of something dangerous. His mouth traced my jaw, my throat, the hollow beneath my ear where my pulse hammered against his lips.
"You're shaking," he murmured against my skin.
"I know."
"Good shaking or bad shaking?"
I huffed a breath that wanted to be a laugh. "I don't know yet."
He pulled back enough to study my face, his eyes soft and searching. "We don't have to do anything. If this is too much after today—"
"It's not too much." My voice came out rougher than I intended. "It's just—" I stopped. Swallowed. Tried again. "No one's ever touched me like this. Knowing what I am."
Something shifted in his expression—not pity, never pity, but a fierce and aching understanding. "Then let me be the first."
He kissed me again, slower this time, his tongue tracing the seam of my lips until I opened for him. The heat of his mouth was staggering—not because it burned, but because it felt like permission. Like my body was being told, for the first time in decades, that it was allowed to feel something besides cold.
His hands slid under my shirt, and I flinched.
He stopped immediately. "Too fast?"
