Dominic’s jaw tightened. “I have never done this before. I have heard approximately twenty minutes.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“I am not.”
“The agency files were missing several chapters.”
“It would seem so.”
I started laughing. Real laughing. Not graceful. Not controlled. Not remotely appropriate to the situation.
I was pinned under a dragon enforcer who was physically locked inside me for approximately twenty minutes because dragon biology had footnotes the CIA hadn’t seen fit to brief me on.
Dominic looked down at me as if trying to decide whether laughter counted as distress.
I laughed harder and his mouth twitched.
He kissed me through it, warm and slow and unmistakably amused. “Do not laugh, little spy.”
“I’m absolutely laughing.” I tried to pull in the air to sound indignant and failed. “You knew this could happen and chose not to mention it.”
“There were other priorities.”
“Dominic.”
“Yes.”
“This is insane.”
His mouth brushed mine again, unhurried. He had nowhere else to be, and no intention of letting the moment end just because the mechanics had shifted.
“I disagree.” His hand moved into my hair, gentle now, almost lazy.
“Of course you do.”
Morning After
Dominic
She adjusted to the knot without resistance.
Her body took the shape of it and kept me there. Every small shift of my hips moved it deeper, and she answered before either of us had time to think. Her muscles tightened around me. Her breath caught, then broke against my throat.
I had read about the knot for decades.
I had never experienced it.
Dragons did not discuss it. Not directly. Not usefully. What I knew of mating, claiming, and the bond came from council records, medical notes, and precedent written by men who had spent entire lifetimes avoiding the details that mattered.
The texts were incomplete. Twenty minutes was a long time. Longer with Catalina beneath me.
She had entered Ashenmere expecting to leave with intelligence on the council. Nothing in those records had prepared me for the reality of her body holding mine, her breath against my skin, her bond wrapped around my ribs like it belonged there.
She had entered as a spy.
She lay beneath me now as my mate.
The distance between those two facts had closed in mere weeks, and I did not know whether to call that fate, failure, or the only honest thing I had ever wanted for myself.
