Page 4 of Into Ember

My dragon is finished pretending she’s optional.

And god, she’s beautiful.

I’ve had a long time to look at beautiful women. Long enough that beautiful stopped being interesting. Long enough that it became a fact about a person, like height.

None of them hold a candle to her.

There’s something else. Something I couldn’t have seen on Earth — and I spent the day close enough to see everything. I know what she looks like when she thinks no one is watching, which is exactly what she looks like when everyone is, because she has no idea how to be anyone but herself.

But this? I would have seen this.

This is new.

There’s light around her. Faint, but there. A ring of it sitting against her skin. It moves when she moves. It’s been getting steadier since we started walking.

Nobody has said it out loud. Brock keeps looking at her exactly when she isn’t looking at him. He sees it too. I’m sure of it.

Rayner looks like a lovesick fool and my dragon agrees.

We’re all acting like we have any say in anything anymore.

I wonder how long until they figure that out too.

Erik stands half a step behind her shoulder like the light is a threat he might need to step in front of.

Of the five of us, I’m the controlled one. Erik watches, Gunnar talks, Rayner feels, Brock reads — and I hold the line. I’ve held it through wars, through the Vestry, through every impossible thing this unit has ever been handed.

Because my dragon is the worst of them.

He always has been. That’s what the control is for. The others manage their dragons. I contain mine. I’ve had lifetimes to get good at the harder one.

We’ve reached an understanding over the centuries.

He pushes.

I win.

Today…

I’m not sure that’s still true.

Right now he wants me to stop walking, close the distance, and put my mouth back on her neck where it belongs. He wants Erik’s hand off her spine. He wants to carry her the rest of the way so her feet never touch ground he hasn’t checked, he wants to fight something on her behalf and he is not particular about what, he wants—

Enough.

He moves under my skin, too close to the surface.

The growl was the first leak in longer than I can remember.

There will be more.

My eyes move down. I don’t authorize it.

Her eyes are the problem. They have been the problem all day. When she pins me with them, I swear she sees the whole way in, and no one can blame me for what happened back there — a man wearing nothing at all has no secrets, and with her eyes on me there wasn’t a chance in any realm my body was keeping that one.

The curve of her neck. Her collarbone, which is begging for my fucking lips. The swell of her —

This is not helping.