Page 98 of Only Flames Remain

Natural?

Was it natural to have those feelings for a man that was not Kallias? I doubted the bite could make you desire someone if you did not already feel so inclined.

I stood, allowing my skirts to fall back to the floor to cover me. Sorin’s legs were still spread, his shirt still torn open to reveal his chiseled bare chest. I could see beneath the poultice that his wound was already beginning to heal.

Sorin was all hard ridges and planes. Everything about him was sharp and severe. I drew my gaze away from his skin, the ache to touch him still simmering deep in my core and between my thighs. When I slipped my own hand between my legs tonight, I could not think of him.

“Good…it’s healing,” I told him, crossing my arms over my chest protectively. His hooded gaze darkened as it raked over me. “Let me help you get into bed.”

“You’ll join me?” he asked, voice molten.

I scoffed. “Hardly, Prince. But you need some rest—as do I. It might be normal for you, but I woke in Stormgaard this morning. The travel and the events thereafter have left me weary.”

“Then rest with me.” His voice was a sultry invitation as he leaned forward, a lock of inky hair falling across his perfect face.

I wanted to lean in. To brush that lustrous strand of hair back from his face. To feel the scratch of his stubble against my palm. It took everything within me to keep my arms crossed and pin him with a serious glare. At last, he relented. He sighed, falling back against the chair.

“I fear I am still weak. It can take hours for the blood to strengthen me. You’ll need to help me up.”

“The mighty dragon prince needs my help?” Mock innocence laced my tone.

A broad smile spread across his face in return. It was my favorite expression, when he smiled so wide his eyes crinkled at the corners as his lips turned up. I moved forward, gripping his hand and pulling him bodily from the chair.

His brows rose in surprise as I took his arm across my shoulders and helped to walk him across the room for the second time tonight. I brought him to the bed, and he fell back against it, a blissful smile still painted across his blood-stained lips.

“You aren’t going to change?” I asked glancing toward the door.

I might be his indenture, but he had made a point of telling me I would not be tending to him at night. Surely, he had someone else for that?

He shook his head back and forth, his toned abdomen vibrating with a laugh. “I sleep naked.”

“Of course you do,” I muttered, moving forward.

I grabbed one foot, sliding the boot off and allowing it to fall to the floor with a resounding thud. Then I moved to the other, though this one wasn’t as loose and I had to untie the laces to get it off his massive foot. He sat up only long enough for me to remove the blood-soaked shirt from his muscular frame, tossing it into the fire.

“Hey! That was one of my favorites…” He murmured, falling back against the silken sheets.

“And as the one who does your laundry, I say you have plenty where that came from. You are the crown prince of Gothryn…you can buy another. That one was soaked in blood and sweat.”

“You don’t like my blood and sweat?” he asked, crawling to the top of the bed to curl against the pillows, bare from the waist up.

Some of the poultice had rubbed off against the sheets, the skin beneath visibly knitting together. Vireth healed quickly, though I wasn’t sure how quickly a cursed wound would take to heal.

“My pants?” he asked, peering at me with one eye open.

“You’ll keep them on,” I told him, doing my best not to eye the length of him still pressed against his trousers.

He didn’t push, only rolled onto his side away from me so that the wound faced upward.

“Thank you, Little Dove.”

A small smile lifted the corner of my mouth as I watched his breathing become even.

“Goodnight, Sorin.”

His breaths had fallen into a steady rhythm of sleep by the time I grasped the lantern atop his nightstand. His salvageable clothing lay in a pile on the floor, the soiled shirt already reduced to ash in the fireplace.

He would be fine until morning.