Page 21 of A Matter of Dragons

“Oh?” She raised an eyebrow. “Is it the man from the elven bar?”

It took me a moment to remember the sad old man I’d jokingly told her was a dragon. “No,” I said. “It’s a woman.”

“Mmmm,” she purred skeptically. “Just how many dragons are there in this town?”

I let my hand snake around her waist. The velvet of her dress was thick and rich beneath my fingers; the warmth of her body pulsed through the soft fabric. I tried not to shiver. Mothers, it had been so long.

“Oh, hundreds,” I said.

I pulled her close and leaned down, pressing our lips together. Heat and pleasure surged through me, radiating from the place where our bodies met and completely destroying any last vestiges of my earlier plans and my better judgment. Her mouth opened for me, letting me in, and I dove into our kiss. She tasted like frost wine, warm and sweet and powerful. Her arms tightened around my waist as our lips and tongues embraced and then danced together in slow, exquisite pleasure.

She pulled away, leaving me aching, and swept her hand across my very favorite view of Cairncliff. “Hundreds of dragons in this one little town, huh?”

I grinned. “If you think this is a good view, you should see what it looks like when you’re lying down.”

Our eyes met in the moonlight. I froze. I’d spoken without thinking, blurting out a bumbling stab at flirtation that could go horribly, horribly wrong. Damn it! Damn my stupid, awkward, ham-fisted attempts at intimacy and my thrice-damned cock, which was now pulsing against the laces of my trousers with horrible urgency. I’m going to get slapped, I realized. I’m going to get slapped, and I’m going to deserve it.

But Rayne didn’t slap me. Instead, she looked at me the way a cat eyes a mouse. Praise the Mothers. This was the kind of woman I’d always been drawn to, one that could just as soon cut you into ribbons as kiss you, one who wasn’t afraid to tell you exactly where you stood. The kind of woman who’d be equally at home in this rich velvet dress or in a suit of armor on the battlefield.

Rayne pulled in a breath, and I braced myself for some form of rejection. But instead of speaking, she grabbed my shirt and tugged me into another kiss. There was no hesitation this time; our lips met as equals, tugging at each other, biting and begging and almost desperate for more. Her hand crept up my back and sank into my hair as her kiss devoured me. I ran my fingers down the lacings on the back of her dress, wondering where I’d even begin with this labyrinthine bodice. Rayne pulled away, gasping.

“I very much want,” she panted, one hand still buried deep in my hair and the other clinging to the back of my shirt like she was holding on to a cliff, “to see how this view could possibly be improved.”

My breath came out in a moan, low and shuddering. I closed my eyes and pulled her into my arms, crushing her voluminous skirts between us. My damned cock was throbbing, and every single part of my body was standing at full attention. This close, with my face in her hair and her body pressed to mine, I could even smell her, soft and rich, like some sort of rare floral perfume that had been laced with frost wine. Gods, it was enough to destroy me. I tried to fight through the raging bonfire of my own arousal and think; she was a lady, by the Mothers. I couldn’t just expect her to lie down on a pile of gravel.

“I—” I gasped, trying to pull back even as my hips rocked against hers. “I can maybe find... a blanket?”

My voice pinched at the end, making my words into a question. Rayne's fingers slowly eased out of my hair. A moment later her arms left my waist, and she stepped back, her teeth playing over her lower lip. She glanced up at me, then back over the view of Cairncliff, and there was a hesitancy in her expression that made me want to kick myself.

“Sure,” she said, turning back to me as her expression shifted into a predatory smile that burned my insides far more than any frost wine. “A blanket. That would be great.”

I tried to return that incendiary smile. “I, ah, I’m pretty sure there’s one— I mean, I’ll find one,” I stammered, trying not to blurt out that this was my damn garden, my damn house, and maybe we should just go inside and use the bed instead.

No, that kind of honesty would ruin everything. Rayne thought I was the kind of man who’d sneak a woman into someone else’s garden to seduce her. And for tonight, damn it, I could be that kind of man. I could be a trespasser, and a thief, and what was the word she’d so enjoyed back at the elven bar?

Ah, yes. Dangerous. Tonight, for her, I was dangerous.

I grinned at her again, this time trying to mimic my father’s cocky arrogance, and then leaned forward and traced the curve of her jaw with my mouth. Her breath caught as I kissed her, softly, on her glorious, full lips. Then I turned and walked into the darkness beneath the trees, counting on my night vision to show me the way. I’d grab the duvet off the master bed and come back to her, my arms full of silk, a dangerous man about to show her an entire world of pleasure.

CHAPTER TEN

Rayne

This was such a terrible idea.

I stood on the edge of the bluff, my entire body burning from those unbelievable kisses, and watched the man I hardly knew vanish into the carefully cultivated grove of trees behind us. He was heading straight for the house, damn him. The little house made of curves and stones with light flickering from one of its windows. He was going to get himself killed, the fool. Or he was going to get caught and I was going to need to run like hell to avoid an up close and personal tour of Cairncliff’s jail.

Damn. I exhaled sharply and looked around for escape routes. My night vision was excellent; if it came to running, I could probably lose any pursuers in the garden. Or, hells, I could climb down the bluff, if I needed to.

I crossed my arms and ground my teeth together. I didn’t want to spend tonight running for my life or ripping my dress to shreds on the rocks. I wanted to get laid, damn it. The way Doshir had smiled at me over the frost wine, the way he’d kissed me— Stars! Every part of me ached with desire. I couldn’t remember the last time a handful of kisses had turned me into a trembling mess like this.

I ran my hands over my arms and shivered at the memory of Doshir’s lips. Usually, my occasional lovers kissed me like they were trying to get it over with, like my lips were an obstacle to overcome or a key to unlock on their way to shoving my pants down. And His Highness, of course, never kissed me at all.

But Doshir had kissed me like he’d wanted to kiss me, like the taste of my mouth was the perfect accompaniment to the frost wine we’d shared. He’d kissed me slowly, as though all he wanted to do was kiss and, by all the blessed kings of Valgros, his lips had me completely undone. Even now, after he’d vanished into the darkness, my pulse roared in my ears and my dress felt too hot and too tight, with its horrible corset and the hilt of my second dagger jabbing into my ribs.

Oh. Shit. Panic spiked in my chest, chasing the heat that Doshir had just unleashed. I was supposed to be a lady searching for a way to heal my scars. But, kings help me, I’d hidden three daggers in this elegant lady costume.

I brought my palms to the front of my dress, smoothing down the fabric where Doshir’s body had just met mine. I hadn’t even thought about my daggers, or about how Doshir might have reacted if he’d felt hard metal where he’d expected to feel satin and lace. I hadn’t thought about anything but those kisses, the hungry press of his lips to mine, and the heat swirling between my legs, building, begging for release.