Page 34 of Bad Blood Alpha

Unbelievably, she heard a rumble of laughter in his chest. Dammit, he might not want to have sex with her, but it wasn’t supposed to be laughable.

“Hell,” he said. “My ego’s as big as any guy’s—bigger than most—but even I don’t delude myself that sex with me is a magical cure.”

Kira wasn’t so sure of that. She could feel the power in him—and something else. She’d never recovered this fast from a seizure before. She felt almost okay again—and this one had been much, much worse than the others.

But she didn’t know how he’d take it if she said that. Instead she asked, “Did they ever tell you how the bonding and unbinding works?”

“Not really,” he said. “You were only five. It was going to be sixteen years before it happened. I guess it didn’t seem real to me.”

“We’re supposed to have sex. Three times.”

“Was that three different nights? Or three times in one night?” She could still hear the amusement in his voice.

She smacked him on the chest. “I’m glad you think this is funny.”

“Just getting my intel straight. And then what happens? After the orgy?”

“I don’t think it can be an orgy if it’s just two people.”

“With enough whiskey, some creativity and that bathroom down the hall, I bet it could be.”

God, she wished he’d stop talking like that. It made her all soft and wet and wanting.

And he wasn’t serious, anyway.

She said, “After the non-orgy, very boring, very dutiful vanilla sex, came the official bonding ceremony. Blood and magic.”

“And then the sorcerer did the unbinding, and you gave the magic back to the other draken?”

“Yeah.”

“And we were bonded forever. In your dutiful, vanilla version of Bored Ever After.”

“Something like that. And then you went off and fought more wars and visited every now and then, if you didn’t get killed.”

“I’m trying to find words for all the fun that sounds like.”

Despite herself, she smiled.

“Yeah. I was hoping…well, that maybe just the sex would do it. Tame the power, I mean. So we wouldn’t—you know. Be stuck with each other.”

“Just the sex,” he repeated. “So you were just going to come up to me and be like, ‘Hey, medicinal fuck, no strings, what do you say?’”

“Well, when you put it like that…” She sounded like an idiot. A complete and total idiot.

His fingers stroked the back of her neck, sending heat through her body again. She felt him smile. “Not that that would be a hardship, Princess, but what if it didn’t work?”

“Then I’d be no worse off than I am now.”

“You mean, dying. And being chased by dragon hunters.” She felt Flynn’s arm tighten around her. It seemed almost—protective. “There has to be a way to unbind the power. Or…I don’t know. Siphon it off somehow? What about when you Change? Dragons usually heal when they Change.”

“I can’t Change.” She should be used to the shame that surged through her, but she wasn’t. For a draken to be unable to Change was cause for pity, if not disgust.

Flynn growled in his chest. “Why not?”

She realized she’d been toying with his dreadlock again and put it down, smoothing it.

“When my guardian brought me here, to this world, he knew that if anyone ever found out who I was or what I was, I’d be hunted down and captured, or killed. So he put another kind of binding on me, one that disguises my draken nature, so it can’t be detected. The binding makes it impossible for me to Change.”