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“I’m fine,” she said breathlessly. “I’m more than fine. It’s just…” She tilted her head back and looked up at him. Her eyes were shining and her cheeks were flushed and her hair was a wild tangle across the moss. “You learn fast.”

He smiled down at her slowly, full of a fierce, hot pride.

“Yes,” he agreed.

She reached for him. Her hand slid down his stomach, and he caught it before it could go any further. It took every scrap of strength he had. Her scent was all around him, and she was lying soft and warm and willing in his arms. His body was burning, and the need was a hard, heavy ache inside him.

But she had been frightened today. She had nearly died, and she was lost, and far from home. That morning he had watched her look at the silent box on her bag and put it quickly away. He still didn’t know what he had seen in her face. He wanted her more than he had ever wanted anything, but he wanted her to be sure.

“Not yet,” he said, and his voice came out ragged.

She stared at him incredulously. “Not yet? Korrak, I want to.”

“I know.” He brought her hand to his mouth and pressed his lips to her fingers. “When you are sure. Not because I pulled you from the water. Not because you are cold.”

“I’m not cold,” she said indignantly, and then she laughed a little, shakily. “I’m definitely not cold.”

He smiled helplessly against her fingers. “Sleep, Frrankie.”

“How am I supposed to sleep after that?”

But eventually she did. He drew her back against him and tucked the silver blanket around her. She grumbled under her breath for a while about stubborn, impossible, overgrown dragons who didn’t know what was good for them. Then her grumbling slowed and softened and trailed away, and her body grew heavy and relaxed in his arms. Just before she fell asleep, she turned her head and pressed a kiss to the inside of his wrist.

He lay awake a long time afterwards, aching and happy, with her heartbeat under his hand. He had not taken what his body wanted. But she had given him something else, something he had not known he could have.

She trusted him completely. And one day, when she was sure, she would be his.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Frankie woke up in Korrak’s arms, and she didn’t feel the slightest bit embarrassed about it. She lay there for a while without moving, listening to the slow, steady thud of his heart beneath her ear. His arm was draped heavily over her waist. His tail had curled around her legs at some point during the night, and the end of it was tucked possessively over her ankle. She wasn’t cold anymore. In fact, she didn’t think she had ever been so warm in her life.

She thought about the night before. Heat rose into her cheeks, but she smiled into his chest like an idiot.

He had touched her as if she were something precious. He had listened to every sound she made and learned her faster than any man she had ever been with. And then he had held her while she shook and told her she wasn’t sure yet. Stubborn, impossible, overgrown lizard. She had lain wide awake for a good ten minutes afterwards, frustrated and more than a little moved, before she finally fell asleep.

She was sure. She had been sure when she asked him to touch her, and she was even more certain now. But she was starting to understand him better, and she suspected that telling him wasn’t going to be enough. She was going to have to show him.

“You are thinking,” he rumbled above her head. “Very loud.”

She tilted her head back and found him watching her with sleepy, amused eyes. “How can you tell?”

“Your heart.” He touched one finger to her chest, over the place where it was beating a little too fast. “It talks.”

“Well, tell it to hush,” she said, and he laughed.

After they had eaten, he took her somewhere new. It was at the far end of the gardens, past the last of the pools, where the cavern narrowed into a high, arched passage. The vines grew thickly across the entrance, and she would never have found it if he hadn’t pulled them aside for her. Beyond it, the passage curved to the right and opened into a round, domed chamber about the size of a small house.

She stepped inside and came to an abrupt halt. There was a pool in the center of the chamber, perfectly round, and steam drifted gently off its surface. She could feel the heat on her face from where she stood. But that wasn’t what made her stop.

The walls were covered in lines. They were carved into the stone, deep and precise, hundreds and hundreds of them. They curved and branched and joined and branched again, sweeping across the domed walls and up over the ceiling in a vast, intricate web. And the lichen had grown into every one of them. It filled the grooves with a soft, living glow, blue and green and faintly gold, so that the lines shone out against the dark stone as clearly as if someone had drawn them in light.

She walked slowly towards the nearest wall. Her mask was hanging around her neck, but she checked her reader out of habit. The air was still rich here, almost as rich as the gardens, but she barely noticed.

“Korrak,” she said. “What is this?”

He came to stand beside her. He looked up at the glowing lines with the same expression she had seen on his face at the spillway, fond and sad and a little lost.

“Old,” he said. “Very old. I come here to… remember.”