Page 21

“Maybe,” I say against his skin, “you should listen to your dragon.”

He moves.

I have seen Silas move quickly twice now. Both times it rearranged my understanding of physics. One second his hands are on the counter and the next they are on me, one arm around my waist, the other sliding under my thighs, and he lifts me off the ground like I weigh absolutely nothing and my legs wrap around him on instinct and my hands find his shoulders and I am pressed against his chest and the kiss he gives me is not polite.

It is not civilized. It is not from a man who has spent more than a century perfecting his restraint. It is his restraint catching fire and I feel it in my entire body, his mouth on mine, his tongue, his teeth catching my lower lip, his hands gripping me hard enough that I will have marks tomorrow and I want them.

“Bedroom,” I manage.

He is already walking. Through the kitchen. Down the hall. His stride doesn’t break. He is carrying me and kissing me and navigating his own house simultaneously and I am learning things about multitasking.

He stops. Just for a second. I feel him turn and walk back toward the kitchen and then his arm reaches and I hear something scrape across the counter.

“What are you doing?”

“A moment.”

He scoops something off the counter without putting me down and I catch a glimpse of the honey jar in his hand and the wooden dipper balanced on top and I start to ask why and then he’s moving again, up the stairs, long strides down the east wing corridor, past my door to the one at the end of the hall, and the question dissolves because his mouth is on my neck and his breath is hot and I cannot think about condiments right now.

He shoulders his bedroom door open. I have never been in here. The fire is low, embers mostly, casting the room in warm amber over dark wood and a bed that could sleep a family of five. He sets me on it. Steps back. Puts the honey jar on the nightstand next to the reading lamp and the antique clock.

“Silas.”

“Yes.”

“Why did you bring the honey?”

He looks at the jar. Looks at me. His eyes are solid gold and the scales are visible on both forearms and he is standing beside his bed with a jar of wildflower honey and an expression that suggests several competing thought processes are resolving into a single conclusion.

“I was instructed to,” he says.

“By your dragon?”

“He was insistent.”

I look at the honey. I look at him. Something warm and liquid turns over in my belly that has nothing to do with the omega heat and everything to do with the look on his face, which is the look of a man who has never in all his long life done anything this unhinged and is discovering he does not care.

“Take off the robe,” he says. His voice has dropped.

I untie the belt. The silk falls open. Underneath I’m wearing a thong and nothing else because I was coming downstairs for tea, not a photoshoot, and the way his eyes move down my body makes the air leave my lungs.

“Remove it,” he says. “All of it.”

I stand and let the robe slide off my shoulders. It pools on the floor. I hook my thumbs in the waistband of the thong and push it down and step out of it and I am standing naked in front of him in firelight and his gaze is on my skin and electricity courses through my veins.

“Turn around,” he says. “On the bed. Hands and knees.”

My breath catches from the way he says it. Clinical and molten at the same time.

I climb onto the bed. Settle onto my hands and knees. The sheets are dark linen and they’re cool against my palms and I can feel him watching me and every nerve ending I have is turned up.

I hear him move. The nightstand. The sound of the honey jar being lifted. The quiet wooden clatter of the dipper.

“Silas?”

“Yes.”

“Is that the honey?”