If I could just get up!
“Poison,” I answer.
She stares at me before nodding. “What bit you? Do you know? Or where?” She scans my body.
I tense, wanting her to like what she sees.
Am I pleasing? I know horns and tails are not human traits, nor are scales and claws—my dark jewel—but could she overlook them?
If she recoils from me…
She bites down on her lip and turns away. My chest constricts. She finds me repugnant. I close my eyes in embarrassment.
Something thuds, and I hear a rip of cloth. I reopen my eyes to discover what she is doing and find the scraps of her bag hanging in her hands. She drops it over my jutting shaft with a squeak and threads it under my hips. Confused, I try to lift them to help her. Her warm skin is on me again and my embarrassment fades long enough to enjoy the pleasure of having her near. Then her hands find the base of my tails.
I moan.
She stops what she is doing but her hands and the bunched cloth remains.
“I’m sorry,” she says quickly, shaking her head. Her cheeks have gone red.
I do not respond. Her hands move to tie the cloth into place. I peer down.
She has covered my root, I realize. And not in the way I would have preferred.
She shifts, and our eyes meet. “I should have covered you sooner,” she says.
I part my mouth to argue—
“I’ll look for that bite now,” she mutters, beginning to circle back down me, wandering out of my line of sight.
“No bite.” I stop her. “Wounds healed long ago.” My voice is clipped.
“No bite?”
“No.”
She returns. Her dark eyes capture mine again. Skies, is she lovely. I may not be to her liking but she is to mine.
“Is it something you ate?” she asks.
“No.”
“Something that touched you, something you absorbed?”
“No.”
She sits back. “How can I help you then? What can I do?”
Stay here with me. Do not leave my side. Make sure I can see you at all times so I do not worry. But I do not tell her this. “Rest,” I respond. Though this is not what I need, it is what she needs.
Knowing there is a naga lurking somewhere in the dark unnerves me. She needs to rest, to regain her strength, and I… I need to get the skies up!
“Rest… Okay, rest it is.” She nods.
She goes quiet as we stare at each other. Her mouth opens and closes several times as if she has more she wants to say, but she remains silent. Her hand lifts to the back of her head, and she winces. It comes away with blood.
Her wound. My face tightens.
“Rest,” I order.
She straightens and drops her hand. “No. I’ll keep watch.”
I will not have it. My eyes narrow. “You rest. I do not… need it…”
“And if something attacks?” Exhaustion etches her face. She cannot hide it from me. She needs sleep more than I.
“I will… wake you. Rest,” I order again. I will not have my orders disobeyed, not by a human. Not by my human. “I have… good hearing. I will wake you.”
She sucks her lower lip into her mouth but nods. “All right, I will rest.”
Another wave of pleasure floods me. She knows to trust me. This, I can do for her.
She lies down beside me, just shy of touching me. I shift my hand, managing to press it to her arm. She does not remove it. I drop my head to the side. She is gazing back at me, her eyelids half-closed.
“Drazak,” I tell her. “My name is Drazak.”
She will fall asleep with my name in her mind.
She smiles softly, and my heart seizes.
“Drazak,” she breathes, saying my name back to me. “I’m Milaye.”
“Milaye.” I like it. It is sweet on the tongue. “Sleep now, Milaye. I will listen.”
Her eyes close, but her smile remains. And as her breathing softens, I take her in, wondering how much my life has changed in such a short amount of time. I lose myself in her nearness. Her sun-kissed skin. Her inviting lips. The way the firelight flickers across her face. It gives me the strength to keep working at my body.
Her lips become my goal.
And I listen and listen intently, knowing despite this quiet moment, we are surrounded by danger.
10
Receding Darkness
Something tugs at my hair, pinching it away from my skin, and I moan. Ticklish prickles shoot from my scalp, through my body. I long to bask in it, but the haze of sleep clears from my head. The pain returns.
Gone is the pleasure, and I groan, batting my hand at whatever’s in my hair. If Haime thinks waking me is… That’s not Haime’s hand. My eyes shoot open. There’s a strange and wicked male in front of me.
A male! In my cot?
My lips part to scream but then recognition hits. Drazak.
The cave. The dragon.
His eyes catch mine as he traps my hand, clenching my fingers between his. Heat surges, and my sex clenches. My legs twitch. I try not to show how much his touch does to me. How much I want him. How inappropriate the timing is for all of this.
Don’t glance at his groin. Don’t.
It’s so hard not to. I have a feeling his shaft is as hard as ever. And with mortification, I hope I’m right.
“I did not mean to… wake you.” His voice is rich and deep, no longer raspy. His words are clearer. His voice coils around me.
“How long have I been asleep?” My fingers flex against his, and his hold on my hand tightens.
“A while.”
He brings our hands between us, resting them on the ground. His engulfs mine, and even in the flickering shadows between our bodies, I’m dazzled by the purple twinkle of his scales. Even as my eyes lock on his short black claws.
“I’m glad you woke me.” I swallow thinking what those claws could do to me. I itch to stroke them
