Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 55059 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 275(@200wpm)___ 220(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55059 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 275(@200wpm)___ 220(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
“Your scent.”
Astonished, she snapped her eyes back to him. “My scent?”
Ryu laughed. “Yes.”
For a moment, Eira had forgotten they were still wrapped in each other’s arms. It had felt like second nature, even for a girl who refused to be touched. Now, however, from that comment, she was aware of it and quickly started to feel self-conscious.
He must have known she was beginning to feel that way, because he continued. “As soon as I flew overhead”—Ryu leaned down to her soft neck and inhaled—“I smelled your sweet scent, and I knew.”
Eira was the one sitting as still as a statue now as she tried not to melt at the sensations he was creating.
“What can I say?” Ryu said, placing a light kiss on her sensitive flesh. “My dragon form has a good sense of smell.” Flicking his tongue out, he took a taste, “Mmm, honey.”
Her insides singed from the touch. All she wanted was for her actions to reciprocate his, but …
As if sensing her turmoil, Ryu pulled back as his face turned serious. It only seemed to take him a single moment to understand why.
His eyes went to her scars, but he didn’t just let them caress the markings this time. Lifting a finger, he was finally able to let them travel over the branching, translucent veins before his hand dropped along with his voice. “Someone did this to you.”
She could feel the heat radiating from him, and a new fear unlocked that she could awaken the dragon at any moment as she understood something herself.
When Ryu had run hot in the past, it was most likely because he fought turning into a dragon.
Eira was afraid to respond, but her silence told him everything.
Quickly, Ryu stood, beginning to put a safe distance between them.
“Ryu,” she cried out to him in hopes to calm the raging dragon inside. “It was forever ago—”
“Yeah, so long ago now that you still can’t be touched.”
Her mouth snapped closed, because she knew he was right.
She feared it was always going to feel like it had just been yesterday. However, since Eira had met him, she felt like she’d finally started making progress. Before Ryu, she had been stagnant, as if she were always kept in an endless loop being held over the fire that scarred her for life. Anything before she’d met Ryu truthfully no longer mattered to Eira anymore. All she had wanted since sitting in that hospital bed while recovering was to move on. And, for once, she felt like she could. Like she could at last recover and heal her scars. Not on the outside, of course, but on the inside, where it truly counted. Ryu was giving her a reason to move on, and she didn’t want anything jeopardizing that.
“Ryu, please, just take a breath. You already risked changing once. If you change into a dragon again, someone might see you.”
“They wouldn’t,” he assured her, practically breathing out smoke. “My magic protects me.”
She was simply dumbfounded, not by the literal smoke escaping him, but … “Not everyone can see you when you’re a dragon?”
He shook his head. “Only the people born in my village, and you.”
She simply couldn’t believe it. What the—
Suddenly, Ryu laughed after taking a few calming breaths. It was obvious he remembered something. “It’s a good thing you were asleep when I left my village and first flew over; otherwise, you would have seen me.”
“That would have been a sight.” She laughed with him, happy to continue distracting him. It was helping, so Eira drew closer to him. “How come I didn’t see you when you left and came back?”
“I left in the middle of the night, when you were sleeping, and I took a boat back. I didn’t want to take a chance you’d see me. And knowing you, I figured where you’d be. I thought I’d stop by your grandparents’ house before I came up in hopes to spare me a trip up the mountain, but of course you were here.”
With that explaining it, she slowly reached her hand out to his, lightly letting her fingertips rub over his supernatural skin to soothe him. She could swear she almost felt the scales underneath. “And your magic?”
Ryu began to relax under her touch. “We believe we get our magic from a tree in our village, on the island.”
“We?” Her eyes grew wide in delight. “There are others like you?”
Ryu shook his head. “I’m the only one. My father used to be able to shift into a dragon, but he lost the ability when I took my first flight.” He looked out toward the little island. “I’ll tell you more about it when I fly us back home.”
Eira immediately stopped her soothing by dropping her hand from his. “That is definitely not happening.”
He frowned, his brows drawing together. “What part? The flying or going back to my village?”