To Love a Dragon - Tiffany Roberts Page 0,11
to her, to touch her, to ease whatever burden was weighing her down. That would have been easier than acknowledging his own loneliness and pain.
“Perhaps not always, but hearts are resilient things. They can heal. The chasms torn open by loss can close, given time.” The end of his tail rose off the floor and settled back down again—nearer to Leyloni than before. “What has brought you out here, Leyloni? Why are you and your hatchling in these wilds alone?”
“Serek…is not mine.” She tore her gaze away from the hatchling to look back at Arysteon. “Our village was attacked. I fled with Serek to protect him.”
Memories stirred in the back of Arysteon’s mind, some of which were the oldest he could recall. His clan had suffered many attacks during their long years of wandering—most of them from other dragons. Battles over territory, over food, over mates, always more violent and intense during those periods when the red comet was in the sky.
He could relate to the emotion in Leyloni’s voice. It ignited a fire in his heart, made his mouth feel dry, and instilled him with an underlying anger. He had the sudden urge to destroy whatever had harmed these humans.
“What of the rest of your clan?” he asked.
Her brows fell, and she shook her head.
Arysteon exhaled slowly through his nostrils. “I am sorry for the loss of your tribe, Leyloni.”
She pressed her lips together and nodded. Bringing her hands up, she scrubbed her palms over her face and swept her damp hair back. When she pulled her hands away, she stared at them for a few moments. Moisture gleamed on her fingers. Frowning, she lifted a corner of her wet skirt, letting it drop to the floor with a wet slap.
Leyloni took in a deep breath before standing. Her shadow grew long in the firelight, and the dancing orange glow granted her an ethereal quality that only strengthened the strange pull she had on Arysteon. She lowered her hands to her waist, removed her belt, and unlaced her skirt.
Arysteon watched, transfixed, his claws digging into the stone floor as she pushed the skirt down her legs and laid it and her belt out on the ground beside the wet blanket.
She moved her hands to the lacings of her top next, pulling them loose to reveal the upper curves of her chest mounds—her breasts. That was what humans called them.
His breath caught in his throat when she pulled the top off over her head, baring herself to him fully. Leyloni was lithe of limb, with just a hint of muscle tone visible through her pale skin, which was sprinkled with those curious brown speckles everywhere. He was enticed by her full breasts and their pink nipples. Were those mounds as soft as they appeared? Was she as soft as she appeared?
Her curves, especially those at her hips and backside, were the opposite of a dragoness’s hard scales, but he found them infinitely more appealing in that moment. Physical contact between dragons and humans had always been forbidden, but what would just a fleeting touch feel like? How would her hair, as chaotic and fiery as the flames before her, feel against his most sensitive scales?
His spark buzzed in his chest, sending a thrumming current through his limbs that had his fingers curling and his claws raking the floor stones. He clenched his jaw and tensed his tail before it could twitch even closer to Leyloni.
He’d seen humans without their coverings before and had never thought anything of it. No other creatures wore clothes so far as he knew—nudity, as the humans called it, was simply a natural state for all living things. But he could not ignore Leyloni’s body, could not look away from her.
When she bent forward to lay her top on the floor with her other belongings, he caught a glimpse of her slit between her thighs.
Arysteon choked back a groan as his stem emerged from his own slit, its tip pressing firmly against the cold, hard floor. He was grateful he’d lain on his belly to spare himself the shame of her seeing him extrude.
This was…this was perverse! He was acting like a dragon in the early stages of the comet’s Heat, like he had no control over himself. But he could not blame the red comet for this lack of self-control. This was Arysteon alone—this was Arysteon lusting for a human.
Lusting for a mate.
Was it wrong to want her? Was it wrong to think of her