nose in the air. His red gaze only glanced her way, moving onward as if he couldn’t stand the sight of her too long.
“Don’t look at me that way.” She scratched her chin and continued to pace, the snow beaten down into a solid path now.
Hurk chuffed air through his snout and rubbed his wings against his back, like he knew what she was thinking.
“I don’t have a ton of options here,” she reasoned. Hurk held his snooty posture. “I refuse to fail.”
Another snort. Maybe Hurk knew she was lying, avoiding the truth. Truth—it wasn’t the fear of failing her village that kept forcing her feet in the direction of the tracks.
She wanted to go after the beast-man purely for selfish reasons. Curiosity, the desire to sate this new sensation in her blood… and to experience that sense of rightness that overcame her whenever he touched her—even if she tried to ignore it, deny it, smother it.
Even recalling the way he’d savagely licked her face made her thoughts race.
She hadn’t meant to touch the dragon—honest mistake—but it was too late for that now. It happened. What that meant for her village… she didn’t know.
All Jaya knew—maybe this had started as a mission for her people, but now she wanted this dragon for herself.
She just had to convince the beast-man too.
How did one seduce?
Jaya had never done it. Wasn’t even sure how a person initiated seduction.
She drew on her past observations. The only ‘young’ men in the tribe—all two of them—were old enough to be her father but had always treated her as if she were their younger sister. And the quad of old men in the village were like grandfathers.
Jaya scrubbed her forehead. She had zero interest in thinking about them in compromising positions with their wives.
And she couldn’t imagine Remmy, Ferin, and Sersha being seductive. Inducing insanity? They had that talent honed like a sharpened blade. She would pity the man who got caught in their claws.
Hmm...
Should Jaya try a dance? Village dances always ended in couples running off to their lodges as if fire licked their soles. Was it the tickling touches of their partners or their bodies brushing past each other on every turn?
How did one seduce a dragon?
“You’re not gonna like me right now,” Jaya told Hurk as she rushed to extinguish the embers and hoist her bag onto her back. “But I’m going after him.”
Hurk finally gave her his full attention. His wings stretched and bushy tail wagged as if to say, “It’s about kuseking time you stopped lying to yourself.”
Jaya grinned.
10
It wasn’t hard to follow the tracks because the dragon man didn’t bother covering them. Took most of the day to get there, but eventually Jaya stood outside the wide mouth of a cave. Daggers of ice hung down from the top, forcing her to duck down when she entered.
It was too quiet and, realizing she was alone, she turned. “You coming, Hurk?”
The fikanthro sat his bum in the snow outside the cave. It might make her uneasy, but over the summers, she’d learned Hurk didn’t like enclosed spaces. Jaya figured it was because a creature of flight didn’t appreciate feeling hemmed in.
Maybe she was reading too much into that.
Jaya walked deeper into the cave, roaming around the large, shadowed cavern. Frozen pebbles and blown-in snow crunched beneath her boots; her frosted breath puffed clouds in front of her face.
“Dragon?” she whispered, unable to see very well.
“Human?” a gravelly voice asked.
She jumped, turning in the direction the voice came, but still, she couldn’t see him. A movement to her right, then her left. Her breaths quickened and her hand closed over the dagger hanging from her belt.
“Come out!”
It was silent for a time, no sound other than her shallow breathing. But then, behind her, she felt his menacing presence.
“B… B…” the dragon stuttered. “Ban—Banning.”
Banning?
Jaya slowly turned.
He stood before the cave’s entrance, his masculine silhouette catching in the sun. Still his face was in shadow. His large hand captured hers and placed it on his chest, just as she’d done earlier.
“Banning,” he repeated.
Banning.
Her brows pinched. It was an odd name and spoken by a rough voice that sounded more masculine than any human man she’d come across.
It... did things to her body. Things she tried to ignore. Made her insides quake, stomach feel woozy, and her thighs clench together.
Banning.
The more she replayed it in her mind, the more she liked it. “Banning,” she finally said aloud.
In a flash, he was behind her again. She turned