To Desire a Dragon - Amanda Milo Page 0,4

other hand.

“You would do well not to scratch at me with this again,” I snarl.

It wasn’t my intention for the words to sound so full of aggression, but it’s difficult to articulate softness when you speak through fangs.

Rather than pledge her oath that she won’t raise her talon to my face, rather than even providing an apology—she whirls and races right off my hand on her pair of shaggy hind legs.

Tossing her claw aside, I easily recapture her. My tail twitches lazily behind me as I ignore her screech and scoop her up to bring her to my eye level.

I open my jaws to suck her scent onto my tongue, permeating my senses with her even further.

Instantly, my blood speeds. It’s been moonscapes since I’ve smelled you. Stalked you.

We were both adolescents then. I was much smaller, and she was much less hairy.

My eyes catch on the way she shivers, because the ring of fur humped up around her shoulders doesn’t shudder with her.

Waxing crescents, you’ve turned out so strange.

Long ago, I was ordered to stay away from her. But she’s stumbled into my cave and attacked me and I caught her so she’s mine now. I don’t care what she looks like. This female should have been in my keeping since we were children, and would have, if it wasn’t forbidden to touch a human. I was punished harshly for getting as close to this one as I did.

And yet… I’m holding her in my hands, and all the dire warnings that ring in every hatchling’s ears… none of the warnings have come true with her.

If I’m honest with myself, I’m experiencing a small degree of disappointment.

But this is fine. I can still keep her. I press my nose along her body, sucking in her scent, and immediately I’m entertained by an outraged squeal. When I rasp a laugh and puff at her, a rush of smoke travels under her skin, causing it to billow up before she slaps it back down.

Interesting.

Has she grown a frill, like my dragonkind have? A Crested Merlin like myself fans their frill for a variety of reasons: to express themselves, to accompany a mating dance, and to appear more formidable during a battle to protect your territory or your nest or your mate.

I puff again, watching her skin billow once more before she savagely slaps it down again.

“I want to see it,” I tell her, and frown when she cowers on my hand.

Perhaps she’s afraid to raise her frill to me. At her size and disadvantage when faced off with me, I can almost see why the average creature would hesitate.

But I have seen this female defend a lamb from slinking yotes using nothing more than a handful of rocks and her fearless stance and shouts. I would have thought she’d be fanning her frill at me like a hatchling faces off against a raiding wyvern. When cornered, a scrappy individual turns fierce.

And my still-stinging nostril says my human is scrappy.

Why did she come here?

I repeat the puff of air a third time, and when the top half of her skin bulges up from the force of my breath, I catch her frillskin with my teeth and tug.

She makes an outraged bellow as I peel up the loose flap. I don’t pull hard; I don’t want to injure her—I only want to see what her frill looks like. And she isn’t making sounds of pain, just indignation.

Only, instead of the frill lifting up a little bit, it comes completely off—and her arms drop out.

I stare at what’s revealed.

She doesn’t have a hairy humped frillskin at all.

It was a covering.

Save for her fluffed legs and her furred wrists, she looks more than ever like the human girl I stealthily pursued.

And with her skin flap removed, her scent is even stronger.

My tail curls around us and I knit my talons behind her back, pulling her closer, almost as if I’m cradling her to my chest.

As I draw her to me though, she begins to fight, her limbs flying with the incoordination of a panicked meal. Hunger begins to war with curiosity. Then her flailing hand bangs me in my clawed nostril.

I snarl.

She freezes.

My chest rises with my inhale, and her sweet scent is so good, I unconsciously flick my tongue at the air, tasting her with my receptors.

She shudders against my chest scales, and I tighten my hands around her, squeezing her to me, loving the way she feels against the scales of my palms.

I’ve