The Protector (Fire's Edge #4) - Abigail Owen Page 0,93
from her kiss-swollen lips. At the first grip of her orgasm around his cock, he let it all go, a new fire joining the other he’d filled her with and together, gazes locked, they both shouted through the explosion of pure sensation. Only this time, she was his. Forever.
“I love you. Always.” He kissed her hard and long, easing as their bodies slowed until he was sipping at her lips. Replete and incandescently satisfied.
With a soul-deep contentment he’d never known possible, Levi slid over to lie beside her, keeping her close, staring at the incredible woman who was now his mate.
With a tender smile, he picked up her hand and placed a kiss to the inside of her wrist. Then grinned as she melted in his arms, gaze going languid.
“I’m going to tattoo my family crest here.” He brushed his thumb over the spot. “So that you carry me with you always. So you remember me while I’m away.”
“I’d like that.” She said the words almost shyly. “Not that I’m likely to forget you.”
His Lyndi shy? He wasn’t having that. “I’ll tattoo yours on my wrist, too.”
The shyness left her on a laugh. “Now that I’d really love to—”
She paused, frowning, gaze suddenly not with him as though she had drawn into herself.
“Lyndi?”
“Something feels odd.”
Odd? “What do you mean?”
She shook her head, then her gaze jerked to his face, full of shock and fear as her lips parted and her face contorted in a silent scream. Her back bowed off the bed and she scrambled at her neck with her nails, as though trying to rip away her skin.
Without another thought, Levi flipped her over and gathered her hair, lifting it away from her nape to reveal the sign of her clan glowing like metal in a kiln, almost too bright to stare directly at.
“What’s happening?” she whimpered.
“Your sign is—”
Her scream shattered the next words that would have come from his mouth. The mark turned a pure, terrifying white, then disappeared, leaving her skin entirely bare.
Lyndi crumpled, breath heaving in and out of her. Then she pulled herself into a ball, body shuddering with reaction. He hunkered down beside her, only she wouldn’t look at him, her hands covering her face.
“Lyndi?”
She started rocking.
“Lyndi?” He took her by the wrists, pulling her hands away. “Min eneste, look at me. I can’t fix it if—”
She opened her eyes and bile slammed up his throat in a burn of acid. Because her eyes were no longer the reddish-brown of a red dragon shifter. They were near black and entirely human.
“Oh gods.” This couldn’t be happening. What have I done?
Lyndi scrambled into his arms, clinging to him as she burrowed into his chest. “Levi…I can’t feel my dragon.”
Chapter Eighteen
Levi stared at the satellite phone clutched in his hand and willed it to ring because all he’d been getting over three days of trying to reach his team was nothing. No answers. No one calling back to check in.
No way was he leaving Lyndi in her defenseless state. The team needed to know. Informing the king…he’d figure that out later.
“If you’d stared at me with the same intensity all these years, I might have given in sooner.”
At Lyndi’s teasing he raised his head, sending her a quick smile even as he scanned her face. In the days since their mating, she’d turned wan, dark circles bruising the underside of her eyes. Just this morning, he’d woken to the sound of her retching in one of the chambers too small to use as a bedroom.
Her eyes narrowed. “But if you keep looking at me like I might shatter into a thousand pieces before your eyes, I’ll snap your well-muscled arm off and beat you senseless with it.”
Levi managed a chuckle. For her.
But this was his fault. He’d just assumed that his fire wouldn’t do anything to her. A symbolic and instinctual need to claim her, and that was all. But for three days her dragon had remained silent inside her, her eyes still human, and no marking had returned to her neck or the back of her hand.
He was the asshole who did that to her. Stole that from her.
Pushing away from where she sat propped up against the rough wall of the cave in their shared bedroom, Lyndi crawled over to him and straddled his lap, taking his face in her hands. “I know you’re worried.”