“It is,” I confirm. I lean back, trying to calm myself. My insides are humming for her and it’s difficult to concentrate. “You are…” I cast about for words to describe Isla. “Great in counsel.”
“In counsel?” Isla repeats, beginning to grin up at me.
“Daft woman. I’m paying you a compliment. Stop arguing.”
“Sorry, right; by all means, continue.”
This would be a perfectly acceptable response except that she pairs it with a tiny laugh and a wide, rather princess-like wave of her arm.
I tip my horns, darkly acknowledging her lofty permission. “Brazen scaleless vermin. As I was saying, you… well, for a human, you do a mighty amount of work.”
“For a human?”
“Shush. And among the humans, you are the best of them. If I was given the permission, I would grind up their bones into powder and use them as mortar, and finally make them useful for something—but you I would spare.”
“Gee, Bash. Don’t hold back. Tell me how you feel about us.”
“I am,” I assert, my eyes flaring. “You, I would keep.”
The humor is wiped from Isla’s face. “Oh.” She stares up into my eyes. “I like you too.”
My fists clench, instinctively wanting to reach out and catch her. I refuse the impulse.
Claiming instincts rear up though, so loudly I can almost hear my body ask, Why? Why shouldn’t I give in to this attraction? It isn’t as if I haven’t begun bonding to Isla. I’m already gone for her. It’s only going to grow worse.
She could destroy me.
I crush the thought. I have tried to learn from my mistakes. I have watched Isla, and she hasn’t shown untoward affection for masses of males. She is not a Gryfala to take a harem. And if I can weave myself carefully around her heart, she will never want to part from me. Which is absolutely a must, because the more I spend time with her, the more I fear I can never part from her.
“Bash?” Isla asks.
I’m staring at her. I haven’t stopped staring at her. It’s too much intensity, and it’s making her nervous but I can’t stop. Instead, my tail wraps around her ankle, shackling her.
How do I make her want me like I want her?
When she drops her gaze to look down at her caught leg, I bring the back of my foreclaw along the side of her smooth face. “I noticed your lips are pale.”
Her head snaps up. Her browfurs almost touch. “Pale?”
I nod solemnly. “I believe we can restore your color if we do this…” I lean in and take her mouth.
CHAPTER 27
ISLA
Bash can kiss. He angles my face with his hand, tilting my mouth, encouraging me to open for him. His lips are surprisingly smooth despite being made up of scales. They’re firm and hot—as hot as he is, and he feels like a furnace as he keeps me trapped against him. His tongue meets mine—and the surface of it is heavily textured but not unpleasant. He takes my mouth like he does everything else, like he owns it, like nobody can stop him because he’s the master here.
He’s certainly mastering me.
Until… he just… stops.
He pulls back from me, breathing hard enough that I can’t help but be flattered. Did I cause him to get this excited?
Rhetorical question. We’re the only ones around; of course our zinging-hot kiss is the reason his ribs are heaving like he’s just run a couple of miles. “We need to stop,” he says.
My fingers tease up his side. “That is terrible advice. I’m rejecting it,” I declare, my lungs working overtime just to manage the oxygen intake process plus words.
There’s kind of a weird pause, like the tiniest, almost imperceptible hesitation before Bash looks at me. And in his eyes… for a second, there’s a flash of almost… unease.
The only way I could be more stunned is if a lightning bolt burst out of the sky and nailed me right in the back. Because Bash looks—not scared, but… extremely uneasy. Of me. “Hey,” I say, reaching up to cup his face.
Except he raises his head so that my fingers barely do more than graze his jaw.
What’s happening here? “Do you not want me to touch you?”
“Of course I want your touch on me,” he grates out.
I motion around us, to the very empty quarry. “Are we leading up to sex?” I ask.
Alluring green eyes flash to a brilliant shade of lime. “Yes.”
“Ohhh, are you worried about the bonding thing?”
Stern face in place, nose slightly in the air like it’s