To Tame a Dragon - Tiffany Roberts Page 0,26

through the air around him baked into his scales. Dragonsbane’s fingers crept up his spine, causing another flare in his heartfire, but the ache in his groin—while still quite present—was bearable. His human had granted just enough relief for him to think clearly.

Clearly enough to understand that such lucidity would not last long while the comet was still up there somewhere, bathing the world in its power.

Before he risked succumbing to the Heat again, there was another matter that required his attention, one he’d been reminded of after drinking—food. His last meal had been just as long ago as his last drink, and his gut was hollow with hunger.

Falthyris stood up. Maintaining his balance was growing easier. The relationship between his body, wings, and tail was gradually becoming apparent, and he was learning how to counteract the awkwardness of this shape. He turned away from the river and strode forward. Before he realized what he was doing, he picked up the human’s bag. Her scent clung to it. He groaned and lapped the smell off the air.

He took a few moments to rummage through her belongings. He recognized most of the fabrics as articles of clothing, and knew some of the objects were food, but many of the tools within were strange to him. What need had a dragon for such things? They were little more than means of bolstering a species too weak to survive on their own, a species that could be killed by things as harmless and mundane as exposure to the sun.

His foot bumped into something as he moved to walk away. He bent to pick up the object. It was a leathery sac, a bladder, with liquid sloshing inside. A rawhide cord was tied around its neck, and it was plugged with a wood cylinder wedged in a ring of carved bone.

Falthyris adjusted his hold on the bag to uncork the sac, lift it to his nose, and sniff the contents. Water. As he replaced the plug, he couldn’t help again recalling the human cities that had once stood in the wavering heat of the Forsaken Sands, the stone buildings that had been clustered around oases, along riverbanks, and near floodplains.

For all their shortcomings, humans were tenacious and inventive.

He dropped the water bladder into the bag, which he closed and slung over his head and one shoulder. His human would likely be happy to see her belongings returned.

The corner of Falthyris’s mouth quirked.

He fought back that smile with a purposeful scowl, punctuating it with a snarl. He would not take her happiness into account, and he would not go out of his way to please her.

But his lips still tingled with the remembered feel of her mouth, so soft and yielding, pressed against them, and his heartfire blazed.

His scowl faded. He told himself it was due to confusion—why would she want to join their mouths? Why would she want to rub their lips together? All that had mattered was the meeting of their pelvises, the slide of his shaft inside her channel. What did mouths have to do with any of that?

Did I not long to run my tongue over her skin, to taste her? Do I not still long for it?

Do I not yearn for the feel of her lips again?

“The human has lodged herself in my mind like a parasite,” he muttered. But he knew at heart it wasn’t so simple as that. Though the mating bond served as a perpetual reminder of her, though the Red Heat kept his desire for her burning bright, part of this was just…him.

Because despite everything, there was something intriguing about her, something alluring. Something he could come to admire.

With a guttural growl, he broke into a run, spread his wings, and leapt into the air. The first rays of golden sunlight had broken over the horizon, blanketing the land in a golden glow and making all the rock formations cast long, deep shadows. Much of the sky remained clouded, but he could tell merely by the humidity that there would be no rain today. This mountainous land—and the desert beneath its gaze—would remain dry for a while longer.

Falthyris scanned the ground, seeking signs of movement, signs of animals or their passage, falling as easily into the hunt as though his last had been yesterday rather than decades before.

But I did hunt last night.

It simply ended with me becoming the prey.

9

Falthyris landed heavily just inside the mouth of the cave. He tossed his quarry onto the floor