Raluca felt as if she’d drunk several cocktails in quick succession. It was all she could do to keep from closing his mouth with kisses, from tearing off his clothes, from finally touching every part of his body with her own. And she knew he felt the same way. She could feel it, like a mist hanging in the air between them.
Surely a brief but sincere apology, an even briefer conversation about James Bond, a stumbling but honest explanation of his behavior, and an attempt on her life in which he failed or succeeded in protecting her, depending on one’s point of view, should not have changed her feelings so much. Was she so fickle?
But it wasn’t his words, or even his actions. It was the look in his eyes, the emotion beneath his voice, the way he’d visibly struggled to confess that he loved his teammates but had done it anyway, so he could make a point that she otherwise wouldn’t have understood.
They’d somehow found a delicate balance, as if they were dancing and he held her in a dip. It would probably vanish in the next minute, when one of them said the wrong thing and the other lost their temper. But it was here now. And Raluca wanted to make it last as long as she could.
She dropped her hand to the bed between them. Nick grabbed it, his knuckles paling from the force of his grip.
“I’m scared to talk.” His voice dropped, rough with desire and raw with honesty. “Everything I’ve said has come out wrong. But I can’t just — I have to ask —”
Raluca tightened her hand around his. Their fingers locked together, their shifter strength creating a hold that no power on earth could break.
“Are you asking if I want you?” Raluca said.
“Yeah.” Then his eyes blazed with wolfish intensity, brighter and brighter until she imagined them burning a brand right into her soul. “But if you say yes, you gotta take me as I am. I don’t mean my temper. If I’m being an asshole, feel free to call me on it. Everyone else does. But I can’t watch my mouth every time I open it. I’m not Prince Charming. I’m a fucking wolf from the streets. If you want me, you gotta want me.”
When Raluca had taken her first leap off the balcony, she hadn’t known if she’d be able to transform in time, or if the fall would kill her. But she hadn’t cared. As she’d thrown herself into the air, her heart had lifted with the pure joy of freedom, of the chance to be something other than a princess cut to shape like a paper doll. To be Raluca, a woman and dragon questing for her true self, whatever that might be.
She had that same sense of freedom as she replied, “I want you, Nick. As you are, and everything that comes with you. Words included.”
Nick swallowed. Raluca realized that he hadn’t expected her to agree. She could hear him breathing, hard and fast, as if he too felt like he was in free-fall.
“Then take me,” Nick said.
Inside Raluca, her dragon took flight.
“I had a fantasy...” she began.
Nick sucked in another harsh breath. “About me?”
Raluca had never told anyone about any of her sexual fantasies, not even the few men she’d had rather unsatisfying sex with. It hadn’t even occurred to her to do so. But she could see the pulse beating at Nick’s throat and see the bulge growing within his pressed pants, and knew that her words alone were driving him wild.
If he can be wild, you can
be wild, hissed her dragon.
“I knew you would not be able to show tattoos at a ball,” Raluca said. “So I imagined you in gloves. And I imagined pulling them off. With my teeth.”
Wordlessly, Nick offered her his hand. Raluca delicately took the edge of kidskin between her teeth and pulled. The glove began to roll off, exposing his pale skin and the curling green of the vine. Her upper lip slid along his skin in a long, slow kiss, moving along the smooth back of his hand to his big knuckles, feeling the tiny raised scars scattered across them. He must have cut his knuckles over and over to make his shifter flesh accept those marks as part of his body.
Her lip slid over the hard slickness of his nails, and the glove came off. Raluca let it fall on the bed between them, then took his hand in hers and traced the vine, sliding her finger around his and then over the back of his hand, until she was stopped by his starched cuffs.
“How far does it go?” she asked.
“Take off my clothes and see,” Nick replied, with a wolfish grin. “And by the way, that was about the fucking sexiest thing I’ve ever had anyone do to me, but I don’t know if I can sit still long enough for you to do it all that slow.”
“I don’t know if I can, either,” Raluca confessed. She was trembling with desire, her voice catching, her nipples hardening against the silk cups that contained them.
Nick peeled off his other glove and tossed it to the floor, then indicated the dragonmarks on her shoulder. “How far do these go?”
“Take off my gown and see,” Raluca said immediately.
She stood up, turning to put the zipper tab within his reach.
“I remember that.” Nick caught it and pulled. As he did, Raluca reached up stealthily and rolled off her damp panties. They came off as the gown slid down her body, falling into a heap of silk and gauze and jewels at her feet.
Raluca, once again clad in nothing but the black sheath undergown, indicated the silver zipper. “If you pull that, you’ll get to see something you don’t remember.”