Chapter Ten
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The measure of a man is not by the length of his sword but by how he wields it.
She wasn’t doing it right.
Rui was a millennia-old dragon. She’d seen countless human civilizations come and go. She knew the mysteries of the deep blue seas. And up until now, she’d prided herself on being as pacific as the ocean that the humans named.
But she didn’t know this: how to please a man.
How to entice him and coax him and make him want to stay with her. Never leave her. Make him as desperate for her as she was for him.
If he was a fellow animal spirit, even if he wasn’t a dragon, she felt they would have less barriers to overcome between them.
Animals were pure. They followed their instincts. If they wanted to Mate, they simply did. It was a connection as primal as anything else in nature. Like thunder, lightning, storms and sun.
But humans were so much more complex.
Rui didn’t understand them, and for the most part, tried not to spend any more time than absolutely necessary in their presence.
They thought too much. Plotted and schemed. They denied their natural urges. Which was sometimes a good thing, because unlike animals, humans could be “bad.” They could be evil.
Other times, when they denied themselves, like Wolfe was doing now, it wasn’t a good thing. At least, from Rui’s perspective, though admittedly, she was biased.
Wolfe clearly wanted to be close to her too. She scented his deepening male musk, saw the dilation of his pupils, heard the acceleration of his heart.
Though she knew something of the basic mechanics—that his very large, very long and very hard male part would somehow cleave into the notch between her thighs and hopefully (gulp) not split her asunder in the process—she didn’t know exactly how to proceed.
Should she fight off his shackle on her wrists, wrestle him into submission and mount his rod?
But she didn’t think he’d be pleased by that. For some reason, he was fighting his instincts, holding himself back. She didn’t understand why, but she respected him enough not to force his hand.
And even if she were to mount him successfully, and hopefully not faint from loss of blood after being cleaved in two, what then? Rui had no idea.
Above all, no matter how her instincts, how theSheinside her, clamored to claim him, she wanted to please him.
How was a dragon to keep a man?
“Show me,” she murmured again, nuzzling his jaw and throat with her lips and cheek, wishing she was in animal form so her scent glands could mark him.
He kept her wrists trapped in one hand and lifted the other to cup the back of her head, threading his fingers through her hair to gently distance their faces enough that he could look into her eyes.
“What is it you want from me, little one?” he rasped in that deep, rumbling, spine-tingling voice.
Those glittering citrine eyes speared deep into her own. Unblinking. Mesmerizing.
“Are you curious for the first taste of a man?”
Something inexplicable flickered in his eyes, and his mouth twisted slightly, distorted by his scar.
“Do you crave a big, dangerous beast? If it is the thrill of pain you’re after, I am not your brute.”
She heard perfectly what he didn’t say:I would never hurt you.
But they would be opponents in the tournament, so she knew that couldn’t be true. Not in that sense. She also understood, thefemalepart of her understood, instinctively, exactly what he meant.
“It’s just you, my Wolfe,” she answered.