Page 111 of House of Ashes

“The hell I am—”

“To push me away.”

I rolled over on my side to glare at him. “How am I pushing you away? This is all in the spirit of the agreement, Rhylan. You don’t have to pretend—”

He put a finger to my lips, rolling onto his side as well. Facing each other in the dark, with nothing but the sound of our breath between us, we stared at each other.

“I don’t have to pretend,” he agreed quietly.

I stayed silent, not trusting my own voice.

“As I said, I don’t think you’re cold.” Rhylan took my hand, moving slowly, like he was taming a wild creature. Our fingers locked together and remained between us, bridging the gap of empty bed. “I think you’ve gone so long without someone else you’re allowed to lean on that you don’t know how to handle it when you do. I think you find it easier to build a wall between yourself and whatever you want, so you can tell yourself you never had it in the first place, therefore it doesn’t matter.”

There was a horrible ring of truth to his words. My brows knit together in a frown. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

“See?” Rhylan smiled without humor. “You’d rather push it away than face it. But Sera…you do have me. I’d like to think that by this point we could call each other friends, at least.”

What he’d said…it was like having someone reach inside me and pull out all my fears, holding them up to the unforgiving light to be seen in all their repulsive awfulness. But he didn’t lie.

And I couldn’t handle that. Not right now.

“We are friends,” I growled. “Against my better judgment.”

There was an edge of true humor in his quiet laugh. “That’s all I wanted to hear—that you acknowledge that you’ve got at least one true friend in the world you don’t need to hide from.”

A faint grumble escaped me as I moved to extricate my hand, but Rhylan kept my fingers firmly linked in his. He squeezed lightly, two times, keeping my hand captive.

We laid in silence, gazing into each other's eyes for several long moments, the small gulf between us seeming to shrink as the seconds ticked by.

I wanted this dragon so terribly that my need for him was a fist in my chest, squeezing my heart in uncaring hands. I couldn’t sleep next to him.

I couldn’t have him, and that was the true torture.

“I need air,” I whispered, feeling naked and exposed by how deeply he saw the truth of me, and pulled my hand away. I threw back the blanket, crawling out of the bed for the window, but I had only made it a few steps to the window—to the relative safety of distance between us—before he caught me.

“You don’t need air,” he rumbled, gripping me around the waist and throwing me back into the bed. I landed on my back in a tangle of pillows and sheets. “You just want to run and hide again.”

Rhylan prowled towards me, climbing onto the bed with the lithe grace of a predator and grabbing my wrists. He pinned them above my head with one hand, lowering his forehead to mine, the coals in his eyes brightening into flames.

I gazed up at him, watching the flames flicker, the scales spilling over his chest and shoulders, aware of every inch of skin that touched.

My breath came shallow, my heart hammering against my ribs, but not with fear.

Rhylan pressed his lips to mine, deepening the kiss as my body flexed involuntarily.

I knew that he was hunting; that his scent, clinging to the shirt I wore, marked me as his in the primal way of dragons—and I didn’t want to stop what came next, hidden under cover of darkness.

“You do know I want you, Sera,” he said roughly, breaking the kiss, his tongue flicking out to taste my lower lip. “Are you still going to run from this?”

With my hands held above my head, the length of his body along mine driving me to madness, I shook my head. Heat coiled low in my belly, driving through my veins like fire as his lips moved over the soft scales on my cheekbones, moving down to the sensitive spot under my ear.

He was everything I wanted in a dragon…and tonight I would prove to myself that I didn’t run from everything.

That I could have a sliver of what I craved, with no regrets.

And I would not acknowledge the tiny wellspring of hope inside me for more than that.

Instead I tilted my head as Rhylan’s lips moved down my throat.