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private elevator, he swiped the key card he’d taken from Torch and they started up. There’d been a time when he would’ve just flown…
    As bad as elevator lighting was when it opened in his cavern, it was harsher standing right underneath. He closed his eyes against the sensation of needles puncturing his retina.
    “It hurts you, doesn’t it?” Her voice was soft.
    He’d heard her speak before since she talked in her restless sleep. But to talk to her…
    He shrugged his right shoulder then wished he hadn’t when pain ricocheted through the joint down his spine. “You’ve heard enough about the stone blight to understand what’s happening to not only me, but to all of the dragonkin."
    “Yes.” A pause, and then she asked, “So why did you come down?”
    The tentative hitch of her voice—as if no one had ever sought her out—made the dragon gruff. “I told you.”
    “Why do you feel possessive?” Another pause. “Of me.”
    So she hadn’t overheard him telling Rave that she could be his solarys. Just as well. “My dragon feels everything in the Keep belongs to it.”
    “Then you could have sent someone else to collect me.”
    He opened his eyes to quirk a brow at her. “Would you have listened?”
    Her pink lips pursed in a way that made him not care about the daggers in his eyeballs. “Probably not,” she admitted, then added, “Definitely not.”
    He inclined his head. “And so.” Unable to stop himself, he prodded, “ I came down to get you. The real question, however, is…why did you come down here? Were you looking for someone? Or rather… something ?”
    “I, uh, just wanted…” She sucked in her lower lip, chewing lightly as she considered her answer. When she released her breath in a short huff, the flesh was slicked and much redder. The sight of that vivid blood, so close to the surface, made his dragon twist hungrily.
    “What if”—she dragged the words out as slow as the flowstone in his cavern—“I’m trying to remake myself for myself? I’m tired of being a good girl for the bad guy. Maybe I want to be the bad girl for the right guy.”
    The flush of heat wasn’t external this time. It rushed through his veins like a bath of acid, and he clenched his teeth hard enough to spark. “Are you saying I’m the right guy?”
    Her glance followed the arc of the tiny embers then arrowed back to him. “I don’t know what I’m saying right now, given the vodka, but…”
    “But what? You do remember I am not a ‘guy’, yes?” He closed the distance between them in one step and looked down at her. She was tall for a female human, as if she’d sacrificed the curves when she’d stretched herself, reaching for something else. And still she had to angle her head to meet his gaze.
    Her eyes were as dark as his with shadows.
    But she didn’t retreat.
    So very carefully, he put one hand under her jaw, tilting her head higher. Even to his half-deadened fingers, her skin was soft, yielding, and her pulse fluttered, all that blood seething in her veins.
    “You were to be sacrificed to a dragon,” he reminded her. Unnecessarily. “Why would you want to continue down that path? Why are you teasing me?”
    “I’m not a sacrifice, not anymore. And I’m not teasing you.”
    “You don’t know the temptation…” He let out a shuddering breath. “What I need is beyond anything I would ever ask of you.”
    She lifted her chin another notch in challenge, so his fingertips just grazed the hard bone at the edge of her jaw. “Just so we’re clear…it’s mine to give. Mine .”
    Her virginity. As if the beast cared about that. The beast within him wanted only the purity of the flame that flickered in her—low, perhaps, unfed, but ready to burn.
    The agony of not immersing himself in her solarys fire would kill him.
    But she wasn’t strong enough to take his dragon. If he tried to claim her, they would find themselves immolated in a mating fever that knew no boundaries. Refusing