Deryk (Dragon Hearts #2)(22)

She raised her lids, her cheeks feeling hot as she looked at him. “Has the mating already gone far enough for you to be able to read my thoughts?”

A gentle smile curved his lips as he shook his head. “I can only read your expression. This, being here with you, makes me forget everything and everyone else. It certainly makes the past hollow and meaningless. You, the essence of you, already fills me with so much more than I have ever experienced before.”

He sounded and looked so sincere, Izzi felt something expand in her chest. Not quite love. Not yet. But a warmth that perhaps one day might become love?

The thought of that gave her the courage to continue. “I want to make love to you too. To give you pleasure. Can I do that?” Her cheeks were burning with her forwardness in suggesting such a thing.

“You never have to ask, Izabella,” he instantly assured her. “Not ever. If you want me, whenever you want me, I’m yours.” He raised his arms out to the sides, the parting of his leather jacket revealing the thick and lengthy bulge of the arousal in the front of his trousers.

Heady, heady stuff for someone who’d had less than a handful of boyfriends, and none of them what could be called serious. Not serious enough for Izzi to have ever wanted to take the next step from kissing to entering into a physical relationship with any of them, at least. She had been considering it with Pyotr, yes, and was so relieved now that she hadn’t gone any further than thinking about it.

Because what was between her and Deryk was so very different from anything Izzi had ever felt before. He was so very different. She didn’t know him, and yet in the ways that mattered, she did. She wasn’t in love with Deryk either, not yet, but she believed him when he said her happiness was all that mattered to him. His offer to remain in Russia, far away from his own family, had already proven that. As had his unselfish lovemaking.

She also believe him when he said he would be faithful to only her for the rest of his life.

How many women could claim that about their partner?

Very few, Izzi believed.

It’s the mating, a voice cautioned inside her head.

So, what if it was?

A dragon’s mating was no less binding, no less real, than two complete strangers meeting and believing they had fallen in love with each other. If anything, a dragon’s promise of fidelity made it so much more than that.

And Deryk wanted Izzi for his mate.

The reason why didn’t really matter, not when Deryk was looking at her with such raw passion and pleading in those gold-colored eyes. He was an alpha, alpha male, and made no secret of the fact, and yet he had gladly fallen to his knees in front of her so that he could pleasure her. She had no doubt he would do it again, and again, if she asked.

Izzi gave a self-conscious and yet triumphant laugh as she took his hand in hers and pulled him with her toward the bed. She removed his leather jacket and then unfastened his shirt before slipping that off his shoulders too and dropping it to the floor alongside his jacket.

Deryk’s bared chest was a work of art, his skin slightly golden, the musculature clearly defined. Like a sculpture by Michelangelo. Or Bernini, who was Izzi’s favorite sculptor of all time. Deryk might even have posed for Bernini, she realized, having been alive during the sculptor’s lifetime.

“What?” he prompted curiously.

“You’re beautiful. Hard and yet at the same time smooth and utterly beautiful,” she repeated huskily. “Like a Bernini sculpture. Did you ever…”

Deryk grinned. “Meet him?”

“Yes,” she confirmed shyly.

He nodded. “I did, as it happens. Rome was an interesting place to be in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.”

And this man would have wanted to be there. “Did you meet Michelangelo too?”

“Yes.” He hesitated before speaking again. “There’s also someone else, someone who was very important in my life who was born before either of them that I want—need to tell you about, one day. But not right now,” he teased as he ran a fingertip along her slightly parted lips.

Izzi couldn’t even begin to imagine all the wonderful things and the amazing people Deryk must have seen and met in his long lifetime.

But he was right, there would be time to talk of that another time. Right now, she wanted to study and touch the perfect living, breathing sculpture standing in front of her.

“May I?” Her hands hesitated over unfastening his jeans.

“Please,” Deryk encouraged gruffly. It was taking every bit of his control not to grab Izabella up in his arms and lay her on the bed before joining her. To make love to her, to claim her, to mate her, as he so longed to do.

But he knew that he couldn’t do that. Not only was this the first time Izabella had voluntarily touched and caressed him, but he was determined, no matter what the cost to himself, to take their relationship as slowly as she needed it to be.

There was too much at stake for him to do anything else. A lifetime of happiness together. Or a quick and agonizing death for both of them.

Instead, Izabella was the one to gently push him back until he sat on the side of the bed and she could kneel at his feet to pull off his shoes and unfastened jeans.

Izabella gave him a shy smile. “I didn’t think that through very well, did I?” she derided herself at the realization he was still wearing black boxers. “Should I—”