Last Dragon Standing (Dragon Kin #4)(105)

“Like the village slow boy who brings flowers to the pretty neighbor girl?”

“Pretty much…but I must say you have managed to make me feel better.” Keita sat up, scrutinizing the dragon crouched in front of her.

“What?” he asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You know…you have a beautiful face.”

“Thank you?”

Reaching out, Keita framed his face with her hands.

“Has no one said that to you before?”

“Of course. My brother said it just the other day before he bought me a pretty new gown…and earrings.”

“You Northlanders do love your sarcasm.”

“It gets us through the day.”

“Would this help you get through the day?” And then she kissed him, pressing her lips to his, stroking her hands across his jaw.

To Keita’s surprise, unlike their first kiss, there was no response from Ragnar. She might as well have been kissing the boulder she was sitting on.

Feeling a little idiotic, she pulled back and found those strange blue eyes watching her.

“Was I too forward, warlord?”

“No. But I’m no Southlander.”

“Which means what exactly?”

“Something about you tugs at me, Keita, and I won’t be shooed away like some irritating fly once you bed me. You can play that game with your Fire Breathers, not with me.”

“So should I hand my wings over now or wait until you come first?” His smile was a little sad as he took the hands she still had pressed against his face and gently pushed them back into her lap. “If that’s the best you think of me, perhaps you should find yourself someone else. A safer distraction for Her Majesty than a wing-removing bastard of a Lightning.” He rose to his full height, towering over her with all that power and muscle. As a dragoness, she should feel wary. Ready to fight or flee at the slightest move from the Northlander who made her feel so uncomfortable.

“It’s all right,” he said. “To the rest of the world we’ll be ravenous lovers.”

He took a step away, and Keita reached out, catching hold of his inside thigh. Keeping her hand there, she stood. She only reached his shoulder, but that was enough.

“How about we make a deal?” she suggested.

“What kind of deal?”

“I promise not to shoo you away like a…what was it? An irritating fly? And you promise not to force a Claiming.” She pressed her hand hard against his thigh. “Seduce me, if you like. Charm me, if you can. But no more than that. If that’s amenable to you.”

Ragnar turned toward her, stepped in close. Her hand automatically moved up until it pressed against the sizable c**k he had hidden behind his leggings. His big hands slid into her hair, fingers massaging her scalp while he tilted her head back.

“That’s a deal I can agree to,” he murmured, his gaze searching her face.

“Then kiss me, warlord. I think we’ve both waited long enough.” He knew he’d made a dangerous decision as soon as he took her mouth with his own. Nothing had ever tasted sweeter to him, nothing had ever felt so perfect. And what kind of deal had he agreed to? A deal that, at the moment, felt impossible to abide by when all he wanted to do was toss her over his shoulder and fly her back to his Northland home. Yet he knew that the one way to lose Keita forever was to break his word to her. And not the everyday things that males promise their females—“I know I said I’d clean up the ox carcass from the dining hall, but I’ve been busy!”—but this deal in particular. It was a test, and they both knew it. Because what Keita wanted above all else was her freedom. The freedom to go where she liked, when she liked, with whomever she liked. That meant everything to her. Of all the commitments they’d made to each other over the last few days, some that risked life and death and the future of their territories, this was the one that could make Keita his or push her away forever.

For that reason alone, he should stop this now, get this situation that might or might not involve the Sovereigns out of the way. Then, when the time was right, Ragnar would return and court this dragoness of royal blood properly.

That’s what he should do.

But as soon as he ripped her bodice open to get at her br**sts, any hope of doing what he should rather than what he wanted ended.

He sucked her nipple into his mouth and she moaned, her hands digging into his hair, her small fingers quickly undoing the braid that fell past his shoulders, and he knew they were both beyond the point of stopping and thinking rationally.

Rationally? He would have laughed if he wasn’t busy falling on his back and bringing Keita with him.

Rational thought was for when one courted someone one was interested in, but who didn’t heat the blood. Someone safe and pretty and not remotely challenging. Keita was dangerous and stunning and more challenging than that nest of ice snakes he fell into once. Ice snakes, which could grow so big and long that they could wrap around a dragon his size seven or eight times, and crush every bone he possessed in less than a minute. And that five-hour fight Ragnar only managed to survive because of Vigholf and Meinhard—not nearly as challenging as Keita.

Then again, nothing ever would be, and he understood that now.

He’d torn the bodice of one of her favorite dresses and she didn’t care.