Forbidden Honor (Dragon Royals #1)(99)

I raised my eyebrows to prompt him to go on.

“If you were willing to come be the housemaid at our private retreat, in the north.”

The thought of being forever their maid and never the dragon jolted me. “Oh no, not another girl exiled to the north.”

“It’s not an exile. Your life here isn’t really that great.” He gestured around the garden and at the towering pinkish-orange columns and walls rising beyond. “Sure, it looks beautiful, but none of it is really yours.”

“No, the house and grounds will never be mine. But what is mine is my sister, and I have to look after her.”

“Well then you have to choose.” Talisyn’s voice was unexpectedly stern. “You can have us, or you can have your sister, but we’re not going to put your life in danger.”

“The king doesn’t need to know.”

“We’re always being spied on, Honor.” Tal sounded impatient, as if I should have just understood the life they lived as dragon royals.

“Is there someone watching us right now?” I asked.

“Maybe.”

I ran my hand up his arm, stopping to look over my shoulder, to make sure the garden was clear. I pushed him in a secluded alcove, where lilies dripped from a ceiling constructed of vines.

“Right now,” I asked, “Do you think someone is watching me touch you?”

He gazed at me with an expression that I couldn’t quite read, somewhere between fond and exasperated. “Why are you like this?”

“Why are you the way that you are, Talisyn?”

“Childhood trauma and too much time on the battlefield at a young age,” he rattled off. “Oh, and then a dash of just plain being born stupid.”

“Always so self-deprecating, as if you’re not one of my very favorite people.”

“Just one of them?”

“Top ten,” I assured him, and his brow furrowed.

“What about the top five?”

“Okay, I guess top three.” I loved bantering with Talisyn, but I loved kissing him more, so I bobbed up onto my toes, my body falling against his as I raised my lips.

He pulled his head back, catching my chin with two of his fingers and regarding me skeptically. “Do you have a death wish?”

“I have a Talisyn wish.”

He snorted in exasperation. Then he leaned forward, pressing his lips against my mouth and kissing me with a mix of tenderness and heat, all at once.

And all the while we traded kisses, my hands were toying with his belt. His lips pressed mine passionately even as he slapped my fingers away.

I finally pulled away and gave him a wounded look. He twined my fingers in his and pulled my hands above my head, pinning me against the wall. “Jaik was right when he called you a naughty cat.”

I groaned. “I really don’t like the naughty cat thing.”

“Oh really?” A mischievous glint entered his eyes.

I’d sealed my fate. “Am I going to carry that incredibly stupid nickname for all my life?”

“Right now, it seems like that might not be very long,” he said dryly, still gripping my hands above me. He bent his head and his lips plundered my throat, and my back arched.

“I am trying to be good,” I said softly, “because when I thought about dying, I thought about what that would do to my sister. But I don’t think that Jaik’s father can kill me that easily.”

He straightened, fixed me with an intent look. “The man has a hired fleet of assassins.”

The word assassin made something inside me buckle for a second, and I raised my chin. “That seems normal.”

His jaw set as if he’d slipped and told me something that he shouldn’t, once again. If I were a spy, I’d be a good one. And that worried me, because I wanted to make sure these men always trusted me.

And yet… There were so many lies springing up between us like brambles. I was starting to feel like a princess trapped in a tower, so surrounded by those thorny lies, the royals might never want to battle their way inside. How much longer could I live as Lucien?

“Talisyn,” I said, my voice pleading, although I wasn’t even sure anymore what I was asking for.

He closed his eyes. “Honor, you are really straining my abilities to be reasonable.”

I swayed, even though he still had my hands trapped, so that I could press myself against his hard, muscular frame. There was no one else in the garden. “You’re a dragon. You can sense there’s no one spying.”

“You are incorrigible,” he muttered, right before his lips claimed mine.

The tip of his tongue teased along the seam of my lips until he coaxed them open. I let out a soft hum of a moan. That seemed to drive him a little crazy, and he kissed me more deeply, his lips plundering mine. He trapped both my wrists in one hand and dropped the other to caress my cheek, my throat.

My knees went weak and his hand dropped to my hip, holding me steady. I never liked being weak or vulnerable before, but somehow, I liked it with Talisyn.

“I still feel Henrick’s hand on my skin, Talisyn,” I whispered. “Please help me forget.”

His gaze was somewhere between tortured and angry. “I don’t want you to use me to forget, Honor. I want to be what you remember.”

“If you keep on kissing me, that’s what I’ll remember from today,” I whispered. “The music floating over the garden from the party. Your hands on my body. Your mouth on mine. My stepfather will fade, he’ll be nothing but an unpleasant footnote.”