“So, you’re really coming with me?”

Minach and Amara were seated at his kitchen table, the window wide open to allow the evening’s warm breeze to flood the flat. For once, the Dragon shifter looked hopeful, expectant. Excited, even. He was barely able to conceal the joy behind his eyes, and for the moment at least, he looked a little like a young boy anticipating Christmas morning.

“Yes, I told Bertie I would. I brought a little luggage with me. I thought I’d crash here, if that’s all right, so I’ll be ready to go first thing in the morning.”

“Crash here, you say? I never thought I’d hear those words from you, Enlightened.”

“Well, don’t get too excited. I’ll be spending the next few nights with you; it’s now officially my job to accompany you to Cornwall, so I don’t see how another night in the same vicinity as you could hurt.”

“Your job, eh? You’re getting paid to be my escort, then? I like that.” Minach grinned like a Cheshire cat, all teeth and mischief.

“Something like that, but don’t get any ideas into that lascivious head of yours, Mr. Dragon. I’m all business.”

“Business, bah. You do realize that I don’t need you for this. It’s just a quick trip to find a shifter. I just wanted you along so that I could get into those pants of yours.”

“They wouldn’t fit you. Besides, I’m not sure this trip will be so simple, Minach. After what happened to Kliev, anything could happen.”

“Are you offering to protect me?” He issued her a wry grin. “You’re afraid something will happen to your favourite bastard, are you?”

“Not quite,” she said earnestly. “I know full well that you can look after yourself. I’ve seen you and your Dragon take on multiple Forsaken and Lapsed at once. You’re…impressive.” Amara averted her eyes with the last word, not wanting him to read the genuine admiration on her features.

“I’ve been waiting months to hear you say that,” he replied, thrusting out his chest like a peacock looking for a mate. “I knew you’d come round.”

“Silly plonker,” she laughed, steering her eyes back to his face. “Now listen, there’s the small matter of how I’ll get there.”

“Well, I suppose you can ride me for a few hours.”

“Great, thank you.”

“And after that I’ll take you to Cornwall.” Minach raised his eyebrows in quick succession, doing a somewhat impressive Groucho Marx impersonation. Cheeky monkey.

Amara smiled. She loved his humour, much as she never admitted it in so many words. She loved, too, that he treated her like he treated everyone else. He didn’t care that she was another breed entirely, a creature deemed off limits to most of his kind. If anything, he seemed genuinely fond of her.

Yet he’d never kissed her; never really tried anything. The most action she’d gotten out of him was his hand on her arm, and even that had been initiated with a certain respectful distance. She’d always gotten the impression that he respected the invisible boundaries that she’d long since erected around her body.

Still, it was fun to flirt a little now and then.

“Dirty Dragon,” she said. “Always throwing the innuendo about.”

“I wouldn’t mind, you know,” he replied calmly.

“Mind what?”

“If you wanted to ride me. Either my face or my cock. I’d take either one, or both, even. I’m not fussy.” The right side of his mouth curled up in a sexy half-smile. Okay, that was a little beyond flirting. Whatever it was sent a frisson of pleasure down Amara’s belly to the place between her legs, reminding her that she too had unmet needs. Riding him would fulfill a fantasy that had stormed through her mind since almost their first meeting.

But it would never happen, of course. That’s why they called it a fantasy. It was merely a fabrication of her mind, a tease. Nothing to do with grim reality.

“That is the most unromantic proposition I’ve received in my entire life, Minach,” she scolded, much as his forwardness aroused her. It was a beautiful sensation, this, reminding her how alive her broken body was in spite of everything. She wanted him; she always had. But theirs was an impossible union, infected with complications. Their names may as well have been Montague and Capulet for all the barriers standing between them.

“I’m not trying to be romantic,” he told her, leaning in close so that his delicious scent did that alluring thing that Dragon shifters’ aromas did, embracing her erogenous zones in its tendrils. “I’m trying to tell you that I want you, Amara. You must know that by now.”

Yes, she knew. He wanted her body, just as she wanted his. Men were so simple-minded, wanting to fuck anything with breasts, so long as she was convenient. Well, she wasn’t here to be used for such a purpose. Perhaps if she were human she’d have given herself to him for a few hours of erotic pleasure. But there was too much at stake to take such a chance. She could destroy them both if she wasn’t careful.

“You want a roll in the hay,” she chastised. “You want to fuck someone, without attachment or investment. I know how much you value your life of bachelorhood. Find yourself a hooker if that’s what you’re looking for.”

“What makes you think that’s all I want?” He looked almost hurt by her accusation, despite the fact that he probably deserved it. After all, this was a man who rambled on about how wonderful it was to live from day to day, free of the shackles of a mate. Why would he possibly want anything more than sex? He claimed to thrive on bachelorhood, solitude and freedom.

“Because, Minach, you’ve never once shown that you truly care for me. You tolerate me better than you do most people, but that doesn’t exactly constitute the makings of a relationship. Besides which, you know what would happen if we got together.”

“Oh yes, I know perfectly well. It would be eighteen or so hours of erotic bliss, and you would thank me for my intricate tongue work afterwards while smoking a cigarette.”

“You’d be scolded by your Guild at best, expelled at worst. Tryst might find out, wherever she is, and she’d probably use it as an excuse to gather forces against the Dragons. She hates my kind and wants us to cease existing.”

“Tryst can blow me,” Minach snarled. “Wait. No, she can’t. You can, however. I would welcome it with open arms and a very hard hard-on.”

Amara sat back and crossed her arms. “Incorrigible,” she said.

Minach leaned forward again, and once again his scent all but overwhelmed her. “Admit it. You want me, too.”

“I tolerate you, just as you tolerate me.”

The shifter slammed his back into the chair and crossed his arms over massive pectoral muscles. “Right then, Miss Grouch. Back to business. I will transport you to Cornwall on my back, no strings attached. How’s that?”

“Even if I don’t give you my body?”

“Even then. But for the record, I would absolutely take it if offered.”

“Duly noted.” Amara smiled again. He was getting more comfortable with her. It was both a nice change and a frightening one to have Minach so easy around her that he could essentially declare his desire. Perhaps they were growing dangerously close.

“Besides which,” Minach said as though reading her thoughts, “my Guild wouldn’t disown me. Lyre likes you too much. Lumen does, too. They’re the only ones who count.”

Yes, but there is more. So much that you don’t know about, thought Amara. She didn’t dare say it; doing so would make it all too real.

“Well, for now we need to focus on the Relic of Earth,” she said, “not on the suitability of a naked romp. It’s not going to happen, so you should get it out of your head right now.” Even if it’s never going to leave my own mind.

“Right. There’s the matter of the damned Relic,” he said, clamping his jaw shut with the finality of her rejection. “Business over pleasure, as always. We’ll find the sodding thing, assemble the four and be done with stone-hunting forever. The Dragons will become powerful beyond imagining, and you will still refuse my advances despite all my newfound macho impressiveness.”

“Yes, probably,” Amara sighed. Her mind was moving onto other matters, prying itself deliberately away from thoughts of his naked body.

“What are you sighing about?”

“Nothing, and everything. Just…the Dragons will grow more powerful, but I just wish we could help my people as well. I’d give anything to be able to bring them out of hiding and to show them a safer world.”

“It will be safer once the Guild has the four Relics in our possession, Amara.”

“There’s more, though,” she said, her voice all but breaking. “I…wish I could heal them.” It was herself she spoke of, of course. It was herself that she wanted to heal. Perhaps then she wouldn’t have to push him away.

In a rare show of sympathy, Minach leaned forward and reached for her hands, which were sitting on the edge of the table. “I’m going to fight for that very thing, for your people. But especially for you,” he said, drawing her left palm to his lips to kiss.

Amara suppressed a shudder of delight at his touch. This was a complete turnaround from his tone a minute earlier. Crude, flirtatious Minach had moved off, and soft, thoughtful Minach was letting his barriers down for a moment. This was the man who tempted her at times to fall in love.

Arousal didn’t begin to describe the sensation of his lips on her flesh. It was all she could do not to reach for his shirt and tear it away from his massive, muscular body. She knew full well what lay beneath; the mountains of hard flesh that arched and angled their way over his torso. He was the most beautiful man in the world, and for too many reasons, she would never experience the full pleasure of him.

“Thank you, Minach,” she said when he’d given her hand back. She wondered if he smelled her arousal on the air. Part of her hoped that he did, that he understood how he filled her with want, with deep, unsettled need.

“No,” he said, staring deep into her eyes, his gaze taking stock of her soul. “Thank you, Amara.”

Perhaps he knew after all.