Princess Gaia climbed out of the tin basin, feeling refreshed from the hot, herbal-scented bath. She dried off with a woolen towel, slipped into a sheer linen nightshift, and began to detangle her deep red hair with a double-sided ivory comb after taking a seat in front of the blazing fire.

Her bedchamber was warm, but not warm enough to soothe her soul.

She was worried about Prince Dario and the exorcism.

She was concerned about her father, held captive in Thieves.

And she was anxious about the ploys, plots, and plans of Prince Dante and his loyalists—what the upcoming coup might mean for Gaia and her place within the Realm. His warning to her about King Demitri still sent a shiver up her spine.

A soft knock on the door had her spinning around in the high-backed, upholstered chair and glancing toward her platform bed at the turquoise embroidered robe. “One minute,” she called, rising to fetch the wrap.

Before she could take three steps, the door opened, and Prince Dario Dragona stepped silently into the chamber, wearing a pair of dark breeches and an open white tunic with flared, ruffled arms. The medallion of a dragon dangled from his neck and glinted like liquid bronze against his exposed chest. Like before, his powerful presence enveloped the room. Only this time, his shimmering blue eyes cast silvery shadows, like muted moonlight, across the fire-lit space, and his intense, primitive gaze swept over the princess from head to toe. He took a harsh intake of breath, shut the heavy wooden door behind him, and leaned against the panel, raising one knee.

“Prince Dario!” she exclaimed, feeling suddenly self-conscious. The robe now felt a dozen miles away. She licked her bottom lip in a nervous gesture. “Are you well? Did you come through the…ordeal…unharmed?”

The corner of his strong, sculpted mouth turned up, just a hint, and he crossed his arms over his stomach, looking like a lazy jungle cat. Gaia couldn’t help but notice that his wounds were healed, his complexion was radiant, and his stunningly handsome features appeared older, wiser…somehow more refined. Someone had obvious healed him, and beyond that, his dragon had fed—and fed well. Power was practically seeping from his pores.

“I’m alive, and I’m here,” he said in a contemplative drawl. “I reconciled with my father and my cousins—my brothers, I suppose. I told Prince Dante that I wish to remain his son, no matter what occurs. That is, if he succeeds in usurping my true father, and if Mistress Mina can live with the scandal…with all of the Realm believing Prince Dante fathered children with more than one Ahavi.” His jaw tensed, and his shoulders curled inward, as if he were struggling to carry the full weight of a burden. “Do you know what he said?”

Despite herself, Gaia stuttered. “I…I…well, I…” She had no idea what Dario was talking about. “What do you mean by your true father?”

Prince Dario closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. “Apologies, I thought you knew all the Dragonas’ secrets.” He blinked them open with brusque determination. “King Demitri is my true sire.”

Princess Gaia did her best not to flinch or otherwise react indecently. “I see.”

Dario shook his head. “I found out on Wednesday. That’s what drove me to the Wild Witches Tavern, why I drank half my body-weight in spirits.” He stared at the back of his hand, clenching and relaxing his fist in several absent sequences. “That’s how Kristof and Eliaz…and Prince Damian…were able to subdue and overcome me.”

Princess Gaia nodded slowly. “Believe me, it is not my place to judge. Much has been happening in Warlochia…” It was a trite, if not dim-witted comment, but it was the best she could do under the circumstances. Her mind was virtually reeling from the breadth of so much deception. “Why are you telling me this?” The words just came out. It was a reasonable, albeit somewhat blunt question. And that’s when Prince Dario pushed off the door with the flat of his foot and strode forward in earnest.

Princess Gaia took a cautious step back.

She wasn’t exactly afraid of Dario, but there was just something deep, predatory, and intense in his eyes, something in the way he gazed at her. He stopped several feet shy of her person, and she bit down on her lower teeth, trying not to cringe. Blessed Ancestors of Lycania, she was wearing nothing beneath the shift, and this close to the firelight, little was left to the imagination. She gulped. “My prince, let me fetch my robe.”

He took two steps forward, closing the final distance between them. “Stay as you are. You’re breathtaking.”

Her stomach clenched, and goose bumps dotted her arms.

He reached out and cupped her cheeks in his strong, rugged hands. “Princess Gaia, can you ever forgive me?” He paused for the space of a heartbeat. “For what Prince Damian did…with my hands…with my mouth…for the way he abused you?”

It was all too much.

Princess Gaia grasped his wrists, lowered his arms, and turned around, giving him her back. “It wasn’t you, my prince. I know that.”

He sighed. “How are you? Really?”

She smiled. She knew he couldn’t see it, but she hoped to put some life into her voice. “I’m well, under the circumstances. Worried about my father.” She twisted a lock of her drying hair in her fingers. “I know that he gave me away, traded me like insignificant chattel, but he’s still my father.” She shrugged. “And I’m a bit overwhelmed by all that has occurred this night, but taken as a whole, I’m surviving.”

He placed his hands on her slender shoulders and pressed his chest against her back, even as he bent to her ear. “Why did you come to me in Forest Dragon? When Damian called out to you in your dreams, with the use of the warlock’s magic? Why did you come, Princess Gaia? I need to know.”

She gulped. “Then you remember everything? Everything Prince Damian said and did during the possession? You know the details of my vision?”

“I do,” he said plainly. “Tell me why, sweet princess.” His voice was like a resonant drum, beating to the heartbeat of the earth, and his breath was both warm and breezy, tinged with the faint hint of sandalwood and smoke—it smoldered against her ear.

“I…I suppose I came because you said you were in need of my assistance, and I am your ward after all. Dutybound. I came because you said there was no one you could trust, and I felt something strange, something awful…something foreboding. I knew you needed help.”

He brushed his temple along the back of her hair and pressed a tender kiss to the same, his hands rubbing up and down along the slope of her shoulders, where the curve met her quivering arms. “That was an excellent recounting of the vision—of the facts—but that isn’t what I asked. Why did you come to me, Princess Gaia? Why did you risk life and limb to ride out into the night in an unforgiving land, to place yourself, alone, in my care?” His head dropped farther, and this time, he pressed a lingering kiss on the back of her neck, right along the rise of her spine.

Princess Gaia shuddered. She closed her eyes and whispered, “I wanted to win your trust. I wanted a second chance.”

He practically groaned behind her. “A second chance for what?”

Her heart fluttered in her chest. “To make inroads in your heart. To show my loyalty. To earn your friendship. To prove that I wasn’t a child.”

His right hand slid down from her shoulder, along the planes of her arm, and over the back of her hand, where he linked his fingers in hers. His left hand dropped low to her belly, his fingers splayed wide, and he drew her tightly against him. Then he nuzzled her neck again, kissed a trail from her ear to her collarbone, and nipped at the base of her throat with exquisitely gentle canines.

Gaia was glad he was holding her, or she might have fallen over—her body swayed like a pendulum. “My prince,” she murmured, no longer recognizing her own voice. “Nothing has changed.”

He trailed the underside of her jaw with his tongue, and the dragon left fire in its wake. “Everything has changed,” he whispered.

“I am not a Blood Slave.”

The hand on her stomach rose higher, cupping the weight of one breast. “No, you’re not.”

She gasped and covered his hand with hers. “I’m not your Sklavos Ahavi.”

“Mm,” he groaned, as he kneaded the sensitive flesh with raw, unconcealed hunger. “This is true as well.”

She dropped her hand to her side and stifled a moan, struggling not to arch into his touch. “I don’t know what I was thinking, my lord. I don’t know if I had…such intentions. I was simply trying it out…exploring the possibility.”

He pinched her nipple, tweaked the flesh between his fingers, then rubbed his thumb along her areolae in a tantalizing caress. “Too late, Princess Gaia,” his dragon purred. “You risked everything for me. You reopened the door. It’s too late to turn back. I want you. In every way.” He scooped her up in his arms, carried her across the chamber, and laid her softly on the canopy bed. His passion-drenched eyes never leaving hers, he removed his tunic and tossed it to the floor, and then his gaze took in every inch of her feminine form, peering straight through the see-through shift.

Gaia could hardly breathe.

She felt as if she were being tossed at sea, riding a turbulent wave, utterly incapable of swimming, about to drown in that gaze.

His chest was bronzed and cut from granite.

His arms and his stomach—bless the gods—he could’ve been a granite statue.

Perfection.

And his sex, that part of him that made him distinctly male, the way it strained against his breeches…

Well, she couldn’t even think about that now, or she might flee the chamber out of fear. She could only pray that he knew how to…employ it…with some manner of delicacy because that…because he…oh gods, it would never fit.

Not ever.

A deep masculine chuckle rumbled in Prince Dario’s throat as he blanketed her body on the massive elm bed, and Gaia cringed in embarrassment: The dragon was reading her thoughts.

“You’re my ward,” he rasped playfully. “Remember? You no longer have a choice.”

Princess Gaia gasped in alarm. “Is that true?” Her voice was tinged with fear, but before she could protest further, he claimed her lips with a kiss. And it wasn’t just an ordinary kiss—not that she knew what one was. He devoured her mouth, he dueled with her tongue, he nipped at the corners of her lips. He breathed smoke and heat and passion, deep into her throat—he must have, because the sensation reached her toes, and her hips swirled in an unbidden roll.

“No,” he drawled against her throat, turning his erotic attentions to her neck. “It’s not.” And then he pressed up on his arms and hovered above her, his divine, otherworldly gaze searching hers. “Tell me you want me, sweet princess. Say yes, then trust me.”

Gaia shivered beneath him like a captive dove.

She studied every feature on his face, and then her eyes swept lower, taking in every majestic inch of his powerful, masculine frame—and she knew she was lost…

Lost to the night.

Lost to the dragon.

Lost to the heat of his flame…

“Yes,” she whispered, descending into the abyss of eroticism.

To hell with it all!

If she never lived to see another day, she wanted this magnificent being inside her.

“Yes, Prince Dario. I want you.”

Her shift was shredded in an instant.

His breeches were torn in two.

And as he settled between her thighs in a wicked descent, his hands began to worship her body. He kneaded her flesh; he grasped at her hips; he tasted every untouched inch of her breasts…and her stomach. His fingers explored places she didn’t know she had, and great gods of the sea and spirits of the shifters, her body was coming apart.

Coiling into a tightly wound ball.

Trembling with some undefined need.

Burning, writhing, wanting…

Something she couldn’t name.

At last, when the torture became unbearable, she scored his back with her nails, grasped the perfect globes a bit lower, and raised her thighs to his waist. “Dario,” she panted, shocked by the intensity of her need, “please, my prince…please.” She was utterly breathless.

He reared back like a magnificent stallion, placed the head of his sex at her core, and slowly thrust his hips forward, sliding forward by careful inches. He paused for a moment, slid his shaft back and forth until it glided with much greater ease, and then he drove his hips forward with a feral plunge and tore through her maiden’s veil.

She gasped in pain, and his body grew still, even as his back arched and trembled from the restraint. His hand slipped between them—he did something with his thumb—and in a matter of minutes, Princess Gaia was weeping…

With pleasure.

With desire.

With need.

As the tide rose, and the waves swelled to a crescendo, he began to rock his hips once again. Slowly at first, then faster, with more urgency, until at last he was buried to the hilt and stroking her in places too intimate to comprehend.

Princess Gaia groaned in pleasure, and the dragon released his fangs.

Mother of mercy, he bit her beneath the ear!

And her body splintered into a thousand pieces.

There was nothing in all the world but ecstasy between them.