CLAUDIA

I stand in a dark cell, the same jail cell that I’d been held in for over a week, all for snatching a few things from the Scavenge Lands and getting caught. It’s a bullshit sentence, made all the more bullshit by the fact that I’m the only one in the jail. I sit, waiting, but no one comes to get me. My irritation grows, and I pace my cell. Somewhere in the distance, Amy is sobbing as if her heart would break. The sound makes me frantic, and I continue pacing, waiting to be let out.

But no one comes. No one ever comes. All the while, Amy’s tears escalate, until there’s nothing I can hear except my sister’s misery.

I storm to the metal door and bang on it. “Let me out!” I scream. “This is a mistake!”

“No mistake,” someone calls back to me.

“But my sister! She’s crying!” I pound on the door again.

“Don’t you worry about her anymore,” the guard calls from a distance. “She’s ours. You gave her up.”

“No! I want her!”

“Then you should have thought of that before you fucked the dragon.” The voice is hard, cruel. Familiar. The captain of the militia? I try to peer out the door of the jail cell, but the small window is foggy. I can’t see anything but a vague outline of a man.

“You can’t hold me here. My sister needs me!”

“She doesn’t need you. You’ve chosen who you want to be with, and it’s not humans.” The voice is full of scorn.

“He’s not like the others!”

“Isn’t he? Isn’t he exactly like the others?”

And I can’t deny it, because he is. Just because he’s my dragon doesn’t mean he’s not a murderer. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“There’s always a choice, traitor,” he tells me. “You could choose to help your people, and instead you’re running off with a dragon.”

“No,” I tell him, running my hands over the walls of my cell. “I don’t love the dragon,” I lie. “I’m with the humans. Let me see my sister.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m here!” I yell louder. “I’m here in the Fort with you, and I want to see my sister.”

“No, you’re not,” the man says, and his voice seems to change, turn deeper. It comes from all around me, and the walls of my jail cell smooth out. I fall backward, only to realize that the walls have turned golden. And warm. And they’re moving.

I’m no longer in the jail cell. I’m in the belly of the dragon. My dragon.

He’ll let me out, though. I pound on the wall with a flat hand. “Kael! Let me out!”

You said you didn’t love me, the dragon rumbles all around me. That you have no choice. You care nothing for me.

That’s not true, I tell him. I love you. But I love my sister, too. Please, please help me rescue her.

You have to choose.

“Choose?”

Choose me, or choose Amy. You cannot have us both.

Amy’s sobbing grows louder, even through the walls of the dragon’s stomach. I can’t choose. I don’t know how to get to my sister. I don’t know how to get out of the dragon’s stomach. “I can’t choose! Why are you making me?”

I am a murderer, like you said. I have killed thousands of people and flamed all of Old Dallas. I cannot live with people. You must choose them, or you must choose me.

“I don’t know if I can.”

Then you lose me.

“I don’t want that! Can’t I have you and my sister both?”

But Amy’s sobbing is moving farther and farther away.

Choose, Kael tells me.

The walls begin to close in, even as Amy’s sobbing recedes. I shake my head frantically, but they continue to close tighter and tighter around me.

Choose!

“I can’t choose! I can’t!”

Then I’m in Kael’s arms and we’re high above the city. Kael drops me, releasing me from his claws. I tumble through the air, falling, falling, falling…

Then you lose everything…

Falling…

* * *

I wake up with a gasp, sitting bolt upright in the bed. My body is covered in sweat, and there’s no air in my lungs. I suck in deep breaths, trying to calm down. A heavy arm rests across my hips and tightens, drawing me back.

Kael, in his human form. He lies next to me in the bed, his eyes closed, attempting to pull me closer and return to sleep. I am here. Sleep. You are safe.

But the dream won’t stop cycling through my mind, flashing over and over again. I pull out of his grip and slide off the side of the enormous bed. Moonlight trickles in through holes in the ceiling of the wrecked building, adding a ghostly light. To think that I’d laughed about those holes earlier, calling them skylights. Now I see them and wonder what dragon clawed his way through on the roof. Was he trying to get to the people trapped inside?

Was it Kael that destroyed this building and murdered everyone inside?

I hug my arms to my chest. This is wrong. All wrong. To think that I’d been so content earlier because I’d gotten a bath, some cuddles, and some furniture. How fucking cheaply I sell myself and my loyalties. I haven’t even tried to rescue Amy—hell, I spent the better part of an hour earlier today trying to figure out how to get Kael to boil water for the precious bag of coffee beans that I found.

I’m trading my sister’s freedom for a few orgasms and coffee beans.

Amy’s trapped. She’s imprisoned and miserable. Poor Sasha’s all alone—a bad way for a woman to be in Fort Dallas. Neither of them is safe. I close my eyes, and in my mind, I can still hear Amy’s miserable sobbing.

God, what am I doing here? Setting up house with a dragon? Dragons are the enemy. They’re the ones that caused all the problems we’ve got. And I can’t go home, because Kael’s decided that he owns me.

For a moment, I resent everyone. Kael, for putting me in this position. Sasha, for not being strong enough to take care of herself. Amy, because if I didn’t have to worry over her, I could be happy out here with a dragon.

When do I get to do what I want to do?

A large, scorchingly hot body presses up against my own, startling me. Kael’s heat immediately moves over my skin. It’s not blindingly, uncomfortably hot like before, but oddly comforting. Comforting, I suppose, because he’d bitten me so he can claim me any time he wants. And that makes me go all sour inside.

He tries to pull me against him.

I push him away. “Don’t touch me.”

I can feel the surprise in his thoughts. Claudia? What is it?

My heart hurts, but I have to think of Amy. “I don’t want you to touch me anymore.”

You are my mate, he tells me, and the possessiveness returns to his thoughts, nearly black with intensity. I will touch you.

“I don’t want to be a dragon’s mate.” I try to push away from him, but his arms only tighten around me. “You never asked me what I wanted.”

You enjoy it when I put my mouth on you, Claudia. His eyes are dark and glittering black with emotion. You cried out for me to touch you earlier. You pushed my face between your thighs and demanded I lick you. Did I imagine that?

Okay, maybe I’d done that a few times in the second round. Or third. Whatever. I push at his chest. “You’re a dick to bring that up. Let me go.”

But he only sweeps me into his arms and moves back toward the bed, ignoring my struggles. You say you do not wish to be my mate? I will show you that you do.

Fear—and desire—shoot through me, dual emotions. My hand curls into a fist, and I hammer at his shoulder even as he carries me to the bed. “I want you to put me down!”

A moment later, I thump onto the bed, flat on my back. Kael looms over me, eyes gleaming in the darkness of the small room that we’ve made into a bedroom. Shall I prove to you how much you want my mouth on your flesh? My tongue sweeping over that little nub of flesh that you enjoy so much? Tasting all of you?

“No!” But a small part of me is screaming yes, is turned on by this show of strength. Deep inside, I love that I can’t push him around. That I’m never in charge. Sometimes I’m so tired of being in charge. Being with him is almost freeing—except that it fucks over Amy and Sasha.

Big hands jerk at my tightly clenched knees, spreading my legs wide and exposing my pussy to him. I both hate and love that I grow immediately wet when he gazes down on me. And when his nostrils flare and he gives me a knowing look, I feel ashamed I’m so obvious. I’m a big hypocrite. I know I am. But I can’t look away as he licks his lips and bends over my pussy, as if preparing to feast. I jerk against his hand as he spreads my folds with careful fingers and leans in. His scorching, raspy tongue sweeps over my clit, and he gives a low rumble of pleasure in his throat.

The taste of you tells me that you enjoy my touch, my mate. I will make your legs tremble with so much pleasure that you will not be able to push me away. You will beg me for more. And he licks me hard again.

Shudders ripple through me, shudders of pleasure mixed with intense guilt. A sob breaks in my throat, and I press a hand over my eyes as I begin to cry. I hate it, but he’s right. I love the feel of his mouth against me, the dangerous power in him…and knowing he can be so very gentle with me, his entire being focused on giving me pleasure.

And that just makes things worse, because I don’t know what to do. About anything. I’m fucked if I love him, and I’m broken if I don’t. I continue sobbing, inconsolable.

Kael strokes my cheek with the backs of his knuckles, ever so gently. You weep? he asks, and I can feel his confusion, anger, and helplessness. This is ‘no’?

This is no, I agree, not trusting my voice. I don’t care what my body says. My mind says no.

I…have made you cry. Remorse pulses through his mind, so thick that it permeates my own thoughts. My Claudia. Forgive me.

To my surprise, he pulls me from the bed and gathers me in his arms, holding me in a tight, oddly comforting hug. I don’t know how he knew that I needed a hug, but it helps. I burrow my face against his chest and let the tears flow.