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Four days had passed since they’d kissed in the water, and Tamryn was just as confused as ever. She admired Nolan and was attracted to him, but she was betrothed to someone else.
Her mother had chosen Charles for a reason.
Yet the idea of kissing anyone other than Nolan made her chest hurt with a mixture of sorrow and dread. Was Nolan an obstacle to her destiny with Charles? It was hard to think that when her entire being yearned to be with Nolan.
She didn’t know what to do or how to behave. Nolan still slept at the entrance to her tent in his bear form. He didn’t shift and come inside. Somehow, it seemed lonelier with him being so close, yet not touching her.
Not only that, her dragon still wouldn’t come forth.
The weather had improved to the point Tamryn actually felt warm as they hiked, and they spent most of their time walking in silence. She wondered if Nolan was as confused as she was. He had to be thinking about how they were about to meet Tamryn’s intended. Maybe that didn’t matter to him like it mattered to her, though. Maybe his feelings weren’t as strong.
She wished she were more experienced. Her mother had laughingly told Tamryn stories about her many suitors, and how in the end it was Tamryn’s father who had stolen her heart. Which was lucky, because their marriage had been arranged since they’d been children.
It had worked for her parents, the entire royal child betrothal business. She had to give it a fair chance, didn’t she?
Except every part of her wanted to grab Nolan and walk back down the mountain, away from the place Illary had said they would find Charles.
She didn’t want to lose Nolan.
They’d climbed quite high; Tamryn turned occasionally to survey the view behind them. The forest stretched out like a vast blanket of green, far into the distance. The sun would be setting soon, which meant another night spent on the side of the mountain. Tamryn desperately wanted to sleep beside Nolan, soaking in his heat.
But she shouldn’t touch him. Not like they’d done before.
Jubilee, who had been walking along at Tamryn’s side, stopped suddenly. One of her ears swiveled to the side.
“What’s going on?” Nolan asked.
“Wait,” Tamryn whispered.
They both stopped walking, waiting to see what the fawn would do. Tamryn couldn’t hear anything beyond the usual sounds of the forest—the wind in the trees, smaller mammals far away. The large ones had been scarce; perhaps they were frightened off by Tamryn’s and Nolan’s unfamiliar scents in the air.
Jubilee gave a high-pitched bleat. Then she started forward on quick legs, almost running.
Tamryn didn’t think—she took off after the fawn. She could hear Nolan behind her, easily keeping pace.
She stopped as suddenly as she’d begun. Jubilee stood next to a larger deer, a doe who regarded Tamryn with an inscrutable look in her large, dark eyes.
“We found the mother,” Tamryn said in an excited whisper. “Jubilee found her mother!”
Her eyes felt wet. She wasn’t sure why. Happiness? She was happy for the fawn, certainly. But she also knew this was the end of their journey together.
She also couldn’t help comparing the fawn’s journey to her own. She’d thought them both orphans, but that hadn’t been the case for Jubilee, and Tamryn felt as if she were losing her mother all over again.
Jubilee trotted over to stand in front of Tamryn. She nudged Tamryn’s hand with her nose, so Tamryn gave her a little scratch behind her ear.
“Goodbye, little one,” Tamryn said.
Jubilee stared up at Tamryn with her big, black eyes, then turned around and went back to the doe. They each gave Tamryn and Nolan another long look before bounding away. It didn’t take long for them to disappear into the trees.
Nolan put a hand on Tamryn’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, of course,” Tamryn said. “It’s a better outcome for Jubilee than I’d imagined. I’ll miss her, though.”
Nolan nodded in understanding, and no more needed to be said. The two of them resumed their hike.
*
THE SUN WAS SETTING, burnishing everything with its orange light. They’d climbed higher and higher and now even in the sunlight, it felt cold.
From looking at the map, Tamryn was certain they would reach Charles’s location within two days.
“Are you warm enough?” he asked over that evening’s supper of protein bars and dried apple slices.
Wiggling her toes in her boots, she said, “Yes, thank you.”
“I could build a fire if you want. There’s been no sign of anyone following us since...”
He trailed off, probably not knowing how to explain what had happened to Illary and the people who had been after them.
“You seem very concerned about the cold,” she said.
He shrugged. “You seem susceptible to it.”
“I am.” She hated the cold. Dry, hot days were her favorite. “There’s more to this for you, though.”
“There is.” His gray eyes were darker than usual, troubled.
She reached toward him. “It’s all right. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“I had a girlfriend.”
“You were...courting someone? Is that what girlfriend means?”
“Yeah.” He flashed her a smile that nearly stopped her heart. “I forget how old you are sometimes.”
“Oh, that’s very nice, isn’t it? How old are you?”
“Thirty-one. You?”
“If we don’t count the two centuries I was in the spell, then I’m four and twenty.”
He snorted. “Practically a baby, then.”
She waited, wondering if he’d purposefully maneuvered the conversation away from his paramour.
“You sure you want to hear about this?” he asked after a long moment. “It’s not a fun story.”
“Tell me about her.”
“Emily was her name. Em, I called her. She was a human who lived in the territory I grew up in. Alaska. Cold place, year-round. She knew about shifters, knew about our culture and customs.”
Tamryn knotted her hands in her lap, waiting for the next part of the tale. Nolan stared off into the sky, and the fading pink and orange sunset played on his hard, handsome features.
“She wanted me to mark her as my mate, but I wouldn’t do it,” Nolan said. “We were young. I wasn’t sure she was my mate, even. Sometimes I wonder if she could’ve been.”
It almost sounded as if he were speaking to himself alone, and that Tamryn was eavesdropping on his thoughts. The faraway expression on his face made her heart clench.
“One night in winter, we fought about the mate mark again. There was a snowstorm and I told her not to leave, but she wouldn’t listen. I should’ve made her listen to me. Those storms—you can go blind in them, lose your way even if you’re just walking a few feet. It happened to Em. I called her house an hour after she left, but her sister said she hadn’t come home. I went out to look for her. I found her. Half-buried in the snow.”
“Was she...?” Tamryn couldn’t finish the question, because she already knew the answer.
“Dead,” Nolan finished in a dull voice. “Yeah.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah. Me too,” he said bitterly.
The frozen story in her mind contrasted with the orange light hitting the mountain face behind Nolan.
“You know it wasn’t your fault, don’t you?” Tamryn asked.
“I’ve been trying to tell myself that for years.”
“Then maybe it’s time you listened to it for the truth it is.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, maybe.”
“I mean this, Nolan. I am in earnest. You must accept that you could not have known what would happen.”
“I grew up in Alaska. I had a pretty good fucking guess.”
“Then you made a mistake. Forgiveness is hard. Especially when it’s ourselves who we need to forgive.”
Scrubbing a hand over his face, Nolan said, “I suppose you’re right.”
She knew she was right, but she’d pushed him enough on this tonight. He would believe her, or not, on his own schedule.
It hurt her to see him hurting; his pain was hers.
Looking at their rustic camp, Tamryn thought of how different it was from her pampered upbringing. She was uncomfortable and cold and she always seemed to be sitting on a stick that dug into her backside. Yet she would live like a nomad in the woods forever if it meant being with Nolan. She wouldn’t want to be in the finest castle without him.
She loved him.
The realization came upon her swiftly, but it didn’t feel like new information. The acknowledgment of the love was new, but the love had been there all along.
But what to do with her realization? The responsible thing would be to ignore it. Find Charles. Marry him. Continue with her plan to collect her people and make dragonkind stronger than ever.
Her eyes pricked with tears and she blinked them away. It wouldn’t do to continue this line of thought, not right now.
She stood to go into her tent for the night. “Thank you for sharing your story with me. I know it couldn’t have been easy.”
“I’m glad I did,” he said, rubbing his chest.
She felt it, the ache in his heart, and she couldn’t help herself—she went to him and bent down to place a tender kiss against his cheek. He wrapped an arm around the back of her knees, holding her close for a moment before letting her go.
Once in her tent, she inhaled and exhaled deeply, trying to quiet her mind. She loved Nolan, and if she examined the past few days, the feeling had been growing all along.
She watched him through the opening of her unzipped tent flap as she crawled into her sleeping bag. He removed his shirt and started to take off his pants, as he had every night before shifting into his polar bear form.
“Nolan,” she said, so quietly she wasn’t even sure she’d spoken aloud.
He froze, his strong fingers on the buttons of his jeans. “Yeah?”
“I want you in my tent tonight. With me.”
She suspected she wanted it as much for herself as for him. He’d just bared his soul to her, telling her things that made him feel terrible about himself and his past. The result was raw sorrow and a need for comfort.
He dropped to his knees and crawled into her tent. He barely fit inside, but she scooted over and lay on her side. He lay on his side, too, facing her.
“What do you want?” he asked softly.
She reached up and touched his face, tracing his blond eyebrows and running her hand over the scruff on his cheeks. When she traced his full lips, he sucked in a breath and she felt his hardness against her thigh.
“I want to kiss you,” she said.
No questions, no talking—he simply moved his face closer to hers until their lips touched. The barest, most fleeting of kisses. It was soft yet full of heat. Her eyes were closed so she could feel more of what he offered.
“Tamryn,” he said, tugging her closer. His arms were a band of warmth and strength encasing her.
This could be their last night together. She didn’t want to miss a single second with him. She wanted to hear every heartbeat, taste his pulse, give him pleasure.
“I want everything,” she whispered.
His hardness pressed harder into her thigh and a growl reverberated through his chest. “Tamryn, I don’t want to do anything that could hurt you.”
“You mean my betrothal?”
He nodded and closed his eyes, hiding the emotion.
“He and I don’t know each other. I am certain he has enjoyed more than his share of paramours.” Gossip throughout the court had told her as much, although it had never bothered her. Despite the betrothal, she’d never felt she had a claim on him. “I don’t begrudge him those, and I certainly can’t imagine him begrudging me one night.”
Her heart, Charles might begrudge her giving away. But one night? She didn’t believe he would care about one night.
“I’m selfish enough,” Nolan said, capturing her lower lip in a hard, biting kiss before releasing it, “to give you everything you’re asking for, because it’s what I want, too.”
“Good,” she said, sitting up and pulling off her shirt and bra.
He helped her slide down her pants, running his palm along her skin as the fabric peeled away. She helped him with his, doing the same as he’d done to her, caressing his legs, listening to his swift inhale when she visited his inner thigh.
“Just a minute,” he said, reaching for the tent flap.
“What is it?”
He rummaged around outside the tent, and she heard the sound of a zipper. He brought his arm back in holding a square wrapper. “This is a condom. If I put it on, it’ll keep you from getting pregnant.”
“Oh,” she said as he tore open the wrapper and slid the condom over his length. “That’s a great invention.”
“Do you want kids?” he asked, then quickly added, “Not now, of course, with me. But someday?”
“I don’t know,” she murmured. “I’ve always thought I wouldn’t want to raise them like I was raised—in fear of the skin-hunters. I’m too scared for children.”
He nodded. “Makes sense.”
She didn’t want to talk about fear or skin-hunters anymore. She wanted Nolan. When she reached for him, he lay down beside her, half-covering her body with his own. Naked, they resumed their kiss. Her breasts were pushed against his chest, her nipples sensitive to the heat of his skin.
His hardness was against her leg, but she knew a better place for it. Reaching for it, she held it in her hand. The skin was smooth. Warm, too. Nolan hissed and muttered a curse when she squeezed him, so she let him go immediately.
“Did that hurt?”
“Not at all. Felt too good.”
Grinning to herself, she reached down and squeezed him again. He kissed her hard and pumped his hips so his member moved in her grip. That was what it would do inside of her. She wanted it. Her entire body was hot and full of need.
“Can you...?” she asked, pointing his hardness between her legs.
“You want my cock inside you?” he asked.
Cock. Yes. She’d never used that word, but she knew what it meant. “I do.”
“Might hurt you a little at first.” He reached between them to touch the place between her legs. His fingers slid in the slickness he found there. “You’re nice and wet, though, which will help.”
He poised his cock at her entrance and pressed forward, just enough for her to sense his girth. There was no way he could fit inside of her.
“I don’t know...” she said.
“We can stop, anytime,” he said, kissing her cheek, her ear, her neck. “Do you want to stop?”
“No,” she said. “Keep going.”
He pressed inside slowly, his jaw tight as if it took effort. It gave her a chance to stretch to accommodate him. There was some pain, a burning ache that radiated from her core outward, but as he started to move back and forth, the burning faded and the ache sparked pleasure.
“You okay?” he asked, pulling up to look at her face.
She nodded up at him. “Yes. I’m better than okay.”
Experimentally, she lifted her hips to meet one of his thrusts. He grinned and kissed her. He kept his movements slow until she began to speed him along with her own movements. Her pleasure heightened with each stroke, each caress of his hands on her arms, hair, breasts.
She kissed him, again and again. With her kisses, she tried to show him how she felt. I love you. I ache for you. I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to say goodbye.
Her release came suddenly, fiercely, her entire body shaking with the desire he wrought both within and without. He tensed momentarily, his gaze locked on her face, before pumping within her a few more times and stopping suddenly. He threw his head forward and touched his teeth to her shoulder without biting down. He wanted to mark her, and she wanted the mark as well.
“I’m yours,” he said. “Forever. Whatever happens next, I’m yours.”
She wanted to make the same promise to him. But she couldn’t, not yet. Still, she opened her mouth to respond.
“Shh,” he said, touching her lips. “It’s okay. Now, we sleep.”
His eyes and his smile conveyed understanding, and she felt it, too, coming through his aura in a pulse of devotion. Could he feel it from her as well? It was as beautiful as it was temporary.
Aching beauty.
Her sense of duty said she should find Charles and marry him, continue the dragon line with another dragon.
But her heart said something else altogether.
As she curled against Nolan’s broad chest and watched the muscled expanse rise and fall with every one of his breaths, she wondered whether she would follow duty or follow her heart.
Her heart would have to win, she decided as she drifted off to sleep.