Page 42 of Dragon’s Ending

Perhaps I was hopelessly gone for him, but I thought it meant something that he’d asked rather than taken himself off flying on his own.

I took the hint and launched myself skyward. He followed hard on my heels. And God, it’d only been two days, but I’d already missed flying with him. Banking together through cloud and darkness, so close I could hear the beat of his wings beneath the wind. I seemed to know where Dominic was without needing to look, adjusting instinctively to his movements through the night sky.

By the time we landed again at the castle, my entire body felt loose with exhilaration.

I shifted first this time, still half-laughing under my breath as cold night air hit my skin.

And then I realised Dominic had shifted and was watching me. His gaze roamed over my body slowly enough that heat flared inside me. Oh, God. I couldn’t— I mustn’t…

“I’d better let Evelyn know that was a bust.” My voice was high and thin as I yanked my clothes on. My fingers wouldn’t work properly, damn it. “It’s interesting that she and I both felt we recognised those marks the first time we saw them. Did the same thing happen to you?”

He was lazily pulling his jeans up his strong legs, which I was not looking at. “Can’t remember,” he said. “It was a while ago now, maybe a couple of years.”

“Have you shown them to anyone else?” I asked. I’d asked whether Rhodri knew, but it had never occurred to me someone else in the family might.

“They’re not really the kind of thing anyone round here’s interested in,” he said.

“So you haven’t?” I checked. I’d learned that Dominic rarely answered or asked a question directly, but I wanted precision on this, to be absolutely sure of his meaning.

“No, historian, I haven’t.” His voice was low and warm, as if he were somehow amused by my insistence.

“Just checking,” I said, glancing over my shoulder to see if he was ready to return to the house. Thank God he was dressed, though his eyes were still lingering on me. On my body. Which was thankfully fully clothed again.

As we walked back to the house, I asked him if he had any idea when those marks had first been visible.

“Do you remember seeing them as a child?”

He was silent for a moment before answering. “The first time I remember seeing them was a couple of years ago.”

“So it’s possible that the outer wall has collapsed recently, which means it may be easy to bring more of it down with a little encouragement,” I said. Sue me, I may have been just a little excited.

“Are all historians secretly vandals at heart, or is it just you?” he asked, and God, something inside me melted at what sounded like fondness. A teasing that was just for me.

But this wasn’t anything, no matter how much I wanted to believe it was. He was Dominic Bedwyr, a dazzling comet in a dark sky, while I was a normal person.

The house was silent when we let ourselves in through the back door, and the clock on the wall showed almost two am. We’d been flying far longer than I’d thought.

“I, um, I’m going to get a glass of water to take up to bed with me,” I said, and winced at the fact I sounded just like my dad.

In the overhead light, I could see laughter in his eyes, but it was mixed with the kind of warmth I thought I’d heard in his voice. As though he was laughing at a shared joke, not at me.

“Night, Ben,” he said.

And then I was alone in the huge kitchen, wondering where on earth Glenys kept the glasses. I’d panicked, really, and I didn’t even know why. Just that walking up the stairs with him, so close our shoulders would have brushed, had felt like too much. Worse, if I’d let him take the lead, I’d have been staring at his arse the whole way. It was too dangerous. So I’d decided to act like a middle-aged dragon who couldn’t sleep unless they had a drink of water by their bed.

I eventually found a glass in entirely the wrong cupboard and stood at the sink drinking half the water immediately. Apparently, flying for hours made one dehydrated. Or emotionally unstable. Possibly both.

Upstairs, floorboards creaked somewhere, and absurdly, my whole body froze at the sound before common sense reasserted itself. Dominic wasn’t coming back downstairs looking for me. Why would he?

Still, as I climbed the stairs a few minutes later, I found myself listening for the sound of another door opening in the darkness.

I heard nothing. Which was definitely for the best.

Chapter Eighteen

BEN

I woke to the sound of rain against the windows. It took me an instant to remember where I was, and then it came back in a rush—moonlight on ruined stone, Dominic’s eyes on my body, laughter shared high above the clouds. Burying my face in my pillow, I groaned. This was becoming untenable.