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My heart stops for her.
“Wynn…” she whispers.
My stomach knots itself up.
I know at this moment, with harrowing distinction, that she would do anything for me. Anything. Whatever I tell her…whatever I ask for…it’s mine, because she’s already given me her whole entire heart.
“What’s the story tonight?” I ask, throat raw.
Her head tilts. “Hm?”
I frame her face, touch her bottom lip with my thumb. “How did you end up in my bed tonight, Dece? Was it innocent enough…or despicable?”
Moonlit blush coats her, and she lowers her gaze. “Despicable.”
Well. Great.
A better man would stop talking right about now.
I am not a better man.
“Tell me.”
She fidgets, and the sensation her squirming elicits clouds my brain before she says, “It’s stupid. They’re all stupid little distractions from the things I probably should be dealing with or processing instead. Worse, though, I can’t even call them childish, because sometimes they’re just…depraved.”
Heat settles in my chest, tightening around my heart. I hunch, nearer to her face and force her chin up, baring her throat to me. “Tell me.”
Her lips tremble, but she says, “It was an auction. One princess to a good home.” Her eyes lower from mine and glaze with distance. “I stood before a stage connected to a large, glittering hall overcome by many, many men with flutes of liquor. Despite my royal title, the auctioneer led me out in chains. Bids flew left and right. Sneers, laughter, and dark promises clenched around me like the steel that tugged with every wave of the auctioneer’s hand.
“Finally, when I was on the verge of tears, you stood somewhere in the dark of the space, listed an outrageous price, and came to claim me then and there. Everyone fell silent with fear as you broke my collar with your bare hands.”
A breath exits the tense, quaking space of my lungs. “Really?” I murmur.
December’s lashes flutter. “It’s my fantasy. I’m pretty sure that your character knows magic and is royalty, too, with dirty draconic blood that no one mentions to your face because they’re too scared, and maybe I’m an elf princess facing this fate as a prisoner of war. What’s it matter if anything goes?”
“It matters,” I say. “For my immersion. Now that I have context, you may continue.”
Flushed, she obeys. “You left an underling to handle the paperwork and payment while you took me from the hall, out into the night. Snow was everywhere, and it was frigid. And I was in little more than a slick, thin, white scrap of a dress.”
A curse hisses through my head. The curses seem to be doing that a lot tonight.
“Wings unfurled from your back.”
“I have wings now?” I rumble.
“Yes, you have wings now.” She squishes me. “Of course you have wings if you’re part dragon. What do you think I’m going to do? Pass up the opportunity to daydream about wing hugs? Don’t be insane, Wynn-Wynn.”
“Thousand pardons, your highness.”
She puffs, pouty lip still trapped beneath my thumb. She murmurs, “You flew me away to your frightful palace and wasted no time taking me to a moonlit bedroom cloaked in ebony decor. There…you buried me against the linen, dark wings stretching behind you.”
Unwise as ever, I roll my Dece onto her back and hover above her. “No wings, sorry…but…like this?”
Eyes massive, she stares up at me, arms still stretched around my back. Her fingers twitch, then close into me as she whispers, “Y-yes.”
I groan, lowering onto an elbow and dwelling a bit too heavily on the way her legs are still flirting with mine. “Go on.”
Voice breathy, she says, “You told me I was your soulmate. You kissed me without asking.”
