CONTENT ADVISORY / TRIGGER WARNING
THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS DEPICTIONS/STRONG IMPLICATIONS OF THE FOLLOWING THAT SOME READERS MAY FIND OFFENSIVE OR DISTURBING:
~ SEX AND INTIMACY
~ EXPLICIT SEX SCENES
She pushed him with her hands, raised her knees and kicked him off of her. Eskil snarled at her when she stood up and stepped away from him, her body trembling.
"Libelle," he growled like a beast while staring into her eyes.
She stood next to him for a moment, staring down at him as he pushed himself onto his knees to look back at her. Her mouth didn't move, but he could sense she wanted to say something. She straightened the fabric of her shirt and pulled the material over to cover her exposed breasts. He eyed the tear in her pants, the buckle so loose that it threatened to fall to the ground. She wiped away a new tear from her eye and took another step backwards.
"Libelle," he started. "I am Eskil, the first dragon to be created and birthed from the gods. I am what your kind call the death-bringer. I am a dragon, the strongest of my kin and one of the oldest. I swear to you, you are my lifemate. Dragons are not mistaken on these facts; when they find their lifemate, they just know. I am not wrong. I cannot be wrong."
He stood up and held her gaze. How he wished he could hold her delicate chin and trace her lush lips with his thumb. How he wished he could hold her in his arms, enjoy the heat of her body and the arousal in her voice while he fucked her. He felt the ache in his loins, and it was growing unbearably painful to not tend to his own desire. He wanted her, but she didn't want him. He wanted to take her, to prove to her that she was his lifemate and that he was hers.
Eskil had never felt like this for any other dragon, not even for Brenna. He loved his cursed mortal, but he never wanted to mate her like he wanted to with Libelle. How he had not realized this long ago was startling. The number of times that the two had battled and nearly killed each other; he couldn't number them. He had always been close to her, had heard her before, smelled her, touched her, and tasted her; how had he not recognized her as his lifemate?
He thought back to all the times he had nearly taken her life, and all the times she had nearly taken his. They had always come so close to death, but neither had ever been able to make that final blow that would end everything. He stared into her eyes, a feeling of defeat rushing over him like never before.
Her blank eyes stared back at him. "Libelle, I want you to believe me. I need you to believe me." He took a step closer to her, and she unconsciously took another step back. "Why would you not? Eskil, the dragon prince, the death-bringer. Enemy to all mankind and to the slayers, the ones who slay my kin. What would he, I, have to gain from this if it were not the truth?"
He saw her flinch at his words and knew he should have phrased it differently. She did not take any enjoyment from killing his kind. "I have been asking myself the same question since I first saw you at the damned town you call Grimsby. I remember seeing you on that chopping block, and I know you saw me too. I remember the rage that churned in my stomach when I saw the man about to take your head off, but I couldn't explain it until now. The anger that rushed through me that day, when all I wanted to do was burn the place down and find you. You."
He pointed at her chest for good measure, and she took more blind steps backwards. "All I wanted was to find you, to learn why I felt this incredible yearn to know who you were, and you disappeared like a rabbit down a hole. Then you reappeared in that grove, but you were a slayer, one born to destroy my kind. My anger and my hatred got the best of me, so I pushed the yearning to the back of my mind and did my best to ignore it. I shouldn't have, I should have listened to it.
"How many times have we crossed paths? How many times have we fought in close quarters? I cannot tell you the amount of times, and each one brought me closer and closer to my breaking point." Eskil stepped further towards Libelle who was now backed up to a tall oak tree, the shades of her eyes beginning to shine like a gem. His hands slammed into the sides of the tree, shaking the old wood and rustling the leaves. She was pinned between him and the tree, and she did not realize it yet.
"Do you know how many times I have wanted to reach out and touch you for reasons I could not have explained? How many times your scent made me ache, made me crave to touch your skin. The number of times that hearing your voice has eased my tension and just made me want to sit and listen to you calling me all the horrid names you could think of. Just being near you, it makes me yearn for you. I've never felt this way, not for anyone. Not even Brenna if you must know, so I didn't know how to explain it or how to make sense of it all."