The Dragon King by Candace Blevins Read Free Book Online Page A

sure, though.”
    I leaned my head against the hard wall of his chest as I tried to get my heart to slow down. “Don’t call me Princess.”
    “Deal with it.” No apologies. His voice was a rough scrape over my skin, but I understood. He wanted me to consider the ramifications of kissing him — and doing more than kissing — as not only Sophia, but also the Princess who might want to try to hold the reins as Queen, one day.
    I needed to know more about him, about us , before I could decide. “You made this house, in this cave, to hide me.”
    He stilled, frozen in time for a brief second, and then caressed my back. “To hide supernaturals, Soph. Every way into the cave has a body of water you must cross, and the air is sucked into the earth in this cave system and rarely blows out. The crystal formations in the area help camouflage both of our magical signatures, and with no ley lines close, not even the Fae have a hope of finding us.”
    “Not many supernaturals have occasion to need to hide from the Fae.”
    He chuckled and kissed the top of my head. I liked this, being so close to him, feeling the vibrations of his chest as I heard him laugh. His lips on top of my head, if only for a brief second, set my insides on fire.
    “More of us need to hide from the Fae than you might think,” he said. “In my business, when someone comes to me needing protection it’s always good to have options.” His sigh told me he’d given up on me deciding whether I wanted a kiss, but when he tried to pull away, I held on. He relaxed and snuggled me back into him. “I’d given up on any hope of the Swans providing an answer, and then had to feel guilty when your mother died and the news came that there was one viable egg, and the Fae announced you were a girl. I felt grief for your father, and heartache for the child who would be born without a mother to raise her, but at the same time I felt a spark of hope. And then I got to know you, came to adore you, and later came to love you. Part of me wants to spirit you away to an island that shows up on no maps, and is out of bounds so the Fae can’t get to it from the Summerlands. I would make you fall in love with me, and try to figure out how to make it work…but I care too much about you. You’ve been locked away all your life, and if it kills me, or kills both of us, I’m going to do everything in my power to give you your freedom.”
    I gave in to the sensory input snowballing in my brain. For the first time I my life I didn’t have to worry about revealing my body’s reactions, so I looked up, caught his gaze, and said, “Kiss me, Aaron. I don’t want to wait.”
    His face came towards mine, slow, as if he were giving me a chance to change my mind. He ran his lips across mine, fast, hot. He paused, pulled back a few millimeters, and then touched his mouth to mine again, so languorous, delicate, and sensually slow my lips opened to him without my realizing it. I closed my eyes, relaxed into his arms, and let him have my mouth, let him do whatever he wanted with it.
    His tongue encouraged mine to move, to do a kind of dance with his, and once I relaxed into the kiss, my lower body came to life in a way I’d never experienced and I pressed my thighs together, alarmed he’d smell what he was doing to me.
    The kiss grew from a slow, relaxed caress to an urgent, demanding, hungry claim. I felt as if he branded me, owned me, and if he hadn’t ended it I’m not sure I’d have been able to. I was breathless and speechless as I opened my eyes to see him watching me, his eyes so focused on me it felt as if he could see every thought in my head and wish in my heart. All I could do was smile, close my eyes, and rest my face against his chest. The quick fantasies I’d allowed myself while swimming laps in the pool, or while showering — places no one was likely to smell the scent of arousal — were nothing compared to the larger-than-life reality of Aaron Drake in