Torn: A Dragon Shifter BBW Menage Serial (Seeking Her Mates Book 1) by Carina Wilder Read Free Book Online Page B

different?”
    “There you go again. Always trying to extract compliments from me.”
    “Of course I am.” He was moving around the table now, towards her. The only escape would be to continue around to her left as he approached, drawing him in a circle. “How could I not want your good opinion, Lilliana?”
    “I don’t really see why you want it,” said Lily. “It’s not as though I’m something special.”
    “You’re everything special,” he said. He’d caught up to her and now he had his hand on her again, wrapping itself around her side.
    This was no good. All his admiring looks would end in the realization that she wasn’t perfect after all; she would seem flabby, out of shape to him. He would feel her softness underneath her clothing.
    But he didn’t pull away in disgust; nothing of the sort. Instead, seeing that she was at last within his reach, Conor pulled her closer to his own body.
    “ Why am I everything?” she whispered when their faces were an inch apart.
    “You just are. You were made that way. And I haven’t stopped thinking about you, your scent…how you might taste…since the moment I first locked eyes on you in that classroom.”
    No. No. No. This wasn’t how it was meant to go. She was leaving in a matter of hours and this would complicate all of it.
    Lily opened her mouth slightly as if to speak, but before she could do so, soft lips were on hers, first almost tentatively and then taking her in, enfolding all of her senses within their touch. She seemed to sink into the wooden floor, her head floating towards the ceiling as his tongue met hers.
    This moment. She’d waited for it all her life and only now realized it.
    Desire wrapped her up, swaddling her in its clutches and refusing to let go. Damn the security cameras; damn convention, tradition, shifter codes. She wanted him. She wanted all of him here, now. And as though to let her know his own desire, his delicious scent poured off him, his body moving deeper into her own. She felt him harden against her through their layers of clothing, his own wishes so very palpable, so conspicuous and yet so…inaccessible.
    “I…can’t,” she said a moment later as clarity struck, all her strength surging through her in a reluctant attempt to push him away.
    Lilliana was stronger than Conor expected and he found himself taking several steps backward, nearly losing his balance.
    “What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice strained with emotion, his hands gesturing helplessness. “What is it with you, with us, Lilliana? I have never wanted anyone so much, and you seem to want me as well…I am meant to be yours, and you mine. I know this. And yet you do this thing. Tell me what you want, because I can’t…I can’t see it.”
    Tears welled in her eyes. To hear the word felt like a knife in her side, twisting. Want.
    But another word warred with it: Duty . The conflict between her inner animal and the woman who stood in that room, opposite the man she so needed, was too great and she couldn’t keep all of it in much longer without catastrophic results.
    As Conor watched, the woman he’d grown in a very short time to adore disappeared in front of his eyes as though she’d never been there. Only her lingering scent told him that he had not just gone mad.
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9
    T he large sitting room was welcoming as always when she arrived, a fire burning in its great hearth and comfortable upholstered chairs which had likely been swiped from the nineteenth century facing the flames, begging for visitors to seat themselves and to rest.
    In spite of the pain of leaving Conor behind, Lily wanted desperately to see her family before settling in, and that meant the usual hunt through the many labyrinthine corridors between Dundurn Castle’s walls.
    She must do her best not to let what had occurred between herself and Conor be a hindrance. Now she was home and would have time to sort her feelings. Perhaps her mother could even offer a word or two of