Free Blackwing Dragon (Harper's Mountains 5) by T. S. Joyce Page A

against the mattress until he met her gaze. There, just slightly, was a smile in the curve of his lips. “You’re trying to seduce me?”
    Rowan waggled her eyebrows and beamed. “You won’t even have to wear jeans.”
    That deep, sexy chuckle vibrated up his throat, and he shook his head again. Kane linked his hands behind his head and grinned up at the ceiling. “I bet you were a wild child growing up.”
    “You would bet wrong.” She gave him a cheeky grin and repeated his words, “But you’re on a bed with me, tits out—”
    “Stop it,” he said, but his smile was so fucking stunning. Straight white teeth and dimples she could see even under his dark scruff.
    “Just so you know, I don’t do this. I don’t seduce boys wherever I go. I’ve been stuck in Damon’s Mountains with the same silly guys I grew up with. And my ex and I broke up three years ago—”
    “You mean you went dragon on his ass three years ago.”
    Rowan swatted his arm and rolled over on her stomach right beside him. “It’s not funny to joke about that.”
    “It’s kind of funny. So what you’re saying is you are super deprived and sexually frustrated, and you’ll take anything at this point.”
    “No! Kane, that’s not what I’m saying at all.” She made a frustrated noise. “I was saying I don’t do this all the time. Ever really. I was trying to tell you that you feel…”
    The smile disappeared from Kane’s lips, and his eyes blazed brighter. “That I feel what?”
    “Never mind. You’ll just make fun of me.”
    Embarrassed, Rowan moved to log roll away from him, but he caught her arm and held her in place, right beside him. “Say it, and I won’t make fun of you.”
    His face was angled toward hers now, his lips only inches away, and her body was humming oddly from where his strong grip was wrapped around her upper arm. His blazing green eyes dipped to her lips. Kane was so big, so wide, taking up most of the bed already, and she’d never found a man more beautifully made than him. His pulse drummed against his muscular throat too fast, bum-bum, bum-bum , like hers.
    “Tell me,” he whispered, and she knew she was gone. She knew she couldn’t deny him anything, but she couldn’t understand why. Dragon wanted him. She wanted to sink her teeth into him and claim him so that he would never get away. She wanted him to choose them, because who else would make a match like this? Who else could hold their own against her? Who else could survive her if she lost control and Changed again? Who else had a monster that matched hers? Who else was this damn beautiful, this damn alluring, this damn everything?
    Kane was big and important.
    Kane was…
    Closing her eyes like a coward, Rowan whispered, “I was trying to say that you feel special. I’m supposed to be afraid of you, but you don’t feel scary. You’re good.”
    “I’m not,” Kane murmured, pulling her palm onto his chest, right over his racing heart. “I’m really not good, Rowan.”
    “I can tell you are—”
    “You’re wrong. I’ve killed people. I’ve hurt people, ruined people’s lives. You shouldn’t get attached to someone like me.”
    “But I’ve hurt people, too—”
    “Not like me.” Kane shook his head and leveled her with a look. “I’m not special, Rowan. I’m not important. Don’t convince yourself otherwise, or I’ll hurt you, too.”
    He was wrong. Kane didn’t see himself the way she did. Okay, he’d killed people. War was ugly. War brought death, and he had been recruited to be part of that machine. But the Kane she saw—the one who helped her on the plane and at the airport, the one who picked up her plane ticket and who defended her at the restaurant—that Kane wasn’t a pretender. He’d given her real peeks into himself. She just knew it.
    Before she could change her mind, Rowan dipped down and kissed him, her lips perfectly still on his. She hadn’t done this in so long, and Kane lay like a fiery stone