He sensed her hesitation, though it registered as a mere blip on his radar compared to the mouthwatering scent of rain mingling with her sweet perfume. Unconsciously, Vladya moved his foreleg from its resting place across Ko’s tiny waist to a more neutral spot on her softly moving ribcage. Still close, still cradling, and simultaneously showing the innocent flower that her knight in battered armor had no intention of leaving her should she decline his unspoken entreaty. For moon’s sake, Vlad was a bastard—not a rapist. A clumsily comforting statement prepared itself behind his teeth—it’s fine, kid, don’t worry about it—and then a subtle, brave expression opened the compassionate features of Kobato’s face. Permission.

For Vladya, who in the past had coupled with nearly any convenient female when she expressed consent and didn’t try to shred the skin off his face, sex had always been fire. There was the agonizing heat of twisted lust scorching his insides and driving him insane, the clashing sizzle of two desperate bodies, and then a searing burst of inner flame as that bundle of ferocious live-wire anger and want finally—violently—expended itself. Combustion that quickly devoured all oxygen until both parties were exhausted and empty. Knowing nothing different, Vladya used to enjoy the taste of ashes on his tongue. He understood that as “satisfaction,” while a withering corner of his soul suffered. His miniscule frame of reference told him that this lascivious act could have no other outcome, and be done no other way. Part of that savagery hooked its fangs into his heart the moment his princess bestowed her blessing with trusting candlelit lanterns.

A snapshot of raw carnal starvation harpooned itself down through Vladya’s chest into the coals of his pelvic bone. It would be thoughtlessly simple to fall back on muscle memory and ravish his captive maiden until both their bones collapsed on the cool cave floor. Kobato wouldn’t fight back like a tundra lamia would. As the ivory warrior’s battle-scarred forelimbs smoothed the tawny sleekness of Ko’s flanks, he wondered how the explosive temperature inside his skin failed to melt the stone walls hiding them from view. Thoughts of lava blurred the corners of his vision. Vlad parted his jaws, slick pink tongue stroking roughly up the side of his bird’s dusky nape before teeth clicked shut in a gentle love-bite just behind her sable ear. “Don’t hold back your voice.” A lifetime of roaring orders and screaming pain had thrown permanent gravel into Vladya’s lyrics, but now that texture transformed into a smoky purr. “I’m listening.”

All the tinder was there. The dragon was prepared to revel in his element. Except . . . just when Vladya expected himself to bow beneath the practice of experience, affection intervened. This dance was unlike any he’d ever stepped, because he had never guided a partner like Kobato.

With Kobato . . . he discovered an entirely new world. There was an iridescent universe in the warmth that bloomed between their tenderly entwined bodies. And Vladya indeed felt a delicious furnace of passion throbbing deep in his abdomen—yet this was slow, the low and gentle glow of red-gold embers as they smolder endlessly in the night. Soft breaths and sweet moans wiped out all memories of ragged panting snarls. There couldn’t be, and never would be, anyone that could make the battered war dragon ever feel this way in his lifetime. Always, at the back of his blissfully opening mind, despite the singing high of ecstasy sending fireworks through his synapses, Vlad obeyed his new mantra.

He would improve. He would shed the abrasive armor to no longer scuff the skin of his princess. He would be good.

For his dearest, most treasured, little queen.