A infinitesimally tiny sneeze that wouldn’t have startled a rabbit jumped from Kobato’s muzzle and sent a trio of scarlet petals fluttering from the tip of her nose like butterflies taking flight. The sudden action was obscene in its purity. Vladya’s laughter had been booming, expressive, great shaking cackles of humor—and now his amusement focused into such an intense cone of hilarity that his entire abdomen violently contracted and forced all air from his lungs, rendering him into a silent gasping wheeze of laughter. He had to turn his maniac-bright gaze away, diaphragm heaving with the effort of taking in oxygen. She makes me crazy! the varg thought to himself deliriously. It’s not enough that we’re in danger—I have to be cracked in the head, too! Fuck me.

Eventually the joyous python constricting his insides slackened its hold, allowing Vladya to gulp in the air that fueled his receding sniggers. He felt high as a cloud. Intoxicated. How freaking immature. This situation wasn’t nearly funny enough to warrant the snow-born soldier’s reaction. He turned his muzzle to a foreleg and clamped down with his teeth—enough for it to actually hurt. And then he giggled stupidly around a mouthful of his own flesh. Yep. Kobato had totally ruined him.

Had Vladya been more . . . himself, he might have noticed that his darling princess had started the slow process of waking up after sneezing away her floral facial mask. It wasn’t until her own effervescent lyrics burbled birdlike in the air that Vlad paused, cranium thrown back and features frozen in a wicked grin, to realize. His laughter stuttered to an abrupt, jerking halt, a few staccato ha’s yanking from his vocal chords. Pallid hackles lifted along his neck in squirming embarrassment. Ko had already witnessed illuminating peeks of her ice dragon’s ferociously guarded vulnerability, yet Vladya experienced a sort of nakedness at being caught out of control like this. He didn’t give glimpses of the skin beneath his armored scales very often. Instinctually he curled around the parts of himself he’d been trained to hide—despite the fact that his girl was the one person he trusted to see them.

“Like what?” the arctic outlaw backfired flippantly, donning the rough-edged persona he’d mastered. He lifted one scar-laced jowl to leer at her playfully, knives glinting in the morning light. “Maybe I was just so excited to see you outside of a dream that I woke up. I guess I missed your face or something” That was delivered in classic caustic old-Vlad style . . . to keep her from immediately guessing that perhaps it might be true. It would still take another lifetime for the dog to master romance the same way he dominated sarcasm. No need to tell her what was eating away at him. Better to give her a few minutes of safety, blanketed by a rainbow.

Her reaching stare dropped to the dirt, and all at once Vladya worried that he’d come off too strong in his mocking indifference. The moron didn’t even consider that perhaps the newly enlightened young maiden was simply bashful in the presence of the one responsible for deflowering her. And with that train of thought . . . Vlad found himself hungrily watching her robe of petals cascade down her shoulders and pool around her delicate paws, as if she were unknowingly shedding a thin slip of modesty. A bloom of heat flared to life in the glacial warrior’s pelvic bone. But she wasn’t quite looking at him. And that was never a good sign. “Kobato, I just . . .”

Without warning, Vladya had buried his face against the impossible silk of Kobato’s breast. He nuzzled as close as he could without pushing them both to the ground, eyes shut and muzzle mashed firmly into her fragrant fur, the gently yielding softness of her flesh. He wanted to tell her what haunted his mind at night. Neither of them were safe while Kershov hunted for their lives; paranoia tormented him as it had forever, choking him with fearful venom whenever Vlad left his mind open. This life of running wasn’t a life at all. Ko deserved so much more. If the ivory draco could hide his fledgling queen in a steel tower somewhere, he would. Even if it meant—

Pain stabbed his rapidly beating heart. All of this was his own stupid fault. A frustrated sigh bled from between his daggers and ruffled the tawny down of Ko’s chest. For once he’d like to have something without the danger of destroying it. Especially when that something was someone who had transformed him like sunlight spilling across a landscape of night.

Vladya decided they needed a diversion. A playful growl thrummed in his vocals, textured with a hint of peril. He drew his skull back just enough to nip at the plushness below Kobato’s throat. “You know what would be fun? A little dare game . . .”

When his pyrite lanterns flickered up to her deep caramel pools, they glittered with the wicked wisdom of a creature who had lived far too much before she’d ever been born. “Whaddya say, kid? Scared?”