The Dragon's Heart: Unspoken Passion-Chapter 142: Do You Want Me? (Part 2)

Levan stared at her, the sheer absurdity of her doubt finally fracturing the heavy iron of his reserve.

"Sleeping politely?" he repeated, the words almost ridiculous.

He stepped closer, heat pressing against her. His hands, usually so disciplined, cupped her face, framing her jaw with possessive force.

"Ilaria, look at me," he commanded, his voice dropping an octave into a low, rough timbre she had never heard before.

When she met his gaze, a jolt ran through her. The calm, familiar husband she knew was gone, replaced by a fire that made her pulse skip and her knees feel suddenly weak.

"I assure you," he murmured, his thumbs grazing the sensitive skin beneath her ears, "there has been absolutely nothing polite about my thoughts while lying beside you."

He leaned in, his breath a warm, ghosting caress against her lips. The air in the room suddenly felt thick, charged with the static of a storm that had been brewing for months.

"You think I am made of stone?" His disbelief was sharp. "Every time you press yourself against me, every time you wrap your arms around my neck without warning, I have to remind myself how to breathe."

"I have spent every night for months staring at the canopy of that bed, counting the seconds until dawn just so I wouldn’t reach for you and take everything I’ve been starving for." His grip tightened slightly, his fingers tangling into the silk of her fallen hair.

"And when you kiss me as you please, or smile at me with that damned light in your eyes..." He trailed off, his gaze dropping to her mouth with a focus that was almost predatory.

"I am reminded of exactly how much I want to be the only thing you see. I have sat through war councils with the scent of your hair still clinging to my skin, nearly losing my mind because all I could think about was the way you felt in my arms before I left."

The fire crackled behind them, the only sound in the suffocating silence. The distance between them had vanished, leaving only the frantic, matching rhythm of their heartbeats.

"You want an heir?" Levan’s voice was a dangerous, velvet growl against her skin. "I want you. I want every inch of you. I want the world to stop turning for a single night so I can finally show you that the only reason I haven’t touched you is because I feared that if I started, I would never be able to stop."

He tilted her head back, his eyes searching hers one last time for the permission he had been too disciplined to ask for. "There has been nothing polite about my thoughts, Aria," he repeated as if to emphasize his point, his gaze burning into hers.

"I wanted to give you a sanctuary. I wanted to wait until the world wasn’t trying to tear us apart. But if you think for a single second that I don’t want you, then you are the most brilliant, beautiful fool I’ve ever met."

He did not wait for her to answer. Because once he found the permission in the soft glow of her violet gaze, he finally closed the distance, his mouth crashing onto hers with the desperate, unbridled hunger of a man who had finally reached the end of his endurance.

The kiss was a cataclysm.

It was not the gentle, anchoring brush of lips Ilaria had grown accustomed to; it was a reclamation. When Levan’s mouth crashed against hers, it carried the weight of months of silent agony, of every repressed instinct and cold, lonely night spent staring at the ceiling.

The force of it was enough to steal the very air from her lungs, sending her reeling backward. Ilaria stumbled, her heels catching on the heavy rug, but Levan would not let her fall. His arm hooked around her waist like a band of heated iron, hauling her flush against him until there was not a breath of space left between them.

The sudden, violent proximity made her head spin. She pressed back slightly, a brief, instinctive attempt to create space, but his frantic heartbeat against her ribs left her trembling, caught between wanting to resist and wanting to surrender.

His other hand tangled deep into her hair, his fingers winding through the silver silk with a grip so tight it bordered on a bruise. The sharp tug against her scalp should have hurt, but instead, it sent a liquid heat racing down her spine.

Oh Saints, Ilaria thought, her mind a frantic blur of violet light and silver stars. I only meant to distract him.

Guilt flickered as she realized she had wielded a weapon she did not understand to deflect the horror of the Blithe. She had expected quiet reassurance, a measured explanation. She had not expected to crack the foundations of the man she thought was made of ice.

But as his tongue swiped against her bottom lip, demanding entry, the guilt was swallowed by a rising, desperate tide of her own. The cold memory of the terrace and the smell of ozone and the rot of the shadows was incinerated by the sheer, unadulterated heat of him. If the Blithe was the silence of the void, Levan was the roar of the sun.

Ilaria’s hands, which had been resting uncertainly against his chest, suddenly found purchase. Her fingers curled into the fine linen of his tunic, pulling him closer as if she could somehow climb inside his skin. She let out a small, broken sound into his mouth, a whimper of surrender that only seemed to drive him further over the edge.

She was not deflecting anymore.

She melted against him, her body turning soft and pliable in his arms. Her eyes fluttered shut. There was only the taste of him, the scent of cedar and spice, and the terrifying, beautiful realization that the man who she thought was unmovable wanted her just as much as she wanted him.

The air in the room seemed to ignite, thickening with a tension that made the heavy silk of her gown feel like a cage. Levan did not break the kiss; instead, he deepened it, his tongue tracing the seam of her lips with a devastating, rhythmic persistence that left her lightheaded.

His hands moved with a frantic, focused hunger. He knew the geography of her body better than any map of Noctharis. He had bathed her in the quiet of midnight, his fingers skimming over her skin with a reverence that had nearly broken him. He had laced her into these very stays, his knuckles brushing against the curve of her spine while he forced his gaze to remain fixed on the wall.

Now, the restraint was gone.

With a dexterity born of a thousand whispered prayers for self-control, his fingers found the intricate fastenings at her back. There was no hesitation this time. The silver clasps gave way with a series of sharp, rhythmic clicks that echoed like gunfire in the quiet room.

Ilaria gasped into his mouth as the sudden release of tension allowed the bodice to loosen, the cool air of the room hitting her skin just as his heated palms slid beneath the fabric to claim what they had only ever been allowed to politely tend to.

"Do you have any idea," he growled against her lips, his voice a low, vibrating friction that made her knees buckle, "how many times I’ve had to walk away from you after helping you from your bath? How many nights I’ve had the scent of your skin on my hands and had to force myself to go stand on that balcony until I went numb from the cold?"

He pulled back an inch, his eyes dark and turbulent as they dropped to the pale swell of her chest rising and falling in a frantic rhythm. His thumb brushed over the hollow of her throat, feeling the desperate leap of her pulse when she gulped.

"I have memorized you under the guise of ’duty,’" he confessed, his breathing as ragged as hers. "Every time I touched you to help you dress, I was imagining this. I was imagining the moment I finally stopped being your protector and started being your husband."

Ilaria was literally catching her breath, her head lolling back as his lips found the sensitive cord of her neck. The sensation was overwhelming, the contrast of the cool room and the searing heat of his touch leaving her trembling.

"Levan... ah..." she gasped, fingers clinging to his shoulders as if they were her only anchor.

"Hold me," he whispered against her skin, "like you mean it. Like you’ve been waiting for this as much as I have."

"Levan—" she breathed, her fingers tangling in his hair, tugging him closer as the last of her reservations dissolved into the heat.

"I’ve got you." He slid his hands down to her hips to hoist her up, effortless and powerful, as he moved them toward the bed. "I’ve had you since the moment you stepped foot here. I was just too much of a fool to admit I was never going to let you go."