“You reek of dragon,” she said under her breath as they descended the staircase to the first floor. “Is your clan leader going to find that suspect?”

“Fuck.” Silas stopped in his tracks and looked at her, fresh panic that rivaled his rooting rising up in him. He swiped a hand over his mouth and groaned. “She’s going to know what I did. Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“You reek of me, too, but I think that’s excusable. If you don’t mind smelling even more of me, I think I can help.”

Silas inhaled deeply, taking in Gavra’s aroma along with hers. Both mixed in a tantalizing combination of different spices - one intensely masculine and the other delicately feminine.

“I like the way you’re both all over me,” he rumbled. “But my mistress is not going to be as thrilled if she finds out I was messing around with the captive I was sent to guard. What can you do?”

“Come,” she said, stepping into a shadowy alcove beneath the staircase and leaning against the wall. Silas’s cock perked up at the sight of her barely clad curves and the coquettish tilt to her mouth. He stepped into her arms and bent his head when she tilted hers up to gaze into his eyes.

Those dark, swirling orbs were hypnotic, and he lost himself to the feel of her when she pulled him close and kissed him deeply.

Her hands cupped his face and he had the oddest sense of plunging into deep, cool water as she slid her hands down over his bare shoulders, over his chest, and dipped beneath the waistband of the cargo pants he wore.

She drifted her lips across his, caressing his cheek with the barest brush of silken skin. She inhaled as she went, and he realized she was scenting him, her nose brushing the edge of his jaw, the side of his neck, and leaving cool, wet kisses as she went.

“He’s all over you,” she murmured in an almost hungry tone. “Seeping from your pores.” Her tongue darted out and licked at his pulse point which only made his heart beat harder and his cock rouse to painful stiffness again.

She gripped his hips just beneath his waistband and turned him, sliding around his body as she pushed him against the wall. Her gaze heated with avid interest and she continued her deliberate exploration of his body like every inch she touched was more fascinating than the last.

“He kind of was all over me for a few minutes before you got there,” Silas said, his breath quickening when she brushed her palm down the ridge of his erection through his pants.

“You swallowed his Nirvana. You're filled with his energy. His power will be tricky to mask, but I think I can manage it.”

Assana’s mouth moved back to his and her tongue plunged between his lips, the power of the kiss enough to make him weak. He drank her in as she continued to touch, her hands still roaming. She unfastened his pants and pushed them down until they slid past his thighs and pooled at his ankles.

How she could feel so deliciously cool and smooth yet make him so hot seemed incongruous. Her touch seemed to leave a sheen of icy wetness on his skin that soothed and aroused at the same time, like she were skimming ice cubes over his body. She released his mouth and slowly slid down, trailing her tongue along the center of his chest, down over his stomach, to his navel. His abs tightened in anticipation and his cock kicked against her chest when the tips of her breasts graced the tops of his thighs. The hard peaks of her nipples pressed against his flesh through the gauzy wisp of her dress.

“Please, yes…” he moaned, drifting his hands to her head and tangling his fingers in her hair.

Assana’s cheek brushed along the length of his aching cock, her eyes wide and almost fearful. She seemed to hesitate as he stared down at her.

“Are you afraid of something?” he asked.  “It’s just my stupid dick.”

She swallowed and shook her head. “I’ve never been this close before… allowed to touch, to taste.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Was his scent just an excuse for you to touch me? Not that I’m complaining… You just had to ask.”

“No, I… well, maybe.” She lowered her gaze and her cheeks flushed.

He touched her chin, urging her to look up at him and struggling to keep from groaning in outright lust at the sight of such a beautiful creature on her knees with her lips mere inches from the tip of his stiff cock.

“You’ve really never been with a man… and you’re how old?”

She swallowed again. “I was twelve when my brother and his squadron of Thiasoi soldiers was captured by the Ultiori. That was almost three thousand years ago. Mother didn’t let me leave the Haven after that. By the time I was old enough to learn about sex, the only male left in the Haven was my uncle. I’ve never melded with a man before. Never touched one like this.”

The significance of the moment made him pull back. “Assana… we shouldn’t be doing this here. Not in a fucking hallway. I thought you just needed to - I don’t know - magic his scent off me somehow with your watery essence.”

She smiled. “That’s one way to put it, but I need to meld with you to do that. We don’t have time to make a big production of it. I need your essence first.”

“Won’t it seem suspect if you go in there smelling like me, though?”

“Not if I tell them I’ve chosen you for my mate. They already know I’m looking. May I…?”

He stared at her, confused at first until he realized she was asking fucking permission to suck his cock. It was such a contrast to the way he envisioned nymphs, not to mention to his recent experience with the dragon he loved and Gavra’s rough, wordless, insistence only a little while ago. He could still feel the dragon’s fingertips digging into the back of his neck as Gavra forced him to take his huge cock into his mouth - could still taste the spice of the other man and the hot pulse of his semen as it shot into the back of his throat.

“Fuck, Assana, you don’t fucking need to ask. I’m yours.”