Survive My Fire Read Free Page B

battle was any indication.
    Two black-robed warriors fought at the base of my cliff. Jalan held the scimitar in one hand and a short blade in the other, both whirling and striking as fast as his tribe’s namesake. Through his bond, I felt blazing fury, a Fire to match my own.
    Fire.
    Rage poured over me, a crushing betrayal that seized my mighty lungs before I could bellow my flames. He lied to me. He tricked me. He betrayed me. He never meant to break my curse.   He couldn’t.
    He was just as cursed as I. Worse, in fact. He was nigh to losing his humanity entirely.  
    I could see his beast just beneath his skin, a roiling energy of shadowed rage and smoke. Black and red hovered like a second hide of scale and leather. The invisible promise of massive wings swept above him, driving his opponent back.
    Now I knew what dra’gwar meant. All of his Krait warriors must have already turned feral. He was terribly close himself. No wonder my stone warrior held his emotions in such fierce check.
    Simmering with rage, I lay there on my rock ledge and watched as the sun set.   I watched him dance the blades, his taamid a shadow as dark as his near wings, his blood burning. I watched him slit his opponent’s throat. I watched him attempt to leash his own beast, no easy feat with blood and meat before him.   With his head thrown back and his weapons bare in his hand, he roared to the twilight sky.
    A call I could not refuse.
    I barreled down the slope at him, wings tucked tight to my back. Silent, swift, I slunk behind him, jaws gaping. He knew, though. The blood bond betrayed me.   Fighting his rising dragon, he whirled away from my claws and retreated.   Not because he was scared of me, no.
    He feared becoming me.
    I don’t know what I would have done if I’d caught him. I was so furious—at him, at myself, for daring to hope an end to my curse might be near. But spilled blood overwhelmed my senses. Blood, fresh blood, fresh meat.
    Glaring at Jalan with my baleful eyes, I hunched over the dead warrior and feasted. Deliberately, I ate messily, slinging a severed hand in his direction, licking blood from my jaws, crunching the skull like a rotten melon.  
    Jalan watched me, silent, his rock face hardening with each jagged bite I took.   His control returned somewhat, and the raging beast retreated. Power settled beneath his skin, but his eyes blazed at me in the dying sun. His blood still burned, but with a different need.
    A need all male dragons felt in the presence of an unmated female.   Domination. Aggression. Lust. He wanted to subdue me.  
    Somma damn me for all eternity, I wanted him to try.
    Tail lashing, I dared him to interrupt my feast. I would be more than happy to eat him for dessert. I felt him through the bond, vibrating with tension and urgency. His dark eyes gleamed, locked on my every move. The more I tried to revolt him with my eating habits, the darker his eyes burned. Snarling, I munched on a femur and wished it was his.
    The rising moon cast its glow on me. My scales itched and crawled, my bones cracked and convulsed. And then he slammed into me, pressing my very human body into the sands.
    Too much of the dragon still burned in me to go gently to his embrace. Too much hurt in my Riven heart, too much disappointment to accept his caress.   Outweighed by nearly ten stone and armed with only human teeth and nails, I didn’t have a chance against him.  
    Fighting like a dragon only inflamed him—and me—all the more.
    My human body wanted him. Even my shriveled dried-up broken heart wanted him. More, my dragon wanted him. I wanted his wild male dragon to force me into submission, and if he failed, I wanted to kill him. I would not accept a male who couldn’t fight me with tooth, claw, and wing—and win.
    With a knee in the small of my back and a hand fisted in my hair, he pinned me face down in the sand while he shrugged out of his clothes. Not a word from him, not a curse, not a muttered