10. Corin

10

Corin

All those wasted months, all his miserable, self-denying self-control. He had almost lost her.

He had almost lost this. Not only his mate’s presence in his life, her scent in the air she breathed, but her laughter.

“Corin?”

He stepped away from her. Away from her warmth, her sweet scent, her dancing eyes. The sudden blossoming of laughter that had turned all the burning desire within him to bitter regret.

“What’s wrong?” The laughter left Maya’s eyes. “Did I—”

She stopped herself before the sentence could escape. The muscles in her neck tightened.

He’d been worried about his duskfire hurting her.

As though he needed magic to do that.

“It isn’t you.” He dropped his head against hers, breathing in the sweet delight of her hair, her skin, her arousal. “Never believe that. It has never been you.”

Her laughter was a hiccup of disbelief. “I mean, you’re not wrong—”

“You have always been my mate.” He didn’t want to look into her eyes and see the hurt there, but he wanted even less for her to think for a single second that any of this was her fault. He raised his head and put a finger beneath her chin.

For a moment, she resisted. His heart froze. Then she lifted her eyes to meet his, guarded and challenging.

Relief surged in his chest.

“I have made you feel unwanted. Unappreciated. I have not treated you as you deserve, and I take the blame. It is not your fault. It is mine.”

“But you don’t want to…”

She gestured, and even that embarrassed gesture made him hard again. “I want it more than almost anything,” he growled.

“But?”

“ But ,” he continued, his voice like shards of glass, “you are not the only one for whom it has been … a while.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh.” And then, before he could say anything to make it worse—not worth hoping he could say anything to make it better —her eyes narrowed again.

“However,” he said quickly, before those narrowed eyes could see too much, “our arrangement was about relieving tension, and that matter is dealt with.”

Dealt with. His dragon hid its head. The gravel and broken glass in his voice was gone, replaced by a chill that he instantly regretted.

Thank god, it didn’t freeze Maya away. Instead, she leaned against the wall, her eyes still far too perceptive. One hand went absently to the bare, dimpled skin of her stomach between her jeans and her rucked-up shirt. “ One side of it is dealt with,” she pointed out. “You don’t want—”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.” The words were too harsh. Too brutal.

And Maya seemed to expect them. Her mouth twisted, wry, but accepting. And he hated it. He hated that she expected this of him, and he lived up to all her expectations.

She shook her head. “Maybe this strategy isn’t going to be as helpful as we hoped. Just … another mistake.”

“Certainly not.”

Her eyes flew to his, bright with hope—and wariness.

“I can’t be the mate you deserve,” he told her. “Nothing will change that. But until I am sure you are safe, I will remain here to protect you. And I will provide all the relief that my presence requires.”

But that was all.

He could make her come, pursue her pleasure as relentlessly as any dragon, leave her breathless and quivering and sated, and she would be safe. His magic would not come out to harm her, so long as he remained focused on taking her body.

But he was a dragon. Fate had chosen not any woman for him, but her , sharp and ferocious and sweet and tender—and he did not want her in controlled increments. He wanted all of her.

Maya Flores, breathless and trembling and his.

Maybe it was good, the wariness in her eyes, the way she smoothed her shirt down over her skin. Closing herself off to him.

He could satisfy her body. But he could never claim her heart.

“The mate I deserve?” she echoed him quietly. “Well.”

He had to tell her. She’d seen his magic. He had to explain.

Corin cleared his throat. “You must want to know why I never—”

“No. I don’t need to know why you never told me about magic, or about shifters, or about what’s meant to be between us. I don’t need to know why you don’t intend to claim me, or send me magic or whatever it is you dragons do. You don’t. That’s all I need to know. And now we’ve established that—” She broke off and took several deep breaths. Corin watched as she pulled herself back into being the Maya she had been all the time she worked under him. Calm. Collected. Professional. “I should get back to work.”

“When can we meet again?”

“For more pressure relief?”

“To talk.”

“To talk .” She barked out something that was almost laughter. “Yes, let’s talk about—about the stolen treasures. I’ll see if I can find any other envelopes or whatever the other treasures came packed in. Tomás might have stashed them somewhere, he’s good at hiding stuff. There might be a clue on them, I don’t know. And—”

Something that made his dragon rear up protectively flickered behind her eyes. “And we should talk about … the other possible suspect,” she said, quickly, as though she had to force herself to let the words out.

“Tomorrow?” he heard himself say, as though from a long way away.

“After Tomás is asleep.” She nodded, once, and fled.

I don’t need to know why . Maya’s words dug their way into his chest and hung there like a stone.

He had been ready to give her all the answers in the world. Whatever she needed. Explanations that would widen the trench between them. Put him in an even worse light in her eyes. Or—he closed his eyes, cursing. Ones that might mend everything that was broken between them. As though anything he did could do that. His power was only good for re-breaking the broken things, not for fixing anything. Why would he think himself capable of anything else?

In the end it didn’t matter. She wouldn’t give him the chance to explain why he’d kept the truth from her for so long.

Because all that mattered was that he had lied. That he’d known she was his mate, and hadn’t even told her.