Her jaw tightens and she frowns. “That fat hypocrite?”

“Yup. Sitting there using a laptop, too. He had the nerve to look me in the eye and tell me that scavenging was bad and I shouldn’t do it, all the while using scavenged equipment. He’s a piece of shit. Anyhow.” I shiver and set down my empty bowl, dragging my blankets closer. “He decided I should be permanently exiled.”

Sasha sucks in a breath of alarm.

“It gets worse,” I tell her. “The militia had a different idea.”

Sasha reels. “Worse than exile? That’s death! Where can you go? Oh, Claudia! This is awful! The nearest fort to here is Fort Orleans, and that’s hundreds of miles away. You won’t make it.” Tears flood her eyes. “If the nomads don’t get you, the dragons will—”

“It’s okay, Sasha. Really. Just listen.” I put my hands up in an attempt to stem the tide of her worry. “The militia had heard that someone in Fort Orleans tamed a dragon, and they decided to use me as bait.” Her expressive eyes widen, and she opens her mouth, but I jump in before she can freak out again. “Before you ask, I’ll tell you. It seems that the dragons like human females. The militia cleaned me up and chained me to a post in one of the abandoned buildings, and then left me for a dragon.” I make a wry smile. “Wouldn’t you know, one showed up not too long after.”

Sasha’s jaw drops. “But…how…”

“I know. It was…weird.” I shiver at the memory of seeing Kael for the first time. “He didn’t hurt me. Actually, he’s kind of fascinated by me. I think the militia was right—the dragons do like human females. The one that found me was a big gold, and he sniffed me and tried to feed me.” I tug the blankets higher, wondering how much I should tell her. Might as well spit it all out. “Oh, and, uh, he turns into a man.”

“Turns into a man?” Sasha’s head tilts slightly, as if she’s having a hard time digesting this. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, they’re shapechangers. He landed in front of me and turned into a guy.” I gesture at the air, as if that’s somehow going to help explain things. “He’s almost seven feet tall, and his skin is this weird, dappled shade, but he’s got hair and eyebrows and everything. He really does look human except for the eyes, and he’s got claws. And fangs. And um, some spikes in his arms. And um, bigger than average equipment.”

Sasha stares at me. “You saw his equipment?”

“Well, he was naked.”

“And you were naked.” Her brows go up. “Did you—”

“That’s not important. I was just, you know, telling you about how they’re different from us but still similar.” I am blushing so hard right now.

“Was it barbed?”

I stare at her. “Was what barbed?”

“His dick. I read that in a book once,” Sasha tells me. “Before the dragons. There were these shapechanger guys and they had barbed penises. Some of them even had two penises.”

“God, no! It was just, uh, different. Thicker. And he’s hot to the touch.” I’m not going to tell her about the scorching release of his semen.

“So you touched his dick!”

“His skin,” I cry out. “His skin is hot to the touch.”

“But you did touch it, didn’t you?” she whispers. “You can tell me.”

“Um. Maybe.” When Sasha’s eyes go wide, I hastily add, “It wasn’t like that, though!”

It was exactly like that, but she doesn’t need to know the details.

Sasha clears her throat, blinking. “So you did try to tame him?”

“No! I don’t want to tame him! It was just…” I struggle to explain it. “So…he captured me, and he was really nice and kept trying to talk to me. But he also made it obvious that he wanted me.”

“Wanted you wanted you?”

I nod. “I guess they don’t see females much? He kept trying to touch me, but when I said no, he backed off. He wanted me to want him, too.”

Sasha’s nose wrinkles at the thought.

And I want to protest that she’s misunderstanding. That Kael can be really sweet and flirty, and at the time it felt kind of right to be with him. But then he bit me and everything changed again. It’s going to be damn hard to explain the dynamic with Kael. The constant possessiveness followed by intense tenderness. Sasha won’t understand. Heck, it’s hard for me to wrap my brain around things sometimes, and I was there. It’s hard to think of a dragon as tender and caring…and bitey. That there’s a duality to Kael, and one side is incredible and the other side is incredibly scary. “You had to be there. He protected me from another dragon.”

“Another dragon?”

“Yeah. It tried to snatch me from him.” I skip the part where dragons can apparently smell arousal and that’s how the other dragon found me. “Kael stole me back from the other dragon and he was all emotional. He wanted me, and I started cleaning him up, and one thing led to another…”

“Cleaning him up?”

“The blood. He ripped the throat out of the other dragon.”

Sasha’s eyes go wide again. “And you slept with him after this?”

“I wasn’t going to tell him no,” I tell her. But it feels unfair to paint that image. I could have told Kael no again. I could have pushed him away. The truth is, when he started touching me, I’d responded, and I’d wanted to have sex with him.

But Sasha won’t understand that. She doesn’t like sex, and she only does it with her officer friend to score food. She wouldn’t understand the sheer longing and need I felt for Kael to touch me, or how it felt when he put his mouth on my pussy and went to town.

“And…so you had sex with him and he let you go?” Sasha looks impressed. “Wow. They really are tamed by women.”

“Not exactly.” I rub at the hot bite on my neck. God, I feel hot all over now. Achy, really. “In the middle of sex, he bit down on me, and it hurt, so I knocked him on the head with a rock. I left him unconscious and ran away.”

Sasha puts a hand to her mouth, gasping. “He bit you? Let me see it.”

I pull down the blankets and push my hair aside, exposing my neck. “Is it bad? It was ugly earlier.”