The consent was given without hesitation.
'Take it...'
It was a simple thing...her word. But it slammed into him like a crashing wave.
Jian's breath hitched. His heart stuttered within him, a sharp rhythm against his ribs, and his veins pulsed with a need that felt nothing like the haze he'd fought earlier.
Not lust... no...
A need that had nothing to do with the aphrodisiac in his veins and everything to do with how her presence drowned out the noise of the world. How her voice made his skin tingle...
With how, when she looked at him... like she knew every crack in his soul, even those he didn't know himself, he stopped being a Dragon King, and simply became hers.
It was a need that was completely hers.
It was clean. Pure. Real... and maddening.
And he wasn't the only one frozen in that heartbeat. His eyes met Xenon's, his stance was taut, his jaws tight...Jian could read the man as surely as he could read his own self,
