CASIMIRA
dragon-shifting daughter of ashhal and ryatah
He does something to her, and it terrifies her in ways that are beautiful and heart-wrenching.
She had never thought herself the kind of girl to be so easily taken by someone else. Not because she saw love and romance as weaknesses, but because she assumed it would never find her. For so long she had hidden herself, tucked away in the forests and the mountains, and the only thing that ever consumed her thoughts was learning to control her dragon so that she stopped being destructive. And there was a part of her young, foolish heart that was convinced she didn’t deserve anything like that. She didn’t deserve the love of someone else when she could accidentally snap one day. She didn’t deserve to know what it was like to feel safe tucked in the embrace of someone else when they would never be safe with her.
But he’s making her wonder what it would be like to try.
She had pulled away from him and he was still right there, and somehow through her own torrent of apologies she hears his hushed reassurance. He touches her face and for a moment her eyes close, and all she can hear is the pounding of her heart against her ribs, and all she can feel is him against her skin. Slowly, she exhales a tremulous sigh, unknowingly leaning into his touch. He calls her Casi and it makes her heart skip in her chest, because even though her mother and brother called her that, it somehow sounded sweeter coming from him. At this point she was beginning to think there wasn’t anything he couldn’t do that wouldn’t send her reeling, and though she is powerless to stop it, she finds that she doesn’t really want to.
She can still feel the heat of his kiss even when he pulls away, like an echo of it being replayed across her skin. Her pale blue eyes search his, and she can’t help but to think that there was a reason that he was put in her path. There was a reason that out of all the souls she could have come across, hers found his. “I want to tell you,” she begins quietly, reaching forward to brush her lips against his jaw. “I want to tell you everything, because I want you to know exactly who I am,” because she wants him to be able to decide for himself if he wanted to risk being with her, but at this moment all she can think about is how it might send him running. It was selfish of her, she knows, to want to see what happens now without divulging the full truth. Another step closer, and her touch traces his cheek, and then along the groove of his throat where she breathlessly whispers, “But right now I just want you to kiss me again.”