by Zoe Chant
She gave him an odd look, and Morgan realized that he had probably come across as someone who dearly wanted to play dress-up with his new doll. Thankfully, Harper was generous as well as beautiful, because she let it go by with a nod.
“We can figure it out if it becomes a problem,” she said easily. “Shall we hit the road?”
Chapter Eleven
∞∞∞
The large black town car that Morgan procured for the trip ate up the road like some kind of starving beast, and the ride was so smooth that Harper would have thought she was on the couch in her own apartment if she couldn't watch the scenery going by. It was so restful that she spent the first few hours of her vacation asleep, her arm tucked under her head and her seat reclined back so far she was nearly prone.
Now she looked around, startled at the new angle of the sun. She was grateful when Morgan passed her a cool bottle of water.
“I'm sorry,” she said, rolling her shoulders to loosen them. “I feel like I should have been keeping you company.
“It's fine,” he said, and Harper blinked at the clipped note in Morgan's voice.
She could tell right away that he wasn't angry, but there was something to it that made her look more closely. Harper sipped her water slowly, watching Morgan out of the corner of her eye. She took in the focused way he stared at the road in front of them, and the way his hands grasped the wheel too tightly. There was a peculiar stillness to his body that set off a quiet alarm bell in her head, and when she screwed the top back on the bottle, she shifted the seat upright and turned to him.
“How are you doing?”
“Just fine.”
It…it was all right. It was something he might have said to a barista who handed him his coffee order or someone servicing his car if they had asked him how things were going. For some reason, though, it irritated her.
“Are you sure?”
He gave her a look that stopped just short of being sharp before turning back to the road.
“Of course I am.”
She frowned. She recognized the area that they were traveling through. It was lightly forested, mostly empty. They were probably a good hour or more from a city of any size.
Carefully, lightly, she put her hand on his arm closest to her, and she blinked when she felt how very tense the muscles were there. She waited to see if he would snap at her. If he did, they were going to have a problem, but instead he only shifted slightly before settling again. She watched as his hand on the steering wheel tightened and then loosened again, listened as he took a breath and let it out slowly.
Harper stifled the urge to ask him again if he was all right. There was a wariness to him that she didn't understand, not yet, but it was there, as sure as anything.
“Is this all right?” she asked, nodding at her hand on his arm.
“Of course it is,” he said, and this time his voice was gentler, perhaps a little remorseful of his earlier sharpness. “I…like you touching me. I always like it.”
“Because I'm your true mate,” she guessed, but to her surprise, Morgan shook his head.
“No. Because you're a beautiful woman. Because you're you.”
There was a flat honesty to his voice that made Harper's breath catch. The sky was blue, grass was green, and she was a beautiful woman, at least as far as Morgan was concerned.
“I'm glad you're you.”
“I'm glad I'm me too,” she said with a slight smile.
She wasn't glad that there was still that tightness bracketing Morgan's mouth. He was squinting slightly at the road as if it had done something to wrong him, and she made a decision.
“i want to get out and walk a little. Can we do that?”
Morgan gave her a startled look. For one heart-sinking moment, Harper thought that he was going to show his true colors, one of those petty tyrants that thought if he could tough it out then of course everyone around him was capable of doing the same. Instead of looking irritated, however, Morgan was only surprised and then guilty.
“Of course, I'm sorry, I didn't realize...”
“Nah, I didn't tell you,” Harper said with a slight smile. “But that's why I'm telling you now.”
She expected questions of some sort, about what had happened or what had gone wrong, but instead Morgan pulled the car over at a rest stop by the the side of the road. In the early spring chill, it was empty except for a business traveler who was on his way out when they pulled in, and Harper got out with real gratitude, stretching as she did so. She turned around to find Morgan staring at her from across the top of the car. There was something intent in his gaze, and for a brief moment, she felt like something he was hunting or stalking, followed by a hot thrill that shot down the core of her body.
All right, we'll look into why that sounds so very good in a little while.
Outwardly, all she did was raise an eyebrow at him.
“Do I have something on my face?” she asked, and he blinked.
“No. I just wanted to make sure that you're okay.”
She came around the car towards him, allowing him to look her over quickly and carefully. She had the idea that he would have touched her as well, checked her limbs like a horse if she had allowed it, but for the moment, he kept his hands to himself. She was actually a little sorry about that.
“I learned a long time ago that there's nothing to be gained from running myself so ragged that I collapse,” she said, keeping her voice easy. “If I stop, take some time, I don't collapse at all.”
“How did you learn that?”
She smiled at him, reaching up to pass her hand feather-light over his jaw. He smiled, and she was enchanted to discover in the good clear light that he had a single dimple right under the left corner of his mouth. She hadn't noticed before.
“I learned it by collapsing a few times. Come on. I bet they have vending machines here. I'll buy you a candy bar.”
“Oh, no need.”
Puzzled, she watched as Morgan reached into the back seat and pulled out what looked like a honest-to-god picnic basket.
“Are you serious?”
“You might not have been traveling very much, but I've driven across the United States many, many times. Truck stops and gas stations never have decent food.”
“So you just…pack yourself an old-fashioned picnic whenever you go?”
“No, usually I just go hungry until I reach a place with decent food, or I carry protein bars.”
“So...”
“I'm not going to let you go hungry or live off of protein bars.”
He said it with the flat authority of a general in charge of leading his men through the war, and because she didn't want to break into tears over the obvious care in his voice, she laughed instead and followed him to the picnic table in the sun.
It really was a bit too cold to eat outside, but she had her coat on and long socks, and even in just a light jacket, Morgan didn't seem to feel the chill at all. She watched as he put out a surprisingly artful spread of crackers, cheese, and thin-sliced pieces of spicy sausage, complete with tiny jars of jam and mustard.
“So are you going to pull out a bottle of wine next?” she asked.
“Should I have brought wine?”
Harper stared for a moment in astonishment before she caught the little whisper of amusement at the corner of his mouth, and then she laughed out loud. Morgan grinned – so handsome when he did that – and brought out two bottles of orange juice instead.
“Like I said, I wanted to make sure you were well-fed,” he said, and she was struck by the oddly diffident tone in his voice. He didn't seem to think this was special at all. It was just something he did.
Harper took the cracker he handed her, topped with cheese, sausage, and just the perfect dab of mustard. She nibbled it thoughtfully, giving herself time to think.
“This is a true mate thing, isn't it?” she asked, and she knew that her guess had been right at the half-pleased, half-cornered look on Morgan's face.
> “It is,” he said reluctantly, and she handed him a cracker topped with sausage as a reward.
“You should probably stop trying to sneak this stuff past me,” Harper said. “Tell me more about this. Maybe we can talk this out? This is new territory for me.”
“It's new territory for me, too,” Morgan admitted.
“Never had a true mate before?”
He stared at her in confusion.
“Of course not. I mean. I've had – I've had sex before.”
“Well, I didn't really think you were a virgin that night. I mean, did you think I was? Is that going to be a problem?”
Morgan shook his head.
“True mates…it doesn't have that much to do with sex.”
“But not nothing to do with sex,” Harper said, unable to avoid teasing.
In return she got a look that she could only describe as smoldering. He looked at her as if she was something good to eat, as if he wanted nothing more than to put the nice crackers aside and have her on the picnic table.
“It has a few things to do with sex,” Morgan said finally, and then he grinned, a smoky hot thing that made her want to reach over and to kiss him and to let him kiss her in return.
“But,” Harper said, making a heroic effort to get to the bottom of things, “not everything?”
“No. A dragon's true mate is the person they're supposed to be with. Just…the right person.”
“Is it fate or destiny? Is it…a chemical thing, there's one person that just smells right to you?”
Morgan gave her a crooked grin.
“You certainly do smell and feel and taste very good and very right to me. But the truth is no one knows. We've been making guesses like this since the very beginning, and we, shifters, dragons, whoever, are no closer to the truth than we ever have been. We are shifters, we have true mates. We all know that, and for most of us, that's all we need to know.”
“And you,” Harper echoed. “What is it you need to know?”
Morgan hesitated, and Harper raised an eyebrow.
“You thought of something just then.”
“You see very clearly.”
“It's something that you're going to have to get used to,” Harper said sweetly. “So 'fess up. What just went through your head?”
“I want to know more about your wrist.”
Whatever she had been expecting, It wasn't that. Before she knew what she was doing, Harper pulled her hand off the table, bringing the offending wrist to her lap as if she could hide it.
“It's a wrist,” she said, a little defensively. “it connects my hand to my arm. It bends, and it flexes.”
“And it hurts sometimes. Enough that you need to wear a brace for it. I'd like to hear more about that, please.”
She gave him a wry glance.
“You're stubborn.”
“It's something that you're going to have to get used to,” Morgan said gravely, a twinkle in his eye.
Despite how good-looking he was when he smiled at her, when he warmed like that, there was an old part of Harper that still wanted to tell him it was none of his business. She was long past the point in her life where she would snap at someone for what she considered prying, but she wasn't above redirecting the conversation or deflecting questions with humor.
Something about the patient way Morgan watched her, however, told her that that wouldn't do. Still, Harper might have tried, but then a thought struck her.
How in the world can I expect him to trust me if I don't trust him?
Morgan sat across from her now, the picture of calm power and confidence. Still she could remember how he had winced when she had caught his arm and how stiff he had been in the car. How could he trust her with that story if she couldn't trust him with hers?
“So I left home when I was about seventeen,” she said. “Nothing terrible, I was just ready to be on my own and my mom and I didn't get along. I told you about getting a job at the alterations shop, starting my own business, things like that. That was about five years of non-stop work, and the only reason I'm not running that hard any more is that. Well. I was stopped.”
She ruefully held up her wrist in its brace. Once she had started talking, it was easier to let him see it, to let him see her.
“Tingling that turned to burning that turned to pain and swelling so bad that I couldn't hold a needle. It seemed to come with no warning, and then just when I thought I would be stuck like that forever, it would go away.”
Morgan made a soft distressed sound, and she patted his arm gently.
“It's all right. Well, it's all right now. I finally got scared enough that I would lose everything I worked so hard for, and I went to a doctor. The results came back conclusive. It's rheumatoid arthritis, and this is me, forever. I'll always have to be careful about triggering flare-ups, and if I do trigger one, I have to take care of it.”
“You've taken it very well.”
“Well, I didn't always. There was a lot of anger when I first got the diagnosis. I'd never had anything I couldn't beat before, you know? And now there's this, and this is me. If I have the time to get mad, I have the time to reduce my stress, to take my meds, and to slow down before I have to stop entirely.”
Morgan took her hand as if it was something precious, smoothing his thumb along the sensitive cup of her palm.
“It always pains you?”
“I have good days and bad days,” she said, aware she was being at least a little evasive. “I have to be really careful not to over-strain it or I'll have bad weeks instead of bad days. It's stable at the moment, and that's about what I can ask for.”
“And there is nothing to be done?”
She shrugged, and Morgan thought a moment.
“Is there anything I can do?”
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him of course not, and then she hesitated.
“This helps,” Harper said, nodding around at the park and the food. “Getting regular food. Making sure I don't sit still too long. Thank you.”
“Thank you for telling me all that,” he said at last.
“And maybe someday, you'll tell me if there's anything I can do for you.”
The fact that Morgan didn't protest, didn't brush her off or get his back up, was an oddly thrilling, oddly wonderful thing. She didn't press, because after all, he hadn't pressed her, and with a sense of satisfaction that she couldn't quite name, she went back to the delicious food that he had prepared for them.
Chapter Twelve
∞∞∞
By the time the day was over, they had stopped twice more, and they pulled over long before Morgan would have stopped on his own.
I am more than capable of driving longer, Morgan told himself. Of course I am. It is only that I want to make sure that Harper is comfortable.
It both was and wasn't true. He was definitely capable of driving longer. He had driven fifteen hours straight without much pause before when there had been a need for it, but now even the idea of doing so made the bones of his right shoulder and side ache. Of course he wanted Harper, who had spent long stretches making what looked like near-microscopic stitches in his suit, to be comfortable and to have as little pain as possible. However, there was a secret shameful part of him that was relieved to stop for the night just as the sun was dipping below the horizon.
Harper's gray eyes widened as he pulled up to the lodge where he booked them for the night.
“You're kidding,” she said, and he tilted his head politely at her surprise.
“Not more than normally. Does this suit?”
She gave him an impish grin.
“You know, I feel like I should tell you that this is too much, and that we should backtrack to that budget motel that we saw a few miles back.”
“But…?”
“But look at this place. If you're footing the bill, I am more than happy to stay here.”
Morgan grinned at her enthusiasm, taking her bag and leading her in through the swinging glass doo
rs.
If he had his way, he'd take her to one of the lavish hotels on the coast, modern palaces that were insulated from the world and supplied with every luxury imaginable. Perhaps, depending on what Harper liked, he would instead find a house that he could rent for the occasion, something small and lovely and intimate, overlooking the sea so they could watch the morning mist roll in over the water.
Of course palatial hotels and rental beach properties were in short supply when they were crossing the Midwest, so the lodge that catered to the rich hunters from the city would have to do.
It was an elegant stone building decked out in rustic charm, elegant and oddly stately. The lobby, with the fireplace that ran along one side of the room, the thick wool rugs on the flagstone floor, and the stuffed animal heads mounted on the walls, resembled a medieval castle. Morgan got them checked in, and then they made their way to to the master suite at the far end of the building.
“You're kidding,” Harper said again when they entered the suite. “This is incredible.”
It was an open-plan space with a small sitting area by a sunken fire pit and an enormous bed draped in blankets of faux fur. One enormous window overlooked a cliff with the forest below, and the entire space was lit with a soft golden light that made Morgan think of oil lamps and candles.
The place was impressive, but Morgan only gave it a cursory look before focusing on Harper as she explored the room.
He had been stealing glances at her all day; he could only imagine that it was a natural reaction to meeting his true mate, this need to learn all about her and to make sure that her needs and wants and wishes were seen to. Right now, though, he could look at her as much as he liked, take in her quick motions as she fluttered around the room, watch as she returned to the window over and over again to stare out over the cliffs.
“You're not afraid of heights, I take it?” he asked, coming up behind her.
“No, not at all,” Harper replied, looking out over the trees. Their window faced the west, and there was just a little bit of orange and salmon left to the sky. “When we were asked what super power we wanted as kids, I always wanted to fly.”