He hopped out of the car and kissed her on the cheek. “Ava,” he said. “It’s so good to see you.”
Mate! his dragon insisted.
Yes, you’re right. Now we just have to show her how we feel.
20
Ava
Ava wasn’t sure what was going on. Eli’s mood had changed drastically in the last twenty-four hours.
Yesterday, she’d broken the news to him that she was leaving. It had not been an easy decision. But weeks had gone by, and he hadn’t said a word to her about dating. Yes, she’d asked for space, but she hadn’t meant a chasm.
And sure, she could have initiated a talk. But she was the one who’d spoken up about them dating in the first place. What if he didn’t feel as strongly about her as she did about him?
He’d probably just go along with it for a while, just to be nice. Because that was the kind of guy he was. Then he’d have to let her down easy, which would be problematic because he’d already told her she was going to be offered a job by the lab.
As much as she appreciated the job offer, she couldn’t keep working at the lab with him. Not even if it meant a slower initial start to her career.
So, she’d told him, but she hadn’t expected such a visceral reaction from him. He’d looked so angry and devastated all at the same time. At first, she’d thought he was angry that she was leaving the lab. But then it dawned on her that no, it was personal.
He didn’t want her to leave. Not because of the work, but because of him.
But she had to do something. She couldn’t go on in that limbo for another day. She wasn’t interested in offering him an ultimatum or forcing his hand, so she’d made the call to leave.
It shouldn’t have felt like running away, but it did.
As soon as he left the parking lot, she regretted it. But now, he was at her apartment. And he had just kissed her on the cheek. What was she supposed to make of that?
As usual, he opened the car door for her.
He was quiet at first as they drove. He put the radio on a classical station and let Mozart wash over them both.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“I have a confession to make.”
She waited.
“I would like for today to be a date. It doesn’t have to be; we can spend time together as friends. But if you’re interested, I would like it to be more.”
Ava tucked her hands under her legs and held onto the seat as if it would help ground her. A date?
“I know you asked for space,” Eli said, “but yesterday, you seemed distressed. So, I want to make sure I’m not missing something.” He took his eyes off the road for just a second and looked over at her. “Just to make things clear on my side, I love you. I never stopped. And I want to be with you.”
“Why didn’t you say something earlier?”
“Because until yesterday, I was your boss.”
Right. She knew that was an issue for him. “I did want space. But only for a few days. I realize now it wasn’t fair of me to expect you to just know that. But the longer we were apart, the more I started to question myself.”
He put his hand on her shoulder briefly. “Thank you for telling me that. I’ve been driving myself crazy.”
“Me, too.” She moved her left hand so that she could hold his while he drove. She chewed on her lip. If he could say it, so could she. “I love you, too.”
He seemed to sag in relief. “You don’t know how glad I am to hear that.”
“I think I do.”
He chuckled. “Now that you’re on board, I can tell you what we’re doing today. First, we’re going to meet my family. Then, I’m going to show you my workshop and my lab. After that, I want to show you the cliffs and the ocean where I spend most of my time as a dragon. And then, after all that, we can go to dinner.”
She turned to look at him with wide eyes. “You’re really going to take me to meet your family? Your clan?”
“Yes. I should have done it as soon as we got back. I know this date sounds really boring and dull, but—”
She interrupted him. “No, it doesn’t. It sounds perfect.” He was going to include her in his world. She’d never be a shifter, but she was going to meet them, and it was his idea.
For the rest of the drive, she couldn’t take her eyes off of him. When they pulled onto a secluded street lined with large houses all nestled into the woods, he squeezed her hand. “Brace yourself. My family is intense.”
Moments later, she saw what he meant. His mother and father came running toward them. Both of them hugged her tight. Then, various other relatives came up. All of them wanted to hear about her encounter with the aliens in great detail.
Eli let it go on for about thirty minutes. Then, he pulled her away to meet his best friend Jackson and his wife Helena.
Helena was reserved but friendly, and Jackson was an overgrown frat boy, but she liked them both a lot.
He had to drag her away. Once they were in his lab, he showed her the equipment he had used to monitor the aliens before he even knew what they were. She enjoyed the tour, poking at all the equipment and asking questions.
As the tour wound down, Eli became serious again. He sat down in his lab chair and pulled her close. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
“It can’t be any crazier than anything I’ve already seen, right?” She moved closer, sitting down in his lap.
“It depends on your definition of crazy.”
She clapped her hands over her mouth. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to call your clan crazy.”
He put one arm around her. “It’s okay. They are completely crazy. But this is related to being a dragon shifter.”
She leaned her head against his chest.
“Dragon shifters don’t just get married. They form bonds. Lifelong bonds that can’t be broken. We use the term mate because it just makes the most sense.”
“So, dragon shifters mate for life? Is that what you’re telling me?” It didn’t seem possible. But neither did anything else she had learned in the last few months during her life with Eli.
“Yes, we mate for life.” He ran his hand down through her hair.
A shiver passed through her limbs. She tilted her head to look up at him.
He was gazing down at her with an intensity that replaced the shiver and instead sent a shockwave through every part of her.
“Ava, you’re my mate.”
She took a minute to think. The word didn’t frighten her. She didn’t mind the intensity. She felt…loved. And cherished.
“How long have you known?” she asked.
“I knew for sure when we were in Ireland.”
“Is that why you reacted so strongly yesterday when I said I was leaving?”
“Yes. A dragon shifter can live without his mate, but it’s not pleasant. And I knew that I had not done enough to prove to you how I felt.”
She snuggled in closer to him. “Tell me more about how it works.”
He brought both arms up around her and held on. “As a human, you might not feel the bond as intensely, but you may still feel part of it. We don’t know exactly how it works, but there are aspects of hormones and brain chemistry that are involved. The clan in Texas that I’ve told you about has two human members. Both of them formed strong attachments to their mates early on. So, it’s possible that I can influence your feelings through my bond.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“It’s not bad at all, in my opinion. But it means that I won’t be willing to let you go. At least not easily. I’ll do everything in my power to make you happy, and if you don’t feel the same way, it could become quite suffocating.”
She couldn’t imagine that ever being a problem. She had lived without Eli’s attention for the last few weeks, and she had no desire to do so again.
“It also means I’ll be very protective of you. I will try to use my brain whenever possible, but my dragon is going to react on instinct quite often,” he said.
<
br /> “I think I like the sound of it. That’s a high level of commitment.”
He kissed her temple. “I like it, too.” He framed her face with his hands. “Do you want to see the ocean here?”
“Yes, I’d love to.” Giddy, she stood up. He was letting her inside his world, and she wanted to soak up every single thing.
They spent the rest of the day on his clan’s land. They walked the cliffs and strolled along the rocky beach next to the rolling ocean. He let her into every aspect of his life.
I’m his mate, she kept thinking to herself.
She liked the way it felt. And she’d have to spend some more time thinking about it, but she wondered how much her own brain chemistry was involved in it. She had a lot of very good reasons to love Eli, and she would happily list them all. But there was no denying that her feelings for him also felt like magic in the best way possible.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. “I have reservations for us in the next town over.”
“I don’t want to leave yet. This has been just the best day.”
He lifted her into his arms and spun her around once. As soon as he put her down, he pressed his mouth to hers. “We don’t have to leave at all.”
“Good. Then I don’t want to.”
He canceled the reservations, and the two of them went back to the house he shared with his parents. She was enchanted by the sense of community she felt everywhere she went on his land. He tried to shoo his mother out of the kitchen, but she wouldn’t budge. While Eli put together a simple dinner for them, his mother showed Ava photos of Eli when he was young.
In every photo, Eli was wearing a little lab coat and tiny goggles.
“You started early,” she said, giggling. “I did, too.”
Once the food was ready, he took her out onto the back porch and built a roaring fire in the outdoor fireplace to ward off the evening chill.
They ate with leisure, trading childhood stories. But toward the end of the meal, Eli began to fidget. Once she was done, he cleaned away their plates.
He scooted close to her, taking her hands. “Ava. You know I love you. I’ve told you that you’re my mate. But there’s one more thing I’d like to do. I’d like to make you an official part of my clan.” He moved over, dropping effortlessly to one knee. “Would you marry me?
Ava’s breath caught. This beautiful man, who was also a mythical creature, was on one knee, asking her to marry him and be his for the rest of her life.
He was also the smartest, most interesting person she’d ever known. She had been ready to walk away from him yesterday, but that was only because she hadn’t known the depth of his feelings. Now that he’d brought her into his secret life and shared every aspect of his world, she didn’t even have to think about it.
“Yes!” she yelled. “Yes, I would love to marry you!”
He grabbed her and picked her up again. She wrapped her legs around his waist and he kissed her. She moaned, but then froze when she realized they were in his family home and that his family all had enhanced hearing.
She pulled back, cheeks burning. “I’m going to need some alone time with you later.”
He traced his fingers over her face. “I’m counting on it.” He sat her down and picked up her hand. “I haven’t even given you the ring yet.”
She didn’t need a ring, but she’d happily wear it if it was from him. She lifted her hand up higher, and he slipped the ring on. “It fits perfectly.”
“Good. It was my grandmother’s. She wanted us to have it.”
Ava’s eyes stung. She had met his grandmother earlier in the day. That she had shared a precious heirloom with Ava meant the world to her. She swiped at her eyes, not wanting to cry. “I love it.”
He pulled it back off again and showed her the inside. “It says ‘partner.’” He described how he’d inscribed it himself.
She ran her finger over the inscription. “Because that’s what we are.”
“Always,” he said.
Then, he picked her up once more and carried her to his workshop. “I keep a bed in here for when I need to be alone.” He laid her down on the bed. “And right now, I need to be alone with you.”
“Will we live here?” she asked.
“We can do whatever you want.” His warm hands started unbuttoning her shirt, kissing her chest as each inch of her skin was revealed.
She arched her back, moaning as he kissed her. “I’d like to do what you do. Live in Portland and come here on the weekends.”
“Does this mean you’ll keep working at the lab?” he asked. He got to the last button and tugged her shirt off, tossing it behind him.
“If you’ll have me back,” she said. It was getting hard to concentrate on their conversation.
“If you haven’t formally quit, then we don’t have a problem.”
“Good. I only told you and Ashley, and I told her not to tell anyone.”
“Mmm. God, you smell so good.” He undid her bra and flung it away, too. “I can’t wait to be inside you—mate.”
Hearing that word did something to her. She grabbed him tighter. “And I want you inside me, too. Now that you’re my fiance and my mate, too.”
He growled at her again, kissing her firmly. He looked up. “I think I have a condom stored here somewhere.”
“We don’t have to use them anymore. Not now that we’re engaged.”
“Really?” he asked.
“If you want to, of course, that’s fine. But I haven’t been with anyone else since I was last tested, and Nora told me that you guys can’t catch diseases, anyway.”
“I’m not worried about disease. But, um.” He put his hand over her flat stomach. “Shifters are very fertile. We tend to create babies very easily, even if the timing doesn’t seem right.”
She leaned up a little closer to him. “I’m willing to take that chance. But I understand if you want to wait.”
She couldn’t describe the way she felt. Before she met Eli, she wasn’t sure she ever wanted children. She thought she’d be at least thirty-five before she even tried. But being with him had changed something inside her. She wasn’t desperate to have children yet, but she didn’t feel any urge to avoid them either. In fact, she’d already started imagining what Eli’s children would be like.
“That works for me.” He kissed her forehead. “You’re my mate. I have a very strong urge for us to start a family. I just didn’t want to put that on you.”
“I want that, too. You’re not pushing me into anything.”
“In that case, I can’t wait to feel you without any barriers.”
He laid her down on the bed and pushed her legs apart. “I can’t go another second without tasting you.”
She closed her eyes, savoring the moment when his tongue swiped over her clit.
“Eli!”
He pushed a finger into her body. “You’re so warm. So slick. So wet. I’m going to be able to slide right in.”
“Don’t tease!”
He pushed a second finger in, stretching her walls. His mouth covered her clit, sucking and flicking his tongue until she thought she’d explode.
“I can’t hold off any longer.”
“Then don’t,” he said. With two fingers in her pussy and his mouth on her clit, he reached up and pinched her nipple with a light squeeze.
She screamed as her climax charged through her body.
He let her ride it out as she came on his fingers over and over.
He crawled up and kissed her neck. “That was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
She grabbed his firm biceps. “You’re pretty hot yourself. Don’t keep me waiting.”
“I don’t plan to.” He positioned his cock at her entrance and slid in bare.
She watched his beautiful face as his cock filled her pussy. “How does it feel?” she asked.
“Unbelievable,” he said, gritting his teeth. “There are no words.”
He kissed her again, and then he began
to move inside her. It only took a few minutes of thrusting before he was on the knife’s edge as well.
She wrapped her legs around his waist. “I want to see you come, too,” she said.
“Ava!” he cried out. And then he came, pulsing inside her body.
Ava nearly drove her future mother-in-law crazy when she and Eli announced that they weren’t going to delay their wedding at all. The clan wanted time to plan, but Eli put his foot down and told them to leave her alone.
She didn’t want to upset them, but a big wedding wasn’t on her list of things she wanted to do. She wanted to be married to Eli, not plan a wedding. She was more interested in defending her dissertation and graduating, which she did in May.
Her own parents weren’t sentimental, and they didn’t mind a last-minute wedding. They were proud of her for earning her PhD and attended her graduation ceremony, then took her and Eli out for dinner afterward. It was casual and easy, much like the rest of her relationship with them. As a wedding gift, they insisted on paying for the entire wedding. She argued with them at first, but spending money was their way of showing their love, so she finally agreed.
When her mother heard Ava wasn’t interested in planning the wedding and was considering a courthouse wedding with a justice of the peace as the officiant, she paid a wedding planner who promised to handle every single detail. The clan grumbled a little, because involving a human wedding planner meant the wedding wouldn’t be on their land.
Ava satisfied the clan by letting them plan a big graduation party for her.
They took to the task with vigor, and she ended up with a huge backyard graduation party on a warm Friday night.
The following Sunday, she and Eli got married on the beach with all of the clan there. She wore a white sundress, and he wore his best khaki pants.
After they said ‘I do’ and danced at their reception on the beach, they headed up to the cliffs with only the shifters, and they did a traditional dragon shifter ceremony.
As soon as she’d slipped the necklace with his wedding ring over his neck, he scooped her into his arms. “My mate,” he said.
“My mate,” she said back to him.
Scientist Dragon's Assistant (Irish Dragon Shifter Brothers Book 9) Page 12