He replaced the cage in front of it and grabbed her phone. With it, he called Griffin and asked for a small favor. His cousin wasn’t particularly happy to hear from him. It seemed Jasper had tried to leave the mountain the night before and Ashton had been unreachable.
Ashton looked back at his sleeping mate. Her problems were forgotten in her dreams. Her lips were slightly parted, the corners quirked with a small smile. He hoped she dreamed of him.
Soon, if he could convince her to love him the way he loved her, then he would be able to better serve his king. But he didn’t say that to Griffin. He told his cousin to suck it up and grab the stuff from the cabin.
While he waited for Griffin to arrive, he made another call to order food. He ordered way more than they would need for one night, but he didn’t plan on going anywhere else. Besides, he put it all on Jasper’s tab as a way to make him pay for the late nights to come.
Ashton settled back beside his mate. She stirred and cuddled against his thigh. He could only hope she was this loving when she woke.
Chapter Ten
“You did what?” Makenna screamed.
While Makenna thought a work-day without Ashton would have been blissful, she’d been wrong. The hours felt like they were stretching into days. Each minute had grated against her mind, pulling Ashton to the forefront of her thoughts. She would do her best to banish him, but the next minute he would return, and she’d find herself looking to the clock all over again.
Ashton should have been the last thing she looked forward to. He was old news, someone she’d put behind her a long time ago. Makenna knew they shouldn’t allow space for one another in their hearts. It would only lead to disappointment.
Especially for Ashton.
She couldn’t give him what he needed. It was selfish to think otherwise. Keeping him near just to see him for a few hours of the day when he needed a mate who could give him much more felt shallow. Makenna wasn’t that greedy.
Yet, she’d been excited to see him on her doorstep, standing there as if he belonged the whole time. It wasn’t until he opened his mouth that reality came rushing back to her.
“I paid the late bill to have the lights and heat turned on.” Ashton didn’t look fazed at all. If anything, he looked proud of himself. It only made her angrier. He tugged his sweat pants back up over his hip, but she watched as they slunk down once more and admired the sliver of skin it revealed.
The thought that they were not a couple crossed her mind, but it faded as soon as he tugged her into the house. The sun was going down, but the landing at the top of the stairs into her apartment glowed. She stared at it, openmouthed and very confused. Conflicting emotions roiled at the sight. Beside her, Ashton chuckled to himself.
“You shouldn’t have,” she tried to argue. “It wasn’t your job. The late bills were my fault, not yours. I wish you hadn’t…”
He cut her off with a finger to her lips. She wanted to argue more. Having Ashton swoop into her life and rescue her from the bills piling at her doorstep… Well, it was a relief and a heavy weight of shame all at once. The bills were in her name. They were late because she hadn’t worked hard enough.
Ashton gently pulled her close. His words were warm against her ear when he spoke, somehow intimate. “You don’t get paid enough for all the work you do. Think of this as back-pay.”
“I…” she began, but Ashton wasn’t hearing any of it.
He beamed at her with pride. Not in himself, it seemed. Instead, it was aimed at her. She warmed and reached for his hand. He leaned in again and laid a soft kiss on her head. She couldn’t deny how good this felt.
“You didn’t have to do this, but thank you.”
“If you think that’s amazing, then you should see what else I’ve done.” He pushed the door open.
Makenna dug her heels into the floor. Sprawled before her were scraps of foam, cardboard boxes, and tool buried beneath bubble wrap and tape. She cast an incredulous look at Ashton. Was this some kind of joke?
The power was on. She could hear the hum of the fridge and the living room lamp illuminated the trash spread over her living room. But…the trash. Why would Ashton destroy her home like this?
He scratched his head, one hand on his hip as he surveyed the mess before them. “When I said you should see what else I did, I did not mean this. I, ah…let me show you.”
At first, Makenna didn’t move. She only stared at Ashton.
“Do you trust me?”
Makenna let out a breath. Did she? When they were young, she’d trusted him implicitly right up until he’d shattered her heart and left for what felt like good. Could she allow him to step right back into her life and reclaim the spot he’d left?
She could. And she did—trust him, that is.
Opening her mouth to tell him he couldn’t pay for everything, he pulled her past the trash before she could get out a word. Makenna carefully tip-toed through the trash while Ashton kicked boxes aside.
This was all too much. She hadn’t asked for any of it. Yet, there’d been no stopping Ashton. He didn’t act like any of this was a burden. The light in his eyes when he told her what he’d done managed to levy some of the guilt that was heavy in her stomach.
Ashton reached for a door knob. Makenna shook her head.
“This is the linen closet, Ash.”
“Well…it used to be a linen closet.”
Makenna wasn’t sure how to respond to a statement like that. She no longer felt drained from work. Instead, she was refueled by the fire of confusion and irritation and even a little bit of amusement. She could have asked where her linens had gone or what he thought he was doing with her linen closet to accrue so much trash, but Ashton threw the door open before she could ask anything.
Inside, the walls had been padded with a thick layer of wavy foam. A simple desk took up one wall, holding not only a microphone but a sound mixer and a laptop.
Makenna’s mind blanked. She stared at the setup, body tingling with cold anticipation as if it knew what her mind couldn’t yet process. Beside her, Ashton gripped her hand. He looked nervous, perhaps waiting to see how she might respond only to find that her brain had been turned to mush.
“What…what is this?” she finally said around the lump in her throat. Her eyes began to sting. Was that the beginning of tears? She couldn’t tell.
“This is your own, personal recording studio.” Ashton leaned forward to kiss her temple. It was an intimate and familiar gesture.
She couldn’t take it.
Makenna needed out.
Ripping her hand from his grasp, she ran for the open front door. Outside, she gulped down fresh air. Her thoughts whirled through her head. She wasn’t sure how to organize them, which to turn over first. They all slammed against the person she thought she was, whittling her away.
Makenna didn’t want to be the kind of person who relied on someone else to do everything for her. She didn’t want to invite Ashton into her life and have him rescue her from her bills. They were her job, her responsibility. Not his.
She covered her face with her hands. They were cold, cooling the heat that emanated from her cheeks. His footsteps were soft behind her. She should have worried about how she could hear him approach, but she didn’t even notice the small fact. Not during the torrent of thoughts tumbling through her mind.
When she turned, Ashton was keeping a respectable space between them. He’d dropped to sit on a stump near the door, evidence of the wood he’d cut for the fireplace inside. He looked calm, but she saw the wave of copper washing over his eyes and the way he wrung his hands between his knees.
“You better go clean your mess,” was all she could say.
Looking him in the eye as he sat outside her home felt…too right. Ashton fit into her life in a way she’d never expected. He’d slid in and found space in what felt like a too cramped world, stretching it into something much more comfortable. If she let him, he would stay.
He idea of Ashton in her bed replaced her confusion with instant need.
For now, she would let him pick up the boxes scattered all over her living room. After that, she’d send him back to his own cabin. Because no matter how much she wanted to keep him, she knew she couldn’t be what he needed.
***
It was a small apartment, but it was the only place that had ever felt like home to Ashton. He didn’t expect her to make room for him just because he paid for the electric bill. Ashton knew he had to work for his place here, for his place beside her.
That work began with the recording studio. It might have been small, but the best recording spaces were often the smallest. It was why people loved to sing in the shower. Which was what he listened to as he leaned against the bathroom doorjamb. Makenna belted notes while she washed her hair. He admired the silhouette of her lithe body behind the shower curtain.
Craving crawled its way up his throat and sparked a hunger deep inside him. There might never come a day when she took him back. It was a thought he fed to his greedy beast over and over, though it never seemed to listen. The dragon was intent on Makenna.
He worried the beast’s desire would end in flames, but before he could think long on it, Makenna peeled back the shower curtain. Her face was a mirror of what he felt inside him. It gripped him and pulled him close.
Swallowing it back, he snatched her turquoise towel from the rack and unfolded it before her. Makenna’s expression faltered but softened into a slow smile. His heart swelled. He wanted her. There was no denying that. His beast only needed to be patient.
He couldn’t let the beast push her or she would push back. Whenever Makenna was ready, he would be ready, too.
She disappeared into the bedroom to return in pajamas, a pair of pink shorts and a black tank-top that proposed they stay in bed all day. His beast growled hungrily. It wanted to hear her scream for him, use that siren voice to shout his name while he filled her. Ashton sucked his teeth while he fought back the beast’s libido.
Makenna looked at him as she gathered her long, blonde hair in a pony-tail. “Well? Are you going home?”
He didn’t know how to tell her this was home. It was as close as he could get. The thought of returning to the cabin that still smelled like every other person who’d lived there filled him with dread. It made the beast restless. It would be only a matter of time before the beast broke loose if he went back there.
But, before he could make up an excuse to stay, Makenna bit her lower lip. He hesitated, held captive by the simple yet alluring gesture.
“Because if you aren’t…”
He waited, breath held, for her to invite him past the bedroom door. His cock rose, tenting the crotch of his sweatpants. There was no way she couldn’t see his need for her.
“I’ve heard that sleeping in the bathtub can be more comfortable than the couch,” she finished.
He growled. It escaped him before he could stop.
They stood, facing each other, the distance between hem charged with electricity. He felt it arc over his skin and try to pull him toward her. She was the center of his universe. He would always revolve around her. There was no way to tell her that wouldn’t make her revolt, so he kept the words locked in his chest for the right day.
Makenna didn’t retreat to her bedroom. Not right away. He dropped onto the couch and watched her retrieve the guitar case near her door. Pride filled him when she disappeared into the home recording studio. Worry tickled at the edges of his mind, wondering if he’d gotten her everything she would need.
While he strained to hear her melodic voice through the sound-swallowing foam, he pulled out his phone and did a little more research. He knew nothing about recording music at home, but he would become an expert just for her.
Chapter Eleven
Makenna tossed and turned. While she knew she needed sleep if she was going to get through two more work shifts the next day, it evaded her at every turn. For a while, she considered heading into the kitchen to make a cup of chamomile tea, but that would mean sneaking past Ashton.
She wasn’t even sure if he slept on the couch or in the bathtub like she’d jokingly suggested. Just knowing that he was in her apartment made her body buzz with anticipation. Her hands could feel him, as if he were there in the bed with her. She reached and wrapped her arms around something, but it was only a body pillow meant to take up the empty space in her bed. It wasn’t the man she couldn’t stop thinking about.
Her mind and body waged a war, both leaning in opposite directions. Her mind knew he couldn’t stay. Ashton not only deserved more, but if he stayed and tried to pay her bills, he would reduce his savings to nothing while he lived out here. Her body, on the other hand, cared nothing for logic or reason.
It demanded she hunt Ashton down and reclaim him.
Could her body know things her mind had not yet realized? For a while, she reasoned that perhaps they’d always been mates but had been too young to know it. It was a selfish desire and so she tucked it away when she put her back to the body pillow she desperately wished was Ashton.
Even though she did her best to ignore any thoughts of him, pressure and heat built between her legs. It throbbed inside her. She shifted her hips, trying to relieve the intense sensation. Nothing helped. She flopped onto her back. Her eyes went to the nearby nightstand and the vibrator it hid, but there was no way she’d hide the sound from a dragon shifter.
She could sneak out and check the apartment for him. If he’d lost control of his beast and wandered away again, she could pull out the vibrator and satisfy the need gripping her so tightly. She warned herself that she could run into Ashton again, but her body didn’t care, already hauling her out of bed.
Tip-toeing out of her room, she strained to see through the darkness. Her heart hammered behind her ribs, but it only made the throbbing between her legs faster and harder. It stole her breath as she tried to navigate the night-obscured room.
“What are you doing out of bed?” Ashton whispered softly.
She jerked upright, a tug in her lower stomach turning her toward the couch. There, she saw the faint outline of a man with his hands folded behind his head. He didn’t turned toward her or even stand, but her body was aware of him all the same.
“Things happen in the night that we can excuse in the morning,” he went on.
She ached for him to stand, to move toward her and take her in his arms. Her fists tightened at her sides. The sensation in her core doubled. It reached into her chest, down to her toes. She needed Ashton.
“I won’t be a mistake you try to cover up the next day.” His voice dropped to a low growl.
She could hear his own desire in that rumble. Why didn’t he come take her? She didn’t understand. If he wanted her so bad, he could have her. Every bone in her body already belonged to him.
“Do you hear me, Mac? Come back when you’re really sure, not just horny.”
Finally, his words were like a bucket of cold water. They splashed over her and took away the pulsing in her core. She let out a breath. This was a mistake. She was a fool to want him so badly.
But, when she passed the couch on her way back to the bedroom, she paused. Lust flared again. It brought with it a longing. Not just for his body and what he could do to her, but for his company. In all the years he’d been gone, she’d been alone. It wasn’t hard to believe he’d been alone, too. The city might be filled with people, but none would have understood what he was and what that meant.
“Come to bed,” she told him. When his form stilled, she added, “I don’t mean like that. We can sleep with a body pillow between us. It has to be more comfortable than the couch.”
Ashton was silent for a long time. When he turned to look at her, his eyes glowed like two pennies in the night. Her voice caught in her throat. The beast sat just beneath the surface of the man, but she wasn’t afraid. It was exhilaration, if anything, that filled her.
If sh
e wasn’t careful, she would break him. Sure, Ashton had broken her heart years ago, but this would be a very different kind of break. The divide between man and beast wore thin. If she let him get too close, let him think they could be mates, and then told him otherwise, it could destroy what little barrier held the beast back.
Yet, before she knew what she was doing, she held her hand out to him. He took it and let her lead him into the bedroom. His words rang in her ears again. She understood them now. If she gave in to her desires and changed her mind, it would wreak havoc on him. Even Ashton knew it.
If he knew she would pull back eventually, then why did he stay? He tempted danger every time he stepped near her.
“Is it easier? The struggle with your dragon—is it easier when you’re around me?”
Ashton let out a long breath. “Yes,” was his only reply.
“The dragon might find me familiar,” Makenna suggested. “That could explain why it’s so comfortable around me. It doesn’t have to worry about threats from me.”
Ashton said nothing. His silence was enough.
She was wrong.
No matter how Makenna wanted to explain Ashton away, she couldn’t. The beast took to her, not out of memory, but out of love.
She shook her head, trying to dispel the thought. Come morning, it would be gone, and her life would take over once again. She wouldn’t have time to think about dragons and mates while she delivered fresh coffee to every table in her section or counted change to patrons determined to pay with the coins between their car seats.
***
Makenna had been wrong.
There was no escaping thoughts of Ashton. When she woke beside him, hair tousled and jaw slack, she found no sign of the beast. It slept inside him, eased by her presence. The serenity of it all made her want to curl around him and sleep the morning away in the warmth of his embrace. His body beckoned her.
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