But last night she had felt special, and it seemed her night with the dragons was still emanating from within her, making her feel a little stronger than she had before.
She walked down the main stairs to her office, listening to her flats clatter softly on the marble in the silent, empty house. It was still early, and the dragons seemed exhausted after their night together.
They’d been working a lot lately. She knew that’s why they were desperate to find a mate.
Something about it would help them, so she couldn’t stand in their way.
She grabbed a breakfast shake from her mini fridge and started up her computer so she could read any new emails from Jace. Since there were none, she did her usual routine of listening to any new messages for the dragons and going over their schedule.
She worked for several hours, and when it was nearly lunchtime (though she wasn’t hungry), she heard a knock on her door.
She knew it was Tor before he even swung the door open. She felt blood move into her face at the sight of his huge body. As much as she had loved having Perry inside her, she couldn’t wait to experience Tor as well. She hoped they would have time for that.
“Me, too,” he said, replying to her thoughts with a wink.
Dammit, she would never get used to that. “It’s not fair,” she said, standing and putting something away in a nearby filing cabinet. “It’s so one-sided, you hearing my thoughts when I can’t hear yours.”
With a low growl, he came up behind her, and she felt his huge arms come around her.
It was odd to have him be so openly affectionate, but she guessed it was a little less odd after what had happened last night.
“Tor…” she said. “I have to work.” Not to mention he was completely overwhelming her and making it hard to stand.
“You can take an hour off,” he said. “I want to take you somewhere.”
She turned to face him. He was wearing a leather jacket over a blue, button-up shirt and loose, dark jeans. His dark hair was combed to at least face mostly in one direction, and his usually intense face was relaxed, almost peaceful. “Where?”
“You’ll see,” he said, scooping her up.
She gasped as her feet left the floor, feeling tiny in Tor’s arms. “I can walk.”
“This is faster,” he said. “You’d take all our time with your puny legs.”
She grumbled something unintelligible and then settled in against him, resting one palm on his warm, large chest. Sometimes she could swear she could almost feel the dragon inside him, winking at her with one yellow eye.
But maybe that was just her active imagination.
“Tor?” she asked as he carried her down the front steps and out of the mansion.
“Yes?”
“Are you feeling okay? You seem… different.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe I’m tired of just teasing you and pretending there isn’t more to this. Maybe I don’t want to waste any more time being mean to you when I can be getting to know everything about you. Who knows how much more time we have?”
“Isn’t that all the more reason why you should be protecting yourself?” she asked, looking up at him. “Because I’m going to have to go and forget you, you know.”
He nodded, his face stern once again. “I know. But even if this is only one part of my life and I’ll never have anything like it again and it’ll hurt me to remember it afterward, I want to enjoy it while I can.” He set her down when they were a safe distance from the house. “Can you stay here a moment and put your arms up?”
“Sure…” she said hesitantly, raising them as he walked a few steps away and then disappeared.
And then she heard the unmistakable beating of dragon wings against the air and felt something wrap around her middle and lift her. Tor was holding her.
She watched the grounds and the mansion get smaller as he lifted her in the air and then turned toward the nearest mountain and flew that direction.
She enjoyed the wind against her skin, the secure feeling of Tor holding her, and just the awe she felt in his giant presence. He was a completely different form, one she could feel rather than see, yet she felt completely safe with him.
Dragon or man, he was just Tor to her.
She felt him look back at her and could swear he was smiling.
They flew closer to the mountain, which was covered with greenery and rocks, and Tor landed on a flatter area that had been cleared off naturally by some sort of landslide a long time ago. When he landed, the whooshing noise stopped, and she stumbled on her feet as he let her go.
Then he was there, as a man, holding her close.
“It’s so cool you get to keep your clothes afterward,” she said, letting him help her over to a rock to sit on. “All the wolves and the tiger I saw transforming just tore out of theirs. I guess they had to be naked after.”
Tor gave her a solid glare. “I don’t want you thinking of other men naked. Not right now.” He nodded. “But dragon magic is pretty cool. I’ll give you that. Not that everything about being a dragon is perfect. Some things are kind of fucked up.” He stared at her as he said that, and she wondered if he was talking about the mating requirements and the fact they couldn’t be together.
Then he looked out in front of them and gestured for her to do the same. When she did, she drew in a deep, intentional breath.
“It’s so beautiful.”
“I know,” he said.
In front of them, the land sprawled out in all directions, green and lush. In the distance, clouds floated, low and puffy and tinged with gray, and the little mansion in the distance looked so lonely, so tiny it could have been a doll’s house.
And farther in the distance, she could see the nearest city. And then she knew the world would stretch even farther beyond that.
But right now, sitting next to Tor, instead of feeling small and unimportant, she felt like she was on top of the world.
Then his arm came around her, hugging her close. “I wanted you to see this. I like to come here when I go flying. When I’m stressed or something’s bothering me or I need to think.”
She grinned over at him. “I didn’t take you for the thinking type.”
“Hey,” he growled. “I may be the brute muscle and unable to think like Perry, but I think I do okay. Me not so stupid,” he muttered playfully. Meanwhile, his hand that wasn’t around her reached over to hold hers, intertwining their fingers.
It was odd, after so many weeks of flirtation and back and forth, to finally settle into something genuinely affectionate. But the more it happened, the more it felt okay.
“Oh, don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not done teasing you. I’m just giving you a break for a while.” His tone turned more serious, his blue eyes focusing intently on the view in front of him. “Though, since I don’t know how much longer you’ll be here, I want it to be a good time, not a bad one.”
She nodded, looking out as well. With the cool air around them, she felt like she wanted to stay there forever. Only with Perry as well.
“Perry will never allow us to be together. He’s too much of a good person. Whereas, me…” His hand tightened against her slightly. “I’m selfish.”
“Selfish?” she asked. “Because you want to choose who you’re with?”
He used their hands to point out at the land in front of them. “Way out there, hundreds of miles in every direction, are people and shifters who depend on us. It used to be six dragons per region. Now we’re stretched to only two each. It’s that much more important to take a mate who can gain a dragon power.”
Her heart sank. “So that’s why you need a particular kind of mate?” she asked. “That’s why the disaster thing?”
He nodded. “That’s part of it. But yeah, if we find the right mate, she’s granted one of the powers. That gives us a better chance to survive.”
“What are the other powers?” she asked. “How do you know which she gets?”
“There are six, as I said. Mine is super
strength and durability as the red dragon. Perry can read minds, even dragon minds, and communicate telepathically as well as move things with his thoughts. He also is just really freakin’ smart.”
She nodded. Tor ran a hand through his dark, short hair, ruffling it, and she reached up with a grin to push it back into place.
That made his expression soften again. “There you go, making me like you.”
“Sorry,” she said glibly.
“It’s okay,” he said, waving a hand. “It was inevitable.”
“Why?” she asked. “Because you loved teasing me?”
“No,” he said, narrowing his eyes at her. “Because you’re perfect. You’ve looked at shifter stuff enough to know we like our women curvy.”
“Sure,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean you get emotionally involved with them.”
He shrugged. “You just fit well with me and Perry. That’s all.”
“Anyway, the dragon powers?” she asked, wanting to change the subject. There was no point talking about how right she was for them when she was really all wrong. She couldn’t give them a third dragon power, though she didn’t know why. She trusted they knew, however, and that was enough.
“Right, there’s the gold dragon, and he has an invincible shield he can put up over things. He’s usually paired with the purple dragon, who is the leader of the dragons and able to see the future in dreams.” Tor wrinkled his nose. “Kind of a nasty power if you think about it.”
“Yeah,” she said, cocking her head. “Not sure I’d like that one.”
Tor nodded. “Anyway, then there are the last two. The blue dragon can heal others, and the black dragon has a fire that is extremely poisonous and can wipe out large groups of enemies and shifters, things that would normally be nearly impossible to kill.”
“Then why is he usually paired with the blue dragon?” she asked.
“Because the black fire takes a massive toll on the black dragon,” Tor said. “Or so I hear. We don’t interact with any other dragons really. But anyway, yeah. The blue has to heal him.”
“And then you and Perry compliment each other because he has the strategy and you have the strength,” she said.
“Yup.”
“Hm,” she said, sitting back with folded arms. The wind was so nice, and she needed to relax so badly that she reached back and pulled out her bobby pins and her hair band, letting her hair free to whip in the wind.
Tor looked over at her. “You’re beautiful that way. Not that you aren’t pretty with a bun, but I love to see it all wild and free like that.”
“You’ve only seen it like that in bed,” she said.
“Not true,” he said. “Occasionally, when you are around the mansion late at night or early in the morning, I’ve seen it. So curly.”
“It’s natural,” she said. “I’ve just never found time or desire to straighten it.”
“I like it how it is,” he said, twirling a lock around his finger and bringing her closer.
His eyes dipped to her lips, his long lashes lowering and then rising so he could look into her eyes. Then his hand moved down over the back of her neck and pulled her forward, sealing her mouth with his.
The warm heat between them contrasted the harsh wind around them as the breeze picked up on the mountain. His arms closed around her, shielding her from the cold, and she felt warm and safe and, as his tongue melded with hers, very aroused.
But it was a soft, warm kind of arousal, the kind you just want to sit and savor rather than rushing to do anything about it.
She let the pressure between them build slowly, arching against him and tilting back to give him better access to her mouth so he could stroke slowly and more deeply.
She moaned against him and felt his arms tighten. She loved those little hints of his incredible strength and dug her nails into his powerful back.
He pulled back to take a ragged breath, and when she looked up, she saw flashing gold eyes with long slits, just for a moment, before he closed them and came in for another kiss.
His dragon was just beneath the surface. She didn’t know how much was him and how much was it, but she loved both.
She let both hold her.
She loved the dragon that let her fly in the sky and the man who sat here and told her his feelings. And made love to her with his mouth.
She kissed him deeply, trying to drink in everything he was. Trying to save it inside for whenever she would need it. Trying to ignore that the wind was getting colder, angrier around them.
She held on to him tight and let the wild heat build to an inferno inside her.
When he released her, she looked deep into his eyes, then noted each feature. His strong nose, that straight, hard jaw, the stubborn tilt of his curved lips, those frank, pretty eyes. His sheer masculinity.
For a moment, she didn’t want to ever forget.
Tor blinked at her. “I don’t want you to either.”
She nodded and rested against him. The rest didn’t need to be said. Things would go on as usual. Perry would ensure that. By the time it was over, she’d be grateful they had let her go with no knowledge of what had happened.
Until then, she’d try not to think about it.
Right now, she just wanted to enjoy the moment with Tor.
8
A couple days later, Perry was finding it hard to keep his mind on their work with their secretary around.
She was much more than a secretary now, and he didn’t know exactly how to handle it. Tor had responded by giving fully into his feelings with the knowledge it was going to hurt like shit in the end.
Perry didn’t know exactly what to do. Even when he was planning the next move in helping in the case against Felding or Domingo, he couldn’t think straight. When they had to go out to track down and end a rogue shifter or bring one in for interrogation, as they had today, he kept finding himself distracted. By her big brown eyes questioning him silently on why they couldn’t be together even though they got along so well.
They had just gotten back from a mission, and Tor was downstairs “talking” to a wolf to extract information that might help them with any remaining loyal to Felding, so Perry took advantage of the relative silence to walk down to Lexie’s office, just to see her.
He would just make sure everything was okay. That was his excuse anyway. He knocked on the door, and when she called for him to open it, he did, peeking around the door before walking in.
As usual, the sight of her disturbed him in ways it shouldn’t. He should have better control than this. Instead, he found himself wanting to take her again.
He shook his head and sat in a chair in front of the desk, slinging his long legs over the side and resting his hands behind his head.
She looked up at him a moment, a secretive smile on her face, and then looked back to her computer, clicking here and there and then typing something he couldn’t see.
Watching her there, totally at home in their home, not intimidated at all by their presence, he wondered if this whole situation would have happened with any female they brought into their confidence and lives or if there was something uniquely her that made them both fall for her.
Maybe they were just lonely and eager to bond. Maybe their dragons were bored. Or maybe, as he suspected, it really was her. The way she worked hard, never doubted them, studied their world and was genuinely interested in it, and trusted them without asking anything in return.
The way she was beautiful in a quiet way that shone more to them every day as she revealed her personality and learned to hold her own, even against Tor.
Maybe it was the way she’d spent the days since their lovemaking helping them find a mate, even though he’d seen inside her head she was falling in love with them.
He couldn’t understand it. She wasn’t dragon-hearted, but she had to be fairly selfless.
“Any new options?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “You might want to widen it up and ask t
he rest of the tigers. I get the feeling other things are distracting Jace right now, try as he might to get this done for you.”
Perry cocked his head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
She just shrugged her shoulders. “Family stuff.”
Perry didn’t want to think about that. It made him think about their own impending mate-dom, which if he were honest, he wasn’t particularly looking forward to. In his dark, stupid moments, he felt like Tor did. That maybe they should test fate and stay with Lexie. He could picture a pleasant future for the three of them, if only the rest of the world would stay outside.
If only it wasn’t their duty to keep so many safe.
“You’re quiet over there,” she said. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking you’re something else,” he said. “Sleeping with us and then helping us find another woman to mate with.”
“Tor told me a little about the importance of it,” she said.
“What did he say?” Perry asked, sitting up a little straighter. Dammit, if Tor had—
“Nothing much. Just that you need to find the right mate in order to have a third power. And he told me about the dragon powers, which I already knew a little about.” She waved a hand. “Not that much. But enough that I know there are people counting on me. Besides, I promised you and Tor I could do this.”
Perry nodded. “We appreciate it.” But did he? He knew her suggestion to involve all the tigers was a good one, but he would wait another couple weeks. For some reason, the rush to find another woman just seemed far away.
He knew he was being a bit stupid, but considering the sacrifice he would have to make in the future, he figured he and Tor were owed a bit of a delay if they wanted one.
“Want to come eat lunch with me?” he asked. “Tor is busy.”
She cocked her head at him and put a hand over her stomach. He loved her shape, loved especially the rounded hips and stomach that were so feminine and nice to touch. “I guess so. I’m not that hungry, but I will be.”
“Good,” he said, reaching out a hand and leading her around the desk. “I already put two sandwiches in the fridge for us earlier.”
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