by Zoe Chant
She said, “What do you think about me?”
“Right now it’s mostly monosyllables,” Theo admitted. “Wow. Hey. Hot.”
“Seriously.”
“Every word of that was serious. But also—I really admire you. You’re able to hold onto what’s good and valuable about your family without getting mired down in the bad. I’ve never known how to do that.”
She ran her hand down his chest, feeling his heartbeat, the slight soft scratchiness of the chestnut-colored hair there. “Can you tell me about your family?”
He nodded. With the way they were lying, she felt that more as a jostle of his chin against her head. That too made the bed quiver and let out a mournful squeak, like it wanted them to know that it didn’t have a family.
“My parents died when I was seventeen.”
That was more tragedy than she’d wanted to bring into pillow talk. “I’m sorry. That must have been so hard, coming along right when you’d been pushing their buttons.”
He stroked her shoulder and said nothing to that for a long moment. Then he said, “Thank you. And yes, it was. Even now, I feel like I’m lying if I talk about it without mentioning that I’d been a thorn in their side for their last few years.”
“You were a kid.”
“Not after that.” He said it calmly, as a cold, hard fact. “I couldn’t see any reason to stay and be shuttled around between houses of whoever was willing to take me in. I’d applied to college—that was one of our arguments—so I just left early. I washed dishes in a campus diner until the semester started. I haven’t been home since.”
“Your parents didn’t want you to go to college?”
She had other questions, too, like why he thought he would have bounced around among neighbors instead of being placed with the nearest relative or in temporary foster care, but this seemed at least a little touchy.
“Riell is a very small town. A strange town, by the standards of the rest of the world. It was unusual for anyone to leave—I only knew one woman who did. Our doctor. I liked her. She taught me how to drive when no one else would, and she’s the one who gave me a broken-down old Chevy to leave the valley when the time came. I owe her a lot.”
It was hard for Jillian to believe towns that tight-knit and small-minded still existed. She was just thankful that the doctor had been there to show Theo the possibilities of a wider world.
“Everyone in the valley is... old-fashioned,” Theo went on. “I know it shows. I’ve watched a lot of TV to try to get acculturated, but I know sometimes I sound—different.”
“You mean you sound like you would use the word ‘acculturated’ in a sentence?”
Theo laughed.
“I like the way you talk,” Jillian said. “It’s gentlemanly. Not in a ‘let’s sit and smoke in the billiards room while the ladies do their chatting in the parlor’ way, but in a real way. I work around kids all day. It’s nice to hear someone sound... courteous.”
“Thank you, milady.” He gave an exceptionally courteous pet between her legs, where all of her twitched longingly but exhaustedly forward.
She groaned. “You’re such a tease.”
“You’re trying to seduce me while I talk about my childhood,” Theo said primly.
“I wasn’t trying to seduce you!”
He tilted her chin up. Humor shone from his eyes.
“You mean,” Theo said, “this is you not trying to seduce me? Where would I be if you were actually putting an effort in?”
“On a circular waterbed, no doubt,” Jillian said, “with a mirror on the ceiling.”
Another warm chuckle. He returned to his lazy caressing of her shoulders and back.
“You could say that I come from a group of people who have a very particular way of life that they wanted to hold onto,” Theo said. “The valley where I was born—it was settled generations ago by our ancestors. It was ours. And keeping it—keeping what we had there—seemed to everyone like the most important thing.”
“But not to you?”
“I felt trapped. I wanted to stretch my wings. Then when I was out, I realized how the rest of the world saw us: stuffy, narrow-minded, secretive. Snobby, arrogant. It’s not untrue, but it’s... the valley, in the morning, it’s so beautiful. You can see the river light up so golden like it’s caught on fire.”
“And the people?”
“In their annoying, claustrophobic way, as beautiful as the river at dawn. But I don’t know how to learn their good lessons without learning their bad ones.”
“I don’t think anyone ever figures that out,” Jillian said. “We just spend our whole lives trying. What are you afraid you’ll learn from them? A hatred of contractions and water parks?”
“Self-satisfaction. Arrogance. A way of looking at the world that makes everything about greed and acquisition, about earning without ever giving.”
He could have been describing her own fears. Unfortunately, that meant she had no reassurance for him.
All she could say was, “I don’t think you’re the kind of person who wouldn’t give anything back to the world.”
Should she be falling for him as fast as she was? She didn’t know that she could help it: there was no irritating fault she could grab onto to slow herself down. Maybe the morning would show her some. Maybe he would turn out to be obsessed with paint-by-numbers clown paintings.
Or maybe if she got him to talk about his job, he would grow suddenly, compellingly boring. Jillian had never known a guy who could talk about work without getting at least a little boring.
“I’m sure your parents would be proud of your job, even if they wouldn’t have expected it.”
“Maybe.” He didn’t sound at all sure. “But I’m sure they still would have wanted me to ‘get it out of my system’ and come home as soon as possible.”
“My dad always thought I would come back for the money,” Jillian said. “He figured the nonprofit work would scratch the good person itch but then I would still come around and let him buy me dresses and cars.”
“Do you like dresses and cars?”
“I do. And I wind up buying vintage on both.”
He smiled, and she looked at it upside-down, her head tilted back. He had a very bitable lower lip.
“Vintage often gives you better value,” Theo said. “As with the lace.” He seemed to be doodling on her bare shoulder with one fingertip and she found it funnily soothing. “Tell me about your job.”
“I asked you first.”
“You did, didn’t you? All right, Miss Marcus, I like my job—at the moment, I like it even more than usual. Thanks to my family, I know a lot about worth and a lot about antiques, so I handle most of our asset forfeiture cases. None of them have ever gone quite like this. I’m sorry that’s how we had to meet.”
She shook her head and then nudged herself upwards just enough to kiss him. “It was always going to be a bad day, Theo, but you made it so much better.”
“I know it’s hard to go through.”
“I just keep telling myself that it’s like Gretchen said. This will help people, and every little bit will mean something. If it will make things better for the people Dad hurt, I’ll rip the light fixtures out of this place with my bare hands.”
“You’re a good person,” Theo said softly.
She could feel herself flush, warmed by that down to her toes. She knew it was silly to go through life hoping to get approval or praise and she was good about not expecting it. But after a life spent trying to be as good as she could be to make up for what she knew her dad was—she felt a kind of prickle behind her eyes to be described that way.
“And I like protecting you,” Theo said. “Looking out for you. I don’t like that I have to, but—I think I’d want to do it anyway, necessary or not.”
Usually she was the one who did the protecting.
You can still protect him, a voice seemed to whisper. You might not have a gun and washboard abs, but you know how to deal with family hist
ory. He needs that.
And if it was too early for her to care about what Theo St. Vincent needed, she didn’t care.
I’m falling in love with him. I’m falling—
Asleep.
6
Theo
That morning’s dawn came without dragon weather skies. That was fine with Theo, who watched the sun come up from the half-moon attic window. He’d already gotten everything he wanted.
He’d even gotten out of the brass band of a bed without waking Jillian, which made her the deepest sleeper he’d ever known. Maybe this was the one time she got to be completely selfish, completely self-indulgent.
It certainly felt selfish and self-indulgent of him to look at her like that. She was still naked from their lovemaking, her bare skin a dusky peach against the ivory sheets, her lightly freckled shoulders exposed where the covers had fallen down. The sheet was gossamer thin and clung to her body, highlighting the curves of her hips and belly and hinting at the dark rose of her nipples. He could still remember the taste of her there, so slightly but distinctly different from the taste of her mouth or her skin. Somehow the taste of her nipples and their texture against his lips and tongue had foreshadowed the sweetness between her legs.
She looked like a priceless Pre-Raphaelite painting, all tumbled red hair and rounded arms.
My mate. I found my mate.
Even if he hadn’t been a shifter, he would have known soon enough that they were meant for each other. It wasn’t just her laugh or her unruly hair. It was how she cared about duty and honor, how she dove into hard but necessary work, and how she kept on being kind and selfless despite everything she saw from life. He wanted to spend his day getting to know her. He wanted to spend his life getting to know her.
He checked his phone. He had roughly a hundred “I told you so” texts from Gretchen. The last one said: I had to explain what’s going on to the team. So you just have the harder job now of explaining what’s going on to HER. She’s a smart woman. She’ll know it’s good news.
But was it good news for her? It wasn’t like she didn’t already have enough upheaval going on in her life. Maybe she hadn’t been looking for sudden, destined love.
He knew their connection meant something to her, even if, being human, she couldn’t perceive it immediately. She hadn’t taken him into her bed casually. That had been plain enough in her eyes, which were too expressive to hide tenderness, and just as plain again in her lovemaking, which had been too enthusiastic to deny passion.
Maybe she would be pleased.
Of course she will be pleased, his dragon said. We are her treasure just as she is ours.
No one did smugness quite like a self-satisfied dragon.
Well, it was earned satisfaction, Theo supposed. His dragon had always looked askance at his human half’s assurance that the mate bond didn’t really matter and that they could be perfectly happy without it.
All those years of formless longing had been leading to this woman and her incredibly noisy bed, so the years had been worth it. He was sure the worry of the next few hours would be worth it, too.
It occurred to him that the gentlemanly thing to do would be to go down and face Tiffani, who had undoubtedly been able to hear every last squeak and thump last night. The least he could do was make her breakfast to compensate for the awkwardness.
“I’ll make you French toast,” he said to Jillian, his voice quiet. “Or anything you like.”
He bent down and kissed her hair. She made a pleasant crooning sound before burrowing further down into the pillow.
He went downstairs to be Emily Post.
Tiffani was sitting in the kitchen, wearing a peacock silk robe over plaid flannel pajamas. The outfit clashed in a way Theo admired: a veneer of sophistication on top of very practical comfort. Human inside, dragon outside.
“Good morning, Deputy Theo.” She raised a cup of coffee to her mouth, but it didn’t hide her smile. “How did you sleep?”
“I think the better question is how you slept. I’m hoping deeply and thoroughly. And quickly.”
“Sweetheart, there wouldn’t have been enough deep and thorough and quick in the world. Coffee?”
“I’ll get it, please don’t get up.” At least fetching it let him turn away to the wall until his blush subsided. “I wanted to make breakfast for you and Jillian, if I could.”
“My kitchen is your kitchen,” Tiffani said. “Actually, as of nine AM sharp yesterday, it’s more yours than mine. Do with it as you will. I even did an early morning shopping run, since I imagine the two of you burned plenty of calories and will want a four-square breakfast.”
The blush refused to subside. He was guessing she knew it. He could hear the smile in her voice when she spoke again, even though what she was saying didn’t sound much worth smiling over.
“Gretchen emailed me the list of what Jillian and I get to keep. It’s not long, but it covers what I care about. I can’t speak for Jilly, of course, but at least she took her most beloved things out of here years ago. All in all, Deputy Theo, I think it’s fairly generous, so, like I said, breakfast’s on me. And at least that’s mine to give.”
“It was never our intention to leave you with nothing.”
That was true. Even if the Marshals made a habit of stripping families to the bone to pay for one person’s sins—and Theo wouldn’t work for them if they did—he would still have made sure Jillian and Tiffani were taken care of. Jillian was his mate. Her love for Tiffani made Tiffani his family, too.
“I know,” Tiffani said. For a moment, he thought she was responding to that last thought. That they were family.
He turned to look at her, no longer caring if his face was red.
Yesterday, she’d been frazzled and worn, with runny mascara and smeared eyeliner. This morning, her eyes were dry and she looked tired but not exhausted.
“I know,” she said again. “No man who offers to cook breakfast is going to screw up a woman’s life. Not when he looks at her like you look at Jilly. I don’t know if that’s true, but it should be. Make breakfast for my girl, Theo. She deserves the best. I loved Gordon, but Jilly is the only part of him I still want to keep.”
*
Jillian came downstairs an hour later as if tugged there by the smell of French toast. Her sleep-tousled hair was loose around her shoulders and her long legs were bare and mostly exposed by a pair of soft cotton sleeping shorts.
She smiled at him cautiously. “Good morning. I was worried you were gone.”
Shit. He should have never have left her alone upstairs without a note. It hadn’t occurred to him that since she was used to people vanishing on her, she might think he’d regretted their night together. It hadn’t occurred to him because it seemed so self-evidently wrong.
He abandoned his spatula and went over to kiss her.
“I got up,” he said, his lips still close to hers, “so I could make you breakfast. Otherwise no power in the universe could have taken me out of your bed.”
Her smile gained confidence. “That’s acceptable.”
“Once you’ve tried my famous French toast, you’ll admit it’s better than ‘acceptable.’ You’ll never let me sleep past six again.”
He had spoke of their future together without meaning to, remembering too late that she wouldn’t have the same rock-solid belief in it. He girded himself for her to draw back from him.
But instead, she flushed with pleasure. She looked almost the way she had last night after her first climax, when her cheeks were still pink and her fingers were still tangled in his hair. She’d said his name like it was music.
Now she said, “Famous, huh?”
“World-famous.” He pulled her slightly closer to him. Her body was so soft. All he wanted to do was to sink into her, to bury himself in her sweet, yielding curves and never come up for air again.
Jillian put her mouth against his ear and said, in a seductive purr, “Your French toast is burning.”
“That�
��s your fault,” Theo said, turning quickly to move it off the stove. He sadly surveyed the damage done and decided that he couldn’t subject his mate, the one and only love of his life, to a scorched breakfast. He started prepping another batch. “You sabotaged me. Like Mata Hari.”
“I think Mata Hari only did pancakes and waffles.”
“You’re ambitious.”
She stood beside him as he mixed the batter. He loved the obvious pleasure she took in breathing in the scent of cinnamon and vanilla extract. He knew it was a sign of trust that she was given him this early morning version of herself, rumpled and indulgent. They both took too much care weighing the impressions they made and trying to prove what they were and weren’t: relaxation wouldn’t come easily. But here she was.
In the soft light through the window, she was unguarded and more beautiful than ever.
She stuck her finger in the batter and then licked it clean. It was a distracting sight.
“Tiffani left?”
“I offered to cook for her, too, but I think she wanted to leave us alone. Last night wasn’t exactly subtle.”
“I don’t think you’ll rake in much cash selling that bed.”
“You’re joking. I’d never let that go. If it comes up for auction, I intend to outbid all comers.”
He drew his thumb across her lower lip. She drew him into her mouth like he was even sweeter than the vanilla. Blood abruptly left his brain.
“Careful,” Jillian said with an adorably wicked grin. “I don’t know how many batches of French toast we can go through before this turns slapstick.”
“Three. This is only batch two, so we have plenty of time.”
“I bet you say that to all the estranged daughters of white collar criminals.”
Theo pulled back just a little. “I don’t, you know.”
“Shh. Breakfast.”
He returned his gaze to the bowl and skillet, but his attention remained entirely on her. He dipped slices of bread, watching as they soaked up the golden-white batter. He wanted to give her the best of everything, and all his instincts as a dragon told him to load her down with jewels and finery. But truly excellent French toast would do if that were all he had on hand.