by Zoe Chant
Except now he had a vantage point on them he had never had before. He had the sight of his mate, with her auburn hair down around her shoulders and wet to the point that it was almost black, curling at the ends from the steam. His mate, with drops of water beading on her round hips and her full, bare breasts. Her nipples were flushed a little darker than usual—closer to rose than carnation-pink. It wasn’t a sight he could easily see while on the phone with his boss.
He was starting to feel that his own sense of duty was distinctly wobbly when desire intervened. He was also starting to think he was fine with that. Did that qualify as a new epiphany?
Still, he brought his mind back to the task at hand. Martin and the job deserved better from him than a wandering mind. “Is Gretchen still staying with Tiffani?”
“She is. Evidently she gave Gretchen a new haircut, but I haven’t seen it yet. Theo—how is Jillian?”
Naked.
“I can’t imagine it’s much fun to be the only human in a valley full of dragons,” Theo said, watching as Jillian sank back into the water and almost fully submerged herself, letting her hair float and spread on the surface like seaweed. “But she’s handling it. She’s already won over my doctor and my little cousin Isabelle.”
He had been trying not to say anything he wouldn’t want her to hear, but he surrendered to worry for a moment and lowered his voice, double-checking to make sure her ears still seemed to be underwater.
“She’s been quiet since we got here. I think the explosion shook her up and she doesn’t feel like she can talk about it since I’m the one who got hurt.”
There was a thoughtful silence at the other end of the line. Then Martin’s slightly gravelly voice broke it. “There may be another reason for her to be clamming up a little.”
A reflexive alarm went off inside him, his dragon bristling at the possibility of something hurting his mate. “What?”
“No one’s claimed credit yet for bombing Gordon Marcus’s house.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Maybe not. But if it’s a vigilante, usually we see at least some anonymous chatter about it, some grandstanding. Not a peep on this one. Nothing on the internet, no letter to the editor, nothing. And if it’s a vigilante, they’re a shortsighted one, blowing up the house after Marcus can’t enjoy it anymore anyway. The reparations that could go to the victims just decreased significantly.”
“Maybe they didn’t realize that before and that’s why they’re not claiming credit now.”
“Theo,” Martin said. “You and I both know what you’re not saying.”
Yes. That Gordon Marcus had torched his own mansion. Maybe in some complicated and likely misguided attempt to collect on insurance—if he thought Tiffani or Jillian would give it to him, if he even thought they’d get a payout in the first place—or maybe to eliminate some evidence of further wrongdoing.
Or maybe, the dragon in him suggested, he just didn’t want his hoard falling into anyone else’s hands.
Theo hated that he could understand that. He didn’t consider everything in his possession to be part of his hoard—his apartment, as he’d told Jillian, was full of meaningless gloss and shine, modernized emptiness—but he’d had some of his treasure all his life. There was a huge, uncut ruby that had been his first birthday gift from his parents (by all accounts, he had promptly tried to chew on it, which showed good instincts). There were golden chain bracelets he longed to see on Jillian’s wrists. These things felt as much a part of him as his own bones. Could he imagine letting someone else have them? Would he rather destroy them than see them fall into another dragon’s hands?
He thought—he hoped—that he could bear that loss if he deserved it. If he’d lost his honor, as Gordon Marcus had, what use would he have for treasure? Better to let it go, let it restore someone else’s life so he could begin the hard work of once again becoming someone worthy of respect.
But from everything Jillian had said and everything the evidence had shown, Gordon Marcus didn’t seem like the kind of man much inclined to hard work.
So—
“Yes,” he said to Martin. “I know what I’m not saying.”
This time when his gaze went to Jillian, he didn’t have the sweet distraction of losing his focus. Did she suspect something about her father that she hadn’t been telling him?
“Talk to her,” Martin said gently.
Not for the first time, Theo wondered what Martin’s marriage had been like. Once, he’d taken Martin’s non-mated marriage as a sign that he was right to think the mate bond didn’t matter. Now he didn’t know what to think, except he knew that no one could possibly compare to Jillian. Nothing could compare to the connection he had with her.
But he didn’t have that connection with his teammates, and that didn’t mean he didn’t care about them. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t be grief-stricken if they were gone.
So what did he know? If he knew more about being mated, Martin knew more about being married, about the responsibilities of being tied to another person. Even if you were tied by the purest and most complete love. If Martin said he should talk to Jillian, he should talk to Jillian.
“I will,” he said.
He hung up and put the phone down on the bench. Then, in full defiance of Dr. Mendoza’s orders, he stripped down and joined Jillian where she was floating in the spring, her eyes closed. They shot open when he splashed her.
“You’re getting your bandages wet!”
“I know.” He groaned as his muscles finally relaxed at the sensation of the heat soaking into them. “It’s worth it.”
“You could get an infection!”
“Everything is closed up.” He was ninety-nine perfect sure of that, anyway. “At this point the bandages are mostly to remind me not to shift yet. She still has to give me the all-clear for that.”
“I think she’d like to give you the all-clear for hot springs, too,” Jillian said, “but since you’re here...”
She floated over to him and slid onto his lap, her thighs to either side of his hips. His body responded immediately to her hot center pressing lightly against him. Then her mouth found his and he forgot any concerns he might have had. He forgot everything but her and the sweet, almost persimmon-like taste of her lips. Talk about a little heat to relax the muscles.
She was delicate with him, attentive to everywhere he was still bruised and mending, but no one, not even Dr. Mendoza, knew better than Jillian which parts of him were still completely alive to sensation and pleasure. She licked a line down his throat and curled her fingers against his shoulders. She slid up and down his lap, her lower lips parting and easy along his agonizingly hard cock.
Surrounded by gauzy white steam, completely naked, and flushed with desire, she looked like Venus coming out of the sea. He yearned to bury himself in her softness until all the aches and pains and uncertainties were gone from him.
He kissed her breasts and drew one of her nipples into his mouth, closing his lips around the stiffened peak and then dragging his tongue over it slowly, and then just as slowly around the pebbled circle of delicate, sensitive skin. She moaned his name, her body riding further up on his.
He reached under the water and ran his fingers over her mound, parting her and stroking her clit. She shook hard against his hand.
“Please,” Jillian said, her voice low and throaty. “I need you. I need you inside me. I’ve missed you so much, Theo.”
He knew the heat of the hot springs would eliminate any need for birth control; knew she was on it anyway. He spread her legs still further apart in answer and she whimpered, ecstatic and needy. He needed her so much too. Needed this, more than he’d ever needed anything. They were both scared and worried and alone except for each other. This felt like a promise they were making, he to her and she to him, to be sufficient to themselves, to be tender, to be there.
He thrust into her slowly but fully. Her inner walls tightened around him to the point where he had to
bite his lip hard to keep his focus. It was difficult. When he went so long without shifting, his skin seemed thinner and more sensitive, more attuned to tiny gradations in temperature or pressure. All his senses were heightened. He could smell the feminine musk of her even through the water. There was no way, he thought, to ever get all of what he wanted from her. He wanted to rub away the barrier between their two bodies until they were one. But that couldn’t be.
Jillian proved him wrong.
Lacing her hands around the back of his neck, she eased her hips forward and back, rocking him in and out of her. She was going gently because he was still hurt, but not only because of that. There was a hesitancy to her movements that it took him a moment to translate.
This was the first time they had made love since they had said that they did love each other. They were truly mated now. This was a kind of consummation: now, at last, they both knew everything and believed everything, and they were choosing each other. Jillian was going slowly because she was savoring the feeling of him inside her.
The only distance between them, the only separation, was being put there by his old habit of hoarding loneliness. But he knew better now. It was time to put that knowledge to work.
His dragon roared in agreement. Yes! We are worthy of our mate! We will bring our mate fire and gold!
His blood burned. He stroked his hands down her silky-smooth back and then down onto her ass, pulling her closer to him, changing the angle so that he could go even deeper inside her. Jillian moaned, her head falling back. He kissed her throat, wanting to give her a love-bite there like some overeager teenager, wanting to mark her, claim her in some way. He bit her earlobe instead and that was when she came. Her back arched and her whole body tightened around his cock to a point of exquisite, almost unbearable tension.
No, actually unbearable. He gave up on perfection for good and found his climax with hers. Some primitive part of him loved the idea of filling her with his seed—there was the mark he’d craved, the scent of his body on hers.
Her face was beautifully flushed, pink from the lovemaking and the steam, and her eyes glittered like jewels. No—better than any jewels. Like stars.
“I love you,” she whispered.
“I love you too. I can live without anything if I have you.”
“Without your wings?” She traced his shoulder blades with her fingertip. “I know it’s hard to wait.”
“It is, but—I know I’ll be fine.” He wryly thought that the best gift he could give her would be to not talk her through the winding maze of his self-doubt, but he wanted her to have a more tangible—and knowable—gesture than that. Something that would really prove that he was with her now and that he would be fine.
Something that said, I don’t have two halves of my life anymore, a dragon half and a human half. When I’m with you, I’m whole. You can have all my life. I trust you to think it’s worth sharing.
Also something fun.
Make love to her on top of your hoard, his dragon said.
We just made love, Theo pointed out. And I think you’re forgetting how many sharp angles there are in our hoard.
He grinned suddenly, sure he had thought of exactly the right solution.
“You have such a beautiful smile,” Jillian said.
“There’s a ball tonight,” Theo said. “Would you like to accompany me? We can find you a gown.”
“Balls? Ball gowns?”
“I know. Fairy tales.”
“Fairy tales,” she said, shaking her head. “I know you think you’re not interested in them, but I think this whole valley is very into the idea of reclaiming fairy tales. We have dragon antiheroes instead of villains. Yes, please, I’d love to go to the ball with you, Prince Charming.”
“I am honored.” He meant it.
But her smile faltered. “I need to tell you something.”
Adrenaline spiked through his veins, chilling him even in the midst of the hot spring. “What is it?”
She started off by looking a little over his shoulder, but before she spoke, she turned firmly back to him and locked her eyes on his. She was still straddling his lap, her thighs squeezing him just a little, as if she couldn’t give up being close to him. Like she wanted comfort.
“Sometimes in fairy tales there’s a wicked king,” Jillian said. “Someone who would burn down his own castle before he’d let anyone else have it. That’s my dad.”
There was a brief shimmer of tears in her eyes, like clouds threatening rain, but then she blinked and it was gone. While he’d been healing, she’d been hardening enough to accept this as the truth. He wondered when she had realized it.
“He broke into the house. He unpacked the fucking nutcrackers so he could take his favorite one. He planted the bomb. He probably didn’t make it, he never knew how to actually do anything, but he put it there.” She saw something in his face. “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”
“Only just now,” Theo said. “Martin thought it was a possibility. You were way ahead of me.”
“I’ve been on this case for years,” Jillian said.
He couldn’t stand the sadness of her smile and he wanted to kiss it away, but he had the feeling that he would only be hiding it. She would kiss him back, because she loved him and because more red hot sex would be a distraction from what she was feeling, but it wouldn’t make her pain go away. It wouldn’t change anything. This was something she would have to feel until she was done feeling it, and all he could do was be there. And take her to a ball. The princess and her dragon.
*
At first, Theo thought the evening was going well.
Dr. Mendoza had rustled up a gown for Jillian. It was deep azure silk with a plunging neckline that exposed the flawless tops of her breasts and a gold underskirt that would pick up the candlelight and complement the touches of gold in her hair. Jillian had protested all the way through the dressing process, her back to the mirror, saying she would look ridiculous, but when Theo turned her around to face her own reflection, her breath caught in her throat.
“That’s me?” she said.
He kissed the delicate shell of her ear. “That’s you.”
“Never mind water parks,” Jillian said. “We’re going to have to stay here forever so I can wear high fashion. I don’t even care if I get snubbed by everyone.”
He still bristled reflexively at the thought of anyone being less than courteous to her, but he knew it was happening. Especially early on, she’d had to spend time alone while he’d been healing, and so he hadn’t been there to glare daggers at anyone who dared to treat her like anything less than the woman she was. Tonight, he could fix that. He was hardly Riell’s most eligible bachelor and he was sure that they had all long since marked him as eccentric at best and a traitor at worse for choosing to leave, but he was still a dragon. No one would dare be rude to his mate in his presence.
Maybe that would force people to actually listen to Jillian.
“One more thing,” he said, and fastened a heavy ruby necklace around Jillian’s throat. “This doesn’t count as the first gift I’m giving you—I’ll need to think more about that. But it’s traditional to always wear a little red and a little gold, minimum, unless there are special circumstances—a wedding, a debut, a funeral.”
“It doesn’t go with the blue.”
“It doesn’t have to. No one will even notice it—it’s like... brushing your teeth. If you do it, it’s invisible; they’ll only pay attention if you don’t.”
“Minty fresh rubies,” Jillian said, touching the stones with her fingertips. “These probably cost more than I make in a year. Are they yours? Or Dr. Mendoza’s?”
He laughed. “No dragon with her wits about her would ever be able to let someone else borrow a piece this significant from her hoard. No, it’s mine. It came to me from my grandmother’s inheritance.” He slid one finger between her warm skin and the cold gold chain. “I know in some ways it’s a waste to have all this wealth that do
es nothing. But to us, everything in our hoard has a history: it’s family, legacy, honor. Beauty. I only feel like I wasted it by not having it on you—by not already knowing you so I can bedeck you in gold and gemstones that your beauty would put to shame.”
She tilted her head back until her dark brown eyes were looking up at him and her curly auburn mane of hair was against his chest. She said, “I promise not to think any of it’s wasted as long as I get to bedeck you too.”
It was tradition, in fact, that they seal their mate-bond—their marriage—by combining their hoards, and it was a quieter, more ancient tradition that this be done in bed. He wanted that: to feel the rings he had put on her hands and the rings she had put on his clink together as they grasped each other.
“It’s a deal,” he said quietly.
So they had certainly entered the ball in the best of moods.
Theo tried to find a balance between the two of them staying in company he knew would be agreeable—people who were at least curious enough about humans to be polite—and risking Jillian’s sense of ease to possibly change some hearts and minds. As he watched her glow with the high of the dragonfire and listened to her laugh at a slightly risqué joke, he started to think that he didn’t give a damn about hearts and minds. They could change on their own. All he wanted was for her to have a little happiness to make up for the last few days and for the trouble that would still be waiting for them when they left Riell. At the moment, all that seemed to matter was the steps of the waltz.
The laugh stopped in Jillian’s throat. She had stopped dancing and had a look on her face that made it seem hard to believe she’d ever been dancing, even as her dress was still coming to rest from its twirl: she’d gone pale and somehow adamantine. If she were a dragon, she would have shifted.
Theo didn’t ask her what was wrong. She didn’t look like she’d be able to get herself to talk. He followed her gaze instead.