by Anya Nowlan
A chilled bottle of champagne waited to be uncorked, separate from the ‘welcome glass’ that had been poured out for her before. The study itself was lit low and smelled pleasant, like old books and comfort.
There was a sitting area with a couch and two chairs in one of the corners and it was behind that where Aeon procured the book from. He skulked over to the couch and sat down, flipping through the book until he found the spot he was apparently looking for.
“Here it is,” he said with some satisfaction, looking up at Isobel.
“What?” she asked, noticing that she was walking over to him only when she was already halfway there.
She managed to catch herself from sitting next to him, but only just barely. Instead, she sank into one of the plush high-back chairs instead.
“Here’s the first tale of the tournament.”
Aeon handed the book to her and his hand brushed against hers for a moment. That familiar trail of heat twisted through her in the loveliest way, bringing the night they’d spent together far too high to the surface. They pulled away from one another with obvious reluctance, though it seemed to come easier to Aeon than it did Isobel.
“I can’t read it,” she said, flipping through the pages and finding the script to be completely alien to her.
It reminded her slightly of Gaelic, but then again they could have just been scribbles as well and she would have been none the wiser. The illustrations, however, were clear enough. Vibrant images of dragons, in ones and groups, soaring through the skies and battling, and then a series of pictures of the princess and her champion, her dragon.
Isobel frowned slightly, her fingertips tracing the final image, where the dragon was protectively curled around the woman, and she leaned against him with a blissful smile on her face. It seemed that no matter where she looked, happiness kept staring back at her and mocking her.
“Things have barely changed since then.”
“But… why? It doesn’t seem like any of you guys would have that difficult of a time finding a wi-… a mate, or whatever you call it. Why go through all the trouble of, well, this?”
She stretched her hands wide, trying to encompass the ridiculousness of everything she’d gone through over the past week. Isobel didn’t even want to think about what her family must have been thinking, without having heard from her in so long.
“Tradition,” Aeon said, holding up his hand before Isobel could protest to it. “I know what you’re about to say. That it’s barbaric and insane and has no place in modern human society. And it is, you’re right, which is why many don’t take part.”
He paused for a moment and Isobel found herself hanging off the edge of her seat, waiting for what more he had to say.
“But for the rest of them, it’s the only time they can really measure up against one another, to see and be seen. If they get a woman capable of giving them young, well, that’s just a small bonus. No one really expects to find their fated here.”
“But they have,” Isobel said, her voice getting annoyingly frail.
“It happens,” Aeon nodded cautiously. “Rarely, but it does.”
“So why are you here, then? It sounds like you don’t think too highly of the event either.”
In her heart, she thought she knew the answer, but she needed him to say it.
“Because I owe you,” he said, giving her a stern, lingering look from across the table that separated them from one another.
“And that’s it?”
Disappointment welled in her bitterly.
“Is that not enough?”
Aeon leaned back in his seat, running his hand through his hair. It was a little mussed. In fact, all of him looked a little worse for wear, like he’d been teetering off the edge of a cliff for too long and it was having an effect on him now. Even his eyes looked a little sunken, though it made them all the more intense.
While before, he’d just been captivating in his broody, tall, dark and handsome kind of way, now he had this tint of danger to him that was all the more sexy.
Oh my god, you need to stop it, Isobel chided herself. It doesn’t matter how damn hot he is. This is not right and this is not okay.
So why did the thought of leaping across the table and curling up in his arms sound so damn inviting?
Silence lingered between them, Isobel finding no good answer to Aeon’s question and he seemingly not expecting one either. A twitch of worry crossed her expression as she watched this strong, unbreakable man before her, showing cracks she hadn’t expected to see.
Despite knowing that she probably shouldn’t, Isobel had asked Casey about Aeon. She’d heard all about him, the reclusive, mysterious time dragon that never shown his face in public or left his castle home. Until now.
She didn’t quite fathom what Casey had meant by calling him a time dragon, but maybe it explained why time seemed to both stand still and move far too swiftly when she was around Aeon.
“So, I have a proposition for you,” Aeon suddenly said, shaking her from her quiet musings.
“What kind of a proposition?”
“How about we use this time to get to know each other better? No strings attached. We’ll pretend like we’ve never met one another and start off from a clean slate. Before you say anything, do you have a better idea? One way or another, we’re stuck with each other for a few hours.”
A small chuckle rose to Isobel’s lips. Damn him for being so… disarming. If there was one thing she could definitely say about Aeon, it was that he could handle whatever situation he got himself wrapped up in.
The look on his face however didn’t make her think that he was quite so convinced of that at the moment, though.
“Is that a yes?” he asked, rolling back his shoulders and taking that lazy, manly slouch on the couch.
“It’s a definite maybe.”
“That’s all I need.”
Maybe that’s all I need as well, Isobel thought, feeling those butterflies in her stomach fluttering back and forth.
Aeon
“Okay, so let’s play this right then,” Aeon said, jumping up on his feet and extending a hand to Isobel.
She looked at it with a quirked brow but took it regardless, standing up as well.
“What are you plotting?”
“I’ve decided to make the best with what we have to work with.”
Gently but firmly, he led her by the hand to the dinner table. Her touch against his skin was just as magnetic as it had been the first time and his dragon roiled and rumbled within him. It was pure pleasure and Aeon wouldn’t mistake it for anything else.
As much as it pained him to admit it, he was pretty damn sure that even though he had set off on this year of ‘adventure’ with firm plans to do nothing other than work, he was willing to throw all that to the wind it if meant getting to spend more time with her. Time which awkwardly enough seemed to constantly be running out on him.
He pulled out the seat for her and she sat down, wearing a slightly confused and equally as bemused look on her face. Smoothly, Aeon looked under the covers to find the appetizers and set a plate of salad before her and then one for himself as well. He lifted the champagne from the cooler, giving it an appreciative look before holding it up for Isobel.
“Champagne?”
“Can we go without tonight?”
“My thoughts exactly,” he said with a note of relief he hadn’t expected to be coming.
Aeon took his seat, fussing around maybe a bit too much in a flailing effort to hide his nervousness. He leaned his elbows on the table and met Isobel’s gaze. In the flicker of the candlelight, she looked like an angel.
An angel meant for him.
Once again, he had to bat that thought away. It was too convenient, in a way. It couldn’t be her, right? Dragons were some of the most notoriously lonesome shifters in the world, partially because they rarely left their hoards, and partially because they simply were not that sociable. Many of them never found a mate and the ones that
did often picked them up from the tournaments, at least in Europe.
The idea that Aeon would stumble on his fated on almost the first night he was driven from the castle was preposterous. But then again, wasn’t fate supposed to work in slightly loopy ways?
“So, my name is Aeon Prevoir. Pleased to meet you,” he started, grinning mischievously.
“Isobel Evans,” she met him sharply, not missing a beat. “I’m from California, here on a… well, I guess you could call it a ‘vacation’.”
Isobel made air-quotes around vacation, rolling her eyes a little. Aeon smirked, stabbing his salad with a lack of appetite that was entirely driven by the sexy creature in front of him.
“And how’s it working out for you so far, Isobel?”
“Well, I have to be honest with you, I’m feeling a tiny bit confined.”
Both of them grinned and Aeon could feel himself relaxing slightly. She truly was a remarkable woman, keeping her spirits up like that in the face of all that had happened to her lately. He wasn’t sure if he could do the same, had he found himself in an equally impossible conundrum.
Shaking his head a little, he brushed those thoughts away. This was supposed to be a fresh start and dammit, he was going to play it like one. No matter what the outcome.
“At least the view’s nice,” he offered, keeping his eyes on her.
Isobel glanced to the windows to their left for a moment, before realization hit her. She blushed in the cutest way, flicking her eyes down to her food for a moment. When she cleared her voice, Aeon was feeling pretty damn smug, in the best way possible, of course.
“You could say that. I can’t argue with it.”
“So tell me about yourself,” Aeon continued, having to force himself to take a few bites of food every now and then to at least keep up airs that he could multi-task when in Isobel’s company.
“Which version do you want? The embarrassing one or the one that makes me look like super woman?” she asked flatly, munching on a cherry tomato.
“Whichever one’s the true one.”
“Okay,” Isobel said, setting down the fork and leaning forward in a conspiratory way. “Well, I work as a lawyer in a firm in New York City. I recently got dumped on my wedding day by my fiancé, and then I ran out on my wedding. After that, I came on a round trip to Europe that was supposed to be my honeymoon with my best friend instead of the man I was supposed to marry. And now, I’ve gotten kidnapped by a bunch of dragons and am… well, here.”
Aeon could feel his brows creeping up his forehead. He set the fork down and leaned back, considering the woman before him with newfound interest.
A fiancé, huh. That’s new.
“You’ve been busy,” he said, to which Isobel nodded, picking up her fork again in a listless sort of way.
He could see the shadows of sadness on her pretty face and it killed him to think that she’d been through so much pain. And that he might have only added to it instead of subtracting from it.
“So what about you?”
“Me?” Aeon asked, feigning fake surprise. “Oh, you know. This and that. I am a dragon shifter and the heir to the Prevoir family fortune. My family owns just about every nightclub in the world worth mentioning, along with a smattering of tech and high-end fashion companies. Despite being the Alpha of my family, my younger brothers used a loophole in the family rulebook and ousted me for a year, kicking me out of my home. So now I’m here, trying to charm a gorgeous woman while not making too big of a fool of myself.”
Aeon Prevoir had never been bashful, not even a little. Yet in this moment, he felt this dizzying swirl of nervousness and nausea within him, only made worse by his dragon. While he could tell himself time and time again that it didn’t matter what Isobel thought of him, he knew he was only lying to himself.
“So you’ve been busy as well,” Isobel said after a small gap in the conversation.
She had a look in her eyes he hadn’t seen before, some sort of an unvoiced questions being hidden behind layers of uncertainty. He wanted to push her to tell him what it was, but got the distinct feeling that this was not one of those times. Whatever she needed to know, she’d have to ask him herself.
“You could say that.”
Aeon smiled, liking the way she was picking up on the pattern of the conversation. She was a curious little thing, though. Aeon was all too familiar with how conversations flowed and as with most other things, he could see the general direction of each chat he had well in advance usually. With Isobel, however, he felt like he had no powers at all.
Everything she did came as a surprise to him and every word out of her mouth was solid gold to him.
“So a dragon shifter, huh. That has to be an interesting way to live.”
“It has its ups and downs.”
“What kind of downs?”
“Well, you’re tied down with the shackles built by centuries by your family. You are constantly compelled to stay as close as you can to the majority of your wealth, and even worse, you want to keep it in gold. You’re naturally inclined not to trust anyone and to see profit everywhere, even where it shouldn’t be made. And, perhaps worst of all, everything’s a constant challenge.”
Hearing himself describe it like that made Aeon frown slightly. It couldn’t be that bad, right? It was then that he realized that thanks to Isobel, he hadn’t been thinking about the hoard at all over the last week. She had consumed his thoughts and he didn’t mind one bit.
“Challenges can be good.”
“At times.”
Saying that, his back throbbed where the wounds were still fresh and healing. He felt sluggish and rationally, he knew he should try to cut the evening as short as possible to have time to recuperate for the next challenge. A thousand demons couldn’t tear him away from Isobel any earlier than he absolutely had to leave, though.
“I get the feeling you don’t get out a lot, do you?” Isobel said, smiling.
“Between my very challenging job of sitting around and growling at make-believe threats, I don’t, no. Which is probably why my brothers decided to pull one over on me. Do you?” Aeon countered.
“I guess not.”
She shrugged and her gorgeous hair cascaded over her shoulders deliciously. Aeon wanted to reach across the table and tuck those strands away behind her ear so he could see her face better. Though he had promised himself to play it slow and calm, he ended up doing just that.
The way she gasped softly as his hand touched the smooth skin of her cheek made a lightning bolt of desire ripple through him. His hand lingered there as their eyes met and her lips parted slightly. She looked so damnably radiant and pure right then.
When he pulled his hand away, hers went to the spot where he had touched her.
“I didn’t burn you, did I?” he asked, worried.
“No,” she said, shaking his head.
“Good.”
“So,” she started, twirling her fork in the air after a moment of silence. “Blueberry or banana pancakes? Choose wisely, I’m very particular about my pancakes and I can tell a lot about a man based on his choice.”
Aeon grinned. He was going to enjoy this night.
Isobel
The night was, in a word, wonderful.
Even thought she’d come into this thoroughly expecting not to enjoy herself, Aeon had broken down her defenses with playful ease. She couldn’t even be annoyed at him for it, because the way he looked at her told her that he felt much the same.
It’s not like the odds were in our favor that this evening was going to be anything other than a disaster, she mused, sitting curled up on the couch next to Aeon.
He was leaning against one armrest while she was next to the other, but her legs were up on the couch and he’d pulled them in his lap. As time passed, their conversation had gotten more and more playful and Isobel had found herself laughing a lot. It was a relief.
They’d cycled through all the uncomfortable topics they could handle – she’d bitc
hed about Joshua and he’d growled about the tournaments and how his brothers had pulled one over on him – and then tackled a lot more fun stuff.
She found him charming and funny, in a dry, deadpan kind of way. And, of course, impossibly sexy, which was becoming a little uncomfortable by now. Especially when his hands ran up and down her legs, massaging her feet absently, reminding her what she had been missing. His touch was so nice and comforting, filling her with a constant warmth she wished she could bottle up and keep with her forever.
“You know, it doesn’t have to be so bad,” Aeon said softly, rousing Isobel from her thoughts.
Her head was propped against the cushion and she felt a tiny bit sleepy, but she wasn’t ready for the evening to end yet. If anything, she was living in constant fear of Grale coming to the door and telling her that it was time to go and get locked up again. The closer that moment came, the more she found herself worrying about what the next challenge would be and how it would all play out.
She might have not been ready to admit it to herself yet, but Isobel was firmly on team Aeon by now.
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe fate’s on our side with all of this,” he continued, sounding somewhat distant. “This can’t all be a coincidence. I think I was meant to find you and though I don’t approve of how this has all played out, I think this could have a happy ending.”
“What’s your definition of a happy ending?”
“I win. You get your life back. Whichever version of it you want.”
Isobel frowned slightly, though a sliver of a moan passed over her lips as Aeon’s hands deftly worked her aching feet.
She clamped her hand over her lips and Aeon grinned, averting his gaze as she wrestled with her blush.
When she came to Europe, she’d been planning on not wearing a pair of high heels for the duration of the trip. The dragons, however, would provide her with nothing but teetering heels. Probably so she could at least pretend to reach up to their shoulders or something.