Of course, thinking about how kissable Helena was at any given moment reminded Dolf of all the reasons that he hadn’t kissed her before now: namely, his friendship with her cousin Declan, the team’s unity, and their team’s cohesion, all things that could be jeopardized if he kept kissing Helena.
One kiss in a moment of adrenaline and high emotion might be overlooked. Two kisses became a pattern, maybe even a habit.
Dolf found that he very much wanted the opportunity to get into the habit of kissing Helena Tarleton.
Helena said something about a study then – specifically, about studying him – and Dolf said hastily “That sounds great. Really. But we need to go into the office tomorrow,” because she couldn’t possibly mean what his first lurid thought on the matter had been.
Helena blinked. “We do. Why?”
“To get you some protection! Why? What did you intend to do about the hellhounds?”
“Run like the wind.”
“That won’t do you any good! They can find you anywhere!”
“Even if I don’t use anything of my own to get out of town?”
“Even then,” said Dolf grimly, his thoughts going to Connor. Using what little he knew from Connor, he added “They sniff out your, I don’t know, soul or something.”
Next to him, Helena shivered.
“Do you think that they’ll be back tonight?”
“With the police crawling all over the place?” returned Dolf. “Nah. We’ll be fine here tonight. And then tomorrow morning, I’ll take you into the office, and get you set up with the boss. You’ll have protection before you know it.”
“I don’t know,” said Helena reluctantly.
“We’ll ask about the firm’s pro bono package,” added Dolf quickly, because Helena likely only owned whatever she had brought with her. “Gil will understand.”
He would! Helena was a good person who was in obvious need of help. And Helena was Declan’s cousin. Family meant a lot to Gil.
But Helena waved away his reassurances, saying, “It’s not the money. If Grandfather is going to know where I am anyway, then there’s no reason not to touch the money in my trust fund. I can probably afford to pay the proper rate.
“It’s just that I don’t know that hiring protection is going to solve my problem in the long term. Grandfather isn’t used to being denied anything. And as long as he’s still paying them, I’ll probably still have the hellhounds on my tail. But I don’t want to always need a bodyguard.
“I might be willing to give Grandfather my money – or at least a portion of it – if that would make him go away, but it won’t, since that isn’t what he actually wants from me.”
“What does he want?” asked Dolf, curious.
“To Sever me from my soul’s mate,” said Helena grimly, stunning Dolf. Glancing at his expression, she added “I haven’t met him yet, but apparently, he’s out there, waiting for me to find him.”
Dolf swallowed, hard. Suddenly, his head felt very light on his shoulders, like it might float away.
“Why would he want to do that?” he demanded, repulsed. He’d never even heard of such a thing!
“It’s like I told you when we first met: some dragons are entirely dedicated to preserving their hoard. Some share a wife with their brother, while others sever their soul bond and marry to advantage. The Tarletons do both whenever possible, which is why my aunt and uncles are such a mess. Grandfather has big plans for my future; plans that involved one, if not both, of those things.”
“But you didn’t want that,” said Dolf, still feeling lightheaded. And ill; he felt very ill.
“No, I didn’t,” said Helena. “I was lucky that my aunt and uncles wanted to save me, though. I never even suspected that I might have a soul mate, much less that Grandfather might want to sever the connection. But they did. So they told me to run and gave me money and passed me cousin Declan’s address, although I didn’t know that he was one of my cousins at the time.”
“But why would your grandfather want to do that to you?” demanded Dolf again, feeling equal parts bewildered and angry on her behalf.
It made no sense to him. Weren’t families, real families, supposed to be good to each other? To look out for one another? If this was what blood relations got you, perhaps he had been lucky to be on his own until he could find the right people to make up his pack.
It had been hard, and it had often hurt, sometimes nearly more than he could bear, but he hadn’t had to develop the same sort of hardness that Helena seemed to have in abundance. Dolf was grateful of that, at least.
“Probably because neither of my uncles’ attempts at marriage worked out, and my aunt’s marriage is hanging on by a thread,” said Helena coolly. “It’s been pretty obvious for a long time now to anyone with eyes that Aunt Barbara’s husband isn’t going to defend Grandfather’s legacy after Grandfather passes. After Grandfather dies, he’s just going to make himself happy, and my Aunt Barbara more miserable. Grandfather needs another protégé. I may not be able to shift into my dragon’s form – and you say that I may not even be a dragon – but I’m probably the only relative that he has left to barter for his hoard’s advantage.”
She said it so calmly, like she didn’t even care. But she must have cared a great deal, mustn’t she? Otherwise, she wouldn’t have left. She would have let her soul’s connection be cut and married whoever her grandfather had picked out for her.
Even thinking about that, about what could have been, made Dolf’s stomach heave unpleasantly. At the same time, he felt snappish and angry. If things had been even slightly different – if her other relatives hadn’t taken pity on her, if she hadn’t gotten lucky with her escape, if they hadn’t sent her to Declan, maybe even if Declan hadn’t been on vacation – then he might never have met Helena.
Dolf found that he didn’t like the idea of a world in which he hadn’t met Helena Tarleton, as clumsy, messy, and often bewildering as she was.
With his rising emotional distress rose his instincts, the weight of thousands upon thousands of years of evolution pressing down on him. As far as he knew, Helena wasn’t his soul mate – of course, she wasn’t definitively not his soul mate either. Thanks to her love of scented soaps and shampoos and chlorinated water, he’d never gotten a clear reading of her personal scent – but at that moment, it didn’t matter to Dolf. He just wanted to take Helena, to claim her as his own, and make her his soul mate, fate be damned.
Catching her chin on her after her next spoonful of soup, Dolf looked down into Helena’s pale face. She looked bewildered, her blue eyes huge, and as he watched, she swallowed hard.
Fiercely, Dolf said “I’m glad you left. And I’m especially glad that you came here.”
And then he kissed her again.
This time, there was no hesitation on Helena’s part. At the barest press of his lips against hers, she surged forward. In short order, Dolf found himself with a lapful of willing, wriggling woman, her arms around his neck and her mouth hot on his. Her scales were gone, lost sometime during her shower, but Dolf found that he didn’t miss them. He liked kissing Helena just as much without their soft scrape as he did with it. But he could have done without the spoon handle digging into the back of his neck.
I’m probably just lucky that she poke my eye out with it, thought Dolf, and then groaned when Helena sucked on his tongue.
He had a hand under Helena’s silky pajama shirt and was gently kneading one of her tight little breasts to the sweet sound of her hitching breaths, when some inconsiderate bastard dared to knock on his front door.
Determined, Dolf ignored the interruption. Instead, he leaned forward to catch Helena’s lips with his own, swallowing her moan when he tweaked her nipple in the way that she seemed to like best.
The jerk at the door rang the doorbell, and in his lap, Helena gave a start. She pushed away from Dolf, her hands firm on his shoulders, and half turned to look in the offending door’s direction.
“Ignore them,�
� ordered Dolf.
He had a mate to claim, and no stupid door was going to stand in his way. And neither was the person behind it.
“But maybe it’s important?” Helena worried at her lip; her plush, reddened lip. Dolf had done that.
“It can’t be that important,” grumbled Dolf, as he leaned forward to kiss Helena again. But she held him off.
“Rudolf, it might be about poor Mr. Lazarus.”
Dolf wanted to sigh. He knew when he’d lost.
“All right,” said Dolf. “Let’s go see who it is. In a minute.”
But Helena was already out of his lap and on her way to the door, leaving Dolf to grab a pillow and haul it into his lap for the time being.
“Wait a minute!” called Dolf. “And I’ll get it!”
“I can answer the door, Dolf!”
“You were nearly kidnapped!”
That, at least, gave Helena a moment’s pause. Then she shrugged, saying, “These things happen. Anyway, it’s unlikely to happen again with all the police here, isn’t it?”
The doorbell rang a third time, and this time Helena answered it, her voice tentative as she said “Hello?”
If she gets nabbed because I have an erection – from her, no less – I’m never going to live this down, thought Dolf grimly, as he clutched his pillow tighter.
“Hi,” said a man’s voice; a familiar man’s voice. “You must be Helena Tarleton. I’m so relieved to see you! I’m you cousin, Declan da Luz.”
Well, that did. His erection gone, Dolf tossed his pillow aside and went to join Helena at the door.
Across his doorstep stood Declan, tall, dark, and tanned a darker shade of brown by his time in Las Vegas. Nearer by stood Helena, who remained as short, fair, and slight as the day that Dolf had found her sitting on Declan’s couch.
They certainly don’t look like they ought to be related, mused Dolf. They had nothing in common, save for the way that they both looked at him – waiting for his confirmation, he realized.
They hadn’t ever met each other before now, though he knew both of them.
At his nod, Helena’s tense expression melted into a welcoming smile for her cousin. Declan, by contrast, surged forward for a hug, one which Helena was quick to return.
“You look so much like my brother,” said Declan, and Helena visibly brightened.
“Really?” she asked, pulling back. “Do you have just the one, then?”
Shaking his head, Declan laughed.
“No, I have three brothers,” he said, as they reentered the apartment. Declan had his arm over Helena’s shoulders. “I make the fourth. What about you?”
“As far as I know, there’s only me.”
“As far as you know? You aren’t certain?” echoed Declan, ask about the thing that had interested Dolf too.
Declan kicked the front door shut behind them.
“My parents died while I was very young, and I don’t remember much from before I was orphaned,” said Helena. She looked embarrassed, as if not remembering was some form of personal failing. “But if I’d had a brother or sister, I’m sure that my grandparents would have taken them in too.”
“So you’re close with them then?” asked Declan warily.
Helena scoffed. “No, but they raised me, anyway.”
Declan grinned at her. Then, turning to his fellow Defender, he punched Dolf in the shoulder.
“Ow! What was that for? Doing you all those favors?”
“Who sends a text like that and then doesn’t follow up! I was worried sick! I called the office and everything!”
“You did?” asked Dolf, surprised. When there had been no immediate follow up from his text, he assumed that he must have sent his 911 text to a telemarketer or those sleezy scammers that occasionally called trying to discuss his computer passwords or credit card numbers with him.
“Yes! I did! And Gil sent Barrett and Gunther to help you. But the police were already here, so they lurked long enough to see that you and Helena were fine then reported back to Gil.”
“Aw man,” groaned Dolf, feeling both sorry to have put everyone out but also pleased that they had cared so much.
I wonder if they like fruit in their bread? Dolf thought. He had a secondhand DVD on that. And his zucchini bread had gone over big at the last company picnic, which had actually been more of an all day treasure hunt than an actual picnic.
“I like zucchini, and I like bread,” said Declan. “And sometimes I like zucchini in my bread. Just fyi.”
“Yeah, but Barrett and Gunther weren’t on our team. They might not.”
“But they might! And if they don’t they might be persuaded to give their loaves to me, who we have established likes your zucchini bread a lot.”
So much so that Declan had claimed the lion’s share of the loaves for himself during the treasure hunt. He had also threatened to marry Dolf, strictly for the eating. Remembering that, Dolf made a face at Declan, who merely grinned knowingly at him in response.
To Helena, he said “Has Dolf made you any zucchini bread yet, cousin?”
“No,” said Helena. She sent a shy look Dolf’s way. “I don’t think he likes me that much.”
Dolf blinked, surprised at how wrong she was, and Declan laughed.
“I think he likes you better than he likes me,” said Declan, flexing the arm across Helena’s shoulders. It made her smile at him. “Declan would never have let me stay in his closet. He barely lets me sleep on his couch.”
“I’ve seen the way that you keep your apartment,” said Dolf dryly. “You’re a mess.”
“So am I,” Helena pointed out, and Dolf had to incline his head in agreement. Perhaps untidiness was genetic?
“We’ve got better things to do than chase after every sock,” said Declan loftily. “We’ve got work to do, parties to go to, and family obligations to avoid.”
“Oh? Are you not close with your family then, cousin?” asked Helena, and a complicated expression flickered across Declan’s face.
Her question seemed to serve as some sort of catalyst, though. The cousins started moving towards the living room, and, not wanting to intrude, Dolf decided that he was thirsty. He stayed in the kitchen.
In the kitchen, he poured himself a glass of filtered water then did the dishes while he listened with half an ear to the rise and fall of the cousins’ low voices in his living room, their obvious happiness doing little to soothe the edges off the frustration from his thwarted claim, which still simmered in his blood.
Dolf didn’t particularly like to clean, but he liked the real and appreciable difference that doing it made in his environment. And sometimes, he found the mindless, repetitive tasks associated with it to be soothing; but not this time.
This time, the more he scrubbed, the more irritated Dolf got with Declan and Helena. He liked Declan! And he liked – more than merely liked – Helena!
Dolf didn’t know what was wrong with him.
Maybe it’s just the dishes? And the general mess? Dolf wondered, testing that thought out.
Helena was trying. She had even made a cursory attempt at cleaning up after herself after she had finished cooking. But somehow, there were still dirty dishes in the sink as well as the charcoal encrusted pan. And there were still dirty dishes in his living room!
But that didn’t offend him as much as it might have. Helena had cooked dinner for both of them – and without even hurting herself this time – so Dolf found himself more open to the idea of cleaning up after her. It wasn’t the dishes or the general mess in his kitchen or living room.
But whatever was bothering him, it was getting on his last nerve.
When she moves in with Declan, I’m not going to miss her at all, thought Dolf, and then threw his sponge down, annoyed with himself now, because that obviously wasn’t true.
He was going to miss Helena dreadfully. And that was what was bugging him. That he had somehow gotten used to having her cluttering up his space in so short a timeframe. That he w
ould miss her.
But what could he do? Helena had originally wanted to stay with Declan, after all. And why not? They were cousins, after all, and long lost cousins to boot. They wanted to get to know each other. It made sense.
To her, Declan was probably just a sometimes anal retentively neat and often tongue-tied guy who had kissed her a couple a times; well, his ego hoped. And that might have been enough to ask her to stay – if he hadn’t made such a big deal at the beginning about this whole roommates deal just being as a favor to her cousin until her cousin got back into town.
Now that Declan was actually there, Dolf found that he didn’t want Helena to go. Could he go back on that now? Or had the kisses already undercut that?
Dolf didn’t know.
And he didn’t know how to ask Helena if she might like to continue staying with him instead of Declan. Or go out on a date. He could take it slower, if that was what she wanted. Except, he was so bad at dating!
Especially when I actually like the woman in question, thought Dolf, wincing as he remembered just how badly some of his dates had gone.
The one that he had accidently set slightly on fire with the romantic lighting had arguably been his most embarrassing low point, although the thing with the dart was a contender. The one who’d been allergic to canines hadn’t exactly gone great either. And there had been that thing with the sewer cover in one of his old places, he couldn’t exactly forget that.
Helena, despite her assortment of self-inflicted cuts, bumps, and accidents, had so far proven surprisingly resilient; and very lucky, although he hadn’t exactly tried to date her properly yet. He was probably never going to find another one like Helena.
Now feeling morose than ever, Dolf gave up on trying to scrub out the pan in which the chicken had been burned. He filled it with hot, soapy water and, leaving the pan to soak, went to check on his guests.
Declan was in the middle of a funny story about one of his brothers, the one who was a lawyer, and Dolf listened to Helena’s giggles with a heavy heart.
They seemed to be hitting it off. Had he ever made her laugh like that? Dolf didn’t think so. But then, he didn’t have a funny brother to tell her stories about. His childhood memories were mostly kind of grim. His various dating mishaps were usually pretty funny in retrospect, but they were also probably off the table, for obvious reasons.
The Wyvern's Defender Dire Wolf Page 14