by Anya Nowlan
“Who are you?” her nameless savior demanded, standing before her, big and broad and frankly far too intense.
“Alexis Davies,” she blurted out without thinking, smacking a hand over her mouth immediately after.
If nothing else, it gave her an opportunity to stare, dumbstruck, at the glowering male in front of her. Well, she got to crane her neck to stare at him, anyway. Almost a foot taller, dressed in an absolutely immaculate suit of Italian make (there was something so specific about Italian tailoring, you can always tell), he looked like he’d stepped right off the cover of a magazine. Those dark eyes and stern jawline only added to the appeal.
It took a moment too long for Alexis to realize that he had, in fact, stepped off the proverbial cover of a magazine. A person couldn’t live in Crete for two years without knowing of the exploits and successes of its three greatest sons, the Calders.
“Alexis Davies, you were eavesdropping,” he said, eyes narrowing.
Was It her imagination playing tricks on her, or did his eyes glow, swirling gold?
Spirits be, Alexis, get with the program! He’s one of them!
“You’re a dragon,” she said flatly, dumbfounded – an emotion she was getting mighty sick of that day.
“Which has nothing to do with this. You were spying.”
The flustered snort of a laugh that Alexis produced was neither ladylike nor elegant, but it fit the situation just fine, in her opinion.
“Spying? How can I spy on a squadron of dragons falling down on my head? I’m working, Mister, and I don’t need that kind of treatment.”
With a huff, and with a very prominent burning to her cheeks that she hoped the darkness would hide, she moved to turn her back on him and march off in directions unspecified. That same strong hand on her shoulder made quick work of her plans, though, spinning her around.
“Don’t walk away from me,” he growled, his voice so low and… well, commanding that it was hard to argue with his logic.
Wait.
“You don’t own me,” she quipped back, shrugging his hand off of her.
The man – Galen, she decided, after rummaging in her memories for what she knew of the Calders, shipping magnates and internationally known billionaires – looked at his hand for a moment as if she’d struck him, but not in a bad way. If that was even a thing.
In fact, she would have not minded at all to stand around there for a little while longer, just admiring him. Even in the relative lack of light, the only illumination coming from the stars above and the faint flicker of streetlights far on the main road, she couldn’t help but be enthralled by the shadows crossing his face, accenting his strong features.
He almost had a kind of pull on her, like an invisible hand was pulling her toward him and she was eager to explore what that meant.
Stop, she reminded herself, jolting out of her wistful thoughts. He’s a dragon. An aggressive one, at that! Get your head on straight.
But who knew dragons were this devastatingly handsome?
“No, I may not own you,” he started, and it almost sounded to Alexis like he added the word ‘yet’ to the end of his statement. “But you are on the grounds of my-…” Another pause, a distinct look of discomfort on his features.
Alexis straightened up, digesting what she’d heard before. Burials? Sacred grounds?
He doesn’t want Knossos changed either, she thought feverishly, a plan so ludicrous she could hardly twist it into words coming to her mind.
“Your ancestors,” she finished for him tentatively, but just speaking the words gave her confidence. “You don’t want Knossos to be ‘restored’ either, do you?”
Alexis bit her lip, feeling the heat of possibility pooling in the pit of her stomach. She wasn’t sure what she could do about it, but here stood another person, far more powerful than she, who could make it stop. Even if he was a dragon.
“No,” he responded, eyes trained on her, the flame of an eternal fire seeming to glow behind them. “What do you know of it? Why are you here, Miss Davies?”
“I work here,” she said, pushing her shoulders back and trying to stand as sure and firm as she could, despite being stared down by a man who looked equal parts convinced she shouldn’t be there, and equal parts as if he would never allow her to leave. “I like working late. I’m an archaeologist.”
“Are there others?” Galen asked, glancing around as if looking for Alexis’ hidden troupe of spying archaeologists, ready to spring on him as a flock of nuisances.
“No. It’s just me,” she said, not clarifying that the man who was to blame for much of Galen’s current ire had left perhaps half an hour before they arrived. “No one else.”
Stop babbling.
“And I think I should be going now,” she added, her head spinning a little from the full weight of what had just transpired.
Between Joshua’s news, almost getting squashed by dragons, finding out that Knossos held some specific meaning to dragons – she knew all of those mosaics couldn’t be of dolphins! They looked nothing like dolphins before they were painted over! – and coming face to face with who had to be the most devastating man in the world, she was feeling a little weak in the knees. Maybe she could sit down, think things over, have a nice cup of tea, come up with a rational plan that didn’t…
“We’ve already discussed this,” Galen said, that throaty grumble back in his tone. “You’re not going anywhere until you tell me what you heard.”
Alexis was about to open her mouth and protest, as she was about to do, but the words died on her tongue as she heard a voice in her head. Instinctively, her eyes snapped off of Galen’s to search the sky, as did his, as if she knew where the sound in her head was coming from.
If you stay arguing like that, you’ll never get anywhere. The night is long, but it isn’t that long.
“What is that?” Alexis asked, brow furrowing.
It certainly felt like she was losing her mind. Was she?
“Icarus,” Galen sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.
A large shadow slipped across the moon and stars for a moment, coaxing a gasp out of Alexis. She could see it clearly now. The large, powerful form of a dragon, gliding gracefully across the star-sprinkled night sky.
The answer is right in front of both of you, the voice interjected once more, and Alexis thought she heard a chuckle in there.
“So you’re hearing what I’m hearing, right? I’m not imagining it?” she whispered quickly, taking a step closer to Galen.
He might have been a dragon, but at least he was down on Earth, in human form, and not in her head. That made him more trustworthy than the other guy!
“I hear him,” Galen confirmed.
His complete lack of freaking out over that made Alexis will herself to calm down as well.
“You’re not making any sense, old man,” he yelled into the heavens, producing another low chuckle in Alexis’ head.
If you’d stop arguing for once in your existence, whelp, you’d see that I do. You’re standing next to Alexis Davies, one of the few living relatives of Arthur Davies, the man who made the Knossos we know today. Who would make a better bride than the one woman who can speak against what is planned here? Two birds, one stone, my boy.
“A what now?!” Alexis sputtered, though the sinking feeling in her stomach reminded her that minutes ago, she’d thought that plan had merit as well.
She was just, you know, not insane enough to actually offer it up. Because that was ludicrous. And she wasn’t even entirely convinced if the whole talk about dragons and mates and whatnot was real or if they were playing tricks on her. Which, admittedly, would have been difficult to do, seeing as they didn’t know she was there.
Focus! Alexis reminded herself.
When she caught Galen’s eye, she saw a spark of newfound interest there, like he’d been given an excuse that tasted just right and he was eager to sample it.
“Yes,” he said thoughtfully, a sly grin spreading across
his lips. “Who better.”
You know what the consequences of stepping out of this fight are, Galen. Your older brother is not fit to serve. Your middle brother will not even try. It is on your shoulders, boy.
Icarus swept lower, coming to fly over the massive stones of the palace at a height that made Alexis bend at the knee slightly, though he was still far above her head. She thought he might have just been trying to make a point. Galen stood calmly, gaze transfixed on her.
“Miss Davies. I believe you are to marry me,” he said with the kind of unflappable calm that comes with telling someone how one likes his tea, or discussing the weather.
Four
Galen
“There’s no time to waste,” he told her, the confines of the town car putting them at close proximity.
She, maddeningly beautiful and so difficult, sat just inches from him, pressed against the side door of the back seat as a driver took them from Heraklion and drove them further into the island to climb the long winding roads leading up to the Calder villa. While Galen thought absently that his mind should be racing with the preparations that needed to be made – when was the moon in the correct cycle? Would he stomach guests? How long could he hide this from Georg? – instead he found it curiously blank of plotting and planning.
All that took up real estate there were thoughts of Alexis. How despite her being dusty and sweaty and grimy from a night of work, she looked absolutely radiant. How his dragon wanted to claw his way toward her and know everything there was to know about her. How her scent drove him wild, the undercurrents of her so powerful that it made a shudder run down his spine.
“You’re insane,” she scoffed, coiled tight like a snake.
“And yet you’re in the car with me,” Galen commented with a wry grin, getting what amounted to a glare in response.
It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had a choice. It took a good half an hour for the vehicle to get there, and a solid ten minutes before that was spent on arguing about whether or not he could just pick her up and whisk her away to his gilded castle if he shifted into dragon form.
Apparently out of all of the insane things they’d decided that night, being flown across the skies was the most insane. Galen didn’t comment on what that said about her that her standards ran that way.
Personally, he thought that extending an offer of marriage on his part, and her not declining it (though she hadn’t outright agreed to it, admittedly), came far ahead such simple follies as flying.
“Desperate times,” she mumbled, fussing with the end of her ponytail with nervous hands, avoiding his gaze.
She was gorgeous, there was no doubt. A part of Galen, the cool, rational part that ran billions of dollars worth of enterprises and made business decisions every day, thought she would look lovely on his arm at official functions. Yet there was a far louder voice, mostly attributed to his dragon, that said that regardless of her looks or the gentle, sloping curves of her delicious body, he would want her by his side.
There was just something about her he couldn’t quite put his finger on, but it drove him to reckless decisions and ludicrous plots.
Like marriage. And throwing his hat into a literal ring of dragons.
There was a length of silence between them that felt both comfortable and uncomfortable. Comfortable, because Galen was sharing it with her. Uncomfortable, because Alexis was fidgeting and chewing on her bottom lip and Galen was all too eager to offer to do it for her.
This is supposed to be a business arrangement, he reminded himself sternly. She’ll be your wife, yes, but it does not mean she must be your mate.
“We’re not going to… you know, actually get married, right?” Alexis asked, turning her lovely, heart-shaped face toward him.
Galen stumbled on his words for a moment, much preferring just to look at her than engage in the clearly awkward conversation they needed to have.
“As real as the stones upon which the palace was built,” he said calmly, willing himself to relax into the seat.
The partition between them and the driver was up and Galen knew it to be soundproof – a necessity of often conducting business on the go. Though he trusted his staff (mostly made up of minor shifter species with a long line of loyalty to the Calder family), a man could never be too careful.
“Oh.”
“I cannot force you into anything, Miss Davies,” he started, with his head helpfully adding in that he would like to, if she were into that. “If you wish, I can take you home now and we can forget this night ever happened.”
Every fiber of his being screamed in protest to that offer, but he had to say it regardless. This would not work unless she was one hundred percent committed. Perhaps it would aid in covering up for the missing percentages he still felt, too.
A dragon should not push a marriage on a woman who does not wish it. Not in this day and age, anyway, he thought with a certain glumness, finding himself momentarily longing for the times of old, when plucking a maiden from the fields that seemed just right was the most sensible thing a dragon could do.
They weren’t his times, though.
“Right,” she said, thoughtful, while the first rays of the morning sun started spreading their delicate tendrils across the skyline in ever-widening patterns.
Both the sunrises and the sunsets were breathtaking on Crete.
“If I go home, Joshua wins. Knossos gets rebuilt to fit the desires of the trampling masses, my work is lost forever or at the very least made obsolete, and the world has lost a great piece of cultural heritage without even knowing what it all means,” she rattled off, counting all the negatives on her fingers. “Am I getting this right so far?”
“I don’t know who this Joshua is, but other than that, it sounds about on par with reality, yes,” Galen nodded.
“Alternatively, if I come with you, get married to a dragon, who also just happens to be one of the most eligible bachelors in the world, you think we can stop this and I can continue my work on Knossos and maybe make a difference. Maybe you’ll even tell me about what the palace really means.”
“When you put it like that, you really only have one option, I think,” Galen commented smoothly, flashing her a warm grin.
Despite looking entirely unamused, Alexis burst into giggles, the laughter seeming to overwhelm her.
“I’m not often thought to be funny.”
“It’s the situation,” she choked through tears of laughter. “I’m going to get married to a billionaire dragon to save a pile of rocks. Maybe. All I was looking forward to today was catching an episode of Grey’s Anatomy and maybe getting moussaka from Anatoli’s near my house.”
“My chef makes excellent moussaka,” Galen interjected.
“Of course he does,” she snorted, coming down from her high of laughter.
He liked her laugh. In fact, he made a personal note to try and hear it more often.
“So, what happens now?” Alexis asked, a hand to her chest, probably to calm her erratic breathing.
“You move into the villa. We don’t tell anyone until the ceremony can be arranged. Then, we will be wed by dragon traditions and human as well. After that, I’ll challenge my eldest brother to a duel and then I kindly convince the local government officials in charge of this ludicrous idea to ‘restore’ the palace to change their minds.”
“Easy,” Alexis said, sarcasm clinging to every syllable.
“It’s doable,” Galen shrugged, waving away her worry, though he would have been a liar to claim that there wasn’t a certain modicum of truth to her disbelief. “We simply need to play our parts.”
“And what does that entail?” Alexis asked. “You know, aside from moving into the same house and staying out of everyone’s way.”
Galen’s attention had never left the beautiful creature beside him, but with that question in the air, it felt like his laser focus had never been tuned so carefully. Her tan skin, her clever mouth, her long neck just begging to be touched… She was truly bre
athtaking.
Pretending to be her fiancé was not going to be a difficult task, he decided.
“It entails all the trappings of a couple in love, Alexis,” he said, voice husky.
“Because we have to play our parts,” she said, echoing his earlier words.
“Precisely.”
Her brows slightly furrowing, Galen was immensely pleased to find her leaning into him slightly as they spoke. As if of its own volition, his hand rose, traveling across the slight distance between them as he angled himself to face her. When his fingertips glided over her skin and gripped the back of her neck, her breath hitched before she gasped softly – the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard.
“I think we need some practice. To be convincing.”
“Convincing. Right.”
Without thinking about it, Galen knew what he was doing was right. The car bumped and jostled on the thin mountain path leading up to the villa, but as far as he was concerned, it was the smoothest ride known to man.
Dipping closer, he savored the way Alexis’ lips parted slightly in anticipation, the way her pretty, blue eyes tracked his and then his lips, expectation and excitement so evident on her that it fed his dragon as well as himself. When he leaned in the last inches and his lips devoured hers, he felt like a man immediately changed.
The world fell away, overtaken by her and her alone. His tongue slipped between her parted lips and when she sighed softly into the kiss, it was like someone had breathed life into him he never knew to be missing. She shuddered slightly and Galen wanted to pull her into his arms, keep her safe and warm from any harm that might come to her (knowing full well that it was warm in the car as well as outside, but reactions were what they were), the overwhelming need to protect her making his head spin.
She tasted like sweet berries and she made him feel like when he guarded his hoard, like a master of his own domain, the best dragon he could be. His kiss was long and prodding, wanting to learn all about her, happy to give up time and space if it meant more time with her.