by Abigail Owen
“What is this boy’s name?” her father asked next.
Cami chuckled. “I’m twenty-eight. I’m not sure we can be called boys and girls anymore.”
“You will always be my little girl,” her father insisted.
“And you will always be my papito,” she answered. A little thing they’d said to each other since Cami had been three years old and insisted she was old enough to help tend the goats.
Her father gave his usual grunt—half acknowledgment, half pride.
Rune tapped his wrist as though a watch sat there, though one didn’t. She got the hint anyway. Denial shot through her, strong and hot, like wrestling a mountain lion. These minutes weren’t enough.
“I have to go.” Cami was proud that the words didn’t come out choked.
Her mother must’ve wrestled the phone away from her husband because she responded, “Not yet.”
“I have to get to class, Mama. You don’t want me to get in trouble.”
Her mother’s sigh indicated she’d give in. “I want to hear more about this man tomorrow.”
“I’ll tell you more when I know it’s more than temporary. Okay?” There. At least she’d bought a little time.
Rune stood, coming to take away the phone.
Cami rushed into her goodbye. “I have to go. I love you. Give Val and Isa hugs for me.”
“Bye, mija—”
Cami spun away from Rune and cut off the call before he could do it for her. She handed the phone back with a disgruntled glare. “You’re a pain in my ass. You know that?”
“I thought you were the pain in mine.” He held the phone in his palm and manifested a stream of black-tipped fire, blowing it across the device, flames curling in on themselves as they hit his palm. The phone melted and charred in his hand, the sharp scent of burning wires and plastic filling the small space.
“Gives another meaning to the concept of a burner phone,” she murmured as he dropped the heap in a trash can under the desk.
Rune huffed what could have been a grunt, probably not a chuckle. The man didn’t smile often, let alone chuckle. Not unlike Drake’s permanent glower. She glanced over and bit back a grin. Even in his sleep apparently.
With a small growl of frustration, Cami dropped onto the corner of the mattress, her knees jutting up in front of her. “I don’t know how much longer I can do this… Be here.”
Rune shot her a sharp look. “You have to.”
She waved a hand like yeah, yeah. She got the dire consequences.
“You’re the only one who keeps bothering me about this,” Rune pointed out.
“None of the other mates have close family,” she came right back. A fact she’d found sort of interesting, and at the same time isolating. The others didn’t get her, they were all focused on mating. All she wanted was to end her fires and return to her regularly programmed life.
“You have to let your family go,” Rune insisted. “Make them think you’ve died.”
“Like hell. I’m not putting them through that.” She slashed a hand through the air, only, without warning, red-gold sparks shot from her fingertips. Embers bounced across the gray rock floor, illuminating the dim room in flashing brightness, like a small waterfall of fire.
Rune stepped on the largest, snuffing it as it rolled his way. Luckily the rest died on their own without setting yet another fire. “Watch your emotions,” he warned.
Rune’s expression didn’t exactly soften, but she could tell he’d eased up just the same. “Even if you go back, they will eventually notice you aren’t aging.”
Only after she’d successfully mated. What if she was old when that happened and then got to spend an eternity with saggy skin and wrinkles? “I’ll deal with that when it comes.”
Cami glanced down at where that glow showed through the white tank top she wore under a black hoodie. The glow was her constant companion. A happy red-gold sparked along her veins several inches in every direction, a sight she had to admit having a certain fascination with. If any one of her extended family caught sight of that, they’d freak.
If she found her mate that and the fires would go away. Not that she was all that excited about it, but at least then she could maybe stop hiding and try to figure out what her life would look like moving forward.
But until then, she lived in the land of limbo.
Glancing up, she caught a flash in Rune’s expression that she couldn’t pin down. “What?” she asked warily.
“You’re only going to make it worse for them, the longer you draw this out.” On that parting shot, he walked out of the room.
Cami followed to duck her head out in the hallway. “I’m not giving up anything. I can be both.”
He didn’t even bother to turn around. “Good luck with that.”
“He’s right, you know.” Drake’s deep voice jolted her out of the doorway.
Cami swallowed a gasp as she swung around to face him. At finding him upright in bed watching her with an expression she couldn’t quite place but that had her insides twirling like a lasso, she frowned.
“Right about what?”
…
“About letting them go,” Drake clarified.
Cami’s eyes narrowed, probably at the way he didn’t even sound sorry about that. She was right. He wasn’t sorry. The sooner she accepted that fact, the better for both her and her loved ones.
He’d made the same choice. For his team. For Lyndi. Those he’d walked away from without a backward glance and hardly a goodbye. Not that he hadn’t thought of them every day lying in this godforsaken cave. He’d make the same decision again, though.
“Don’t sugarcoat it to spare my feelings or anything,” she said.
He shifted his legs under the sheets, waiting for a wave of lethargy. Except none came. Interesting. After she left, he’d test that out. “Facts are facts,” he said. “Leave emotion out of it.”
She snorted. “What? Like you?”
He knew his expression didn’t change, or anything else about him, but Cami’s dark brows pulled low over her eyes and he couldn’t miss the guilt tugging her lips down.
“Sorry—”
“You have to slaughter your goats, right?” he cut her off with the question, wanting nothing to do with her misplaced guilt. He didn’t need pity.
“Yeah,” she agreed slowly. “But I don’t like that part.”
Probably avoided it, if he guessed right. Suddenly an image of her as a little girl—those big dark eyes all innocence and dark hair in pigtails. She probably named the goats. Thinking of Clover, he knew she still did.
Drake shook his head. “Like Clarise Starling.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Isn’t that a little too…pop culture for your kind.”
“My kind?”
“You know…ancient. What were the Hanging Gardens of Babylon like anyway?”
Why the hell did that want to make him laugh? “I like movies.”
Cami dropped to the corner of the bed where she’d sat earlier, eyeing him with a light in her eyes he didn’t care to interpret. “Are you going to psychoanalyze me, Dr. Lecter?” she teased, allowing herself a small smile.
A pale shadow compared to the one she’d flashed while on the phone with her parents. That had lit her face up, like the glow inside her had radiated upward. Unsettled wasn’t a sensation he dealt with ever, and she hadn’t even been aiming that smile his way. Hell, he’d still been pretending to be asleep. Being reminded of that now only managed to bring the sensation back, along with a bewildering moment when he wanted more than the shadow. He held in a growl. “Not today, Cami.”
She blinked. “My dad calls me Cami.”
“I know.” He’d known since the day he rescued her from the fire.
She raised her eyebrows, questions obvious given her expressive face.
Cami dropped to her back on his mattress with a huff, her hair spreading out around her. “Just thinking of all the things that will change for me if I mate.”
If? “It’s an adjustment.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s an understatement. Even little things will be unfamiliar. Like…my children will eventually be dragon shifters. They’ll grow up in this world, be friends with other shifters. Go to school…” She paused.
“You’ll figure it out.” He had the strangest urge to say more, answer her questions. Talk about it. Drake scowled. He never talked about things.
“Where do dragon shifter children go to school anyway?”
“Depends.”
“Huh.” She raised up on her elbows to look at him. “So, no boarding school or anything. Hogwarts maybe?”
“No.”
She sat up all the way. “Did you get a formal education?”
“Yes.”
“Through schools?”
“Sometimes.”
Cami folded her arms, pushing those lush breasts up and together, the glow inside her sort of adjusting and folding into the added coverage. “Inquiring minds want to know more.”
He dragged his gaze up to her face, something he’d been trying to avoid, given the idiotic urge to study that face. Kiss her again. “Inquiring minds should ask someone who gives a shit.”
She kicked him.
“Hey.” He rubbed at his shin, not that that little tap did any damage.
“Forget it.” She settled back to a comfortable position. “I’ll ask Yelena.”
Who was Yelena? He didn’t bother to ask.
“Yelena is Goret’s mate,” she murmured. As though she’d heard his internal question. “The only mated female dragon in this place.”
“Ask her then.” Except the way Cami twisted her lips told Drake that she’d rather not.
Her disappointment tugged at him, similar to how Lyndi, as a child, used to take his hand and tug at him to get him to play with her.
Drake released a sound halfway between a sigh and a grunt. “The clans have schools, originally led by scholars who trained with humans. These days they’re mostly led by previously human women who got human degrees in various subjects or in teaching before they mated. Larger groups in the Americas colony might have one school for all ages. With smaller groups, like my enforcer team, the kids are usually homeschooled.”
“Any higher education?”
He shrugged. “Those whose kings give permission have been known to attend human institutions.”
Cami’s brows drew down over her eyes in a frown that Drake refused to label as cute, or adorable, and any other word that made him sound like a moron, or a shǎguā, as his mother would’ve said. Dumb melon. It sort of lost the bite in translation. Drake almost smiled at the memory that had been buried so deep he hadn’t thought of it in centuries.
“I guess…I’ll teach my children with my mate, then.” Doubt settled heavy in her voice, like mud suspended in water, like she wasn’t so sure she loved that idea.
I don’t care. Except a question popped out of him anyway. “Problem?”
He mentally shook his head at his lack of willpower.
She crinkled her nose, and again he had to squash all thoughts of cuteness or how he wanted to fuck her until she stopped doing that. “I don’t think I’d be a very good teacher,” she said. “I don’t have the patience. What if my kids turn out stupid because of me?”
Drake gave a snort.
“It’s not funny.” She tried to spear him with a glare.
It wasn’t. And neither was yet another strange urge. This time to hug her. What the hell? Drake didn’t do comfort, either. Or hugs. “Shouldn’t you be getting me dinner about now?” The words came out harsher than he intended.
Cami leaned back, crossing her arms, which pressed her curves up in a distracting way. In the constant, steady chill of the caverns, her nipples had beaded, and suddenly all he could think about was sucking on them. Tasting her. The room had started to smell like her over the last few days while he was bedridden and unable to escape the wintry floral scent of her.
“Wow.” One word and a wealth of disappointment.
Drake actually had to keep from ducking his head. Why do I give a shit? He said nothing, but for once silence didn’t sit well with him. Like he needed to defend himself for being rude or, gods forbid, offer an apology.
Cami rolled her eyes but got up and headed for the door. “I’m only going because I’m hungry, too.”
She disappeared before he could comment. When she didn’t return in fifteen minutes, Drake figured she was making him wait to prove a point. Boredom never sat well with him, so he flipped the covers off his legs and managed to stand.
A frown descended as the weakness that’d had him bedridden seemed to have disappeared. In his legs at least. While his arms were still a problem, the shakiness and general stupor that had consumed his body as he degenerated the first two days he’d been here had disappeared.
No way could sleep alone have arrested the sudden worsening. Could it?
The door banged open, and Drake spun to face whoever entered. Or tried to. He would’ve been fine if he hadn’t been standing with his feet still in the sheet that had spilled over the side of the bed onto the stone floor. He twisted up in himself and the sheet, which was doing a damn fine impersonation of a clinging vine. With a muffled oomf, he landed sprawled across the bed.
“That was an idiotic thing to do without help.” Cami, standing in the doorway with a tray in her hands, observing him dispassionately, did nothing to help Drake’s bad mood.
“I’m fine,” he muttered, pushing himself back up.
Except he happened to glance up in time to see her eyes go wide, followed by a fascinating sweep of dusky color in her cheeks. His nurse-slash-tormentor was…embarrassed. Why?
He followed the trail of her gaze to discover that the tip of his dick had slipped out the bottom of his boxer-briefs.
Instead of an answering embarrassment, though, his traitorous body responded to having her eyes on him like that by hardening in a way that was unmistakable to the woman still staring. With a growl, he shoved back up to standing, managing to untangle his feet this time.
“I’m flattered,” she said, following him across the room to a card table.
“Don’t be.” He dropped into one of the flimsy chairs which squeaked a protest at the rough handling. “I’d respond like that to any woman who stared at my cock.”
“Damn.” She sighed. “And here I thought I was special.”
To his surprise, the tray she set down had two plates prepared. Drake clenched his teeth at the way both his arms still shook, but he ignored that and took one plate. “Feel free to eat somewhere else.”
Cami didn’t even glance up from her food. “I believe the traditional response is thank you.”
He was being more of an ass than usual. Sort of.
“At least you’re pretty,” she remarked next, almost conversationally, like she’d remark on the weather. “That covers all manner of sins. Just ask Ted Bundy.”
Now he was being compared to a serial killer. What next? “If you have to stay, feel free to take a vow of silence.”
She sat back and propped her feet up on the one chair not being used—she’d only been able to track down three out of four—acting like they were best buddies hanging out casually. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll be silent if you can smile and say thank you.”
Drake gave her a flat-lipped stare.
Cami’s lips twitched again, then she tossed her head back, dissolving into laughter that, strangely, had him dealing with the for
eign and wholly unwelcome sensation of wanting to laugh with her.
“You should see your face,” she hooted.
The glow under her thin white shirt shining a bit brighter than a minute ago, she aimed that big grin of hers directly at him and Drake froze, blinked, and dropped his gaze to her lips, disconcerted in a way that left him feeling more wobbly than his damn disease.
Slowly the smile faded from her lips as she blinked back at him, tension creeping in between them.
Without warning, that glow sent a shower of sparks flying. Cami yelped as she jumped up, beating at the scorched hole in her shirt that was only growing bigger. Moving with a sluggishness that pissed him off, Drake surged to his feet and, ignoring her squeak of protest, whipped her shirt off, stamping on it on the floor.
Then, his focus total, he stepped close, inspecting her skin for any hint of a burn. It was unlikely a dragon could hurt herself with fire, but he had to check. With clinical detachment, he checked the area of skin in question. A small whimper from Cami had him raising his head.
Then he stilled, fingertips against the warm skin over her clavicle. Need, raw and pure and irresistible, stared back at him from eyes gone dark, consumed by her pupils.
Nothing could have stopped him from lowering his head, especially when she met him halfway, already open and willing. In a fury of kisses, their heavy breathing filled the quiet space and they did their damnedest to consume each other.
A wanting he’d never before experienced reached down inside him and twisted his insides into knots, and the only thing that could assuage the need was Cami. Her taste, her warm, smooth skin under his hands, her body pressed against his.
Her smile tugging at his soul.
Drake pushed that thought away, preferring the onslaught of desire to irrational sentiment. Need he could handle. That was all he could have of her.
Driven hard by the sounds she was making, Drake pressed kisses across her jaw and down her neck, satisfaction at the way she shivered under his touch thrumming through him. He lingered around the fire at the center of her chest, the warmth more stark there, closer to the surface.