The Dragon’s Surrogate: A Paranormal Romance (Shifter Surrogate Agency Book 5)

by Layla Silver

  Shutting the water off, I toweled off and scurried around, trying to get ready. I’d have to wear yesterday’s clothes again and hope no one noticed. Will had helpfully collected them and left them at the end of the bed for me. I glanced at my underwear, which clearly showed evidence of how I’d soaked through it in last night’s lust. Making a face, I left it off and pulled the rest of my clothes on.

  There was no denying how mind-blowing sex with Will had been, but great sex wasn’t necessarily smart sex. What if this changed everything? What would we do, especially with the babies in the picture?

  My thoughts churned as I hurried downstairs. I glanced at my watch and grimaced. I needed to leave now.

  “Here.” Will appeared at the doorway to the kitchen with a sleek stainless steel travel mug in hand. “Decaf.”

  “Are you sure?” I managed, dredging up the teasing smile I always used when I needed to deflect from my feelings. “It smells too good to be fake.”

  “Scout’s honor.”

  He held up two fingers in the Boy Scout salute and gave me his best innocent expression. Paired with his bare chest and a pair of sleep pants that just begged to be shoved down his lean hips, it was an enticing look. Goddess, I wished I didn’t have to work so we could figure this out. My phone beeped, and I glanced down at it long enough to recognize one of my coworker’s names.

  Huffing, I snatched the mug and flashed Will a genuine smile. “You’re the best.” Then I was out the door. Forcibly shoving all thoughts of the night before aside, I opened up the text message and shunted my brain into work mode. Right now, I needed to head off whatever fires had broken out at work. I could deal with the mess I’d probably just made of my personal life later.

  Chapter 10 – Will

  I watched Maia disappear through the door, then retreated to the kitchen to brew full-test coffee for myself. Popping a dark roast pod in the machine and shoving a mug under it, I propped a hip against the counter and folded my arms across my chest. I could feel myself grinning and didn’t bother trying to stop.

  I had slept with Maia.

  It had been even better than I dreamed it would be, which was saying something considering the depth and breadth with which I’d been dreaming about her for so many years. She’d been warm and soft in my arms this morning, and the sleepy contented look on her face when she’d woken had been one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen in my life.

  Then she’d made that crack about remembering that she was pregnant. I’d had to touch her, to kiss her and reinforce my claim. She’d all but melted underneath me. Just thinking about it made my body perk up with interest. If I hadn’t known for certain that we both absolutely had to work today, I’d have taken her straight back to bed. Or followed her into the shower. I groaned inwardly at the thought of running soap-slicked hands over her beautiful breasts, then wrapping my hands around her hips, pinning her to the wall of the shower, and burying myself inside her.

  The coffee hissed and spluttered. Pulling the mug out, I headed upstairs, still thinking about Maia. The sex had been phenomenal, but it wasn’t just that. It wasn’t even just about the babies either. It was everything. I’d wanted her for so long, and now that I’d tasted what we could have together, our deal didn’t feel like enough. Yes, I wanted our babies, but I wanted them both. With her. I wanted to wake up to Maia in my arms every day. I wanted to pin her to our bed and make her come on my tongue and then again on my cock after she’d had a long day at work. I wanted family dinners with messy toddlers and coffee on the balcony on weekend mornings when the twins were teenagers who wouldn’t rouse before noon. I wanted to deal with the mundane details of checking homework and chauffeuring our kids to and from activities together. I wanted us to be a proper family.

  After last night, I could no longer deny what part of me had always known: Maia was my mate.

  The question, I thought pensively as I walked into my bedroom, was whether or not she had come to the same conclusion. We should have talked about it this morning. I should have ordered in breakfast and given her one of my shirts to wear and set us up on the balcony outside my room to talk it over. Damn work.

  Damn her work and mine. I needed to get my own ass in gear if I was going to make the day’s commitments. Setting my mug on the dresser, I shoved my pants down and stepped out of them. I turned toward the bathroom and stopped. There was a flash of black on the bed, and I walked toward it. Picking it up, I grinned. Maia had left her panties. I couldn’t be sure if she’d meant to or if she’d simply chosen not to wear them and forgotten them in her rush, but finding them felt like hope.

  Placing them on the dresser where I’d see them every time I walked into my room, I headed for the shower. A plan to see Maia and have the talk we should have had this morning was already forming in my head. I’d have to wait until after work, though. It was going to be a long day.

  Long, as it turned out, didn’t even begin to describe it. My concentration started off spotty. I was supposed to be making plans for the Waltham’s nursery project, which required checking a couple of references. I got about two links deep and then fell down an internet rabbit hole researching twins. The more I read, the more frayed my concentration got.

  Twins, I learned quickly, weren’t just two siblings you had at the same time. They were connected. Deeply bonded. They needed each other, thrived on one another. Having twins was no small thing, either. Managing twins and maintaining the mother’s health at the same time was a serious undertaking.

  An hour into my investigation, any hope of focusing was completely shot to hell. Could Maia and I really have twins and separate them? Had we made a mistake by choosing to have one given coyote genes and the other dragon genes? Would it screw up the bond between them? Or would they still be closely bonded and suffer because we planned to raise them apart? Was it incalculable cruelty to raise them separately but let them see each other regularly? It could be like reopening a wound every time they had to part.

  What about Maia? If pregnancy and labor with twins were that taxing, would she be okay with one of the babies by herself? Sure, her parents lived next door, but that wasn’t the same as having a partner—a mate —there for her. That didn’t even take into account her family’s general craziness or her mother’s eccentric ideas on child-rearing. Just thinking about her and our baby living in her eccentric house when she was in compromised health made my body prickle with alarm.

  Then there was the whole question of parent-child bonding. Objectively, I’d known that babies did best when raised by loving parents. But now I was reading that babies specifically needed their mother. There were hormonal responses and biochemical reactions and brain development—it was all complicated, and I’d need to do more research, but my doubts were already strong. Could I take one of our babies away from her and deny it all of that? But leaving them both with her would be overwhelming for her, to say nothing of how hard it would be on everyone to separate them later. Shit.

  At about the hour and a half mark, I realized that there was only one solution. I’d have to convince Maia of what I already knew and now had ample evidence of: that she was my mate, and we were meant to be a family. I loved her, and I could take care of her and our babies. Without thinking about it, I started sketching out a new plan for my house. I started with a nursery that could hold both babies and a suite like the one I had talked to the Walthams about for a nanny. I worked from home, so I’d be here, and with a nanny to help, Maia would have all the support she needed to recover from the pregnancy in comfort, secure in the knowledge that the babies were well cared for.

  They were my family already, Maia and our babies. No one could take care of them the way I could. I’d prove it to her.

  At two o’clock, a reminder alarm went off, pulling me out of my feverish planning. Dragging myself from my work, I downed a protein shake. It was a poor substitute for the lunch I’d worked through, but it would have to do. If everything went to plan, it wouldn’t matter anyway. I full
y intended for Maia and me to have another celebratory feast for dinner.

  Changing into slightly nicer business attire, I cleared my desk of the personal files I’d been working on and sorted out the ones I’d need for my meeting. Then I got the digital meeting platform opened up. As I always did, I checked the video feed to make sure there wasn’t anything out of place showing on my end. Precision and attention to detail mattered. Everything was good. It occurred to me that it might get harder to keep the office spotless once there were twins running around.

  I imagined two little hellions overtaking my house, a perfect mix of my mischievousness and Maia’s engaging impulsiveness. Having seen Maia’s house and being perfectly able to guess at the avalanche of toys my parents would buy once they had grand-babies to spoil, it was a pretty safe bet that the house would be overrun by loud and shiny things in short order unless we specifically hired someone to walk around behind the twins picking up. The idea made me grin.

  I was still grinning from ear to ear like an idiot when the client logged into the system. I had almost 100 years of practice in marshaling my attention when necessary, so I got down to the business of going over the latest draft of engineering plans for the LEEDS-certified office renovations his company was in the middle of putting together fairly well. Still, my amusement from imagining children and my excitement about seeing Maia tonight bled through beneath my professional appearance and technical jargon.

  The client noticed, too. About halfway through, he leaned in closer to his screen, a smile playing at his own lips. “All right, time out, Will. What the hell did you have for lunch?”

  “Protein shake,” I told him, spreading my hands theatrically. “Lunch of champions.”

  “Did you put vodka in it?” he joked. “Or drink it in shots off a hot girl or something? I’ve never seen you wired like this!”

  I shook my head. As much as I wanted to boast about Maia and our twins, I valued her too much to talk out of turn. Until I knew she was on the same page that I was about our family, what was going on between us was my secret.

  “Classified,” I told him, feigning seriousness. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

  “Right,” he snorted. “Well, just as long as it’s not some other big contract that’s going to have you punting us off your list. I wouldn’t trust anybody else with this project.”

  “Never,” I waved off his concern. “Now come on, let’s finish this. We’ve both got places to be.”

  My place to be, and the first place I went as soon as the call was over, was the florist’s shop. With a good idea of what Maia liked, I passed over the traditional sprays of red and white roses. Instead, I found a stunning bouquet of a dozen peach roses paired with sprays of tiny bell-shaped flowers in shades of pink, white, and cream. The whole thing was wrapped in a matching peach ribbon. An experimental sniff confirmed that it smelled divine, and I could clearly picture it in Maia’s office at work, perfuming the blandly neutral space. The thought of her smiling every time she smelled it sold me, and I promptly handed over my platinum card and carried it out.

  From there, I headed to Maia’s office. Energy thrummed under my skin as I rode the elevator up to her company’s floor. I collected Maia for lunch or dropped her back off afterward often enough that the receptionist recognized me when I stepped into the entry lounge. She greeted me by name with a smile, then gave me a regretful look.

  “If you just want to leave those, I can take them for you. But if you’re looking for Maia, I’m afraid she’s not in.”

  Startled, I glanced at the clock. It was only a little after four, and Maia never left before six. “Did she have an out-of-office appointment today?” If she had, I’d happily wait for her to come back.

  “No.” The receptionist shook her head, worry touching her expression. “She left early. Some kind of personal emergency. She didn’t say much—she was in a hurry.”

  A personal emergency. My stomach dropped. “I see. Okay. Thanks,” I said, my body on autopilot. With a tight smile for the receptionist, I walked out. The instant I hit the hallway, I yanked my phone out of my pocket and dialed Maia.

  No response.

  Fear formed like a block of ice in my gut. Maia, I texted rapidly. Are you all right?

  Nothing.

  Damn it. Maia never ignored my calls. Not if she was okay. She didn’t leave work for ‘personal emergencies,’ either. Then again, she’d never been pregnant before. The icy dread spread under my skin. Had something happened to her? To the babies? The agency paperwork had warned that miscarriages were a possibility. Even healthy pregnancies sometimes spontaneously terminated for reasons no one completely understood, and twins were always a higher risk, even when everyone was healthy.

  I walked into the elevator blindly. As the doors slid shut, I had a gut-wrenching memory of Maia’s beautiful body bent over my bed as I thrust inside her deep and hard. She’d loved it—the memory of her throaty moans was enough to make my cock twitch even now—but that didn’t mean it had been safe. Hell, what had I been thinking? I should have been gentler, more careful. Had I hurt her?

  The thought that I might have carelessly hurt my mate or our babies made me ill. Maia, I texted again as I stalked out of the elevator on the ground floor and toward the exit. Answer me. It’s important.

  Still nothing.

  Truly scared now, I slid behind the wheel of my car and threw the flowers in the passenger’s seat. Screeching out of the parking lot, I pointed the Audi toward the desert. I’d go to Maia’s house. If she wasn’t there, someone would be at her parents’ next door. I wasn’t keen on inviting myself into a dragon-hating home, but I would do anything to find Maia and take care of her and our babies. Anything.

  Chapter 11 – Maia

  I glanced at my parents’ driveway as I pulled into my own. Quickly, I did a mental accounting of the cars lined up in it and on the street in front of the house. Even if a couple of people had carpooled, it was safe to assume I wasn’t the last one to show up. That meant I could risk ducking into my own house for a couple of minutes before heading over.

  Letting myself in, I dropped my purse, keys, and phone on the counter. I hurried upstairs and peeled off my work blazer, top, and bra, and shimmied out of my pants. I blushed a little as I pulled on fresh underwear, reminded again that in my hurry I’d left yesterday’s pair at Will’s house this morning. Would he think I’d done it on purpose? That I’d meant something by it?

  Irritation prickled through me again, itchy and sharp like poison ivy. Stone had better have a damn good reason for calling an emergency family meeting, or I might seriously punch him. It had been a busy day at work, definitely not a good time to take off in the middle of the afternoon. That I’d already been pushing through on the promise I’d made to myself that I’d text Will when I got off just made it worse. We needed to talk, to discuss the things we should have before I’d run out his door this morning. We had babies on the way. We couldn’t afford to let anything linger—we needed to know what we were doing and be on the same page.

  What could Stone possibly have had come up that warranted disrupting everyone’s lives for an emergency meeting?

  Slipping into a pair of faded jeans and a comfortable, casual halter top, I shoved my feet in a pair of flats. I stopped in the bathroom next, intentionally spritzing myself with a fresh dose of perfume. It should still be too early for anyone who didn’t already know that I was pregnant to pick it up on my scent, but I wasn’t taking any chances. With the perfume as cover, I headed back downstairs. My stomach rolled a little, though whether it was from stress or being pregnant, I wasn’t sure. Risking being just a little later, I rummaged through my cabinets until I came up with a bag of ginger candies. Stuffing a handful into my pocket, I popped one in my mouth and headed out the back door. Time to get this over with.

  Stalking across the yard, I let myself into my parents’ house through the side door.

  “Maia!” My mother rushed over and wrapped her arms
around me. “You’re here!”

  “Stone said it was an emergency,” I pointed out, returning the hug. “Emergency family meetings aren’t optional.”

  “I know, I know.” She sounded flustered and pulled away. “Come sit, come sit.” She waved. “There’s only Lea left, and she texted that she’d be here soon.”

  I let my mother bustle me into the family room where my father and all my brothers were already gathered. Stone and Ford paced, radiating nervous energy. My father stood near the fireplace, and my other brothers were stuffed together on the couch. Skirting around them, I took a seat on the far side of the room in a rocking chair that been in the family for generations. Its worn wooden seat was familiar but less comforting than I hoped. Worry started to creep in.

  To settle my nerves, I reached for my phone … and realized with a sick twist that I’d left it on the counter. Cursing quietly to myself, I sucked on my ginger candy and willed my stomach to settle.

  Three minutes later, Lea had arrived. That made all of us. Usually, my father ran family meetings, but this time he deferred to Stone and Ford. There were only two years between them, and with their matching dark hair and eyes, they made me wonder fleetingly about the twins I carried. They couldn’t be identical, given that one had specifically been given dragon genes and the other coyote genes, but would they look alike anyway? Or would they be radically different despite sharing my womb?

  Stone stepped forward a little, distracting me from my thoughts, and didn’t waste any time getting to the point.

  “We did it!” he announced triumphantly, his lanky body leaning forward as he bounced on the balls of his feet. “We tracked down those killer bastards who took Uncle Joe and Aunt Lorna!”