Pia Saves the Day (9 page)

Then there was the jealousy, which made him feel more insane than ever.

He hated the other Dragos, the one who had been a full participant in this rich, complex life. The one whom Pia obviously adored. He wanted to roar a challenge at that other dragon and tear him to shreds, until he was the only one left alive, the true victor and inheritor of all this bounty.

But there was no other dragon. There was only himself. The threat he sensed lay inside of him.

He was the one who had snapped at her. He could have killed her, without knowing, and then at some future date, he might have realized what he had done. He might have remembered that she was his mate. A cold nausea swept over him again at the thought.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I didn’t know. I could never have done it if I’d known.”

She rubbed his back with one slender hand. When she spoke her voice remained as gentle and pragmatic as ever. “I know how sorry you are, and I knew you would be. What happened here—I never wanted you to remember that. All I want is for you to remember us.”

Of course, she wanted her husband back. It seemed the time to say something reassuring, but he couldn’t reconcile the warring parts of himself enough to verbalize anything that didn’t sound completely crazy.

Things like, you are not his. You are mine.

I’ll kill anyone who tries to take you away from me.

Forget the time you had with him. Be with me, here and now, not some image of who you think I am supposed to be.

Growling in frustration, he gave up on words entirely, tilted up her head and covered her mouth with his. Her body softened readily, eagerly, against his, and her lips parted for his invasion.

This
response should be his, but he couldn’t trust it. The things he felt were dark, tangled, and edged in violence. She thought she was kissing her husband. Instead she was kissing a savage creature. One who might kill anyone, or do anything to have her.

He wrenched his mouth away, and she made a soft sound of protest that went straight to his heart and groin alike. For a moment he thought she might tug on him to coax his head back down to her, and a greedy, ravenous part of him needed her to do it, to show him that she wanted him.

See me. Choose me.

Instead, she let him go and stepped away.

“Do you need more time here?” She sounded breathless.

“No,” he snapped. He watched her recoil, and part of him wanted to rampage through the night in a rage.

Cautiously, she peered sideways at him as she suggested, “Would you like to go back to the house?”

Back to the house, with the silent, empty nursery for an absent child, and the beautiful, serene suite of rooms
the other Dragos
shared with her.

Clenching his fists, he pressed them against his thighs. This was too volatile, even for him. He had to get in control of himself. How could he expect her to continue trusting him, if he didn’t trust himself?

“Go on back.” His tone was too short, and he fought to soften it. “I need a few minutes alone.”

She hesitated, her face tilted up to his like some rare flower that only emerged in moonlight, and while she tried to hide her anxiety, he could still sense it running through her slender form. “Are you sure?”

With a sudden flash of intuition, he realized what she was worried about. He touched her face. The softness of her skin was addicting. This time, when he reached for gentleness, it came to him readily. “I’m not going to leave,” he murmured. “I only want a few minutes.”

Her fingers curled around his, and she pressed her face into the palm of his hand. She said quietly, “Okay. I’ll see you back at the house.”

Some predatory instinct had him gripping the delicate angle of her chin, carefully to avoid bruising that soft skin. He said into her face, “I didn’t want to stop kissing you.”

The tiny sound of her indrawn breath brushed over his heated skin. Her heartbeat pulsed against the tips of his fingers. She whispered, “I didn’t want to pull away.”

I’m not who you think I am.

I am not the man you so badly want me to be.

He didn’t say it. Instead, he brushed her soft mouth with his lips, and never mind that he really was
the other Dragos
—this impulse to sensual intimacy was all new. It was the first time it had ever existed in his world, and trapped in a tangle of his own devising, the dragon had no idea how to tell her that.

Letting go of his hand, she stepped back, pivoted on her heel and walked back to the house.

He stared at her retreating form, his muscles tightening instinctively as she disappeared underneath the shadow of the trees. Once he was truly alone, he gave in to the savage, jealous creature inside, shapeshifted back into the dragon and prowled over every inch of the construction site.

He didn’t care what he looked at. He wasn’t searching for any kind of evidence of wrongdoing. That suspicion had been thoroughly laid to rest. The dragon simply picked through the rock and various items for something to do while the real activity happened inside his massive, convoluted mind.

He hadn’t left the gold and jewels back up the mountain for safekeeping. He had forgotten about it, and he’d only remembered when she had brought it up.

Which, he would have said, was rather unlike him. He never forgot about treasure. Never. Except for this time, when all of his attention had been focused on the real treasure in front of him.

There was only one creature he’d ever heard of who could heal with her blood, a creature that had long ago disappeared into myth and legend, and yet he knew that must be her true nature. He knew it like he knew how to make the fire respond to his commands.

Leaving the construction site, he leaped into a short flight that took him over the barrier of trees and landed in the clearing on the other side. Once grounded, he cloaked his presence in case she watched for him and prowled around the massive house.

Look at the scene, so civilized. So pretty.

The lights she had left on for him twinkled in the darkness.

His tail whipped back and forth as he bared his teeth at the house. He did not fit in that civilized, pretty life. He fit out here in the night, where the moon created a world filled with shadows, and other predators knew to slink away at the first sign of his presence.

Dragos.

Cuelebre.

Those were his names, and they said what he was. No more, no less, yet everywhere in that house he had seen the evidence of a civilized man, the man she had mated with, the man who might never return to her.

The man he hated and would kill if he could. The man he did not want to be.

But he did want to take that man’s place in those soft, serene rooms upstairs. That private place, filled with cream furniture and jewel-toned colors, and all the sensual evidence of her nesting. The perfume she wore. The scatter of feminine clothes, and shoes, and jewelry.

Most especially, he wanted to take that man’s wife for his own.

So he would put up with the rest of the civilized life. He would figure out the complexities in that office of his and learn to make peace with the many other creatures who seemed to be part of the total package. Tilting his head, he shapeshifted back into his human form and strode toward the house.

A better man, perhaps
the other Dragos
she had fallen in love with, might warn her of what he had become.

But he wasn’t a better man. He wasn’t a good man at all.

And unfortunately for her, he was the one who wore her ring on his finger.

Entering by the front door, he tracked her to the back of the house, where he found her in the kitchen, sitting at the table and eating a bowl of cereal.

She had showered, and her damp, combed hair followed the curve of her shapely head. Her sturdy hiking clothes were gone, and she wore thin, soft-looking pajama pants along with a matching sleeveless top that was a deep, ruby red that highlighted the golden tan of her skin. She was barefoot also, he saw, her pink-painted toenails peeping from underneath the hem of her pants.

Glancing at him self-consciously, she said, “If you’re hungry, there’s plenty of food in the fridge.”

He was on fire with hunger, but not for food. He watched her ravenously as she spooned the last bite of her cereal into her mouth. The way her plump, naked lips slipped around her spoon as she took the last bite of food gave him an incredibly painful erection.

Clenching, he fought for self-control. She had undergone a lot of stress, and to the best of his knowledge hadn’t eaten anything for a long time. “How about you?” the dragon asked, striving for a solicitous tone. “Is there anything else you would like to eat?”

Her large gaze slid sideways to him, and he could tell by her guarded expression that he wasn’t acting quite right. “No, thank you. I’ve had enough.”

As she slid out of her seat and carried her bowl and spoon to the sink, his gaze dropped to her shapely ass and thighs, the tight glide of toned muscle sliding sinuously underneath the thin material of her pants.

Abruptly, he said, “I know what you are. I knew when you healed me.”

Setting her bowl in the sink, she turned to face him, her teeth worrying at her lower lip. “I wasn’t really trying to hide it from you, although you should know—we hide it from everybody else.”

He wasn’t surprised. In her Wyr form, her horn could dispel any poison. She could heal with her blood. She could only be captured by unfair means. No cage could hold her. Her life sacrificed could bestow immortality. If word got out about what kind of creature she was, she would be hunted for the rest of her life.

He stalked across the room toward her, slowly so as not to frighten her. Cocking his head, he studied her closely. “You’re cloaking yourself somehow. I didn’t notice it before. I know how to cloak my presence, but I have never seen someone with the ability to cloak as subtly as you do.”

While she might not have realized it consciously yet, some deep, animal part of her sensed that he had gone on the hunt, and she shifted her body restlessly as she leaned back against the kitchen counter. “My mom always said our cloaking was the most important thing we could do for ourselves. That, and knowing when to run and how to hide.”

He would like to see her run. Not in fear, or because she felt she was in danger—those thoughts were as distasteful to him as the scent of her tears. But the thought of chasing her down a dark forest path as she tried her best to elude him… that was a game that appealed to every hunter’s instinct he had, and his erection hardened.

Stepping in front of her, he trapped her against the sink by putting one hand on the counter on either side of her torso. This close, he could hear how her pulse picked up and her breathing shortened. Of all the many revelations in this long struggle of the day, the fact that he could smell her arousal for him was one of the most amazing.

The warmth from her body was a gentle heat that bathed the air against his skin. “Take the cloaking spell off,” he said, in a voice that had turned low and husky. “I want to see you for who you really are.”

A small smile tugged at the corner of her lips. “You never have tolerated any barriers between us.”

He frowned, not sure how much he liked the comparison between himself and
the other Dragos
, but before he could decide how to respond, that elegant, subtle cloaking spell of hers fell away.

Pale, delicate illumination shone from her skin. He lost every other impulse and stared. The glow was so much like the moon’s silvery glow, yet it was exponentially more precious, as it was drenched with her cool, witchy magic.

He lost himself in awe. The dragon couldn’t remember the last time he had ever felt awe. Perhaps he had felt it once at the morning of the world, in that first, bright dawn. Gently taking one of her hands, he lifted it to his mouth, marveling in the effortless symmetry of the movement in her graceful wrist and arm.

She adapted to his action and took it for her own, as she raised her hand to cup the side of his face. That magic, the immediacy of her presence, sank into his skin and found its way into his old, wicked soul. Forgetting to breathe, he closed his eyes and soaked her in greedily.

“What do you need now, Dragos?” she asked softly. “Do you know? Do you need space, or your own place to sleep? Or do you want to go back to the mountaintop?”

The swiftness of his internal reaction jolted him, an immediate whiplash of denial at the thought of taking his own space, but when she mentioned going back to the mountaintop, he had to pause.

He couldn’t deny it. He was tempted. The stone of the ledge would still be radiating heat from the day’s sun, and the gigantic canopy of the night sky would arc overhead, stars gleaming like diamonds. The wildness and solitude of the place called him, and he knew she would come with him if he asked.

Yet, while he wanted to return at some point to collect the small pile of treasure—his gifts—going back there now would not be conquering the alien landscape of this place, and that was what he was most determined to do. He needed to invade that private place upstairs, the nest she had shared with
the other Dragos
, and to claim it for his own.

He needed to claim her in that space.

Holding her gaze, he said deliberately, “I need to take you to bed.”

The sense of her arousal deepened, and the light that came into her face in that moment had nothing to do with her own magic, and everything to do with the magic they were creating between them. She whispered, “I’m glad.”

Keeping hold of her hand, he turned and they walked through the silent house together.