Thea Harrison - Dragon Bound

Graydon and Rune watched her from across the room. Both men were wide-awake and alert. Graydon said, “What is it?”

She shook her head. “Just a dream.”

They stood. “What kind of dream?” Rune asked, eyes sharp.

She frowned at them, not wanting to share it. “Nothing happened. It was just a dream.”

They both looked toward the ceiling. “Dragos is back,” Graydon told her. “He’ll be right here.”

“Okay,” she said, hurt that Dragos hadn’t reached out to her telepathically and determined not to let it matter. Now was not the time to develop a thin skin. In fact, as long as she remained in the Tower she ought to jettison any delicate sensibilities she might have altogether.

Dragos entered and the atmosphere in the room turned electric. He looked invigorated. He glanced at the gryphons and jerked his chin toward the door, and they slipped out as he strode over and squatted in front of the armchair. She gave him a tentative smile as he leaned his forearms on the chair’s arms and regarded her. His gaze was moody, his mouth tight.

“It’s almost four A.M.,” he said. “If you wanted to avoid my bed that much, you should have crashed in one of the other rooms.”

Her smile vanished. She struggled to sit upright and pull the jewelry box out from under the open book. She threw the box at him. Impossible to miss at point-blank range. It smacked him in the chest.

“I was waiting up to thank you for the gift,” she snapped. “That you, oh, by the way, didn’t give me yourself. Move.”

He stayed crouched in front of her, eyes narrowed.

She stuck her face up to his, giving him a full-on glare. She bared her teeth. “I said move out of my way.”

He snatched her against his chest and drove his mouth down on hers. She struggled, managed to get one arm free and smacked him on the shoulder. He grabbed her by the back of the head to hold her still as he devoured her. She mmphed against his mouth and gave him another, weaker smack. He wedged her lips open and drove his tongue in deep.

Damn him! She wound her free arm around his neck and kissed him back furiously. All the electricity in the room shot into her body in one thunderous strike.

After a moment he eased up, turned gentler. She sucked his lower lip between her teeth and bit him hard.

He jerked back, gold eyes flaring. He touched his lip, looked at the smear of blood on his fingers, and his face creased with laughter. He said, “You liked me kissing you.”

She didn’t try to deny it. “Well, there’s a whole lot happening over here besides that. I’ve got quite a bit of angry still going on. Not that you asked. Did you come in here looking to pick a fight? How do you expect me to trust you when you act like such a pig?”

He didn’t like that and glared at her. Struck by the strength and ferocity of the expression, she stared at him. If she were meeting him for the first time and he looked at her like that, she would be spinning on her heel and on the run before you could say Kentucky Derby. How things had changed.

His hold loosened on her. He eased back on his heels. She straightened and inspected the open book that had gotten crushed between them. Some of the pages had gotten creased. She smoothed them out and then set the book on a nearby table. All the while she was focused on him crouching too close in front of her.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Her anger wasn’t so quick to die away just because he knew how to say the word “sorry.” But she didn’t want to start escalating things again, so she just nodded. Maybe waiting up to talk to him had been a mistake. She avoided his gaze as she folded the throw blanket and draped it over the arm of the chair.

“Pia.” She looked at him. He held the jewelry box out to her. “I have a present for you.”

The starch keeping her spine ramrod straight melted. Damn him again. “Do you?”

He opened the box and lifted out the necklace. Gold and rainbow fire glittered in his dark fingers and was reflected in the gleam of his eyes. “I wanted to see how the opals would look against your skin.”

“It’s a beautiful present,” she told him. “Thank you.”

“I’d like to put it on you.”

“All right,” she said.

She pulled her hair into a hand and held it aside as she twisted in the chair. His fingers worked at her nape, securing the clasp. Then the weight of the necklace settled into place around her neck, much heavier than the slim chains she was used to. It was longer than a choker and fell to the top of her breasts. She looked down at it and touched one of the stones.

His fingers stroked the hollow at the base of her neck and trailed along her skin. “Lovely,” he whispered. He bent and angled his head to press a kiss against her throat. She stroked his black hair, her eyes half closed.

He drew back. The lines of strain were bracketing his mouth again. “Do you want to stay or not?”

“I’ll be honest with you,” she told him. “It’s hard to want to stay when you’re being impossible. But I don’t want to go.”

His gaze flared with something, triumph or relief, or maybe both. He started to pull her back into his arms.

“Wait.” She braced both hands on his chest. “I’m not done. I don’t see how we can finish this conversation until something else is concluded.”

“And what is that?” His eyes narrowed.

“I need to know for sure who and what I am. We both need to know. That’s got to come before anything else. You think you want me to stay, but what if you change your mind?” She put fingers over his mouth when he started to speak and said, “It doesn’t matter what you say right now, since this is actually about me. I won’t be able to trust things between us until I believe you know who I am. Hell, until I know who I am. I want you to help me try to change, please.”

He took hold of her hand and removed her fingers from his mouth. “Can I speak now?” he demanded.

He sounded mad again. She wondered if anyone had ever told him before that it didn’t matter what he said or thought. She licked dry lips and said, “Yes.”

“All right. You want to do this, we’ll do it right now.” He stood and pulled her to her feet.

“Now?” She looked at a nearby wall clock. “It’s four thirty in the morning.”

“The hell difference does that make? I’m not going to give you time to overanalyze things and chicken out. You napped, didn’t you?” He took her by the wrist and strode out the door.

“Well, yes.” She trotted to keep up with him. “Damn it, that’s another thing. You’ve got to stop dragging me around like a sack of potatoes.” It was always some kind of he-man issue with him.

He shifted his hold to lace his fingers through hers. “Better?”

“Maybe,” she grumbled.

He led her to the bedroom and into the dressing room. “You’re going to want to put on jeans and some shoes, maybe grab a sweater or jacket. There’s a pocket of Other land about fifteen minutes’ flight west of the city. I’ve used it before for this kind of thing. It’s not very big, but the magic is strong and steady.”

“Okay.” She walked into her closet and stopped. Nerves started to tie her insides up in knots.

Was she going to let him railroad her into doing this now?

Yes. Because he was right, she would overanalyze and she was already tempted to chicken out. It was hard enough to try on her own and fail to change. So much seemed to be on the line with this one.

Not giving herself a chance to think, she tore out of her skirt and hopped into a pair of jeans. She sat on the floor to tug on socks and her new running shoes, then grabbed a black zippered sweatshirt. Then she removed the opal necklace with care and laid it out on her dresser beside her small jewelry chest. She went into the bathroom to run her brush through her hair a couple of times, and she yanked the length back into a scrunchie.