His frown didn’t lessen.
I sighed. “Look, Drake, I’m a big girl. I have a mind of my own. You’re more than a little bossy. I welcome advice, and I don’t mind you offering your opinion, but if we are going to live together in relative peace, you have to give me some room to be myself.”
“There are many things you do which are dangerous or which could bring trouble upon the sept. Many times you go headlong into situations at which a more knowledgeable person would hesitate. You have so much to learn about this world, Aisling—I cannot allow you to harm yourself or the sept in your desire to be independent.”
“Nor would I want you to.” I clutched the arms of the chair to keep my body from flinging itself on him. “I will modify that point to exclude times when I might be unaware of a dangerous situation, or one that would have political ramifications for the sept.”
“We will try it your way,” he said, his voice filled with suspicion. “But if it does not work out to my satisfaction, we will renegotiate this point.”
“If it doesn’t work out to our mutual satisfaction, then I’m willing to discuss the matter,” I corrected him.
“Agreed,” he said after thinking about it for a few minutes. “Your next condition?”
“It’s something you just brought up—my cluelessness regarding dragons. You have to fill me in on exactly what the duties are of a wyvern’s mate. Also, I want a list of my responsibilities with the sept and a detailed history of the dragons so I don’t feel like such an idiot around you all.”
“Granted,” he said without pause.
“One last condition,” I said, taking a deep breath. I was honestly surprised that he’d agreed to my conditions thus far. Maybe he had changed? Maybe the separation had done what I’d hoped it would—made him see I was serious about being a Guardian? Maybe we could live happily ever after, after all? “I want you to tell me what you’re thinking.”
He didn’t move. Not even an eyelash trembled. “Why?”
“Because I never know what it is you’re thinking or feeling unless you decide to spill, and that doesn’t happen very often. I want to know what interests you. I want to know your pet peeves. I want to know what makes you giddy with delight, and what makes you sad. I want to know about your past, your hopes and dreams, the trials you’ve overcome, what you’re proud of, what you want in life…everything. You’re not a very forthcoming man, Drake. I respect the fact that you wish to have some privacy, but I feel like an outsider whose body is just conveniently handy for a little romping between the sheets. I want more than that. If I’m going to have you, I want every bit of you, dragon warts and all.”
“I do not have warts,” he said absently, mulling over my request. His green eyes sparked with inner fire that I could feel from across the room. “Will you do the same for me?”
I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. Verbal reticence had never been one of my faults. “Sure. Consider yourself the recipient of all my thoughts and feelings.”
“Very well. I accept that condition so long as you recognize there are some things I will not be at liberty to tell you.”
“Things? What sort of things?” I asked suspiciously.
“Nothing about my hopes or dreams, as you put it.
There are certain things wyverns swear to that I cannot discuss with anyone, not even my mate.”
“All right. I can accept that some things are off limits. Everyone is entitled to a certain amount of privacy. I’m sure there is some supersecret Guardian stuff I won’t be able to share, too. So long as you do as I’ve asked the rest of the time, I think we’ll be OK.”
“Where is Jim?”
“In the bathroom, with orders to stay there.”
“Excellent. Let us make love.”
I laughed again as Drake rolled backwards onto the bed, waggling his eyebrows and giving me the come-hitheriest of all come-hither looks. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you be silly. Why don’t you do it now, just to let me see a side of you that I doubt few get to see.”
He stopped come-hithering. “You want me to be silly?”
“Yes. Just a little. A tiny bit of silliness. Something to give me a wee little peek into your psyche.”
“I am a dragon. Dragons are not silly.”
I tapped my lower lip. “OK, then, show me your dragon form. I’ve never seen one of you guys all scaly and winged and breathing fire. Why don’t you show me that instead of being silly?”
Drake stood up, peeling off his shirt. “This is as silly as I know how to be.”
As I stood there, blatantly ogling his bare chest, arms, and every other bit of magnificent exposed flesh, he put his hands on his hips and breathed fire.
On me.
In the shape of a heart.
I burst into laughter a third time as the ring of fire wafted over to me, encircling me in dragon fire. “Very silly, and very romantic at the same time. Thank you.”
“Now can we make love?”
I swear his toes tapped in exasperation as I spun around in the ring of fire, opening myself up to his unique form of passion.
“Oh, no, not yet. I have a lot more things to say.” I stopped spinning and traced the sept brand that Drake bore on his collarbone in the same place mine was located.
“Very well,” he said, his face resigned as he caught my fingers in his, flicking his tongue over the tips. “Proceed.”
“For one, I want to apologize for leaving the sept in the lurch. I had no idea things hinged on me being present in Budapest. I honestly thought everyone would be just fine without me.”
Drake gently bit one of my knuckles. I had to stiffen both my knees and my resolve to keep from jumping on him. “I accept your apology. I will admit that in hindsight, perhaps I might have explained the situation to you in a better fashion.”
“Well, I’d make a comment about an understatement of the year, but that would be petty of me. I will content myself with accepting your apology.”
“I didn’t technically apologize,” he murmured, turning my hand over to nibble on my wrist, working his way up to my shoulder.
I shivered at the delicious feeling of heat licking up my arm. “I know. We’re going to work on that, too. But since I don’t expect miracles, I’m willing to be gracious. Um…Drake, there’s something else. If we’re going to do anything involving the application of your flesh against mine, we’re going to have to use some sort of protection.”
“That is unnecessary.” He nibbled my shoulder. “You are pregnant.”
“I’m not. Or at worst, we don’t know that for certain.”
“So?” His face was buried in my neck, nibbling all my little shivery spots. I arched against him, trying desperately to hang on to some sort of coherent thought.
“I’m not ready to deal with parenthood now. And I don’t have any birth control pills with me, so it’s going to be up to you until I get set up.”
Drake pulled back a fraction to look at me with glittering eyes. He opened his mouth to say something. I bit his lip. “Please?”
He grunted something I took to be agreement, his head dipping back down as his tongue flicked over my lips, wordlessly asking for entrance. As his mouth took possession of mine, he breathed fire again, filling me with the heady, powerful rush of dragon fire. I welcomed it, embraced it, then turned it back on him, my body celebrating the act with a wanton little shimmy against his hard body.
“I want to do that,” I said, moaning as he bit my shoulder, one hand sliding up to caress a breast, the other pulling my hips tighter against him. “I want to breathe fire.”
“I will teach you,” he rumbled, his lips demanding and mine answering. His kisses were so fiery, so potent, so filled with passion and desire, my legs melted away underneath me. Luckily, the bed was right behind me.
Drake pulled away for a moment, looking at me sprawled across his mammoth bed. I expected a slow, seductive strip, which was Drake’s preference, but rather than him peeling my cloth
ing off item by item, there was a flurry of hands and cloth, the sound of a heated growl, and suddenly the chilled air was teasing my exposed flesh.
All of it.
“No,” I said, putting up a hand when he ripped off the remainder of his clothing, obviously intending to pounce on me.
His eyes spat green flame at me. “What?”
“Not until you hold by your part of the deal. I want to know what you’re thinking, Drake. I want to know what you’re feeling. You know what you do to me—lord knows I tell you everything, but I need to hear this. I need to know that I’m more to you than just a convenient body. I want to know what you really feel about me.”
He looked down at his erection. “You don’t know what I’m thinking?”
“Well, I know what that’s thinking—it’s the rest of you I want to hear about.”
“You infuriate me,” he said, sliding down until his mouth was poised over one extremely anticipatory breast.
“I know that,” I said, hissing as he licked my breast with fire, capturing my nipple and gently swirling his tongue over it. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“I need you,” he said, switching to the second breast.
“You are my mate. You are necessary to me.”
“No, tell me what you feel,” I groaned, scraping my nails up his back. He moaned in pleasure, nudging my knees aside.
“Condom,” I reminded him. “Please? It would make me feel better.”
His eyes were bright with desire tinged with annoyance, but that melted into sheer passion as he applied the condom and rolled back onto me. “You matter to me, Aisling. A great deal.”
“More than all your treasure?” I asked, teasing him as he sucked my belly button.
“Yes,” he answered without hesitation, astonishing me. A treasure was all to a dragon. “You are beyond price. You are my mate. There is no other like you and there never will be.”
“Oh, Drake,” I said, squirming against him, trying to pull him down onto me where he belonged. “That’s just about the nicest thing you’ve ever said. More!”
“I cannot wait, kincsem. I have missed you greatly these past weeks. You fill my thoughts. I crave your presence. I am not happy unless you are near me, around me, annoying and infuriating and fascinating me. I want to bury myself in your body and never leave.” He pulled my hips up to meet his thrust.
I couldn’t help the little yelp of surprise as he plunged into me, but it wasn’t his actions that brought tears of love to my eyes…it was what he said. I knew that Drake was not a man who discussed his emotions easily, so for him, the admission that he needed me was tantamount to a declaration of love.
“I love you, too,” I told him, my hands dancing down his sides. Our bodies moved together in a rhythm that was familiar and unknown at the same time. “Make me burn, Drake. Make us both burn.”
The molten core of heat that had never left me since Drake kissed me the first time flared to life, answering his call. Flames erupted on the bed, dancing and leaping around us as Drake drove me to the point where I knew I would lose all control. My body tightened around him as his back arched, his head snapped back, the long, beautiful line of his neck and chest etched permanently into my brain. The fire between us exploded when he shouted his ecstasy to the heavens, flames licking along his back as his hips flexed twice. He thrust hard a third time before collapsing on me.
I opened my mouth to tell him what I felt at that moment, to tell him how much I loved him, and needed him, and how horrible our separation was, but the words that echoed in the big room were not mine.
“Drakeling, what are you doing in London? I thought you hated this city. Madre de dios! Who is that woman?”
It took a few seconds for the words—spoken by a strange woman—to sink into my sated, Drake-bemused mind, but in that time Drake rolled himself off me, yanking the side of the blanket up so it covered most of me. I lay like a stupefied log and stared at the well-dressed, gorgeous, dark-haired woman who glared at me from the doorway.
“You have the worst timing of anyone I know, Mother,” Drake said with a sigh.
Mother?
11
“Yes. I understand.”
“No, you don’t. You say you do, but you can’t possibly imagine the embarrassment I felt. Feel. Will continue to feel to the end of my days.”
Drake’s hand was warm on my hip as we walked down the hallway to the staircase that split midway down into two curving arms ending at the marble-floored entryway, which looked as big as a football field to my overwhelmed eyes. “You’re being overly sensitive. I was covering you. All my mother could see was that I was lying on you in an intimate manner.”
“Leaving aside the fact that anyone saw that, it was your mother! Why didn’t you tell me you had a mother?”
Drake shot me an exasperated look. “I did.”
“You know full well what I mean,” I told the look. “Why didn’t you mention that your mother was alive and well and prone to walking in on you at any moment?”
“I had no idea she was in this hemisphere, let alone in England. She loathes England. That’s why she gave me this house. I doubt if she’s been to this country more than three times in the last hundred years.”
I took a deep breath as Drake paused outside the double doors I knew led to a formal library. I’d had a quick tour of the house when we arrived, just enough to see that it wasn’t so much a house as a small mansion, but none of that mattered now. Inside that room was someone I’d never expected to have to meet, and certainly not in the circumstances I’d just found myself.
“Made it downstairs, did you? So many comments come to mind,” Jim said, sitting up from where it was lying on the gray marble floor.
“You make just one of them, and it’s back to limbo for you,” I warned.
Jim evidently read with unusual accuracy the threat in my eyes. “Sheesh! Fine. Make a big deal about it. It’s not like I haven’t heard you two going at it before.”
I narrowed my eyes and thought about a nifty curse Nora had told me about that turned the target into a slug.
“I’m really impressed with the flame-proof quality of your bedding,” Jim said in a conversational tone to Drake as the latter swung open the double doors. “Think I can get a dog bed made up in something like that for when Ash gets pissed at me? The last time she got really annoyed, she singed my blanket.”
“Behave yourself, or there won’t be anything left of you to need a bed,” I whispered, slapping a smile on my face that I felt far from feeling. The four people in the room—Nora, Pál, István, and Drake’s mother—turned to look at us as Drake gently pushed me into the room.
“So. Here you are,” the dark-haired, olive-skinned woman said from a gold brocade couch. Nora was perched next to her, Paco at her feet. Pál and István sat in chairs opposite, both looking uncomfortable. They leaped to their feet as Drake entered the room.
“Yes, we are here. Kincsem, this is my mother, Doña Catalina de Elférez.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said pleasantly, lying through my teeth as I held out my hand for her.
She looked at it like it might contain toads.
“Mother,” Drake said in a voice rife with warning.
I dropped my hand when she stood up, her dark eyes hard as she looked me over from feet to forehead. I felt hideously gawky and awkward despite wearing clothing Drake had purchased for me—a lovely pair of raw-silk black pants and a flowing fuchsia shirt that highlighted my assets. “Your woman is unacceptable.”
“That’s the second time today someone has said that.” My nerves were clearly a bit on edge, but despite the desire to snap at her, I kept a pleasant expression on my face. “Your nephew shares that opinion, for which I’m very sorry.”
“You look tired.” Catalina ignored me completely, examining Drake’s face for a moment. “You are unhappy.”
“On the contrary, at the moment I am quite content,” he answered, escorting me t
o a loveseat that sat at right angles to the couch. “You, however, are being unforgivably rude to my mate. Aisling has done nothing to justify such hostility and poor manners on your part.”
“Mate!” she shrieked, sending me a look that could have dropped a horse.
My fingernails bit into my palms as I squelched back any number of things I wanted to say. To my surprise, Jim marched over and sat next to me, leaning on my leg as if to offer support. I was touched by that, as well as by Drake’s hand, which he kept on my shoulder as he stood on my other side. I felt oddly protected by the two of them, although why I needed to be protected from Drake’s mother was beyond me.
“She is human!” Catalina accused, pointing a scarlettipped finger at me.
“Yes, she is,” Drake answered calmly. His fingers tightened slightly on my shoulder. I took that as a sign that he appreciated my silence while he dealt with his mother.
“You cannot have a mate who is human! You are a wyvern!”
“I know what I am. I also know what Aisling is, what the rules governing the weyr are, and the history of the sept. Regardless of all three, Aisling is my mate. The sept has accepted her. You would be wise to do the same.”
“Wise?” Her voice had a Spanish accent that became more noticeable as she shrieked. I had a few moments of trouble with the fact that she didn’t look any older than Drake—or me, for that matter—but pushed that aside to cope with the important things happening before me. “You are as insolent as your father was! If I had known you would shame me in this way, I would never have allowed them to rip you from my belly!”
Pál and István sidled toward the door.
“I think I’ll just take Paco for a walk,” Nora said quietly, following the two men. She slid me a sympathetic glance as she left. I gave her a feeble smile and wished like the dickens I could escape with her.
“And you are being deliberately insulting,” Drake answered as the door closed behind Nora. “If you are finished—”
“I have not yet begun to express myself,” she snarled, storming toward me, her black eyes lit with an unholy glint.