Dragon Fall

  “Really?” I looked at it again. “Is that going to happen every time we have sex?”

  “It will not happen again.”

  Whether he meant the marking or the lovemaking, I had no idea, and he didn’t say anything more. I sat on the floor for a few minutes, caught between the desire to rail at him for ruining what had been profoundly wonderful lovemaking and the need to understand just why it was that he was so desperate to deny the connection between us.

  “I’m not a saint,” I told the now-empty bathroom. “So I’m going to have to say a few things to him about proper après-sex behavior, but I’m also going to get to the bottom of this whole dragon-mate thing. Because if that mark is what I think it is, then he’s going to have to spill with a whole lot more than a few facts and details.”

  Which is just exactly what he doesn’t want to do, my inner self pointed out somewhat smugly.

  “There are times I really hate the fact that Dr. Barlind made me get so in touch with myself that I can’t shut you up,” I told my reflection, then got to my feet and took a fast shower. When I was dry again, I rolled up the bath mat and tossed it into the tiny trash bin that sat alongside the toilet.

  The mat was scorched black. I couldn’t help but give the female shape burned onto it a little smile. I just hoped I had the stamina to keep up with Kostya’s lovemaking.

  Eleven

  I returned to the main cabin and sat down on the couch next to Kostya. He had a new pencil and was writing on his pad of paper in a language I didn’t understand. “That mark you put on my hip—it’s something to do with me being your mate, isn’t it?”

  He didn’t answer me, but I noticed his jaw tightened.

  “I thought so. Did you put the same thing on your ex’s hip?”

  The muscles in his jaw worked a couple of times but finally gave when he answered, “No. I told you that she was not my mate. She just forced me to name her as such.”

  I wanted to point out that he’d told me repeatedly that I wasn’t his mate either, but figured that was petty. “How’d she force you? I don’t think I could make you do anything you didn’t want to do, certainly not without some serious leverage, and even then, you don’t strike me as the sort of man who can be forced into doing things against your will.”

  “She used her woman’s body against me,” he snarled, careful to avoid my gaze.

  Well, now. There was a lot to be said about that, but I remembered the pain hidden deep in Kostya’s eyes, a sign that he, like me, was one of those people who felt things deeply but who’d been burned for wearing their heart on their sleeves.

  “When I was seventeen,” I said carefully, tucking my legs underneath me as I scooted over until my thigh pressed against his, “I fell madly in love with the mail boy in my dad’s office. His name was Thor, and he was everything a seventeen-year-old gawky girl with braces on her teeth could dream of—tall and blond and wore a Thor’s hammer necklace, and man, was he built—and the day he managed to recognize that I was a living, breathing human being and said hello to me, I thought I would die of happiness. I started going to my dad’s office every day, ostensibly to have lunch with him, but the reality was that I just wanted to hang around and hope that Thor would notice me again.”

  Kostya muttered something so softly I didn’t catch it, but it had an edge to it that could sever concrete.

  “After what seemed like weeks of mooning around the office, one day I was casually posed in the hallway in a spot that I knew Thor would have to pass. As I waited, I heard laughter coming from a nearby office. I edged close to the door so I could hear what was so funny and heard one of the junior executives telling Thor that he needed to go ahead and bang me so that I’d stop mooning around the office.”

  Kostya’s frown grew to an epic level of blackness. The pencil snapped in half.

  “I was so mortified that evidently everyone in the office knew what I thought I was hiding so well that I almost missed what Thor said in response. Almost.”

  “What?” Kostya snapped, the word emerging with the velocity of a fiery bullet. His eyes were black as night, the little silver bits in them glowing. “What did he say?”

  The old memory hurt but was no longer crippling. I’ll say that for Dr. Barlind—she helped me lay a few ghosts to rest, this one in particular. “He said that he had no use for a mongrel half-breed, not even for casual sex. He didn’t use the phrase ‘casual sex,’ but my mother raised me to not have a potty mouth, and other than occasional swearing, I try not to.”

  “Half-breed,” Kostya said on a hot breath of fury. I thought for a moment that his fire was going to get away from him, but he had better control than I gave him credit for, so the papers in front of him didn’t actually burst into flame. They smoked a little, though. “Mongrel! He dared to damn you because of something so trivial?”

  “You know, if I didn’t want to already kiss you just because you’re so kissable, I’d want to even more simply because you’re so incensed on my behalf.”

  “Of course I’m incensed!” Kostya’s hands were fisted on his thighs. I put my hand over one of them, nudging him in the side with my elbow so he’d stop glaring. “This man you desired, this unworthy mortal, devalues you—you who are so far above him that he should be on his knees with gratitude that you would even consider looking at him, let alone allowing him to touch your body… This is intolerable. Give me his surname. I will find him and lesson him.”

  I laughed and kissed him, allowing my lips to linger in a way that I hoped told him just how much I appreciated the outrage. His fire immediately kicked into high gear, but mindful that we were in an airplane, I tamped it down and pulled my mouth from his in order to say, “When you stop to think about what you said, you’ll realize just how less than brilliant jealousy has made you.”

  “Are you calling me stupid?” he demanded, pulling me closer, his eyes all outraged and yet soft with desire.

  “Of course not. Except where old boyfriends who weren’t even real boyfriends are concerned, and that just makes you more adorable than ever.” I tucked a strand of hair behind his ear. “Thor doesn’t matter, Kostya.”

  “He insulted you—he matters!”

  “Only because you are very sweet.”

  “I am not sweet!” He looked even more outraged, if that was possible. “I am a wyvern! I am the stuff of nightmares!”

  “Oh, I’m sure you’re very nightmarish when you want to be, but that’s not what I’m talking about. And don’t think I can’t see that you’re trying to Google men named Thor in Sweden on your phone, because I can.”

  He slid his hand, which had indeed gone to the cell phone sitting on the couch next to him, back onto his lap.

  “I told you about Thor to show you that we all have painful experiences in our past. The thing with Thor—that was painful, yes. Did it make me shy away from all guys for a while? Of course. At the time, I thought I was going to die of embarrassment. But Thor’s attitude was his problem, not mine. I don’t mind that my parents fell in love and had my siblings and me, and I don’t mind my appearance at all. To be honest, I get a lot of envy about my curly hair, which makes me all shades of smug, so that more than makes up for the occasional bigoted insult that comes my way. So stop looking like you want to turn the plane around to find Thor—who is probably going bald and has a beer belly by now—and instead appreciate the fact that although you had a bad experience with a woman, it doesn’t mean I’m going to treat you the same way.”

  The emotional shutters fell over his face. He released me and reached for his tablet of paper again, along with a fresh unbroken pencil. “I do not wish to talk about Cyrene.”

  “That’s fine with me. I don’t particularly want to know about you and your ex, anyway, other than to point out yet again that I’m not her. Have I made my point?”

  “There is no point to be made,” he said, clearly refusing to understand, his attention focused on his work.

  I sighed in frustration. “Boy, I d
on’t know how Dr. Barlind did it. I sure don’t seem to have the patience to deal with blatant denial. Okay, how about this as a conversational subject: the mark you put on me has wings. Why is that so, when you dragons don’t have them?”

  Kostya growled something under his breath.

  “Is it going to stay there forever? Or will it fade away with time? And does something special happen to me now that I’m your mate?”

  He growled some more.

  “Not even going to deny it?” I asked, knowing that he needed to confront his emotions in order to be free of the pain that bound him.

  “Christ’s blood!” he yelled, slamming down his pencil. It broke into three pieces. “What do you want from me? You say you are not like Cyrene, and yet you obviously expect me to name you as mate in front of the weyr. You are doomed to disappointment! The weyr is no more! You can’t receive recognition if there is no one to recognize you!”

  His voice reverberated around the small cabin. The flight attendant, who had taken one look at us when we emerged from the bedroom, had murmured something about providing a restorative and taken herself off to the galley, which meant Kostya had only me to rage at.

  And he was most definitely in a rage. I couldn’t help but wonder what his ex had done to him—or whether it was even her that was at the bottom of his refusal to accept the obvious.

  “By rights,” I said slowly, picking through words to get the ones I really wanted, “I should be offended by the implication that I’m using you for my own purposes, when in reality, I’m trying to help you. For one, I have this badass magic ring, although to be honest, if you asked me nicely, I’d give it to you. And for another, I genuinely want to help you, Kostya. I don’t need to be named as your mate in front of anyone other than you. If you don’t want to acknowledge it, then there’s nothing I can do to make you see the truth.”

  “The truth,” he snorted, glaring so hard at the broken pencil collection on the table in front of him that one of them caught fire. I patted it out quickly before the flight attendant could see it. “The truth no longer matters.”

  “Of course it matters. We have a bond, you and I, whether or not you want to admit it, and let me tell you, if there’s one thing I learned from my time at Casa de Crazy, it’s that lying to yourself never ends well.”

  He eyed me for a moment, then held out his hand.

  I looked at it. “What?”

  “The ring.”

  “Oh. You really want it?” Hesitantly, I pulled it off my finger. I was a bit surprised just how reluctant I was to do that—it felt so right on my hand, but the thought occurred to me that in itself might be a bad thing. “Okay, but only because I feel really close to purring ‘my precioussss’ if I keep it on much longer.”

  I dropped the ring onto his palm. He looked at it for a moment, then slipped it on his little finger. He pursed his lips and held out his hand, examining it.

  “Well?” I asked, glancing toward the galley. The flight attendant was still out of sight. “Do something magic with it.”

  He shook his head, then pulled it off and gave it back to me. “It is as I thought. The ring has chosen you. It will not yield to my will, whether due to the curse or some other reason. The result is the same. Put it on again, and keep it safe.”

  With a sense of profound relief, I slid it back onto the middle finger of my left hand. “Terrin said something about it having a mind of its own, but I didn’t really understand what it was he meant, because really, how many sentient rings do you run across in your lifetime?”

  “One,” Kostya answered, picking up the writeable end of his broken pencil.

  I smacked him on the arm. “You made a funny!”

  “I did not.”

  “Yes, you did. And you smiled earlier. That’s two points for Team Aoife and nothing for Team Kostya.”

  He looked outraged for a moment. “You are on my team!”

  “I stand corrected,” I said with a laugh, leaning over to kiss his cheek. “I’m very much on your team, even though you’ve got to be the most obstinate, annoying man in the universe. The question of our relationship aside—for the moment—what do you expect me to do with the ring in Paris? Aisling said that Drake hoped to use it to break the curse, but I can tell you right here and now that I have no idea how to go about doing that.”

  “You will not break it—we will find a Charmer.”

  “A what?”

  “Someone who can break the curse. You will give the ring to the Charmer, and she will do the work.”

  “She? You have someone in mind?” I told the little spurt of jealousy that threatened to rise to knock it off.

  “I know of no Charmers, but there are bound to be some in Paris. The Venediger is known to favor them.”

  “Someday,” I said, looking out the window, “I’m going to be able to have a conversation with you and actually understand every word you say.”

  He smiled. It didn’t last long, just a couple of seconds, but it was there and I saw it, and I rejoiced at the fact that his emotions weren’t so devastated that he couldn’t be brought around. He smoothed his hand across my hair. “Now go to bed and sleep. I must make plans.”

  “I’m not a doormat,” I told Kostya. “I just want you to know that. My first inclination is to brain you with something bulky, but because I’m a nice, civilized person who has a goodly amount of empathy, I’m going to let your comment slide and instead ask you what a Venediger is.”

  His lips tightened for a moment, and then he gave another of his martyred sighs and tossed the pencil stub onto the table. “You are doing this to enrage me, aren’t you?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “But I was raised to ask questions if I didn’t understand something, and you are not going to make me feel bad for doing just that.”

  “The Venediger is a mage who lives in Paris. She controls the Otherworld in Europe.” A slightly amused look came into his eyes.

  “The Otherworld being, what? The part of the world with dragons and mages with funny names?”

  “Among others, yes… What are you doing?”

  “Snuggling with you.” I scooted over on the couch until I was pressed up against him, running my finger along his eyebrows until the frown smoothed out. “I like it when you smile, Kostya. It makes me happy… and a little aroused, to the point where I want to touch you and kiss you and do wicked things to you with my tongue. I don’t, however, like it when you frown. That just makes me want to pinch you. Now, which mood would you like me in?” I kissed a little path along his jaw to his ear, sucking on his earlobe.

  If anything, he looked grumpier than normal. He gave me a sidelong glance, then said sourly, “Drake was right.”

  “About women who think you’re sexy when you smile?” I asked, nibbling my way back to his chin, where I swirled my tongue around the cleft in it. At the same time, I unbuttoned a few of his buttons and slid my hand inside his shirt, delighting at the sensation of his soft chest hairs.

  “No. He has said many times that Aisling has made his life a living hell and that a mate would do the same to me. Later he said that he enjoyed her brand of hell and would die rather than give her up, but I believe that to be a statement of pride. She has certainly put him through much that I would never tolerate.”

  I leaned back to look at him.

  He accurately read the question in my eyes. “I will not have a mate.”

  I held my breath for a moment. Did he really bring the subject up so soon after shutting me out? I had to tread carefully here, I knew. I tipped my head and, beneath his shirt, stroked his pectoral muscle. “Why?”

  “I’ve already spoken to you about this. Repeatedly.”

  “That’s because you haven’t really told me why you are so hurt. I won’t judge you, Kostya—surely you can see that I was devastated by the whole Thor thing. I can empathize with the pain from the loss of misplaced love.”

  He sighed a huge sigh that could have filled a hot-air balloon. “Very well, I
will explain to you this once, and then we will speak of it no more. I told you that Cyrene forced me to declare her as my mate.”

  “Yes, but she wasn’t really your mate, and I am. So despite that, you’re going to spurn me, spurn everything we could have together—and again, I want bonus points for going from a perfectly normal human being to someone who accepts that there are dragons and Venedimages and demon lords marching around—”

  “Venediger, not Venedimage.”

  Gently, I pinched his side. “You want to turn all that down just because you had a bad experience with a girlfriend? One who didn’t even throw racial and sexual slurs at you like some people I could name? Really, Kostya? You’re that dense?”

  And in a flash, he was back to enraged. “A proper mate does not refer to her wyvern as dense!”

  “I bet she does when he acts that way!”

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “It’s Aisling, isn’t it? She told you to say these things to me. She’s not going to be happy until you have me as deranged as she has Drake.”

  I laughed and leaned forward to kiss him again, very sweetly this time, before biting his lower lip. “She didn’t, but I can see I’m going to have to have a long, long talk with her. Am I your mate or not?”

  His lips tightened for a moment; then suddenly we were both on our feet. “If you do not wish to sleep, then I will,” he said, heading for the bedroom.

  “Coward!”

  His shoulder jerked. He paused a moment, half turning toward me. “To retreat when you cannot win a battle is not cowardly. It is self-preservation.”

  “Hmm,” I said aloud after he disappeared into the bedroom. “Now what am I going to do about that?”

  I had no answer, but I was fairly confident that something would occur to me before too long.

  Three hours later, I was no wiser, although I did put the problem aside to appreciate the fact that I was in Paris. “You’re sure it’s okay to talk in front of this guy?” I asked Kostya as we got to a taxi. The driver was a middle-aged man with a nice face, brown hair, and a lovely French accent.