Dragon Bound

TWENTY

When she woke up again for real she was in their bed at Cuelebre Tower. She gazed at the ceiling for an unmeasured time as the light changed. It was quiet. She was warm, clean and dry and pain free.

Dragos lay beside her, his arm around her. She looked at his sleeping face and saw something she had never seen before. He looked exhausted and worn, as if something inside of him had stretched too thin. She frowned. Had he gotten hurt in the battle?

She tried to raise her right arm to stroke his face but she couldn’t. She tugged at her arm, and all of a sudden Dragos rose up on his elbow. He put his hand on her arm to hold her down. “Sweetheart, don’t do that.”

“My hand’s caught on something,” she mumbled. She looked up at him with sleepy anxiety. “What’s wrong? You look so sad. Are you hurt?”

He smiled down at her, gold eyes alight, and the careworn look vanished. “I did not get hurt, other than in my heart.”

“Somebody shot you in the heart!” She tried to jerk her hand up.

“Pia love, stop. Look at your arm.” She turned and followed the direction of his pointing finger. “You have an IV drip. You keep trying to pull it out in your sleep, so we had your hand tied down. We didn’t want you to hurt yourself.”

“Oh.” Feeling foolish, she subsided. She turned back to him. “Somebody shot you in the heart!”

“Yes.” He kissed her nose. “You did, metaphorically speaking.” He kissed her mouth, his caressing lips infinitely gentle. “You were dying, you little shit. Your heart shut down and your lungs stopped working. I had to take over for a while. Then our son decided to help and almost burned himself out healing you. It scared centuries off my life.”

He nuzzled at her, his eyelids closed. She breathed him in, rubbed her cheek against his and let his presence soothe the jagged edges inside.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. A tear slid out of a corner of her eye and soaked her hair, followed by another. “I’m so sorry for everything.”

“Stop that.” He cupped her face and wiped the tears away. “It’s not your fault. I flew your doctor back from Cancún and had quite a talk with her. First I found out what an IUD was and how it could have endangered both you and the pregnancy. I understand why you panicked and why you were afraid I had forced the pregnancy on you.”

“I should have known better.”

“How could you? We’ve been together for less than a week and under far less than ideal circumstances. But of course I didn’t mean to make you pregnant. You’ve ruined me.” His voice and face were rueful. He stroked her hair. “I had no idea my control had slipped to that extent.”

Her gaze clung to him as her free hand slid to cover her abdomen in a protective gesture that was fast becoming habitual. Something tentative and fragile in her expression seemed to catch his attention. The dark slash of his eyebrows contracted. He covered her hand with his, lacing his fingers with hers.

“The pregnancy is a total shock,” he told her. “Connecting with our son when he healed you—he’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. I can’t begin to describe my reaction to him. I’ve never felt these feelings before.”

“That’s actually a pretty good way to describe it,” she whispered. “Me either. I’m terrified.”

He kissed her, his lips moving slow and easy as he savored her. “I have no idea how to act around small new creatures. But I’m glad.”

“I am too,” she whispered. Her eyes glittered with easy moisture as she smiled at him. Then her gaze turned inward and grew haunted. “I killed five people.”

His eyes narrowed. “How do you figure?”

“It’s my fault the man in the truck got shot—”

He tapped her lips. “That one’s easy. He’s not dead. It was touch and go at first, but they say he’s going to pull through just fine.”

“Thank God,” she said, sighing.

“There were, however, four dead guards around Urien’s house that we’ve been mighty curious about. Was that you?” He searched her face. His fingers couldn’t seem to stop stroking her cheekbones, her jaw, her throat.

She grimaced and nodded.

He showed her his teeth. “I am so damn proud of you. You stepped it up when you had to. You did what needed to be done and got yourself away.”

“Yeah, well, you’re a bloodthirsty monster. Who cares what you think,” she muttered. She drifted for a few minutes and he let her be, stroking her hair. She roused enough to say, “To be honest, I was feeling bad about not feeling bad. Except for the guy in the truck. Him I just felt bad about.”

“That’s stupid and convoluted. You are going to stop it right now,” he ordered.

She gave a ghost of a giggle. “There you go again, giving orders. His Majesty is starting to feel better. Oh, speaking of majesties.” Her eyes opened very wide. “Urien actually thought he was going to be the boss of me.”

“Which was one of the things that finally got him killed.” His eyes crinkled. “Imagine that.”

She slept for a while with the easy exhaustion of a convalescent. She woke up once to say with sudden urgency, “Don’t go anywhere.”

He was dressed in cutoffs and stretched out on top of the covers, reading files, pillows piled at his back. He set them aside and gave her a steady look. “I’m not going anywhere, Pia. Not anywhere. And neither are you.”

His much-loved face was as immovable as a mountain. She nodded and relaxed. He did not pick up his reading again until she was sound asleep.

Almost dying can sure take it out of a body. The brief healing flare of Power from the peanut had taken care of essentials, but she had to do the rest on her own.

She had been unconscious for two days. Dragos had a present for her, an anti-nausea charm set in a two-carat diamond pendant necklace. The day after she woke up, when they were sure she could keep liquids and solid food down, the doctor had the IV drip removed.

She couldn’t concentrate on anything more substantive than magazines and TV shows, and she napped often. When she was awake, Dragos coaxed out of her every detail of what happened.

Then he shared the story of their pursuit, down to the final part when all the sentinels had taken to the air to search for the meadow she had described. With his keen raptor’s gaze, Bayne had caught the movement as Urien and his men had plunged down the incline toward her. They had still been a couple miles away and had hurtled forward with every ounce of speed they possessed.

Every ounce of Dragos’s formidable energy had been focused on taking Urien out before the Fae King had a chance to draw on his considerable Power and fight back. He hadn’t seen Pia get shot, but he had seen her bolt hit Urien high in the shoulder. It hadn’t been a killing shot, but it was enough to distract the Fae King for those few final seconds as Dragos and the sentinels dove down to the attack.

They had all seen her give Urien the finger. The sentinels made much of it as they sprawled on the couches with their feet up on the furniture, ate pizza, drank beer after beer and watched SOAPnet.

“I like that evil twin,” said Graydon, pointing his bottle at the flat-screen. “The other one’s too sickly sweet. Nobody’s that nice.”

“Fuck, no,” said Constantine comfortably. “But you gotta admit, that actress is smoking hot. You think they’re real?”

“Doubt it,” said Graydon. “They’re too globular.”

Constantine nodded. “I can handle globular.”

“Pun,” said Graydon. “Groan.”

Pia looked at them over the top of the Cosmopolitan she was thumbing through but refrained from comment. She supposed it could have been worse. At least they were more or less housebroken.

She was curled on one end of the couch, tucked under a light silk throw. After she had started to feel steadier, she had been able to convince Dragos to go take care of a backlog of things, but that only meant she had a steady, rotating stream of sentinels as visitors. She hadn’t had a moment to herself since the kidnapping.

When she complained to Graydon, he told her, “It’s just a precaution, cupcake. A few of Urien’s Fae are still being hunted down, and that Elven connection we were hunting for has disappeared. Damnedy damn it.” He snickered.

“I can’t believe he told you guys that,” she said. “I’d just twisted my ankle and was having a bad day. I wasn’t responsible for what came out of my mouth—or head.”

“You handled yourself like a pro,” he soothed.

“Yes, I did. I kicked ass,” she grumbled. “And anyway, I’m in the Tower penthouse. This place is locked up tighter than Fort Knox. Nobody’s hunting me anymore. I’m sure not going anywhere right now.”

“Yeah, but you gotta remember,” said the gryphon as he tapped her nose. “You scared the shit out of the boss. He’s not used to fear. If you don’t let him fuss, I think he might blow up. You scared the shit out of us too, by the way. Besides, you’re family now and we’re having fun. It’s like a vacation.” He winked.

Family. Wow.

“Okay,” she muttered. She tried not to wiggle for joy and pretended to still be grumpy, but she gave him an affectionate smile.

A depressed Tricks came to thank her for her part in killing Urien and to say good-bye. The faerie was leaving to be crowned Queen at the Dark Fae Court. She had had the lavender dye stripped from her hair and no longer wore it with a perky flip on the ends. It was its natural raven black. Pia was surprised to see how much it changed the faerie’s appearance and made her look more serious.

“Please God, come visit soon,” said Tricks. “Don’t abandon me to the Dark Fae Court. We’ll do lunch again.”

She groaned. “Okay, but next time let’s do without the Piesporter and cognac.”

Tricks gave her a sly one-sided smile. “We’ll see.”

Pia told her, “I’m going to miss you.”

The faerie threw her arms around her. “I’ll miss you too.”

Lunch sometime with the Dark Fae Queen. Invitations to visit with the Elven High Lord and Lady. How strange her life had become.

On impulse she asked, “Did you find somebody to take over your PR job?”

“No,” said Tricks. “There hasn’t been time. Why, do you want it?”

She lifted a shoulder, feeling self-conscious. “Maybe I’ll talk to Dragos about it. You know, when I’m up for it.”

“Whatever you decide, you keep that dragon twisted around your little finger,” the faerie advised with a giggle. “It’s his karma after so many centuries of being the center of everybody’s universe around here. It’ll do him a world of good.”

Another visitor came one afternoon. Pia looked up as Aryal threw her six-foot body onto a couch beside her. The harpy’s black hair was tangled again, which seemed to be its usual state. She wore low-rider jeans, a sleeveless leather vest and the requisite sentinel weapons.

Pia studied her as Aryal fidgeted. The harpy’s odd gaunt beauty had nothing to do with dieting, and while lanky, her body was sure cut. Pia looked at her arm muscles and rippling stomach, thinking of all the hard work it took to look like that. Not in this lifetime.

Aryal glared at General Hospital playing on the flat-screen and jiggled a foot. She picked up a Harper’s Bazaar, thumbed through a few pages and tossed it aside. Pia thought she heard the harpy mutter, “I’m no good at any of this girlfriend shit.”

She raised her eyebrows and wondered if she was supposed to say something.

Aryal looked at the TV. She said, “Can you believe it—first, the witch Adela sold you a binding oath, the next day she put a tracking spell on you for Dragos and this week she contracted with the Dark Fae to find you. You turned out to be quite the cash cow for her.”

She shook her head. “That’s pretty wrong. I never did feel quite right about her.”

The harpy continued, “We found her body in the Hudson River. Her throat had been slit. Apparently she contracted her services out one too many times. The forensic report is inconclusive, but we’re guessing the Dark Fae killed her. The estimated time of death is shortly after you were kidnapped. It looks like the Dark Fae were trying to cover their tracks after taking you.”

“I see,” she said, her tone neutral. Maybe she should care that the witch had been murdered. Whatever Adela had done, Pia wasn’t sure that she had deserved to die for it. At the moment she couldn’t seem to muster much of a reaction.

Silence fell between them. Then Aryal’s strange stormy gray eyes met hers. “Bayne and I feel like shit about the kidnapping. But I’m not sorry about the rest of it.”

“I didn’t ask you to be. You’re entitled to your own opinion, and you were trying to protect Dragos in your own way. I respect that and there’s nothing more to be said.” Pia took the end of her cheerleader ponytail and flicked it at the harpy.

A feral grin spread across Aryal’s face. “Uh, listen, sometime when you’re feeling up to it, I’d like to have a round or two with you on the mat. For a while the gryphons couldn’t talk about anything else.”

“Sure, why not,” she told the sentinel. “The way things have been going, I had better keep up on my training.”

“Okay.” Aryal put her hands on her knees and started to push to her feet.

“Just one thing,” Pia said. The harpy paused and looked at her. Pia regarded her with a cold, steady gaze. “Try shoving me into a wall again and I’ll smack you down.”

Aryal’s grin turned into a scowl. She looked like she had just swallowed something sour, but after a moment she nodded.

Pia returned the nod and looked down at her magazine. It was a dismissal. The harpy took it as such, launched off the couch and disappeared.

Pia also had time to give Quentin a call. She went out onto the balcony on a sunny afternoon and closed the door for some privacy. Then she leaned against the new wall and looked out over the city as they talked.

It was quite an exchange. She had to fill Quentin in on all that had happened since her brief stay at his beach house. It was a lot to tell, including that she was now apparently Dragos’s mate and carrying his child.

When she finished, there was a long, long silence on the other end. She toed one of the flagstones and watched traffic below as she waited. “That’s going to take me a while to process,” Quentin said in a scrupulously neutral tone of voice.

“Tell me about it.”

“How . . . is he?”

“You know Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady?”

“The professory, growly son of a bitch?”

“Yeah, well”—she closed one eye, squinted at the skyline and grinned—“Dragos is a lot worse.”

That caused another rant that went pretty much along the lines of he’d-better-treat-you-right-or-I-don’t-care-who-thebastard-is-I’ll-kill-him-myself kind of thing. She bent over, put her forehead on the wall railing and endured it with as much patience as she could muster, making noises every once in a while to pretend she was actually listening.

Finally he said, “I want to see you in person. I want to make sure that bastard hasn’t addled you with some kind of beguilement.”

“He hasn’t,” she said. “But I’ll come to Elfie’s soon for a real visit.”

“You’d better.” Quentin sounded grim. “Or as allergic to the Tower as I am, I’ll come break you out.”

“Tell everybody I miss them.”

“I will. See you soon.” He stressed the last.

“Yes, you will, I promise.” At last she was able to extricate herself from the conversation and hang up.

She was wrung out. This starting a new life was a hell of a lot of hard work.

She and Dragos didn’t talk much after they had shared stories, and she didn’t see much of him after she had convinced him to go back to work. He was soon immersed in stabilizing some businesses in Illinois before he sold them, and he mentioned something about initiating a hostile takeover of an investor-owned utility company.

She wondered if the distance between them would be the definition of her life now. He slipped into bed with her every night and wrapped her up in his arms, and she derived a lot of comfort from his nearness. But they didn’t make love, or have sex, or . . . mate.

Changing and becoming full Wyr enhanced her healing capability. After three days of convalescence, she was climbing the walls. Finally Dr. Medina, who had been making daily house calls, cleared her for treadmill walking and other light exercise.

“Yes!” She’d been hoping for the go-ahead.

“No running until I say so, no matter how good you feel. And I’m not going to say so till at least next week,” the doctor warned. “That crossbow wound gave your respiratory system quite a knock.”

“No running. Gotcha.” She grabbed her clothes, black Lycra exercise tights and sports tank top, and put them on. “Thank you!”

“You’re welcome.” The doctor smiled. “I’ll let myself out.”

She sat on the edge of the bed to put on her running shoes—another new pair—as the doctor left the suite. After her last shoes were ruined in her flight through the rain-drenched forest, Dragos had bought her six new pairs.

The door opened. She looked up, ready to tell the guys they could hit the gym. Dragos strode in. As usual, he took total command of the air space in the room.

He gave her a long look, then shut the door. He had dressed that day in black jeans and a black silk shirt that emphasized the strong athletic lines of his massive body and the bronze of his skin—and did nothing to lighten the severity of his face.

Even in his human form he looked capable of ripping the Fae King apart with his bare hands. Should she find that as sexy as she did? She scratched her head. She wondered about herself, she really did.

“Hi,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Apparently you don’t expect much from me,” he said.

“Excuse me?” she said, taken aback.

He began a slow stroll around the large suite. It was his prowling stroll, his long muscular limbs moving like liquid under the silk and denim. She twisted to watch him with equal parts pleasure and uncertainty.

“The doctor has cleared you for exercise,” he said. “So I figure that means you’re strong enough to face other things now as well.”

“Oh-kay.”

“Go ahead and call me obsessive, but I have a bone to pick with you,” he said. He was frowning.

It made her forehead crinkle in response. “What’s wrong? What else did I do?” Hadn’t she done more than enough for a week? At this rate she was going to have to turn catatonic to make sure nothing else happened.

He turned to face her, hands on his hips. “Do you remember when you stepped in the rabbit hole?”

She snorted. “I’m not likely to forget.”

His narrowed eyes glittered like gold coins. “You remember what you said?”

She shrugged, her face and mind a blank.

He stalked over, put his hands on her shoulders and shoved her back. She fell back on the mattress. “Hey!”

Then he crawled on the bed until he was on his hands and knees over her. He glared down at her, every inch the dominant angry Wyr male. “You said and I quote, ‘I can’t tell you how glad I am that you came or how good it is to hear your voice.’ ”

“So what?” She smacked his shoulders with the flat of her hands. Didn’t quite work out the same way when she did it. Of course he didn’t move an inch. “Quit with the primitive crap already.”

“You might have noticed I’m a primitive kind of guy.” He showed his teeth and got into her face. “All those centuries of civilization? Just a veneer.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” She went lax and just stared at him, helpless as usual against the flood of arousal that swept over her. “Have you been sulking about what I said this whole time?”

He tilted his head, his eyes lava-hot. “You said it like I was some kind of visitor. Or like you weren’t sure I would come when you had been kidnapped. When you had just told me you were pregnant with my child. I don’t know what the hell you think of me other than I am a bloodthirsty monster.”

“Dragos!” Her eyes went wide. She touched his face. “I was kidding when I said that.”

“So? I am a bloodthirsty monster, and you are my mate.” There was not a hint of softness in that aggressive face. He growled, “And I am yours. What will it take for you to accept that?”

“I do. I promise I do,” she said. Incredibly, she had hurt him in more ways than one. She stroked his cheek. “I just don’t know how to be your mate. Somewhere between that horrible Goblin stronghold and when you flicked your tail at me on the plain, I fell head over heels in love with you. But I come from a strong human background. Love, being in love, making love—those things make sense to me. They’re part of who I am. And you already admitted you don’t know what love is. So I still don’t have that frame of reference I was looking for. Even though we’re together, I don’t know how to behave or what it means.”

His expression had eased as she talked. He kissed the palm of her hand. “It means, you stupid woman, that I am learning too. Now you listen to me. I never stop thinking about you. You’re with me everywhere I go but I miss you when we’re apart. I’ve already shown that I will kill for you. I would also die for you. You make me laugh. You make me happy. You’re my miracle and my home. If you as much as twitch, I get a hardon. I will always come for you, always want you, and always need you. We clear?”

She had begun to glow. “Sounds a lot like love to me.”

“I thought so too,” said the dragon. In a move too fast for her to track, he snatched her hands and pinned them over her head. She startled but made herself relax in his hold. His fierce raptor’s gaze flared in the light. He descended until he was nose to nose with her. He hissed, “So say it.”

She gave him a gentle, radiant smile and whispered, “I’m yours.”

“It’s about goddamn time,” he growled. He straightened off the bed and yanked her up with him. Then he took hold of her tank top in both hands and shredded it. “Say it again.”

She started to laugh. Even to her own ears, she sounded drunk. She reached for his shirt and tried to undo the buttons with clumsy fingers as she told him again, “I’m yours.”

He spun her until she faced away from him. The controlled violence in his movements jettisoned her laughter. Her knees started to shake. He tore the rest of her clothes away and pushed her onto the bed until she was on her hands and knees, facing away from him. He widened her legs until she was fully exposed to him. The sense of vulnerability was almost too much to take. She shivered spasmodically.

She heard the tiniest of sounds from behind, the catch of his breath and a rustle of cloth. She tried to look over her shoulder to see what he was doing.

Then he put his hot lips on her from behind and licked along the delicate folds of her most private, hypersensitive flesh. He tickled her clitoris with his tongue and mouthed against her, “Say it again.”

Arousal roared over and through her. It knocked her off her hands. She collapsed forward, turned her damp cheek into the bedspread and gasped it.

Her collapse exposed her even more to him. He licked, nibbled and suckled, coaxing pleasure from her with a soft and dexterous touch, then turning demanding and rough, gripping her by the hips and holding her in place as he feasted on her with a ruthless carnality that sent her squealing into a climax that peaked and peaked until she writhed, utterly helpless in his grip as she fought for enough breath to scream.

All the while he insisted she admit that she was his. She gave it to him every time he demanded. She moaned it, sobbed it, until finally she lay boneless on her back, a mass of quivering, exposed nerves.

There was no part of her he had not pleasured or taken when he finally moved over her body, positioned his cock at her drenched, inviting entrance and pushed his way inside. She stroked the strong curve of his back with trembling hands as he filled her and she whimpered, drugged with pleasure. Tears spilled out of the corners of her eyes.

He framed her face with his big hands as he came all the way inside, seated to the root. At last he had burned even his own ferocity away, until all that was left on his severe dark face was tenderness.

“I have learned so many things over the long years,” he whispered as he moved inside of her. “I’ve taken tribute from sovereigns and witnessed the end of empires. But you are my best teacher.”

She stroked his lean cheek. “I love you.”

A smile filled with simple wonder lightened those fierce gold eyes. “I know.”

Laughter threatened to take her over, but then he lost his smile and grew intent as he drove harder, deeper inside her. She arched up to him as he hit just the right pleasure spot, and his powerful body shook as he spilled inside her. She cradled him close as he gasped and hid his face in her neck. Afterward she stroked his hair as they drifted.

Then he roused just enough to shift his weight off her. He lay on his back and pulled her against his side.

“Good to have that settled,” he said with satisfaction. He ran his fingers through her hair and with a gentle pulse of Power smoothed the tangles out.

“What, that we’re mates?” She stroked his hard, beautiful mouth.

“Yes.” He kissed her fingers. “Because we’re getting married.”

“We’re—” She bit her lip. “That’s your proposal. Just like that, we’re getting married.”

“Oh.” He reached over the side of the bed, dug into his shirt pocket and then dropped a massive diamond ring on her chest. “There.”

She rolled her eyes and flopped onto her back. This was too good to pass up. “Well, Dragos, it’s one thing to agree that we’re mates, but I don’t know about marriage,” she said. “I read Cosmo. You eat people. I think divorce court might call that the definition of irreconcilable.”

He rolled onto his side. The sheet slid from his muscled chest as he propped himself up on one elbow and regarded her from under lowered brows. It was his moody, stubborn look. God, she loved that expression. She could just about see the wheels turning in his head.

After a moment, he said, “Please.”

“That’s better, big guy.” She nodded and put the ring on.