Pia Saves the Day

Chapter Nine

He dreamed of being buried, lost in darkness.

Beyond his grave, a splendid, graceful creature of shining, ivory light waited for him. She had delicate hooves and legs, and the single, slender horn on her forehead pierced him sweetly through the heart.

Come back, she called. Come back to me.

Yearning toward her, he struggled to free himself. Dust filled his nostrils, choking him. From an immeasurable distance across the starry night, Death, whose name was Azrael, turned to face him.

Azrael whispered his name.

Dragos was well acquainted with that old bastard. They were, after all, brothers. Azrael, also known as the Hunter, was a part of the dragon’s nature, as Dragos was a part of his.

He said to Azrael, You will not have me.

Azrael gave him a pale, elegant smile. At times Death could appear quite alluring. Green eyes glittering, he said, One day I might, brother. You are immortal, not Deathless, and nothing in this universe lasts forever.

Opening his jaws wide, the dragon let out a furious roar, and Death vanished in a blast of heat and light.

Dragos woke with a start.

Sunlight poured through the large windows of the bedroom. Pia nestled against his side, her head resting on his arm. She was deeply asleep.

Shaking off the dream, he lifted his head and let his gaze roam down her nude body. Her luminescent glow was not quite as apparent in the bright light of day. Instead, her skin retained a faint, pearly sheen. While the effect was subtle, it was still all too obviously inhuman.

Her current position accentuated the hourglass shape of her body. She had marks on her skin, faint smudges of bruising and reddened scores of bite and scratch marks. She was already healing, and by midafternoon the marks would be gone completely.

A more civilized man would care that he had marked her. Perhaps the other Dragos would have cared. He touched one fading bruise lightly with his finger. Being neither of those two men, and intensely possessive, he would be sorry to see them disappear.

Then he regarded his own body. He was so much bigger than she, harder and more calloused, and yet he had marks on his skin too. As he shifted lazily against the sheets, the scratches she had made on his back reminded him of her own passionate response to him.

Carefully, so as not to wake her, he leaned over her sleeping form and mouthed, “You are so very much mine.”

He was a fierce creature at the mildest of times. Now, the intensity of his feelings for her shook even him. And so, she was still a fool to have allowed it, let alone to have welcomed it as she had.

He eased her head off his arm and replaced it with a pillow. She never awakened. They had not stopped making love until well after dawn, and clearly he had worn her out.

Slipping out of bed, he went to the bathroom to sluice off quickly in the shower. After a few moments of searching in his closet, he located faded, cutoff jean shorts that he slipped on. He didn’t bother with any other clothes, or with shoes. The summer day was already acquiring heat, and besides, they were alone on the estate.

He left her to search for food in the kitchen. The refrigerator was well stocked with both carnivore and vegan dishes that could be consumed with a minimum of effort. Someone had planned well for them.

Standing at the counter, he ate most of a roast chicken. Once the sharpest edge of his hunger had been satisfied, he went exploring.

The office—the other Dragos’s office—drew him. He took his time discovering all the different components, glancing through file drawers, reading the first pages of contracts, studying building plans strewn all over a round, mahogany table. The construction site by the lake would be quite a compact complex when it was completed, combining both offices and living quarters.

Without having to be told, he knew that nothing left out in plain view would be vitally important. Any sensitive materials were either locked in the recessed wall safe he found hidden behind a paneling, or password protected on his computer, or hidden in the inaccessible recesses of his mind.

Raging against his lost memory was an exercise in futility. He clamped down on the emotion as he tried several combinations on the computer, yet failed to discover the right password.

What would the other Dragos use as a password? He would not fall into the trap of using personal or obvious information.

When another log-in attempt failed, his self-control slipped. Snarling, he swept everything off his desk and threw a stapler with such force it shot through a window.

The glass shattered and fell out of the window frame, just as Pia walked around one edge of the doorway, talking on a cell phone.

Stopping in midsentence, she came to an abrupt halt. Then she said into her phone, “I’ll have to call you back later. I just wanted to let you know we’ll need a few days here.”

“I’ll arrange everything,” said the man on the other end of the call. “You concentrate on yourselves. Don’t worry about a thing.”

Graydon, the man’s name was.

“Give Peanut all my love,” Pia said.

All her love? Dragos’s rage acquired a new focus. Who was this Peanut?

“I will,” Graydon promised. “This is fantastic news, honey. I’ll talk to you soon.”

Her face calm and movements unhurried, she turned off her cell phone. She had showered too, Dragos saw, and had dressed in a cheerful outfit of yellow shorts and a light summer top splashed with big, bright sunflowers. Her hair was still damp, and she wore pretty flip-flop sandals with tiny yellow flowers etched into leather straps.

She looked like a happy creature of sunshine and light, while he was still seriously considering smashing the desktop computer to bits.

“You love someone called Peanut,” he growled, his fists clenched. “Who the fuck has a name like Peanut?”

She flinched. Somehow, he had managed to strike a nerve. Tucking her phone into her pocket, she said quietly, “That’s our son’s nickname. I started calling him that when he was just a little bundle of cells. You know, because for a while he was just the size of a peanut. Anyway, it stuck. His real name is Liam.”

He sucked in a breath. Pivoting away from her, he stared sightlessly out the window he’d broken.

She came up behind him and stroked his back. As soon as her fingers touched his bare skin, the last of his rage died. He bowed his head.

“What happened?” she asked gently.

He rubbed his face. “I can’t figure out his password.”

She paused, and when she spoke next, her voice had gentled even further. “His password?”

Tilting his head toward the sound of her voice, he realized what he had let slip.

His emotions surged again, a powerful cocktail of anger and frustration. All at once he let it go.

“Yes, his password,” he snapped. He shrugged away from her calming touch and rounded on her. “The other Dragos. The one who has a closet full of handmade suits upstairs. The one who reads contracts and negotiates treaties, and who debates the difference between Wolf and Viking appliances.” He gestured violently at the appliance manuals that had been resting on the desk, and now lay scattered across the floor.

She bit her lip. It was not in laughter. She said softly, “You wanted to buy the best things for my kitchen.”

The walls of the house closed in on him. Grabbing her hand, he snarled, “I’ve got to get out of here.”

Moving rapidly, he dragged her out of the house. She didn’t try to stop him. Instead, she trotted willingly at his side. As soon as they reached the open air, he let go of her hand, shapeshifted into the dragon, scooped her into one paw and launched.

Some flights are lazy, long spiraling glides through the air. This fight was a battle. His wings scything through the air, he flew as fast as he could back to the mountainside where he had rested the day before.

The ledge by the stream was just as they had left it, with the pile of his gifts, her pack underneath the trees, and the stack of firewood and partially burnt wood in the fire ring.

He landed, not gently, but caught himself up before he set her on her feet, which he did with deliberate care. Then he whirled away from her to pace.

She said nothing. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her walk to her pack and settle in the shade of the tree, with her back braced against the trunk.

Tilting his head toward the sun, he considered leaving her and taking a solitary flight. But if he had truly wanted to be alone, the dragon would have left her back at the house, and she was clever enough to let him find his own way through his uncertain, surly mood.

At last, he gave in to the summer sun and stretched out his great length on the hot stone.

He said into the silence, “I am well aware of how crazy I sound.”

He glanced at her sidelong. She had curled onto her side, knees tucked to her chest and head resting on her pack, watching him. Her expression was accepting, even compassionate. How could she look at him in such a way? She, of all people, should know that he was dangerous.

He demanded, “You do know that I am not that man, don’t you?”

Finally, she spoke. “I believe that you are not the man you think you were.”

Scowling, the dragon snapped, “What does that mean?”

“If you look at the details of his life without having his memories, I think it would be easy to get the wrong impression of who that Dragos is,” she told him. Sitting up, she crossed her legs and toyed with a blade of grass. “The handmade suits, the contracts and negotiations… He didn’t do all of that because he was civilized. He did it because he was playing the game.” She met his gaze. “And you are very, very good at it.”

Tapping his talons on the stone, he considered that. Playing a game. Yes, he could understand that.

Rising up on his haunches, the dragon crawled over to her, bringing his head down until his snout came close to her face.

“I snapped at you,” he whispered.

She cupped his snout and smiled up into his gaze. “I’m drawing a line right now. We have to agree to get over that. I know you’re dangerous. I’ve always known you were dangerous. I was not naive about your nature when I mated with you the first time, and I am certainly not naive about it now. You never broke faith with me. You would never hurt me. What you did when you were injured and you couldn’t recognize me is not anything we are going to worry about again.”

A sense of peace threatened to take away his bad mood. He whuffled at her.

“I’m not ever going to be a good man,” he warned.

She pressed a kiss to his snout. “We talked about that once, and I told you then—maybe you’re not a good man, but you make a truly excellent dragon.”

He muttered, “Maybe over time I can make peace with that other Dragos.”

“If you give it a serious try, I think you’ll be surprised at how well you do.” She lifted a shoulder. “And if you can’t adjust, maybe we’ll go somewhere else and do other things. We’re going to live a long time together, and things change.”

The last of his tension eased away. Heaving an immense sigh, he shapeshifted and laid his head in her lap. She stroked her fingers through his hair, and for the first time since the accident, he fell into a truly deep, restful sleep.

The sun traveled across a blue, cloudless sky as Dragos slept.

After a while, she grew sleepy too, until finally she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer, and she nodded off, her hands laced protectively over the back of his head.

Sometime later, he began to stir, and she came awake with a jerk. She rubbed her eyes and looked around. They had dozed the afternoon away.

After nuzzling her thighs, he yawned and rolled onto his back. She gave him a smile as she flicked bits of grass off his skin.

He never got sunburned, no matter how long he stayed out in the sun. Instead, the dark bronze of his skin grew more burnished and rich. After a moment, all the bits of grass were gone and she gave up on that small excuse to touch him and simply stroked his bare chest.

He watched her, his expression more peaceful than it had been in some time. It would always break her heart a little to look at the new white, jagged scar on his brow. She touched it with a finger, swallowing hard.

He’s mated with me, she thought, not once, but twice.

I am so lucky. I am the luckiest woman in the world.

The smile she gave him twisted, because it was simply too small of a gesture to contain the enormity of the emotions inside her.

“I love you, you know,” she told him.

He cocked a sleek, black eyebrow at her. Coincidentally enough, it was the same brow that now carried the scar. “You surely must, woman.”

She chuckled. “Yeah.”

Stomach muscles flexing, he sat up and twisted to give her a lingering kiss. “One of the craziest things that has been running through my head,” he muttered, “is how goddamned jealous I’ve been of that other Dragos.”

She put her arms around his neck. “Maybe I tried too soon to make you feel better about him. I could have used the threat of him to keep you under control.”

Maybe that wasn’t a very funny joke, but she was pleased with the effort. Every time they talked, every joke, every revelation, meant they put one more step between them and what had happened.

He must have agreed because he smiled briefly against her lips. Putting a hand at the back of her head, he deepened the kiss, and it escalated swiftly—a hot, explosive flash fire of emotion.

Coming up on his knees, his face taut and flushed with need, he yanked her clothes off. She was a willing participant, wriggling out of her top before he could figure out the complexities of undoing the buttons.

When he kicked off his jean shorts, his hardened penis bounced as it came free of the material. He pulled her down onto the grass and covered her with his body.

They could find time for foreplay and finesse later. Much later, after the first wave of the mating urge eased, or perhaps, for her, after the memory of the fear and pain over the last two days faded.

They weren’t there yet. For now, he took her in a blaze of heat, and they coupled like the animals they were. Words tangled with motion, and it all became one thing.

I love you, love you.

I’ll never let you go. You’re mine. You’re my mate.

They burned each other out, until at last they could rest quietly in each other’s arms.

At last, he pulled away from her. She watched as he went to the pile of wrapped gold and jewels. Unceremoniously, he dumped the sapphires into her pack, took the cloth that the jewels had been wrapped in and dampened it at the spring.

When he returned, he washed the inside of her thighs gently. She stroked his arm as he did it, marveling at his intent expression. Sometimes he wanted so desperately to get something right, the sight of it shot like an arrow right through her.

After he finished, they dressed. The sky was darkening by the time they packed the rest of his treasure into the pack. He shifted back into his dragon form, invited her into the curve of his paw, and after she had settled comfortably, they flew back to the estate.

Once the buildings came into view, he banked and wheeled overhead, not suspiciously, as he had the day before, but in a more leisurely fashion, as he took a good look in the last light of day.

She glanced without much interest over the scene. They had flown over many times, just like this, as they talked about plans for renovations and the new buildings. Most of her attention remained on him, as she gauged his reaction to the things he saw.

Which was why she noticed the small hitch in the rhythm of his flight.

He said, curiously, “We never talked about that building.”

She looked down again at the focus of his attention.

It was the house of the estate manager, some distance away from the construction site, along the curve of the lake.

A pang struck. Although she wouldn’t trade her memories away for anything, it was hard to remember their time together all by herself.

She told him, “It’s the estate manager’s house. His name is Mitchell. He used to live here full-time when the main house was empty, but he’s taking a vacation right now, as we figure out how to restructure his job.”

Dragos folded his wings and descended. Even though she knew he would never drop her, the abrupt change in altitude made her clutch at one of his talons.

Landing on the shore of the lake in front of the house, he set her down and shapeshifted. He wore a strained, listening expression.

Watching him, she said, “We spent our wedding night in that house.”

He whispered, “You gave birth there. In that room, with the big window, while we looked over the lake. We were all alone.”

Her breath stopped, and her heart began to race. “Yes.”

He turned on her, with the swiftness of fresh outrage. “You stole one of my pennies!”

She wasn’t sure what pure joy looked like.

But she knew what it felt like, shining out of her own face.