He tossed the chicken into the air with a flip of his head and then chomped down on it, crushing the bones and tearing the flesh into strips. A few more chomps and a shake of his head, and he swallowed, the snack going down easily along fifteen feet of esophagus. He could spare one night off in three years. Sprawling out on the stone, he sighed through his nostrils, a faint thread of chicken-scented smoke escaping one of them.
He would sleep a while, and then go downstairs and see if any of the dragon legends he had compiled said anything about a special breed of human which could draw his people to them as surely as clean water drew the thirsty. Until then, the fight and the confusing encounter with her had left him tired. Yawning with a brief display of thorny teeth, he laid his head on his forepaws, stretched his wings out over him, and closed his glowing green eyes.
He didn't realize that he had fallen deeply asleep until a gasp of sheer shock near the stairs startled him awake. He opened his eyes, lifted his head — and there she was, right at the railing surrounding the stairway entrance, staring up at him open-mouthed with her eyes full of amazement.
Uh-oh.
Chapter 4: Lady and the Dragon
Laurel had slept for a few hours before a nightmare, of waking up tied to that chair again, had sent her screaming awake. She had sat up in the darkness, her heart banging away in her ears, until she had gotten her bearings enough to remember the rescue, and Jason, and the strange conversation they had had on the trip here.
She had sighed relief, and settled back down to try to sleep again... but the adrenaline jolt had burned away any chance of getting back to sleep for a while, and she slowly grew aware of just how sore her body was, now that her bruises had developed.
She shuffled out into the main room on her way to the bathroom, hoping to find some painkillers. His medicine cabinet had nothing but toiletries, and some of them conspicuously missing: no razor to go with Jason's mostly smooth jawline, no toothbrush for his gleaming white teeth. Groaning under her breath, she searched the kitchen, managing to score a glass of mango juice but no aspirin. Where did he hide it?
She looked wistfully at the closed doors to the other rooms, but he didn't know which one his bedroom was behind, and she didn't want to barge in and wake him unless she absolutely had to.
Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.
Failing in her search of the main room, she finally sighed and looked up at the spiral staircase. Maybe his medicine chest was upstairs?
It took all she had to haul herself up all those broad hammered-copper steps. Warm air trickled down from above; the room was clearly kept warmer than the others. A strange, organic scent, leather and smoke mixed with the musky smell of some animal, rode the wafts of air. As she drew near the top, she heard the low, heavy rumbling of something very large breathing slowly. She hesitated... but then started forward again.
I think I'm out of fear at this point. Besides, I am really, really hurting.
Curiosity took her the last few steps, into the cavernous room with the warmed stone floor and the massive, absolutely black, shape curled up in its center. Her eyes widened as she struggled to make sense of the elegant but alien contours in front of her; she made out a bat-like wing as long as a city bus half-stretched-out over the creature's back, and a long, sinuous tail which ended in a spear-sharp spade. She gasped loudly — and a pair of glowing silver-green eyes opened in the midst of the coiling blackness. Each one was the size of a Chinese lantern, and the light they shed gleamed off leathery, interlocked scales like those of a snake. Suddenly the shape made sense — a sense it could not make, here in the really real world.
As she stood open-mouthed next to the staircase, it raised its head, and blinked at her sleepily — before grunting in surprise and staring down at her.
For a few moments it was like there were two Laurels inside of her, and each one was babbling at once, trying to drown out the other. The first, predictable and mundane and in total denial, and the second matter-of-fact and completely panicked.
I was only looking for aspirin.
He said he wasn't human.
Those eyes are very familiarly colored.
Was that the creature at the door before Jason kicked it in?
That's a dragon.
I should really try to play this off somehow, I still need aspirin and I'm not sure I can deal with this kind of reality right now. Can I just apologize and back down the stairs again? What about pretending I was sleepwalking?
Cut the crap, Laurel, there's no going back now. That is a real, live, fire-breathing dragon, out here IN the really real world, and it has Jason's eyes.
“J... Jason?” she managed in the tiniest voice.
The creature let out a strange sound that was half rumble and half moan, sounding almost mournful. Then, as she watched, it closed its eyes and seemed to collapse in on itself, its puddle of darkness shrinking and growing insubstantial around the edges — until shirtless, tired-looking Jason walked from its core and it vanished altogether.
“Yes,” he replied, his tone a resigned sigh.
“You... you're... a d-dragon.”
Saying it out loud made it all the more real, and she started shaking. So much for being out of fear.
He hesitated, then nodded slowly.
“I am. I tried to tell you. But hearing and seeing are two different things. I... did not wish to frighten you.”
She swallowed, the warring voices in her gradually going quiet as his shining green eyes searched her face.
“This... this can't be possible. Things like this don't happen. How can you be real?”
He came to her, tentatively, his expression shy, and crouched at her feet, a gesture that seemed almost like supplication. It made him look much less enormous and strange as he gazed up at her, genuine worry in his eyes.
“Please, don't be afraid,” he murmured.
Her stomach did a little flip.
“Not human,” she whispered back breathlessly. But the pain and worry on his face moved her. It took a moment before she could move, but when she did, she didn't move away. She reached out to him instead, with a trembling hand, and cupped one high cheekbone in her small palm. She watched quietly as he leaned into it with his shining eyes narrowing with pleasure. “You tried to tell me, but I didn't understand.”
“Yes, just so. I know it must be a shock. Just... don't leave. Please. I can explain.”
He laid a smooth-callused palm over her hand, his voice filled with a loneliness that she would never have expected.
He had seemed so alien and aloof before, concerned for her but clearly detached from the bulk of humanity — and very critical of them. Seeing that much anguish in his eyes startled most of the fear right out of her.
She took a deep breath and stepped back slightly as he straightened to tower over her.
“All right,” she said softly. “I'll... I'll listen.”
She didn't know if she could bring herself to stay after that, but for now, he had her full attention.
They sat, by the light of a few candles, on the broad, deep couch downstairs, she with her legs curled under her and leaning against a pile of cushions, while he crouched nearby, his pose still that of an animal despite his current form. He had retrieved her a bottle of aspirin from one of the bedrooms, and the pain was finally fading, letting her focus on his words.
He spoke softly, his low rumble soothing to her ears as he hesitantly told his story.
“I was... found... as part of a dig done in Pompeii in 1910. The excavators came across a clutch of eggs in the ruins. Mine was among them. They became part of a collection overseen by the Italian government. But when fascism rose in Italy, much of the collection was smuggled out to prevent its destruction. Most of it, to this day, is hidden somewhere in San Francisco. In the early 1960s it was temporarily unearthed, and the clutch discovered. Of the five eggs, mine was taken for examination by paleontologists at the New York Museum of Natural History, while the rest were kept in storage.”
She listened to him speak without much comment. His words were as matter of fact as a news reporter's, but his voice shook a little as he went on.
“The egg was X-rayed as part of its examination. I don't entirely know why, but the exposure was what woke me up. I hatched hours later in the deserted lab, and broke my way out.”
She stared at him quietly. He looked perhaps thirty but, apparently, he had... hatched... over fifty years ago. And his time in the egg had been like a time capsule, carrying him forward through the ages from a very distant past.
“How did you survive without being seen?”
“Instinct. I have certain... abilities. I don't know if they are uniform, but I managed to access some of them on instinct. I can conceal myself, and that let me fly away without being sighted. I landed in a small town in the Catskills, and managed to change myself into a small boy. I was frightened and disoriented, but fortunately the people who found me were... kind. A family of military veterans took me in. They contacted the authorities, and searched for my parents, but of course, found nothing. So, they let me stay with them. I was so scared that I stayed in human form for years and let them raise me thinking I was an ordinary child.” he rubbed the back of his neck. “I grew up among humans, knowing I wasn't one of them but needing them to survive, at least back when I was small. It was enough to have friends and people who cared about me, back then. I only started growing restless when I reached my teens.”
“And then?”
“I enlisted in the military, as was the way with the men in my adoptive family. It was there that I found my calling. I'm... too good at surviving a fight. Humans died all around me, but they thought I was lucky — when in reality bullets simply don't do much to me. Once my tour was over, I lived with my adoptive parents, looking after them until they died. Then I took a commission as a mercenary and never looked back.”
She leaned toward him slightly, wincing as it aggravated the bruises on her belly.
“Why did you choose to become a mercenary instead of staying with the Army?”
He chuckled.
“They would have noticed that I stopped aging after thirty. I had trouble enough hiding it from my adoptive parents. And I needed the ability to move from place to place relatively freely. I could use my mercenary work as a cover for seeking evidence of my people. Which I have done all over the world, for decades.”
She blinked at him as it sank in.
“Then... that's why you were so confused. You thought that I was... was a dragon, like you? In human form?”
“Yes,” he murmured, gazing at her softly with his luminous eyes. “When I caught your scent, I had hope, and for a moment when I looked at you, I was certain of it. I thought that you had to be a female of my species.”
She tilted her head a little.
“Why?”
He swallowed, his chest heaving slightly, and to her surprise, he cut his eyes away from her.
“I'm not attracted to humans. No matter how beautiful the woman in front of me, she cannot rouse me. I can admire her, aesthetically, like I would a rose, or a jewel, or a painting. But I cannot desire her.”
She realized that she was blushing, her toes curling, and her fingers knotted together nervously. She couldn't speak, but that warmth was back in the pit of her belly, leaving her gasping a little through gently parted lips.
He looked back at her.
“And then you come along, and suddenly I realize all at once what the fuss is about. I... I don't even like being touched. Except when you do it. And that, I can't get enough of.” He shifted restlessly, his eyes going avoidant before peeking back at her from beneath his dark lashes. “Is that crass? Is it... troubling to you?”
He's never touched a woman before. He's never been touched by one before. He's never wanted to. But he wants to with me. It stunned her, leaving her feeling something of the confusion he kept expressing. Why me?
Her mind swept back over the course of the night, remembering the sounds of his fight with the mobsters, the heavy tread of a beast on the stairs, the way he had snuffled at the door. Kicking the door in in his man-form, freeing her, leaping out the window while wrapping her protectively in his — wings. Of course he had made it to the ground with her safely; he could fly.
His strange conversation with her on the way over. His tenderness with her, and the longing in his eyes. And what she had stumbled upon, as her aching bruises had sent her on a search for painkillers. His true form, shadow and leather-smooth scales, his burning green eyes altered only in their size. He could have killed her. Instead he had changed himself, stuffed himself back into a form that must seem entirely too small, and crouched at her feet to plead with her.
Don't go.
“You saved me from worse than death. You avenged me, you avenged my friend. You took me in. You were kind to me when I'm not even one of your people. And you....”
You make my toes curl. So much that I can't even make it go away when I remind myself that you're a big fire-breathing lizard in disguise. It doesn't really matter, not to my instincts.
That was the only way she could put it: the animal part of her, irrational, emotional and primal, craved him as much as he seemed to crave her.
You make me want to show you a thing or twelve about what you've been missing all these years alone. There's a lot we could get up to on this big couch.
She bit her lip, her train of thought suddenly bringing her the image of those silver-green eyes filled with pleasure, desire and delighted surprise as he arched his back above her. She had to stuff the feeling down; dulled by aspirin or not, she was still in too much pain to think of sex. Telling, how much that disappointed her.
“You even told me the truth straight off, even if you weren't exactly, um, detailed.”
She offered him a tiny smile and saw him relax a little at the sight of it.
“I am sorry. I have never had to explain this to a human before. But you... I... I had to tell you the truth.” He sighed quietly. “I don't know entirely why. It is part instinct... and perhaps I'm simply tired of living alone all the time, with no one who knows what I am. I couldn't help caving in to it. But now, I end up bracing myself for your reaction. I have no defense against you. You could cut me down with a word. I don't know why, or what to do, but I....” He looked down, huge hands spreading abjectly at his sides and his head shaking slowly. “I fear you will flee me, now that you know.”
She felt a strange flush of power run through her as she moved stiffly over to him, and saw him freeze, his eyes widening and dilating as she drew near.
He is at my mercy.
His whole body seemed to go rigid with the effort of holding still as she slid her palm up his muscled shoulder. His skin was so warm, almost feverish, and she had to fight the urge to lean forward and lay her cheek against it.
This is crazy, the sensible part of her warned, but his shiver under her fingertips was like a drug. She slid her hand up and down, and watched him squint with pleasure.
“Will you stay? A while? At least... at least until we find out why you affect me so differently?”
She smiled softly.
“I'm not going anywhere.”
Chapter 5: First Times Are Forever
She had to sleep after that, but it wasn't easy. As Jason wandered back upstairs to chase slumber himself, presumably back in his massive, black-scaled native form, she lay back in her borrowed bed and stared at the underside of the wooden canopy. Her mind whirled as it struggled to process everything that had just happened.
Jason was a dragon.
That part was hard enough for her to address. A dragon, living secretly among humans, struggling to find any remnants of his people left in the world. His terrible loneliness in the face of that had earned him her sympathy along with his heroic efforts, and his tenderness. But then... then he had confessed what she could only describe as a desperate infatuation with her.
A dragon... with a crush on me.
Did dragon
s love? And if so, how did they love? Did they mate for life? Did they leave a season's mate pregnant and then move on?
Was it only sexual passion, or would that strange tenderness he treated her with translate over into... other things? He trembled when she touched him, leaning into her hand like a beast begging to be petted. The heat and need in his gaze intoxicated her, left her lying there half-aroused just thinking about it. It wasn't just that he wanted her; she wanted him back.
She tried to imagine what it would be like to be with a man who had simply never been touched, and who responded to her like that. Normally, she was the more passive partner in bed — mostly because of her shyness. But with Jason... Jason who was sexually innocent, Jason who probably had never touched a naked woman in his life or even seen more than a few live... how would he react, when she showed him how it could be? And how could she best introduce him to these pleasures?
The possibilities were endless. She lay there turning them over and over in her mind, and thanks to that, the light outside the window was brightening towards dawn before she could drop off.
When she woke up for good that day it was after ten-thirty, and the aspirin had worn off. Her muscles popped in her back, arms and thighs as she got out of bed and reached for the bottle. Jason had left her a full glass of water on her nightstand, and she took two pills before gratefully drinking every drop. It still hurt, but not quite as much, and the debilitating sense of weakness was gone.
He had laundered the jeans for her, but her blouse was a loss — not a surprise, as she knew a lot of blood from her scalp had gotten onto the cheap fabric. Sighing, she pulled the jeans on over her borrowed athletic socks, put on her freshly-washed bra, and then put the white t-shirt back on. It hung almost to her knees, and she shrugged at the mirror before stepping into her flats and emerging into the great room.
Bound to Change: A Limited Edition Spring Shifter Romance Collection Page 63
