Matthew: House of Wilkshire ― Paranormal Dragon Shifter Romance

by Kathi S. Barton

  His cock was at her entrance. She could feel his head, the way that it slid inside just enough to tease her. She wanted him now, wanted to feel him fill her. When she begged him to take her, he looked at her, and she could see his dragon there in his eyes.

  “I love you, Aisling. So very much. When we come together, it will be for all time. Will you love me forever? Will you have children with me? Keep me safe, as I will you?” She told him that she would. “I love you so much.”

  He slid into her slowly, stretching her body for his. When he was seated, she thought that was as far as he could go, and she didn’t move either, wanting their lovemaking to last forever. As Matt started to move, his hard body sliding in and out of her, she held onto him by wrapping her legs around him. It was too much, almost, the feel of his thrusts as he took her.

  The faster he went, the more she wanted. It was like they were racing to the end now. They needed to come badly enough now that she didn’t care if he came himself. But when he did, bracing himself over her, she watched as his dragon raced over his skin twice before he shouted out his own release.

  As soon as he began to fill her, she came as well. Twice, three times more before he pulled himself tighter over her, his hand holding her tightly to him. When he came this time, his body rod hard and straight; it was all she could do not to scream in his ear as he buried his face into her neck and nipped at her flesh.

  Holding onto Matt was too much. Every breath he took was like him touching her all over again. But letting him go, even for a moment, didn’t seem possible to her. Her love for him, all of him, was just too new, too fragile, for her to think of ever letting him leave her.

  “Are you all right?” She nodded, unable to speak past the emotions that seemed to overwhelm her. When he rolled to his back, taking her with him, she came again, a lazy sort of climax that left her shaken and weak. “You really did need me. I have to tell you, for a few minutes there; I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to breathe, much less move again. You really zapped me.”

  Matt ran his fingers up and down her back. Neither of them moved, nor did they feel the need to make small talk. They’d just shared something incredible, something that she’d bet few would have been able to share with their partners.

  When his hand fell from her back, she laid there for several more minutes. Her body was humming with energy, and she wanted—no, she needed to get up. Even with her nearly stumbling out of bed, Matt didn’t stir. Smiling at the look of absolute peace on his face, she nearly skipped to the bathroom to take a quick shower.

  After getting dressed and making her way down the stairs, she looked at the boxes of things that had been brought from the safe at the castle. She wanted to go outside and enjoy the cold weather, but instead, she made her way to the table and began sorting things out. It was not a job for the faint of heart.

  Aisling didn’t know how long she worked before she realized that she was no longer alone at the table. Matt had come in at one point, gotten a call from his brother, and had left her. Then at some point, she’d been brought some tea to sip, as well as some cookies. The tea was still warm, so she didn’t think it had been that long. Asking Kelly how long she’d been there, she was surprised that it had been an hour.

  “You seemed to be so deep in what you were doing, even going to far as to grunt at me when I asked you something, that I figured sooner or later you’d have to come up for air. I’ve done more research on Angel. Do you want to hear it?” Aisling told her that she didn’t, not just yet. “I don’t blame you. I mean, it’s not that bad or anything, but it can wait. Where did all this come from?”

  “Matt’s father. He has two more boxes of this kind of stuff that he wants me to sort for him as well. It’s going much faster since I don’t have to tell him every little detail about each piece. Right now, I’m just writing down who the last owners were, as well as what they paid for it when it was purchased. Most of this stuff was sold to Lord St. James when he helped a person out.” Kelly asked if he liked her calling him a lord. “Not really. I’m supposed to call him Patrick, but I keep forgetting. I’ll get there. Anyway, he would do them a favor, such as burn off crops from the year before. Or lend them some money in exchange for something. This ring, for example.”

  Aisling handed it to Kelly as she wrote down what she’d found out about it. “It’s very beautiful. Nothing that I would ever wear, but I think it’s beautiful. What about this piece?”

  “The man and the woman, both of them dragons, wanted to leave the country before the humans figured out what they were. So, in order to help them out with funding, they sold him that ring.” Kelly handed it back to her, and she looked at it again. “The sad part about this is, they never left. A couple of days after they had the funding to leave, their carriage tipped over, and they were all killed when they were drowned in the swollen creek bed that they were following. Normally that might not have killed them, but they both were humans at the time and hit their heads badly on rocks in the water. Had they been conscious, they might well have lived.”

  “Well, that sucks. And is not terribly uplifting. Do you have a couple of pieces that do have a good story?” She laughed and told Kelly that most of them were happy endings. But like life, there was good with the bad. “Yes, well, I try very hard, as much as I can, not to dwell on the bad. Did you hear about my sister and mother? Well, they were about as bad as a person could get. Especially my sister. But they’re both where they need to be, and I’m moving on with my life.”

  “Good for you.” Aisling handed her a necklace. It was really just a beautiful chain that had seven pearls on it. It also had a pendant on it with people’s likenesses inside. “The husband gave this to his wife when she had their first child. If you open it, you can see the hand drawn picture of them both. Every time she gave birth to another child, he would add a pearl to the chain. He was a fisherman—not very wealthy, but he found each of the pearls on his own and had them fixed up for her. He had bartered for the chain and pendant with more pearls so that he could gift it to her.”

  “Now that is a good story. What about this piece? Good or bad?” She said it was a good story too. “Let me hear it. In the event you don’t get this, I’m building up to something. I just want you to think of me as a friend first and foremost.”

  “I don’t think of you as an enemy. I mean, I guess that I could because you’re my queen. However, I have a feeling that you wouldn’t care for that any more than I would. I like you.” Kelly thanked her. “You’re welcome. This piece was found by a young boy. He was helping his father plow up the fields for their garden. It was just the two of them by then. I won’t go into more than that. But he found it. He took it to the police, and they promised him that if no one came for it in a certain amount of time, he could have it. No one claimed it, and he was able to clean it up for his own wife some years later and make her a happy woman. The reason that Patrick ended up with it is because the man wanted to build his family a home, and they decided to trade it for the money to get supplies. It’s not worth much—much less than Patrick gave the young man to build with. But Carl was a loyal servant of his for the rest of his days. He still works for him.”

  “And I shall never get rid of that piece, even if it was the only thing between me and death.” Patrick sat down and smiled at her. “I’m thinking that you’re going much faster without me pestering you all the time. About the piece there. Every time I have to get into that safe to put something in or take it out, I offer it back to Carl. He’s long since paid my family back, but he won’t take it. Says that payment is a payment. I don’t know what I’d do without him. What have you found, my dear?”

  “This ring disturbs me somehow. I’ve been wearing it since I sat down, and I can’t feel anything on it. Not anyone that ordered it. There is no face that I can see who might have touched it except you and Julia. Nothing at all. It’s like before it was put into your vault, it didn’t e
xist.” She handed it to him when he asked for it. “Do you remember it by any chance? I mean, it really feels like it’s blank.”

  “No, it doesn’t look familiar, but I am centuries old, so that might account for that. I’ll ask Julia.” Aisling thought he’d take it with him, but he pulled out his cell phone and took a picture of it. She told him that she didn’t know that much about the phone. “Neither did I, to be honest with you. I mean, I was around when they came out, but it never occurred to me to have one. If I want to stay connected to you, I make a connection with a little blood. But this thing is so much better than that. The camera part alone makes just everyday things so much easier.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know that many people that I’d want to talk with all the time.” She smiled when his phone played the music of a long dead composer. “I remember that. I think I even went to see one of his shows. If I could listen to that all day, I might have one.”

  “You can. If you get one, I’ll show you.” She nodded, knowing that she’d more than likely not have a phone. It was too much bother for her even to remember to take keys to open her house when she came back from someplace. “Julia said that she has never seen it either. But she did say that I had told her once that I’d had all the things cleaned just before we were married. I let her pick out what she wanted in the way of a wedding band. Would that have anything to do with it?”

  “I don’t think so. I mean, you can’t really wash away someone’s feelings. I don’t know what to mark it as. The gems are real, I believe. I don’t know what else to tell you. You could, I guess, see what it’s worth if you want.” He said that he wasn’t really that worried about it. “Then I’m not either. But you could get it appraised, then if it’s worth something, even a little, sell it and donate the money to a cause or charity that you’re happy with.” That’s what he decided to do. “Before I forget, again, Matt asked me to see if you could take us to your home. The castle. We’re thinking about trading you this one for the castle. I think he wants to raise our children where he grew up.” Patrick looked at Kelly, then back at her. “It’s all right if you don’t want to. I mean, we both love this house too. If you’d planned on living there, then that would be great too. Having you both so close would be amazing.”

  “We gifted it to you. Julia and I didn’t want to live there. And Kelly here helped us get the paperwork all taken care of last night. It was going to be a wedding present, so this works out well for all of us. Do you really want to trade us homes?” She said that she’d spoken to Kelly as well about this house, and she thought if that was what everyone wanted, it was fine by her. “Wonderful news. Julia is in love with this place already. However, she does want to decorate all on her own. She is old modern. I don’t know what that means, but if I get to spend the rest of my life with her learning about it, I’m great with anything.”

  She was still thinking about it thirty minutes later when Matt came back home, and they all decided to go and see the castle. He also had some great news for her. He’d found her another faerie.

  A long talk with Dak had revealed that he felt just too old and tired to try and keep up with her as an earthling dragon. He loved her and always would, but the fact that they’d be more powerful would also make him more so, and he said that he just didn’t want that.

  “I think you be wanting someone younger than I am. Not thousands of years old, and not able to tell a credit card from a picture.” She told him that he wasn’t that bad. “No, I’m not, but really, I’d like to live out my life with someone that is happy, like you are now, and needs me. You really—I hate to say it, but you don’t need me, someone who is alone like you were, following you around, my lady.”

  It hurt her in ways that she couldn’t explain that he didn’t want to stay with her. They’d had their differences, she knew that, but he didn’t think he could do the job anymore. However, after talking to Matt about all the things they would be involved in, she knew that with just his businesses, they would be moving around a great deal. Dak, Matt told her, was smart to tell her now so that she had time to find herself a faerie rather than when they were in the middle of something huge, like a new child, when she’d not have time to get used to someone else and would have to do interviews.

  “Dak was just there for me. I think perhaps the warrior dragon that was in charge of all of us was the one that chose him for me.” Matt said that was what his dad had told him. “I don’t want to have to do that, Matt. Pick someone and let the others know that they failed me somehow. I don’t know that they’ll feel that way, but I would, and I can’t do it.”

  So Matt was in charge of finding someone to be with her. Honey, she knew, was going to be doing most of the work, but she didn’t have to and would have messed it up royally if she’d been in charge.

  “His name is Blueberry. He just goes by Blue, of course. I think you’ll like him. I did. And Honey said that he’s been wanting to work with a person for a very long time. He knows what we are and what we will be doing. Honey even told him that we were thinking of moving into the castle after it’s renovated.” They were in the car on the way to the castle with his dad. Julia had asked to stay behind. “You’ve never been in it before, have you? I mean, their castle?”

  “I’ve never been in a castle before period. I was just the army, so to speak. No one with a castle ever broke bread with us. Most of the time, we had to fend for ourselves when it came to feeding us.” He said that was a shame. “I don’t know. I could tell who was eating well and who wasn’t. The ones on the outside of the castle, believe it or not, were eating well. Not great, but they did have fresh foods. Meat if they hunted. Also, and this is the big thing, they didn’t have to drink whatever waterway system water they had inside the castle walls. I think that is why they lived to be older. That’s only my opinion, but I think that’s about right.”

  “You are more than likely right. I remember, when I was much younger, that we were all healthier than the people around us that could no longer have a garden or even go hunting. We helped out as much as we could. Dad and I would go hunting for some of the elderly and shared what fresh food we could with them. Even when we cleared trees for the faeries, we would sort out the things that the humans could use in their fireplaces and give it to them. It was better than finding them dead or frozen to death at the end of winter. This is the castle.”

  Even from the outside, she could tell that she could enjoy living there. It had a great entrance and had an actual moat around it. Getting out of the car, she didn’t even wait on Matt or his dad. She made her way there and right up to the stone walls. Putting her hands on the cold workmanship, she leaned her face into it as well.

  “What do you feel?” She smiled at Matt and told him. “So the place misses having someone living in it, does it? That’s about what I’d think too. I mean, it’s been sitting here empty for a great many decades. Dad told me that he had some of the faeries come over yesterday when he and Julia decided that they’d give it to us, so it looks a good deal better than it did.”

  “I’m already in love with the place.” He took her hand into his, and they moved over the drawbridge to the courtyard. “Look, there are garden areas too. For whatever we want to plant. And over there is a fountain. I doubt very much that was there before, don’t you?”

  “It was something that my faeries asked to be able to put in. They thought it would make a nice wedding gift from them.” She thanked Patrick. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve also had it updated with lights, cable, and Internet. Where there were openings for air to go through, there are windows now. The rugs, most of them anyway, are original to the house. The faeries would come here a few times a year and spruce things up for us, just in the event that we would like to move in. I’m so glad that you two are going to be using this old girl. She’s a good home for anyone.”

  “The kitchen might need some updates.” Matt laughed. “Not that I’d know if it d
oes or not. I don’t do much in the way of cooking anymore. Blue has a mate that he told me could fill in as the cook if we wanted. I think my dad mentioned that he’d like to keep the servants that wanted to stay at the other house.”

  It took them nearly two hours to go through the house, made longer because Blue had brought a full crew with him to make any changes to the house they wanted. Since Patrick had done the hard part for them, the faeries could do the smaller things, like redoing a bathroom, adding a wall if it was needed, or even fixing up the yard. Which, she was told, was being done now.

  “The snow on the ground makes it harder for us to have much in the way of work, my lady.” She told Blue to call her Aisling. “I don’t think I can do that. It’s a right pretty name, my lady, but you’re queen of this castle now, and you will be called as such. Green Gables has been around for a while. And it’s aptly named for the gable on the back part of the castle.”

  Making their way through the rooms, they ended up at the addition that had been put on the back of the house for all manner of things. The one that Aisling loved the most was the greenhouse. It was attached right to the stone by magic, and it held smells that she was used to smelling. It was like having her home call to her.

  “The faeries again, I would imagine. There wasn’t such a thing back here when we lived here. But when I was asked if you cooked or whatnot, I didn’t know. So when they asked to make an herb room, I thought they meant just a room for drying. I’m thinking that you could grow all you would eat in a winter in here and never be crowded for room.” It was a huge part of the side of the house and could be seen from the upper floors. “The house boasted three bedrooms when we were here. Again, you must realize that to a dragon, it was nice to have the feel of the earth around us. But now, I’m to understand that it has more rooms, with more being added all the time with the enlargement magic, where they can take a small closet and make it look as if you’re in a huge room. It was one of my favorite parts of having magic. It didn’t force you into shoving all your things into one place.”