by Zoe Chant
Reese deliberately kept himself from pacing while Tara took refuge in the bathroom. His dragon refused to calm down, was convinced that his offerings weren't good enough, that she would be ashamed of them, of him, and it would make her decide that of course he wasn't worth it —
Calm down before you bust in there and offer her her weight in rubies to keep on talking to you, he thought. Do not be the Uncle Wilf of your generation.
Reese changed into fresh clothes, and set about eating some of the breakfast sandwiches he had brought back. He thought about what it might be like to take Tara home, give her proper courting presents, to give her the luxury that both his instincts and his own heart were demanding for her. Would she want to see Cornwall, where his parents lived? Would she let him show her Phnom Penh, Moscow, Sydney, his other favorite cities?
He jerked himself away from such fanciful thoughts. He couldn't show her anything until he had regained his sunstone. That had to be his first priority, both to his family and himself, but now that his mate was involved, things were shifting rapidly.
It was a strange thought. He had never considered that at some point, there would be an urge in his life just as strong as regaining his sunstone, but —
Before he could think further on the matter, the door open, and a freshly showered Tara came out. She had chosen to wear a pair of leggings and one of the light wool dresses that fell just short of her knees. He liked her best naked, but there was something warm about her dressed like that, sweet and comfortable and so soft that he wanted to catch her up in his arms and squeeze. There was a determined diffidence to her, and something about it made his heart ache.
“Well?” she asked. “Is this all right?”
“You tell me,” Reese said. “Do you like it?”
“And if I said no, what would you do?”
“Ask you what you wanted and go out and get it if I could. Take you along to let you choose. I'm easy going.”
As a matter of fact, he wasn't, and he watched her closely for her reaction. Something in him relaxed when she smiled. He probably hadn't messed up so badly, then.
“It's great,” she said softly. “This ... this is way nicer than I would have even tried on. I like... I like this blue, and everything is comfortable and fits pretty well ...Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?” asked Reese in confusion.
“Like ... I'm listing off delicious things that you can eat.”
Reese coughed a little, looking away.
“I like hearing that you're happy with things I brought you,” he mumbled. “It's nice.”
She came to sit next to him on the bed, and he handed her the bag full of breakfast sandwiches. She didn't look at him as she spoke again.
“So is this a ... Reese-nice thing or a dragon-nice thing?”
“It's both,” he said after a moment. “You really can't take them apart, not really. I wouldn't want to.”
“And so it's you that wants to ... to give me nice dresses and breakfast and good sex, not the dragon?”
“It's all me,” he promised her. “It's not some idiot lizard thing. It's me. I want you. I want you so much, and I want you happy, and safe, and with me, and...”
He cut himself off. He was beginning to know Tara, and the way he wanted to finish that statement would have distressed her, true or not. And it was true.
Tara either didn't catch it or chose to ignore it. Reese felt something relax in him when she started to eat one of the sandwiches, and he knew that it was his dragon saying ah yes, mate is accepting food and taking nourishment. All is well.
Of course he also knew what his dragon felt should come after his mate getting the luxuries she deserved and enough food, and he deliberately got up off the bed and put some distance between them.
“Everything all right?” she asked, and he grinned wryly.
“Absolutely. You're just ... utterly delicious, and we should be on the road sooner than not.”
Tara blinked, and then he saw the exact moment when she realized what he meant. Her eyes widened, her lips parted, and she was so damned beautiful that he took a shaky step towards her.
Another moment, and they wouldn't have been going anywhere at all, but then the phone rang, making them both jump. Reese must have looked like he was on the verge of tearing it out of the wall, because Tara quickly picked up the receiver. She listened, made a face, and hung up.
“We have half an hour to turn over the keys or we're going to be charged for another night,” she said, and before Reese could say that was fine, she stood up. “We should probably get on the road, huh?”
“Yeah,” he said swallowing down his disappointment. “You're probably right.”'
Reese thought that would be the end of it, and but as he went to gather up their meager belongings, Tara sighed.
“I hate being right,” she muttered, and Reese had to pretend he hadn't heard her or all of that self-restraint would not have mattered in the least.
Chapter 21
They took the back roads, and if she was being honest with herself, the car probably wasn't going to hold up to freeway speeds. Tara tried to apologize for sticking them with a car that rattled like a bucket of full of bolts, but Reese waved her off.
“We're moving, and we're even moving in the right direction,” he said. “I can't ask for much more.”
“Maybe you should,” she muttered.
He cocked his head at her.
“Say again?”
“Maybe you should ask for more,” she repeated. “I mean, you've got a lot going on. A family, a lot of treasure —”
“Well, it is a lot. I mean, that's kind of the point. I like to think I'm doing pretty well.”
“-some kind of dragon heritage, that I'm still a little unclear on —”
“I can tell you if you want — ”
“And you're doing all this mate ... stuff.”
“I like the mate stuff,” he said sounding slightly put out.
“Well, I know you do. But ... you said you didn't need me to do anything, and maybe that's feeling a little uneven. Tell me ... I mean, ask me what you want. I'm not going to go screaming into the night because you tell me a little more about what you might want from your ... your mate.”
The words on her tongue felt strange, but there was a rightness to them that was so intense that it made her head swim.
“Hm. Really.” If Reese was impressed with her determination, he gave no sign.
“Yeah,” she said, staring out of the window.
The silence stretched between them, and Tara refused to look at him. She could feel a red blush on her cheeks. God, what had she been thinking? What would he think of her making an awkward offer like that? What did she expect?
“All right,” Reese said.
“All right,” Tara repeated.
They drove on in silence for a few minutes. Tara took several deep breaths, calming herself down. This was Reese. He was kind. He wouldn't make fun of her, or take advantage. She might not have known him for long, but she knew him that well.
She was just beginning to feel normal again when he pulled off the freeway, steering the car into the grocery store parking lot of the little town they were passing through.
“What's the matter?” she asked. “We're not out of gas again...”
“Nope,” Reese said.
He got out of the car and came to her side, opening her door and handing her out. She blinked at him and looked around at the parking lot. They were in a plaza that seemed hopefully designed to attract the odd tourist that Tara could only guess had fallen off the main highway. There was a grocery store, a general store, a single small restaurant, and, inexplicably, a fiberglass statue of a gorilla at the far edge of the plaza.
Tara was so confused by why they had stopped that she didn't notice Reese getting down on one knee until she turned back. She stared as he gazed up at her with longing and with a melting sincerity in his bright eyes.
“Marry
me.”
“I ... what?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Tara saw two old women came out of the grocery store, and they stopped to peer curiously at what was going on. Reese didn't seem to notice, instead taking her hand to hold it between two of his.
“Marry me,” he repeated. “Right away. Whatever kind of ceremony you like best. I have cousins who can pull a black-tie church wedding out of literally nothing. Or we could do a quick courthouse wedding.”
He nodded at a sign on the edge of the plaza: Welcome to Palmer, Iowa.
“Bet there's a justice of the peace here in Palmer. We could get married here, come back every year for ... whatever it is they're known for.”
“World-famous tamales, apparently,” said Tara in shock. “I mean, according to that sign over there.”
“Right. We get married here, come back every year for the world-famous tamales. We get our picture taken every year with whatever that gorilla thing over there is. We see the world. We buy a house together, or build one. I give you whatever you want. I make you happy. You figure out that when it comes to wanting more, the only thing I want more of is you, just you, Tara. Maybe we learn to cook fried rice. I've always wanted to learn to cook fried rice, and maybe if I had someone to cook for, I'd finally find the time to learn.”
“I know how to cook fried rice,” Tara said, her voice a little tinny even in her own ears. “I can teach you.”
“Well then. What do you say?”
“I don't want to get married in Palmer,” Tara said, because she realized completely and without a doubt, that if she said yes, Reese would keep her hand and take her to find the courthouse.
“All right,” Reese said, rising to his feet. “What do you want?”
He spoke so calmly that Tara wondered if he was making fun of her, but even as the idea formed, she dismissed it. No. Reese couldn't joke about this, wouldn't. She swallowed twice, because first she had to bite back the urge to say yes. At the same time, something in her would not allow her to tell him she wanted nothing from him. There was some kind of deep and burning urge in him to provide, and as his mate (oh God) she was the one he was meant to provide for.
“I ... I want some snacks,” she said, blushing a little. “I'm, um, getting a little hungry again. And ... and I want a picture of us with the gorilla.”
Reese grinned as if she had made the sun come out.
“Come on,” he said.
The gorilla, it turned out, was not a gorilla at all. Instead it was a statue about as tall as Reese was of a vaguely humanoid creature covered in dark dense fur with two vicious red eyes peering out of its head.
“The Wildman of Palmer,” Tara read from the plaque. “Terrorized the town in 1898 before disappearing into the fields, never to be seen again.”
“Probably just some drunk guy who yelled at people before running off,” Reese sniffed. “I don't believe a word of it.”
“You are literally a dragon.”
“Yes, but dragons are real.”
Before Tara could begin to unpack that, Reese called over the two ladies who had never left off their staring, giving them his phone and showing them how to work the camera.
When Tara was tucked under Reese's arm in front of the (potentially) fictional Wildman of Palmer, a picture was snapped, and even if she was grinning like an idiot in the picture and blinking besides, Tara felt a deep warmth in her chest, something that pulled her towards Reese with a force so powerful that it should have scared her.
Instead, one of the old women passed by and murmured, Should have said yes, he looks like a good one, Tara only smiled and wondered at how very strange her world had gotten.
Fifteen minutes later, they were back in the car with some beef jerky, some fruit, and a suspicious bag of something that called itself shrimp chips. They shared the food between them, and finally Reese spoke as they passed a mile marker sign.
“All right. Well, it looks like we're twenty miles from Miles Mark, Iowa, so let me know if you'd rather get married in Miles Mark.”
Tara was silent, her eyes suddenly stinging, something jagged and hard in her throat. She fiddled with the shrimp chips, which were better than they had any right to be.
Tara jumped when Reese took one hand off the wheel and laid it unerringly over hers where it rested on her lap.
“It's all right,” he said, his voice as gentle as she had ever heard it. “I know this probably sounds insane. And you didn't know me a week ago. But this is real, and I'm real. And I want you and I want you with me.”
“I ... don't know if I can say yes to this,” Tara said, and it felt wrong. She could absolutely say yes to this. She could open her mouth, say the word, and that would be it. It was only her lingering scraps of doubt that kept her from saying it.
She flinched, waiting for whatever Reese's reaction would be, but he glanced at her with a slight smile on his face.
“As long as you're not saying no.”
“I'm not,” she said, and he broke into a wide grin.
“I'll take that,” he said, and they drove on.
They made it to Madison, Wisconsin around dusk, and they ended up spending the night in an actual brick bed and breakfast. Their suite took up the entire third floor, and as Reese arranged some room service, Tara sat on the bed, bouncing lightly on it and shocked all over again at how good a decent mattress could feel.
“You can jump on it if you like, I won't judge,” Reese said, coming into the bedroom. “Food's coming up in twenty minutes though, so you might want to wrap it up before a staff member comes up.”
“I'm not going to jump on the bed,” Tara said with a smile. “I was just ... um.”
“Yes?”
“What if I don't want to sleep with you tonight?”
Reese considered.
“Then I'd probably crash out on the sofa in the sitting room. I don't like doing the tub thing unless there's no other option.”
She laughed in spite of herself.
“So I get the bed?”
“Of course.”
She shook her head, and for a moment, it was all so much that she covered her face with her hands.
“Oh, sweetheart.”
Reese came to sit beside her, and when he put his arm over her shoulders, she could feel how careful he was. He was ready to pull back if she was stiff, if she gave the least hint that she didn't want him.
That wasn't the problem, of course. She did want him. She wanted him so much she ached, and she thought that if he ended up sleeping on the couch, she might last a few hours before she went to join him there.
“I just ... I barely know you.” And everyone leaves. That's what always happens. And I already know that if you do, it'll hurt so much.
“Then take the time to get to know me better,” Reese said with absolute confidence. “Only let me stay with you until you figure it out. I'll be here ... I.”
“What?”
“I want you,” Reese said, taking her hands in his. “So much. This isn't a theoretical for me, Tara. This isn't ... some kind of infatuation. This is real, and I know it as well as I know the alphabet or how to breathe. I want you to know it the same way, and if you're not there yet, I can wait for it.”
“How long?” Tara knew she was being silly. She sounded like a little kid, wanting to know how long it would take to get over a hurt feeling or how long she would miss her mother. There was no satisfying answer that could be given to something like that, but Reese only smiled gamely.
“As long as it takes,” he said, with absolutely no hesitation at all.
The meal that came was very good, and afterward, Tara pulled Reese into the big bed with her. She closed her eyes as he kissed her cheeks, her mouth, and her throat. It sent shivers of pleasure through her, but when he slid his hand along the hem of the T-shirt she wore to bed, she shook her head.
Reese nodded, and settled behind her, pulling her close to his body. She could feel his arousal and the tension of his body, and at the
same time, she could feel it ebb as he fell asleep pressed against her, his arm looped around her waist.
She was exhausted from everything that had been happening. Tara could feel sleep tugging at her, and she was certain she had never been as comfortable as she was in this enormous bed and with Reese curled up behind her. Still she fought it off, because there was something about this she didn't want to forget.
I feel so good with him, she thought drowsily. I feel so safe here. I could ... I could stay here. I could ... with him ...
I love him.
The thought drifted through her mind as she fell asleep, and there was nothing alarming or startling about it at all. If she were awake, she would have shaken at the reality of it, but right now, curled in Reese's arms, with his soft breathing in her ear, she could see that she had known it for a while, and that it was completely true.
I love him. I love him.
When Tara finally fell asleep, she dreamed of walking through a small town with Reese, looking for a place to get married, and finally finding a justice of the peace at a place selling world-famous tamales.
The next day, they left Madison, unaware that a specific monitored security camera had caught them leaving town and recorded the direction they were heading.
Chapter 22
It was a bright winter afternoon when they crossed a rusty steel bridge and finally drove into Pulaski, Wisconsin. There was a fringe of bare trees on the edge of the river, and then they were in the town itself.
“Small place,” Reese noted, looking around. “Don't suppose you have any nascent memories that might help us navigate?”
Tara was looking down at her phone.
“No, but I do finally have a signal and thus, GPS.”
“I will take that.”
Reese felt something tingle at the back of his mind. It was a spark of hope, a spark of excitement that told him his search might finally be at end, that the thing he had been looking for was right in front of him. He had felt it several times over the last seventy years, and each time, he had been wrong.
