“Show me to your stove,” I said with a smile. “I’ll show you that I’m good for something.”
Chapter 8: Melting
Garen took me gently by the hand and led me to the kitchen in his house. This was a room that we’d completely bypassed on our tour of the place, and I supposed that it had more to do with him finding it uninteresting than him trying to keep it from me. Black counters with black marble countertops greeted us, as well as a tall black refrigerator and a black stove that looked like it came from a catalog from the 1950s. The whole room was relatively dim, mainly because of all of the dark fixtures, but also because the low-hanging light left something to be desired in the ‘light’ department.
“Admittedly, I don’t use my kitchen very often,” he said. “It’s not because, ‘oh, I have servants for that’ though. I just haven’t spent that much time here before… I suppose I have more reason to now.” He smiled at me and I got the sense that he fully intended to have some kind of domestic life here, now that I was in the picture.
“Aww,” I retorted. “You probably say that to every girl a prophecy tells you to date.”
To my surprise, he laughed at that, shaking his head. “There’ve been no other girls, and no other prophecies. Personally, I choose to think of it more as fate anyway.”
I rolled my eyes but I smiled at him. It was a great relief to me to know that I could relax with him and talk to him like he was just a normal guy. For a while, I might even be able to forget about all of the craziness. “What has your life been like for you?” I asked, sitting on a cushioned, black wrought-iron stool by the kitchen’s little breakfast bar. It made sense to get comfortable while we waited for Brock to return with the groceries. Ash, meanwhile, was also somewhere within the mansion. I had a feeling he was either taking a necessary nap or hanging out in the den. Life probably hasn’t been too thrilling for him either, when he’s not out fighting bad guys.
Garen sat on a stool beside me, sighing a little. “My life’s been a lot of work. A lot of keeping enemy factions at bay. A lot of paperwork.”
“Dragons have paperwork, too?” I asked, incredulous.
“Oh yeah,” he replied. “Mountains of paperwork. Bureaucracy sucks no matter who you work for.”
I tried to imagine what a dragon board meeting would look like. Probably a lot of fiery arguments and literal fire. “So why didn’t you come home to this perfect castle and unwind every evening? That’s what I would do. How come I never noticed this place before? I didn’t think I was so unobservant.”
Galen smiled at me. “I don’t work a typical nine-to-five job, you know. Some nights, I can’t leave what I’m doing to come home. And that’s why sometimes I’m just gone a while. But I promise to always come back, and I promise to do better keeping you informed about where I am and what I’m doing… within reason, of course. It’s sometimes best to keep certain details out of messages, in order to keep you and me safe.”
I was glad to hear that he had some concern for his own safety. It wouldn’t matter much if I was safe here but somewhere else he was killed, because a Chosen One without her dragon protector wouldn’t be safe for very long.
“But you didn’t answer my other question,” I pointed out.
Garen chuckled. “This mansion can only be seen by Believers,” he explained. “It has a special spell on it. To Unbelievers who want to do us harm as well as anyone else, including all those who don’t know what the hell’s going on, this castle doesn’t exist. There’s just more swamp and trees in this area.”
“Wow,” I said, looking at him with wide eyes. “For some reason, I never thought that magic might be involved.”
He kept on chuckling, nodding his head. “There’s still a lot for you to learn about. But what’s really important is that you’re here and you’re safe, and you’re with me.”
I was just starting to think about getting a drink, when the sound of the front door opening alerted us to Brock’s return. Garen got out of his stool right away and walked out of the kitchen towards the front of the house. “Brock, thank you,” he said brightly. I followed him out there and saw the other shifter holding three plastic bags of groceries.
“I didn’t think that tuna melts required so much stuff,” I remarked.
Garen smiled at me. “We didn’t just need things for tuna melts. I was a little concerned that you might go peeking around in the pantry or the fridge and find out that we didn’t really have a whole lot of anything, but thankfully you didn’t.”
Ha! I smiled back at him. “I thought about it.”
Rather than help Brock with the grocery bags, Garen just followed him back into the kitchen and watched as he put everything away. I did likewise, not wanting to put the Master to shame by deigning to help a servant. I can save that for another day. This day is finally starting to go well.
As soon as the cans of tuna were placed on the counter, Garen went over and got out a can opener. “What type of cheese do you think it’s best to use?” he asked me. “It looked like he brought back at least three kinds.”
I glanced into the dairy compartment of Garen’s refrigerator and saw some provolone, which was always my answer to cheese-related questions. “We also probably want some celery and some mayo,” I suggested. “Otherwise it will pretty much just taste like tuna on toasted bread.”
Once he was done stocking the pantry and fridge, Brock ducked back out of the room, taking the plastic bags with him.
“It sounds like you know your way around a kitchen better than I do,” Garen said, impressed.
I laughed and shook my head. “I know the bare minimum, trust me. I wouldn’t starve on my own, but I’d get so bored of eating the same, like, three things.”
Together, we got out all of the necessary ingredients as well as cooking implements and dishware. I was about to turn the gas on and light the stove, but then Garen calmly puffed a thin line of flame there and ignited it himself.
My eyes widened. “Whoa! Maybe a little warning next time. My arm was close to that.”
“Oh, sorry!” he said sincerely. “I’m just so used to lighting things myself.”
“You’re a show-off,” I teased him. Carefully, I assembled the sandwiches on a pair of plates and then passed them off for him to grill nicely on a pan. “I can’t say I’ve ever eaten something that was cooked on dragon fire before.”
He shook his head, smirking. “It doesn’t really taste different,” he said. “Fire is fire.”
It was true; the flames that came out of him didn’t glow green like his eyes or take any unusual shapes. The flame he created was like any other flame. “It’s still cool that it’s made by you though. There’s probably a lot of people who wish that they could provide their own fire at any time.”
“You’re pretty complimentary now,” Garen said, carefully flipping the tuna melt sandwiches so they cooked evenly. “I thought you were going to try to run away from me earlier.”
I looked at him and smiled, blushing a little. “Well, I know you better.”
The truth was, I’d witnessed enough now to realize that he was telling me the truth and keeping me safe, and noticing the subtle ways he tried to put me at ease and make me happy in spite of all of the things set against us made me more appreciative of him. Added to that was the fact that just the other day we’d slept together and he’d been amazingly gentle about it. “You’re a surprising person,” I added.
He moved the pan from the stove and extinguished the flames, smirking slightly sideways at me. “I’m not a person at all. Not in the normal sense of the word.”
I used a spatula to carefully place the sandwiches onto each plate. We sat together again at the breakfast bar and had a nice time eating the tuna melts and chatting some more. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it felt good to do something like this with Garen instead of just being in a constant panic for my life. For once, things started to feel more like the life I’d enjoyed before all of this dragon, end of the world hysteria. Who k
new that a tuna melt could make me feel so good?
“I could get used to this,” I told him, a smile seemingly permanently painted on my face. “I never thought I’d say that.”
“Oh, I don’t want you to get used to this,” Garen replied, frowning slightly. “I hope to spoil you sometimes. You deserve more than canned tuna in our kitchen.”
The our in that sentence excited me. I had thought of the condo as his and I’d begun thinking of this mansion as his too, but our had a nice ring to it. Especially because until fairly recently, it had felt like all of this was beyond my control and decided for me. I’d stayed in the guest room, I’d been briefed on the life I was expected to lead. I felt like an outsider watching my life unfold, but now I finally felt like a part of it again. I felt important and special. I felt kind of equal to Garen.
In his eyes, I was more valuable than even he was. Which was strange because he was the one who turned into the ginormous black dragon and stopped the villains. But I was beginning to think that if he thought I was important, then I clearly was.
“I look forward to seeing how you spoil me,” I told him with a wink as I stood up and collected our emptied plates. “I mean, aside from letting me live in this beautiful castle. Oh, and for saving my life just recently. There’s also that.”
Garen laughed and followed me to the sink. I attempted to clean the plates by hand, even though I’d never been that great at doing that. He wrapped his strong arms around me and leaned his chin against my shoulder, kissing my neck by my ear. “I look forward to spoiling you soon,” he said softly in my ear, just for me to hear.
The last time we’d been anywhere near intimate like this, I’d felt scared and uneasy about it. Now I found that I wanted it and that I liked it very much. The prospect of sleeping with him again was a thrilling one. “Why not tonight?” I whispered to him, turning my face slightly so I could gaze into his pretty green eyes. He regarded me with a much gentler look now that we’d been together longer and gotten better acquainted. How funny that we had sex before we were acquainted. None of this has been the way that I would’ve liked. It’s all out of order, almost. But maybe that’s part of why it thrills me so much…
He brought his lips to mine and kissed me deeply, letting his tongue softly into my partially opened mouth. I gladly invited it in, and I allowed his whole being to envelope me for a few blissful minutes before reality forced us back to the present. “Unfortunately I have to rise early tomorrow,” he told me, pressing his lips together perhaps in an attempt to keep the feeling of me imprinted there. The way he was looking at me, he appeared like he’d like nothing more than to tear my clothes off and take me right there on the breakfast bar.
But instead of doing that, he took me by the hand and led me back upstairs. At least I’d get to see what his bedchamber looked like here. I anticipated it being the best room in the whole house.
The hallway full of plants and paintings seemed longer than I remembered, but that was probably because the guest room I’d been in previously was located right near the top of the stairs. Now, Garen led me all the way down the hall to a door that stood by itself against the far wall. Ah, I thought. Clearly the master bedroom.
A fleeting thought came to me and I wondered if this room was actually where he stored his vast piles of gold. Then I told myself to stop assuming that such a thing was even really a thing.
Garen opened the door and held it for me to pass in front of him. I walked into the room, hesitating slightly because I didn’t have the faintest idea what I might find in there. The room was dark and elegant, quite a bit like the guest room, but it was much bigger. There was a king-sized bed in the middle of the room, against the wall opposite the doorway. Like in the guest room, this bed had four posters around it and a curtain of obsidian hung over the bed itself, begging me to wonder at its contents. It was the perfect bed for a black dragon to sleep in, and I didn’t even know what the mattress or bedding looked like yet. I had a feeling I was soon to find out.
“We don’t have to go to sleep right away, if you don’t want to,” he said. “I know you woke up earlyish this morning, though.”
I smiled at him and shook my head a bit. “I’m not really that tired yet. I could just read a book or something.”
He chuckled. “Do you want to read more of The Bible?”
I laughed. “No,” I said, probably too quickly to not sound defensive. “I bet you have a lot of good books in here.” I went over to the bookshelves, which were practically carbon copies of the ones in the guest room. Did he have the same shelves in every room, containing all the same books? That would be ridiculously weird, but then I also wouldn’t put it past him. “Why do you even have The Bible if you think it’s worthy of scorn?”
He smiled at me and moved to the bed, pulling aside its curtain so I could glimpse the actual bed underneath. Unsurprisingly, the bedding matched the curtain, right down to the fabric. “I never said it was worthy of scorn,” he said. “I just don’t really think it’s the sort of thing one normally picks when one’s trying to pretend to be busy…”
Goddammit. He must’ve seen me on the balcony. Of course he could. If I could look up and see him circling down to land, then he surely could look down and see me standing there watching him. “Heh,” I said, not even trying to play it off as untrue. “You got me there. I don’t really know what I was thinking. I guess I didn’t want to seem like I was desperately waiting for you to come back.”
He raised an eyebrow at me, still smiling his smart and flirty smile at me. Had it always seemed flirty? I supposed that it had. I just hadn’t realized before. “I take it that you didn’t find the TV and the internet as fitting forms of distraction,” he said thoughtfully. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid this mansion, as lovely as it is, could use some additions. Maybe what it needs is a woman’s touch.”
Blushing, I nodded my head a little. “Maybe I will just go to sleep after all. That bed looks so comfortable.”
“And you have had a long day,” Garen agreed. “I took the liberty of sending Ash out on a clothing store run. He picked you up a few new things. I hope that they fit you well and they suit your style preferences.”
I gaped at him. He gestured a nod in the direction of the dresser along the wall near the bookshelves. “You mean I get to wear more than just this star shirt and booty shorts?”
He laughed. “You can keep wearing it if you want. That outfit looks good on you.”
I chuckled a little, rolling my eyes at him. “I’d really rather not.” Instead of crawling into bed then, I went over to the dresser and opened up each drawer, admiring all of the new clothes that had been organized in there for me. It made me blush further when I realized that Ash had gone and bought panties and a couple of new bras for me. “Garen?” I asked, continuing to look through the bounty of new outfits. “Are there any girl dragons?”
He looked at me, confused for a moment but then it dawned on him. “Ahh,” he said. “There are, but they’re not really factioned up. They sort of go where their mates lead them. And none of them are as good at guarding and service as men like Ash and Brock are.”
I pouted a little. “I see. Well, maybe I can order underwear online from now on?”
He chuckled softly and nodded. “Okay,” he agreed. “That’s fine by me. There’s no harm in that, as long as you make sure to let one of them open each package, for safety reasons.”
Always safety… I sighed a little but I nodded back at him. As much as I didn’t want another man knowing what underwear I was wearing, I didn’t want to receive a bomb or something like that.
Brock did give me that bath, I thought, remembering and shuddering a little. But I don’t exactly want a repeat of that sort of thing. I know how to bathe and clothe myself, thank you.
I slipped into a pair of black silk pajamas – not fearing Garen’s gaze – and then we climbed into bed together. It was so nice to be able to just cuddle there and not worry about anyone or anything disturbing o
ur peace for the night.
Chapter 9: The Dragon’s Secret
When I woke up the next morning, of course Garen was gone. He’d informed me as much the night before, but I wondered how on earth he was able to leave the bed without waking me. I was a fairly light sleeper. Maybe I’d been more exhausted than I thought. Stress could do that to a person. I lay there in the soft, silky sheets, looking up at the top of the bed’s canopy, and questioned whether or not it was necessary for me to get out of bed that morning. I don’t have to go to school anymore. There’s nothing around here that I have to do… Why not just relax?
As nice as that sounded, I wasn’t really the type of person who was comfortable with just lazing a day away. I liked having things to do, a full schedule of plans, fun activities to pass the time. Without anything like that, I was going to be so bored waiting for Garen. It wasn’t like I could go for a walk or a bike ride.
I’m starting to think that the reason he takes off all the time is because he wants me to miss him and feel like I’m only content when he’s here. Was he tricking me into needing him? I didn’t think he’d be so cruel, but then that was how he wanted me to think.
“Argh, this is why I can’t be left to my own devices!” I shouted into the empty room, not caring that my voice reverberated off the stone walls. If Ash or Brock overheard me yelling at myself, at least it would bring them into the room and force them to keep me company. But I didn’t really want the company of the servant and errand men. They left me feeling weird, and I think the feeling was mutual.
I listened for a moment for the sound of footsteps approaching the bedroom, but they never came. “They must think that, as I’m here in the mansion, there’s no real reason to attend to me. How rude.” I caught myself thinking I’ll have to inform their Master about this, and then I realized with a smirk that I was starting to let power go to my head. All I knew was that the dragon in charge had a thing for me, and he was the biggest, baddest dragon of them all.
Abducted By The Dragons: The Complete Series Page 7
