by Starla Night
Speaking of Mal, where was he?
Cheryl finished her relaxing shower, dried herself in the fluffy towels, and went looking for him.
He was not working at his palatial mahogany desk. He was not pacing in front of the roaring fireplaces while shouting into a phone. He was not at the rustic dining benches, in the empty stone hall, on the frozen exterior landing pad where they’d arrived, or in any of the barren rooms.
Well…
She picked up the phone. Did this have long distance? She called the corporation. Mal was unavailable so Jeanine transferred her to Jasper.
“Hello, Cheryl.”
“Hi.” The room heated, even though her hair was still dripping on her bare shoulders with the towel wrapped around her. Cue her social awkwardness.
It wasn’t fair. She was distanced by the phone, and she ought to be used to talking to Jasper since he was her official boss and they talked every day.
“Um, is Mal there?”
“Yes.”
Mal had abandoned her.
She was glad he wasn’t lying in a gully somewhere, a victim of a freak snow accident. But he’d left her.
Maybe he wanted her to sleep. Maybe he was worried she didn’t get enough rest. Maybe this was kindly meant, not that he forgot her. Or didn’t care.
Funny how yesterday any touch was a precious memory, and today she could call up the corporation and get upset that Mal hadn’t answered on the first ring himself.
She wanted too much. She wasn’t grateful for the memories she’d already gotten.
“Are you coming to work today?” Jasper asked.
“I don’t know.” She rubbed her wet hair. It was a nervous gesture. “Do you know if Mal’s coming back home? Like, for lunch, or something?”
It was getting close to lunch time. An early lunch time. He could make it easily. Flying only took him five minutes.
And she was greedy. She wanted more. A lot more.
“I don’t know,” Jasper said.
No, Mal wouldn’t share his plans. “Is he busy?”
“Yes, very.”
Of course he was. She hated to interrupt, but she also couldn’t stand not knowing when he would appear. “Can you ask him to call me when he gets a few minutes free?”
“Sure.”
Well, okay. That was that.
She made her goodbyes and stared out the gorgeous windows at the isolated snowscape. Today the sky was clear and blue. Wind gusts kicked little flurries from the many feet of snow crushed against the windows. Ice chips melted and fell on the sharp incline, rolled into giant snowballs, and flew off the edge of the cliff to disappear into an icy blue abyss.
She went back into the bedroom and put on her sweaty old clothes. Everything except her underwear, which she stuffed in her pocket. It felt weird to go commando in jeans, but what choice did she have? She didn’t carry around spare underwear.
Lunchtime passed.
What was Mal’s plan? He didn’t forget her, right? There were no roads to a dragon fortress hanging off a cliff. And unlike him, she couldn’t fly.
Cheryl kept herself busy by booting up his giant office computer and checking her email. Several classmates had messaged to find out if she was okay, and her professor, while not understanding the situation, wanted to reschedule her draft portfolio review to pick out the third show piece this afternoon.
She checked her watch. Approaching two.
She typed up replies, touched by her classmates’ concern and hoping her professor didn’t mind rescheduling for later.
Too bad she’d left her tablet at the draft portfolio review. Cheryl scrounged Mal’s drawers and folders for blank paper and pens. It had been awhile since she’d drawn in analog. No easy way to erase the permanent marker, and no layers to keep separate.
She could use this time to make a final show piece. Something hard-hitting and commercial—no, she could make all three show pieces. Yeah. She could redeem her grade and make her professor happy with her and wow her classmates. The delay was good, really. She tried to convince herself as the hours dragged past and her nerves grew twitchy.
And also, she was kind of starving.
Mal didn’t have food in his house. The kitchen was as barren as the rest of the stone rooms. She would kill for a protein bar.
Cheryl abandoned her dramatic snow scene—it was already going in the Hallmark direction, with shiny sparkles and happy icicles—and took a quick break to sketch an overweight, shy woman strangling a cutesy, green dragon wearing Mal’s sexy gray jacket. Not that it meant anything…
She uploaded it to her Tumblr and Deviant Art accounts.
Oh, there was a message from her biggest fan, DragonLord C.
“Thank you for the picture of the dragon wearing chaps. Can I please have your picture of the dragon wearing silk pajamas? Your drawings are so wonderful. Thank you for your consideration.”
Her heart thumped and her face heated.
Yesterday, after the logo disaster, she’d relaxed with quick sketches of a miniature dragon lounging in the same silk pajamas shirt Mal had been wearing. Because of nice comments from fans like DragonLord C on her cutesy, non-commercial drawings, like this one, she’d uploaded it on the MAX ride.
“Sure,” she typed. “Do you want me to sign it to DragonLord C?”
The reply came only moments later. “I would love a signed print.”
Well, that got trickier. She’d meant to sign the electronic copy for him, not a physical version. Cheryl chewed on the problem.
It was easy to make signed prints. She could go to any office store and get one printed as a postcard size or smaller, sign, and mail it to her fan. Of course, per item it was expensive. It would make more sense to print a batch. And it wasn’t her first request. DragonLord C was only her newest fan; she’d had requests off and on for years.
Or she could get serious.
She could set up an account with a professional art manufacturer and then try to sell her work. There were fees and operating costs, so she’d have to work hard to recoup her investment. She could even set up an Etsy store.
But this art was just for fun. It would never make any money. There was no point in getting serious. She gave it away.
And why figure out the trip to an office store just to print out one copy? She should try to get to the campus lab. She was fooling herself that anyone besides DragonLord C would want one.
“Sorry,” she typed. “I don’t have a printer. Maybe later.”
“I will print it. Will you sign if I bring it to you?”
Huh. That was farther than most fans went. “Do you live in Portland?”
“No, but I will make the trip if you will sign it.”
This fan must live close, like Kelso or Beaverton. Still, the trip would cost half a tank of gas.
She heated. How flattering.
“Sure,” she typed. “But only if you bring DragonLords A and B.”
The chat went dead for several minutes. She studied the setup fees at her favorite art printers and dreamed.
DragonLord C resumed chat. “I will do this. Who are they?”
Hah. Okay. “It was a joke. Sorry. Because you’re C I thought there might be an A and B. When do you want to meet?”
“I can arrive in one hour.”
Back to the problem. “Today is bad,” she typed. What time was it? After four? Where was Mal? Seriously, what was he thinking?
“Tell me when to come this week,” DragonLord C replied. “Also LOL to your joke.”
A pity laugh.
“Very funny,” DragonLord C typed.
She wouldn’t go that far. But whatever. It was nice of DragonLord C to pretend she was funny. Even she didn’t think it was a good joke. Her fan must be desperate for a signed print. Which was heartwarming in its own way.
Cheryl rose again and stretched. Despite the relaxing shower, her muscles were beginning to cramp from hunching over Mal’s keyboard. She was still sore and achy. Her stomach growled.<
br />
Seriously. Where was he?
She called Jasper a second time. “Did you give Mal my message?”
“Yes, immediately after you asked me to.”
Her belly lurched. Jasper had given Mal her message hours ago. A dangerous awareness, like the drop of an icy rock about to pick up snow and turn into an avalanche, made the inside of the office as chilly as the sparkling snow.
Her voice sounded far away in her own ears. “He didn’t call me.”
“Oh.”
Silence filled the line.
She rubbed her head. So when you said I was yours, Mal, what did that mean, exactly? “Can I talk to him?”
“He is meeting with Darcy and Alex,” Jasper said. “Someone leaked our plan to the Carnelians and they have already bought up all the silk worms in China, so he is researching a new product.”
Oh.
Right. Of course. Mal was devoted to the company a hundred percent. Probably the shock of the betrayal caused him to dive so deeply into the new problem he hadn’t come up for air. And she had said for him to call when he had a few free minutes.
But another thought kept bashing against her mind, no matter how hard she tried to push it away.
Was she so unimportant to him that, the day after he proposed to her and they had sex for the first time, he forgot all about her?
God. Her stomach clenched. She always thought when she found someone to love her, and started her first relationship and began thinking about marriage and family, she would never prioritize work so much that she didn’t have time for the loved ones she was working for.
Mal was different.
But he liked her. He cared for her and wanted her to be happy. Especially last night.
Then why didn’t he call?
Her stomach clenched again. Had she been so wrong?
No. This was all speculation. She wouldn’t jump to any conclusions until she spoke to Mal herself.
“Okay, um, thanks, Jasper.” Her voice was shaking. Dammit. She cleared her throat. “I’ll just talk to him later when he—”
“Here he is,” Jasper said, and a rage-filled bellow made her jump even from the distance of the phone line.
“This is a meeting!” Mal roared.
“I know,” Jasper said distantly. The phone changed hands and Jasper’s voice receded. “It’s your wife.”
There was a pause.
Her heart squeezed.
Mal’s throaty growl filled the line. “What do you want?”
Direct. To the point. The same gruff tone he would take with anyone… but maybe gentler than the roar he had thrown at Jasper?
“Um.” Her heart squeezed again, hard, and her hands started shaking. She rubbed her head. Nerves flirted with hope. “I wanted to know what you’re doing.”
“I’m working.”
Right. Right.
“Right,” she said. “Um, thanks.”
The tremors in her hands reached her voice. She shook harder than any time she’d had to meet a stranger. Because now she had been remade as a person, in Mal’s bed, and he had been remade by being with her, it was like they were strangers.
She needed him to tell her everything was okay. He hadn’t left the bed because waking up beside her fat, ugly body had horrified him in the light of day. She needed him to tell her she was still loved. Just as much as he’d made her feel loved last night.
“So, um, today. You left me here.”
His silence confirmed the truth of her statement. Yes, he had left her at his house. She could almost hear him say, “So what?”
Although he hadn’t said that, she flinched anyway. “Ah, well, I wondered what was your plan.”
“My plan for what?”
“For me,” she said.
When he continued to remain silent, she began to fight the terrifying feeling he had no plan for her. His plan was to run away to work and never see her again.
“What was your plan for me?”
“I don’t have time for this.”
No.
He didn’t have time for her. The dismissal in his rough tone stung more than a thousand cuts in her most sensitive places.
“We’ll talk when I get home.”
The phone went silent. He had hung up on her.
She gripped the phone with shaking fingers. “When will you be home?” A scream of rage filled her with dragonesque fury and she threw the phone against the wall so it shattered into a million pieces…
Okay, she didn’t do that. That was the Cheryl of her imagination.
In real life, she placed the handset on its cradle silently and daydreamed about the meltdowns she would never have while demanding the people she loved spent time with her.
Chapter Eleven
In his office meeting, Mal shoved the phone at Jasper. “No more interruptions.” To the other members of the meeting, he snapped. “Carry on.”
But the others didn’t carry on. The others regarded him with some interest.
Darcy’s grin widened. “I didn’t realize you were married.”
“I am.”
“Congratulations.” The human’s brows rose. “You don’t look thrilled. Love troubles already?”
“No.”
Hearing Cheryl’s sweet voice slid shivering desire between his shoulder blades, where his wings longed to stretch. And his cock, which he normally paid no attention to, forced his mind to it by hardening into rigid readiness.
He’d had to get her off the phone now, force her sweet voice away from his hungry ears, or he’d lose his concentration entirely, fly straight home, and return to the bed that had so recently introduced him to a whole new world of pleasure. Satisfaction. Wholeness.
Which could so easily be ripped away.
Fear panged in his chest.
Mal could not stop this meeting. He could not fly home to be with Cheryl, and he could not think of their future together. Not now. He didn’t have time. They had a product to launch. His siblings needed him.
Yes. His siblings needed him. This company needed him. He wasn’t thinking coherently if he wanted to go home now. He had to become number one. Cheryl would never throw away a number one company.
She would wait. Just like he would wait. It was fine. He was busy. And fine.
“Who’s the lucky lady?” Darcy asked.
A playful human, Darcy was unwilling to give up a new object of fun. If it weren’t for his value, Mal would have banned him long before the male had a chance to grow on him and become like one of their siblings.
“Cheryl,” Jasper answered for Mal, preparing to return to his office.
Darcy stopped smiling. “You married Cheryl? When?”
“Yesterday.”
“Seriously?”
Mal’s anger built. “What is your objection?”
“No.” Darcy leaned back in his seat and frowned at his fingers. “It’s sudden. I didn’t realize you were a couple.”
“They weren’t until yesterday,” Jasper said. “Mal must secure a human wife within two weeks or return to Draconis and marry one of our own kind.”
“Rough.” Darcy looked down the table at the seat Amber had been occupying until a few minutes earlier when one of his human jokes had gone too far.
She took extra care with her fiery temper when Darcy was the villain stoking it. Her ruffled, golden, orange-brown scales had caused her to flounce from the room rather than erupt into a volcano of rage.
“Just you, Mal? The rest of your siblings are off the hook?”
“For now.”
Darcy’s frown returned. “So you asked Cheryl to marry you and she said yes?”
“Yes.”
“How accommodating.” He took a deep breath and leaned forward. “Well, back to the meeting—”
“No.” Anger percolated under Mal’s skin. It was good that he had been born a male or else Darcy’s strange questions would cause him to flame everything in sight. “What do you mean?”
His mouth made a thoughtful
arc, and he leaned back in the leather office seat again. “I mean, it’s awful nice of her to marry you on the spot.”
“That’s not normal for your species?”
He shook his head. “Some marry to get a green card. Resident visa,” he clarified. “Those marriages never last.”
Mal did not like this version. Had Cheryl only married him to be nice? Yes, it was nice. However, he did not want her to remain with him out of charity. His possessive urge flared like a sharp pin between his shoulder blades, and he suddenly needed to return home again. He wanted her as his passionate, loving, lust-filled wife. Not as a means to a green-colored card.
“I thought humans looked each other in the eye and knew they were ‘the one,’” Mal said.
Darcy looked up. “Is she the one?”
The conference room dropped silent. His question stretched.
It made Mal want to thrash free of his clothes. His skin twitched. He wanted to launch into the air, to pump his wings, to fly furiously for the sun, to shatter ice and bellow in fury.
But he suppressed those urges. Like his urge to sleep, like his urge to stretch his wings in his dragon form, like his urge to fly to Cheryl and wrap around her so tight she could never leave him behind, they were desires he didn’t have time for. The ache in his jaw from suppressing them, that he could endure.
“Dragons do not have ‘the one,’” Mal snarled. “We join according to our female’s wishes. They select the most powerful male to seed their offspring.”
Darcy raised his palms in surrender. “Don’t tell Cheryl that. You’ll make her cry.”
His rage escalated another notch. “I will not make her cry. I will never make her cry. She is very happy. I have provisioned her with an excellent lair. Any woman would be happy with the lair I have provided.”
“You know, women have specific tastes,” Darcy drawled. “They’re not one-size-fits-all.”
His brothers tensed at the human male’s continued needling.
Mal’s anger snapped. “You do not know this! I have fulfilled every desire she will ever have!”
“Good. Glad that’s settled.” Darcy planted his palms on the table, deflecting the argument in his easy way, and diverting the tensions from Mal’s wife to the company. “So. The Carnelians stole the idea for comfy silk pajamas. I came up with a new idea. How do you feel about lingerie?”
