Escape From The Green

by Gadziala, Jessica

  At some point, I was ushered, as promised, into a bedroom that had once belonged to Nesta and Rayna, given warm water, told to help myself, and left alone.

  There were remnants of adolescence all around - old toys stuffed in corners beside dried flower crowns, clothes they had likely grown out of, little drawings on the wall, and even a little heart carved into the wall by one of the beds.

  Nesta loves Gray.

  I wondered a bit fleetingly if that was her husband or mate or whatever it was called, or just some silly girlish crush.

  Finding fresh clothing, I stripped out of my old, dirty ones, washing with the water scented with lavender sprigs brought to life again with the moisture.

  I maybe lavished in it a bit, thankful for clean after sweating and laying on dirty floors.

  I changed into clothes that smelled of cedar, a familiar scent, all my clothes having the oil clinging to the fabrics each season when they were brought out of storage.

  Then, a bit uncomfortable intruding on his long overdue homecoming, I stayed there, sitting down on Rayna's old bed, then lying down, pulling the covers up.

  And, without realizing it, falling to sleep.

  I woke up to something touching my cheek.

  "Sh, sorry, honey. Didn't mean to wake you," Drake's quiet voice called. I looked up, finding him similarly cleaned and changed, his eyes a bit swollen with tiredness. "I hadn't seen you for a while. Just wanted to make sure you were okay."

  Scooting back a bit, my hand patted on the mattress, inviting him down.

  He sank in, making the somewhat thin mattress - likely stuffed with leaves, cotton, and hay, bend inward, forcing my body to slip against his. I didn't bother moving away.

  "I didn't want to infringe," I told him, shrugging it off.

  "You weren't infringing. Honestly, it was nice to see a face that wasn't looking at me like some ghost come back to life."

  "They love you so much," I told him, feeling a bit of a selfish sinking in my belly at realizing it wasn't something I had ever known, could ever know.

  "They do," he agreed, giving me a slightly sad smile, like he was thinking the same thing I had been.

  "Your mother is, ah... she's a mom, y'know?" I asked, rolling my eyes at my crummy conversational skills. "I've never really known anything like that. She's so warm."

  "Yeah, she is. She thinks you're the greatest thing since the veil," he told me, sincerity in his words. "She wanted me to tell you that you are welcome here as long as you need a place to stay," he added, reaching down to close his hand around my wrist. "I plan to make you your own place. Soon. So you can start your life here. But until then, I figure we can stay here."

  We.

  I mean, he didn't mean it like that, but my heart couldn't help but skitter around a bit at the idea that he might. That maybe someday he could.

  Maybe it was too soon for thoughts like that. Maybe it was silly and girlish of me.

  But I hadn't been able to stop those wandering thoughts for the past few days. Well, let's be honest here. Months. Because he had been a very active star in my daydreams even when he wasn't around, even when no hope of him coming back existed.

  "It's nice here," I told him, meaning it. "I like your family."

  His smile went warm at that, making his eyes look even more tired. "Are you comfortable? Warm enough?"

  There was no fire in this room, likely a choice his parents had made to keep them as children safe, but the warmth from the hearth in the main room managed to keep the worst of the chill out.

  I don't know what possessed me, where the confidence, the daring came from, but my body scooted back against the wall, making room in the small bed, hand moving to lift the blankets I was very comfortably nestled under. "I could be warmer," I invited, trying not to cringe at the somewhat wobbly sound of my own voice, the insecurity, the fear of rejection clear as glass to my ears.

  Drake said nothing, but slowly lowered himself down, his huge form swallowing up most of the bed, making me crush even further against the wall.

  "Come on," he said, arm sliding under me, pulling me closer. "Get comfortable," he added, curling me onto his chest, pulling the blankets back up over my body, cocooning me in his warmth. There was a long pause before his hand moved up, sifting through my half-dry hair. "I'll show you around tomorrow. I'm pretty sure half the clan visited today, so most of the interest in me might blow over, so we can be left alone."

  "That sounds nice. I mean... the looking around thing. I'm glad your friends want to reunite with you. I don't mind if they interrupt the tour." I paused, letting myself snuggle in a bit. "Than..."

  "Don't thank me, Amy," he demanded softly.

  "Okay," I agreed. "Then... I'm glad you brought me here."

  His arms went around me, tightening. "I'm glad I brought you here too."

  -

  "There's a waterfall back there about a mile," Drake told me the next early afternoon, holding an arm out toward a hillside covered in pine trees. "I'd show it to you, but it would be freezing. It would be better in the spring."

  "I don't know if I want to walk another mile anyway," I admitted, snorting a bit. "I think I have done enough walking these past couple months to last a lifetime." At his drawn-down brows, I shrugged. "You have no idea how much walking you have to do in the city if you want to avoid the subway."

  "We should probably be heading back anyway. My mother will likely be making lunch soon. Soup. She makes great soup."

  "Think it could wait a while?" Drake's friend - and one of the elders - Kieran said, stepping out of the line of trees, having clearly been eavesdropping.

  "I thought the elders were going to give me a few days," Drake insisted, voice getting a little sharp.

  "Not the elders, just me."

  Drake's gaze went to me, torn.

  "I know my way back," I assured him. And after having listened to him tell me all about their rules, laws, their beliefs, their complete and utter lack of violence or crime of any sort, I was pretty sure I couldn't be safer in this realm he called home.

  It had felt scary the day before when he'd left me, when people looked at me with fear and mistrust, when I knew nothing of how things worked.

  Besides, if this was going to become my home, I had to get comfortable navigating it on my own.

  If I had managed to accomplish that in the city where crime was rampant, and the rules and laws that were in place were rarely abided, I was sure I could do so here.

  "I can walk you back and then..."

  "Don't be silly," I assured him. "Double the work for no reason. I'll be fine. Nice seeing you again, Kieran," I told him, giving him a small smile before shuffling off before I - or Drake - could think better of it.

  There were no hordes bent on hurting me on the way home, just the occasional bird or even Draca child, jumping behind trees to hide from me, giggling so blatantly it was charming.

  "Oh, there you are, angel," Aya declared, giving me that smile that awakened the long-buried, needy little girl within me. "Did you have fun looking around?"

  "I did. Drake will be back in a few minutes. He had some friends to catch up with. I thought I might come back and help out around here. I can't claim to know how to cook, but I would like to be of help."

  "Your mother never taught you to cook?" she asked, brows creasing. "How did she expect you to feed your mate and offspring?"

  "I imagine she pictured me in an estate with servants," I admitted, feeling my cheeks heat at that admission, knowing how odd it would sound in this world where everyone worked, everyone pitched in, no one was made subservient to anyone else. Not even for money.

  "Well, she simply didn't know what she was missing out on, I wager. There is nothing like being able to fill the bellies of your loved ones, knowing they were happier for your toiling. Come, let me show you. I hear Drake has plans to build you a home of your own. As much as I would be sorry to lose you, I am happy to teach you how to cook for yourself. And maybe others some day
. A mate and offspring. That is the curse of a mother, you know," she went on, the kind of person who could carry on a conversation all by herself, something I found immeasurably charming. "You spend so much time teaching your girls to cook, sew, clean, keep house. Only to lose them to their own. But," she added, tone cheering right up, "then they come back with their offspring, and you get to start the process all over again. Here, hand me the carrots, angel," she demanded, waving to the jars on a shelf lining a wall to the side of the hearth.

  There were dozens of them, everything from herbs and dried flowers to fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, and grains.

  Finding the carrots, I brought them over to where she was filling a pot over the hearth.

  "We will teach you all this too, of course. Gardening, drying your own stores for the winter. You will be running your own household in no time. So tell me," she went on as casually as could be. "Are you and Drake sweet on each other?"

  And that was the afternoon I was exposed to three different kinds of mothers.

  The doting one who showed her love through caring for you.

  The practical one who knew she needed to hand you the tools that life would require of you away from home.

  And, well, the meddling mother who wanted to know when she was going to get more grandbabies.

  Luckily, I was saved from answering when one of Nesta's children came barging in demanding a snack.

  "Is everything okay with Kieran?" I asked when Drake and I were momentarily alone later that evening after dinner, after he had spent some time with old friends while I helped Aya clean and launder, two very new tasks to me. Sure, I had needed to clean my clothing in the human realm, but there were machines that did all the work. There were no machines in The Green. And certainly none here on Draca land. Just a bunch of women gathered around, scrubbing homemade soaps into fabrics while talking about what they would plant for spring, who was expecting, what young couples had found sweethearts.

  Even then, taking a walk through the mostly-empty path leading away from town, my fingertips felt achy and overly sensitive from all the scrubbing.

  "Yeah. Kieran is just... angry with the other elders now that he knows he was right in trying to find me, wanting to send people out to look for me. He hasn't had anyone to talk to about it for all this time. He needed to vent, purge it out so it stopped eating at him."

  "Did you two... go out and fly together?" I asked, feeling a twinge of jealousy at the idea. Not because I wanted to fly with him per se, seeing as that wouldn't be possible, but because I held this deep-rooted desire to see him Change, to see him freed of that last shackle he still wore.

  Almost seeming to read through me, his gaze went down, a small smile on his lips. "No. We just took a walk. Talked. Speaking of, how did your afternoon go? I heard my mother put you to work."

  "I asked to help. Then she decided it was her mission to teach me how to tend house for myself. And for a mate and offspring one day."

  A low groan escaped Drake. "She didn't use that term, did she?"

  I smiled at that, at his embarrassment, finding it sweet. "She did. She also wanted to know," I started, having to take a deep breath to get the words out, and even then they were barely more than a whisper, "if we were sweet on each other."

  There.

  It was out there.

  For better, worse, and my eternal humiliation.

  At the words, Drake stopped, turning, waiting for me to do the same.

  "She asked that?"

  "She did," I told him, nodding, not sure how to read the odd look in his eyes.

  "What did you say?"

  "Your niece interrupted."

  "What would you have said?" he pressed.

  I was suddenly very aware of our aloneness, of the three-quarter moon above us, of the blanket of stars, of the way all the light was reflecting off the white snow, making everything dreamy and idyllic.

  And, above all else, the nearness of us, the way the warmth always emanated off his body, calling me closer, the way his eyes had a sweet edge, the way everything within me was begging me to tell him the truth, to be open, vulnerable, honest. Even if it was scary, new, uncomfortable.

  My eyes skittered around, not quite able to keep contact. "I would have said that maybe someday we could be sweet on each other."

  "Maybe?" he asked, head ducking, trying to make eye contact, but my gaze was stubbornly downward. "Someday?" he added, fingers snagging my chin waiting for my eyes to find his. "Is there something wrong with today?" he asked, lips curving up ever-so-slightly, eyes intense. "To be sweet on me," he clarified, thumb moving out to trace up my cheek.

  My head tilted slightly, begging for more of the sensation.

  My heart was fluttering around in my chest, seemingly free of the binds that would normally tie it.

  "I'm already sweet on you," I admitted in a whisper.

  "Yeah?" he asked, voice tentative, afraid, maybe, to be hopeful.

  My head nodded. "I know it was only days for you, but it was months for me. And there wasn't a single night that I didn't dream about you, wake up in the morning disappointed that it wasn't real."

  Whatever control he normally had on himself evaporated in an instant, his hand sliding from my cheek to cup my jaw, the other hand raising to do the same on the other side, his strange eyes searching mine, the red somehow brighter than ever before.

  And then his lips sealed over mine.

  Soft, sweet, tentative at first.

  Until my body melted into his.

  Until my lips parted on a whimper.

  My body slammed back into a tree, knocking my air out of me for a moment as his lips grew harder, hungrier.

  Drake's hands left my face, sliding down my arms, my ribs, my hips, then slipping backward, gliding down, sinking in.

  His fingers bruised into the flesh of my ass as he pulled, gently urged me up to my tiptoes, then off my feet completely, leaving me dangling for a short moment before he yanked me up, coaxing my legs to fold around his back, opening me up to him, letting his hardness press against the aching need at my core.

  His teeth snagged my lower lip, pulling to the point of pain as he pressed me harder against the tree, as his hands used my ass to drag my body up, then grind it back down against him, making a shudder course through me at the perfect friction.

  The moan escaped me, loud, unmuffled, echoing out into the silence around us.

  A low, rumbling growl escaped Drake even as his lips ripped from mine, lowering, seeking the sensitive skin down the side of my neck, kissing, licking, sucking, nipping over the flesh as the need became a wildfire in my system, burning, blistering, blinding me to anything else as my legs gave me leverage, allowing me to lift up, then grind back down, his cock pressing right where I needed it most, sparking a flame through my body, a hint of something to come, something overwhelming, an explosion of sorts.

  His lips had just sealed over mine again, his tongue dancing with mine until my body lifted and ground down again, needing more, when I heard it.

  A cough.

  A clearing of a throat.

  An announcement of our not-alone-ness.

  I jerked back so fast that I forgot where I was, head slamming back into the tree, sending stars across my eyes for a second even as Drake's upper body pulled away as well, half-turning toward the sound of the intrusion.

  "Rooms. Rooms are good for that sort of thing," a male voice I decided immediately I didn't recognize - because it was low, deep, growling, and utterly rememberable - said. "Unless, of course, you want to put on a show," the voice went on as my vision finally cleared, allowing me to sneak a look at the man from under my lashes - too embarrassed for full eye-contact. "In which case, carry on," he invited, crossing his arms, leaning back against a tree, and shooting us a wicked look.

  He was good looking.

  I had learned that my ideas of gorgeous dragon-men had been girlish and silly - somehow expecting them all to be beautifully crafted specimens of perfectio
n. Like Drake.

  Sure, most of the Draca were all fit, broader than most fae, stronger, corded with muscles - even many of the women, their arms looking like they could endlessly chop wood without so much as getting a muscle spasm. But that didn't mean they were all attractive.

  Like any society, there were a few specimens of near-perfection. Again, Drake. Or, at least, I thought so. Then there were also a few truly unfortunate looking people. Then there was a whole lot of in-between people. Not unattractive, but not beautiful.

  But this man fell into the privileged few category.

  He was stunning to take in with his wide, strong build, his firm jaw, his severe brow ridge, his masculine, but not overstated nose, his full, but not feminine mouth, his dark, inky hair kept long - like, it seemed, most did - but pulled back. I couldn't make out his eyes from a distance, something that had somehow managed to send off a twinge of disappointment even through my embarrassment. I had come to have a sort of fascination with their eyes, the way each seemed to have brown with unique starbursts within. Except for Kieran who had blue with silver, a combination that was almost unsettlingly lovely to see.

  So I wanted to see his eyes, even as I really wanted him to stop looking at me, at us in that amused, but penetrative way he was currently doing.

  "Tsar," Drake grumbled. "Keep moving," he demanded, voice a mix of needy still, amused, and resigned.

  "Home? Now why would I go home, when the view is so much more... intriguing here?"

  "What's the matter? Ran through all the women in the clan? No one left to warm your own bed, so you need to wonder who might be in mine?"

  "Might?" Tsar asked, head cocking to the side as his eyes roamed over me, not invasive, but somehow making me feel oddly naked at the same time. "Friend, if you only think she might be in your bed later, then you clearly have lost the ability to seal the deal. Because from what I can tell, she is primed and..."

  My feet landed on the ground with an impact that ricocheted up my legs, making my knees ache even as I leaned back against the tree, confused with the sudden drop, only to find Drake had already turned and stormed across the clearing, getting close to the man who seemed no more intimidated by the looming presence of Drake in front of him than he had been with him clear across the path from him.