But if one of them was calling him…. He sorted through the mirrors quickly, hoping he could help in time, and then found the one that was activated, softly glowing and relaxed.
It was Guinevere, from one of the generational groups. Everyone in her lineage had been named after someone both magical and important. And there had been things that he had done to her—and she to him, in the not so distant past—that had made his blood rush low.
The mirror tapped again. He set it into the notches carved into his desk for just such a purpose, and he tapped it back, letting it open, revealing her in its glass. She was only in a shift, busy letting her hair down out of its many ceremonial braids. He used to think he could sit in bed and watch her do that for hours, but now he found himself strangely unmoved.
“Damian,” she said, smiling at him as she took him in. “You look rough. Long hunt?” she asked, running her fingers through her long, blonde hair.
“No. Just a long night.”
“Aren’t they all?” she said, turning toward him and leaning forward so that he could see her cleavage as her hair swooped toward it like molten sunlight. “Long and lonely?” she guessed with hope.
“Long and exhausting,” he said. His eyes spotted the large succubus stinger Grimalkin had added to his desk’s collection after Andi had removed it from him last week, though it seemed like a lifetime ago. How funny that the physical pain of it when it’d happened was nothing compared to the pain of his memory of Andi addled with pheromones and wanting him now. “Why did you summon me, Gwen?”
She folded even closer to the mirror with a pout. “I miss you.”
Damian sighed. He knew Guinevere had a mirror big enough on her side for him to walk through, and it would be so easy to do just that—fuck her senseless, then return—same as he had on other nights prior.
But the sunlight of Gwen’s hair wasn’t the sunlight that he needed. What he needed was to look into the face of a woman who lit up when he was near—even when she was still angry with him. A woman whose goodness was so bright that sometimes it felt like his heart was burning when he looked at her.
“Sorry, Gwen; I’m busy,” he said.
Her chin rose haughtily. “Your loss,” she said with a shrug, then tapped her mirror off.
Damian put his head in his hands and composed himself for a long time before his phone buzzed in his pocket.
* * *
Andi sat on the edge of her bed for what felt like hours, illuminated by her nightlight, still wearing her silk dress. It was four a.m. now, and while she was exhausted, there was nothing she could do to calm her mind. Her brother was alive—but changed. Her uncle had spent an apparent lifetime lying to her. And David had truly been a monster, but he’d died in front of her. It felt like everything she’d thought she’d known in her life—everything that’d once been bedrock—had shifted to the side and left her falling.
Who could she safely talk to? Who could she trust? Who else would even begin to understand? She interrogated everything and everyone she thought she knew and could come up with only one answer.
Damian.
She pulled out her phone and stared at it. How many times in the past week had he been infuriating? Almost too many to count. But whenever she was near him, things felt like they made sense. Despite the fact that they so obviously did-fucking-not, it was just him being there that made it all seem bearable. Survivable. Like all the horrible things that were happening weren’t hers to shoulder solo. Like she was in a terrible storm, and he was there with an umbrella—or maybe dragon wing, she didn’t know—but if he could help her somehow sleep tonight without nightmares…. She swept up her phone to text him: Are you up?
For you, always, he replied after what felt like far too long. For the record, I meant that to be truthful, not pervy, he added.
Andi looked at her phone with a wry smile. How soon can you get here?
In thirty.
She nodded to herself. She knew she’d still be up in thirty minutes. She didn’t want to sleep ever again if it meant her being chased down by that awful thing in her dreams. Is it okay if you just hold me? she typed back.
Of course. But…Andi…I meant thirty seconds.
Andi stood straight up. “What the hell, Damian,” she muttered, texting furiously. Are you in the parking lot????
There was a buzzing sound from inside her bathroom as though someone was getting a text. She twisted on her bed and gasped, as the handle of its door opened.
“I’m calling nine-one-one right now!” she announced, running for her bedroom door.
“No, Andi, don’t,” Damian warned, walking out and pocketing his phone simultaneously.
“What. The. Fuck,” Andi said, looking between him and the bathroom behind him, starting to panic. Her bathroom counter had a clear space where he’d swept her makeup and hair products aside to get through quietly. Her bedroom hadn’t been cleaned since Danny’d disappeared. Damian was used to living in a freaking castle, and here he was walking into her postage stamp-sized bedroom with her clean and dirty clothes all over and a Fate of the Furious poster on the wall.
He waved his hands in a placating fashion. “You saw my bedroom, it’s full of mirrors. You know I’m magical. Mirror transportation is a part of that. Should I have warned you? Yes.”
Andi clutched a hand to her chest, which was still heaving in surprise. “My…my uncle’s house didn’t have a single mirror in it.”
“That makes an unfortunate amount of sense,” Damian said, taking a step toward her.
Andi took a step back and felt her clothes-covered chair behind her knees. “I cannot believe you just whatevered over here!”
Damian detoured for her bed, taking a moment to be bemused by her penguin sheets, before kicking off his shoes and propping himself up in it, his back against the headboard. From that vantage point, he saw the Fast and Furious poster, and a slow smile spread across his face like liquid joy. “Vin Diesel and The Rock, eh?”
“Oh my God,” Andi said, flushing, wishing she could melt straight into the ground. She walked over, lifted the poster off of its hook, and set it down to face the wall, trying to swallow down the urge to frantically clean. “Inviting you over was supposed to make things better, not make me want to die.”
Damian chuckled and held one arm out. “So, let me hold you already.”
She whirled on him and hugged herself. Seeing him there just waiting caused a reaction in her that she couldn’t have explained. It wasn’t like he belonged there physically so much. He made her bed—hell, her entire bedroom—look small. But he belonged here. With her.
In her life.
She bit her lips and took a tentative step forward. “Can you also promise me one thing?”
“Name it,” he said.
“To never, ever, ever lie to me?” She sank down on the bed opposite him, the silk of her dress shifting over her sheet’s cotton.
He outright laughed. “Oh, I thought you were going to ask something hard. Like, ‘Damian, don’t yell.’ Or ‘Damian, don’t have a temper.’”
She reached over and pushed on his legs, rocking him. “I mean it, Damian. Say it.”
“I promise you, Andi. I will never lie to you,” he said and reached for her.
She fell into his arms and let him pull her up beside him on the bed.
She fit beside him like she was meant to be there, snuggled up against him, one of his arms wrapped possessively around her, the other across himself to hold her hip. Her whole body was turned toward him, her head on his shoulder, her arm around him, and one of her knees crooked on his thigh. From here, she could sense the heat radiating off of him, smell the light manly scent of him, and feel the prickles of his five o’clock shadow catch her hair as he fit her underneath his chin.
“I wish you could just tell me everything’s going to be all okay,” she whispered.
“You should’ve asked for that before you made me swear,” he murmured.
“I know.” She folded
up even tighter against him, and his arms followed, pressing her close.
“Just sleep tonight, and I’ll protect you,” he told her, and she gave in, closing her eyes and laying her head against him—clearly able to hear the beating of his heart, slow and steady. She wondered if his heart was dragon or human, but it didn’t matter now.
She lifted her head off of his chest. “You were wrong.”
“Never,” he teased.
Andi shook her head at him, then searched his eyes. “You told me you couldn’t afford to have a heart, but you do have one. I can hear it. And here you are with me.”
“Where else would I be?” He ran his hand up through her hair to cradle the back of her head and fit her to him again.
Andi swallowed, thinking about how suddenly empty her world had become. “Literally anywhere else?” she guessed, biting her lips and unsuccessfully trying not to cry. “Everybody leaves me, Damian. Even you tried to, remember?”
Chapter 20
“Oh, princess, I was a fool,” Damian whispered. He cupped her cheek in his hand and ran a thumb across her eyelids one at a time, knocking the tears trapped in her eyelashes away. He resisted the urge to bring his thumb to his lips to taste them.
He’d had so many fantasies in which he’d made Andi cry for good reasons after he’d given her earthshattering orgasms, but none of them had prepared him for her trembling presence beside him right now. He felt frightened of doing or saying the wrong thing—like she was a doe that he might startle—and he also felt intensely humbled. Because whatever was happening to her right now—to his princess, to his mate—wasn’t something she ever showed the world outside. He pressed her tighter to him and stroked her side and back as chastely as he could, using all of his willpower to force his body to not respond to her proximity. He couldn’t help breathing her scent in, though, with her so close, nuzzling his face protectively into her hair as she sobbed against him—her apples, caramel, and the sea, so much the sea now with her crying—and maybe that’s why the saltwater was always there when he inhaled her.
Maybe even before tonight, her tears had always been under the surface, waiting for him.
“Oh, God,” she whispered against him, pushing back. He let her go, and she didn’t move that far, only enough to pull her hands up to hide her face as she fought to control her breathing. “I’m sorry. I know this is too much, I don’t mean to be a mess.”
“Too much? How is such a thing even possible?” Damian asked her, tilting his head down. His arms were still loosely wrapped around her, and this time, he wouldn’t let her go until she asked him.
She snorted softly. “Welcome to being a girl, then, because that’s what it’s all about. Being told your whole life, you’re too much, until you find out one day that no matter what you did or how hard you tried, you were actually never enough.” She savagely wiped away tears with the back of one hand and twisted farther away, while still staying in his looped arms. “It’s just sometimes I feel like I’m broken,” she whispered, more to herself than him.
That his princess could ever think that about herself—how? It should’ve been impossible, yet he heard her voice tremble with remembered pain. But he knew that telling her she wasn’t wouldn’t help. It was the kind of wound that had to heal from within, or not at all. He opened the circle of his arms to stroke her hair back so he could see her.
“How can I help?” he asked her quietly.
Damian knew she’d heard him, but she didn’t answer for quite some time. “I don’t think you can.” She shook her head. He could almost watch her pulling herself together, shoving down her doubts and fears, pulling all of her wits and armor back on. It was like when he’d seen her at the bus stop, steeling herself for her ride with the interloper, becoming Andi instead of just being herself. “Besides,” she said lightly, teasing, fully back to the woman the world got to see, not the one who’d just been crumpled by his side. “Maybe you don’t even like me. Maybe you just really like this dress.”
It would’ve been so easy to just play along with her joke and tease her back, and things would probably end the same, but he needed to show her she was wrong, and once the words formed in his mind, he had to say them.
“Then take it off, princess,” he commanded, his voice low.
She looked over her shoulder at him, her full lips in a pout that parted slightly as her scent changed—less sea and more caramel—and her cheeks flushed. And then slowly, so slowly it almost killed him, her hands moved for the straps, pushing them off of her shoulders, shimmying so that the silk fell to pool around her hips as she freed her arms, her dark hair cascading down her back. His hands reached for her of their own accord, starting at her waist and pushed up her back, parting her hair as he reached her shoulders. He remembered his time with her in his dreams on the parapet, the way his dragon wrote on her and thought he knew something of how that felt. He wanted to write his name on her, too—with his fingers, with her tears, with his cum.
She lightly sighed and rocked back toward him, falling back into his embrace the way she’d been twisted earlier, her back to his chest, only with so much less between them. His arms moved around to the front of her now, one hand coming up to palm the fullness of an unsupported breast, the other sinking down to the slight swell of her belly to stroke the edge beneath it where the silk began. He wrapped himself around her, his mouth finding her neck, kissing her as he breathed her in deep, and she brought a hand up to run it through his hair as his hips rocked against her of their own accord, his heavy cock aching.
“Damian,” she protested, even as she arched back into him and opened her legs up for his hand.
“Shhhh, princess,” he soothed her, and kissed the spot she’d shown him a lifetime ago, right below her ear. She shivered in his arms, and he growled possessively.
“No…Damian,” she said, even though her voice was thick with shared desire. He stilled in an instant, leaving his hands quiet where they were, pulling his mouth up from her neck. “I can’t do this,” she whispered, so quiet it was hard for even him to hear her.
All the times his dragon had ever cursed him, running forward inside his soul only for him to yank it back and lash it down with chains—he felt that same wrestle with his body now. He fought his baser instincts for control and won, barely.
“I can’t do this if you’re going to leave me again. I just can’t,” she went on. “And, I know that’s crazy to say because we still hardly know each other, right? And so, it’s such a bad idea for me to ask you for promises, and it’s an even worse idea for you to give me them because, God, if you break them, it will hurt so much more.” She turned fully toward him, breaking away from his hands but still staying in his arms. “I can’t take that again, Damian. I just can’t. I’m not that strong.”
Her chest heaved with the force of her confession, her cheeks flushed red, and her gaze cast down as if she were afraid to meet his eyes. He caught her chin and made her look at him.
“But you are strong, Andi. In ways that you can’t even see.” His mate had the room for the whole world inside her heart, and she longed to always do the right thing, no matter what it cost her. How rare was that in this day and age? How dangerous was her drive to be good? “But that doesn’t matter now,” he whispered, his voice husky.
She frowned at him, her brow furrowing over her dark eyes. “Why?”
“Because I’m not leaving you until you push me away.”
He watched his words hit her like hard rain, making her flinch—not because she was scared of him, he knew, but because she was frightened of his kindness. She bit her lips, and her gaze went distant as her breathing sped up, and he knew she was thinking about what he’d said, trying to decide if he truly meant it, letting his words echo in her mind. He hoped that there they would multiply, filling in all the gouges left on her by other people’s cruel abandonments, that the first sharp pain would dull into a warm and roaring downpour that left her satisfied.
I’m not leaving yo
u, I’m not, I’m not, he thought in time with his own heartbeat, willing for her to hear it again.
If he hadn’t still had her chin in his hand, he never would’ve known. But he felt it then, a slight nod, as her mind returned from wherever it had been, judging him against her past, back to being fully present. And then she bowed her head to kiss the hand that held her.
A rumble erupted out of him, the sound of everything that he’d been keeping caged. He picked her up and pulled her over him, her kicking out of the bottom of her dress on the way, before he splayed her across his still clothed lap, her in nothing but her underwear. He took one of her thighs in each hand and rubbed her against his cock beneath the denim of his jeans, arching up against her.
“Yes,” she whispered, “please,” she begged and reached down between her legs to work the buckle of his belt.
He brought a hand up and slid it into the thick mane of her hair, tightening his grip, and while he desperately wanted to hear her beg again, he needed to be inside her more. To finish sealing their pact. He wouldn’t know she was his all the way until he was hilt deep inside her. Until he heard her moaning his name. Until he felt her quaking below him as she came. He rose up in one smooth motion, kissed her, and then took them both down again, rolling himself on top, pulling his shirt off and shoving his jeans down his hips, tugging her underwear to the side.
Dragon Destined: Billionaire Dragon Shifter Romance (Prince of the Other Worlds) Page 22
