by Riley Storm
There was a very distinct snort, and then Cheryl turned back around. “Go on.”
Wincing at the way her tone sliced through him, Victor forged ahead.
“I’m not mad at you,” he repeated, driving that point home. “But I am confused. There’s a lot going on up in here,” he said, bringing his left wing around to tap the side of his head. “I…” he paused.
“You’re doing great,” Cheryl said gently, closing the distance between them.
He watched her eyes for signs of laughter or sarcasm, but only found them open and encouraging.
“The truth is, while I was going to downsize the project no matter what, when I first met you, I immediately decided to take it even farther.”
“Back when you called me a thief?” she asked.
He nodded.
“I never understood that. We haven’t met before…have we?” she asked, looking for confirmation.
“No,” he said quietly. “I had never met you before that day.”
“So why?” she asked, some of the pain at the way he’d treated her bubbling through, coloring her words.
Victor looked down. He’d hurt her, worse than he could have known. She’d hidden it well, but now, in a moment of openness between them, he was seeing the depths of what his actions had wrought, and he wondered if there was any fixing that, or if it was too late.
“I…” he paused, thinking. “I don’t really know where to start. Um.” He took a deep breath, flanks expanding and shrinking.
Damn it feels good to be in this form. It’s been too long.
The dragon was as much a part of Victor as his human side was, and he’d neglected it, keeping it locked away.
A lot of wrongs I need to start righting.
The thought raced through him like a lightning bolt, and suddenly, Victor knew what he had to say. Knew he had to say it.
“First off, I’m sorry,” he said heavily. “This…this is all my fault.”
There, you win, Aaric. You were right.
Victor found himself actually smiling. “You know, I’m not sure the last time I said those words. About anything. But this is my fault. All of it. Even going back a hundred years, it’s all on me. Not you, you didn’t deserve any of the hatred I threw at you. Not an ounce of it.”
“Hold up,” Cheryl started, but he cut her off with an excited shaking of his head.
“No, no I need to say this! I need to get it out there,” he pushed on, ignoring her strange look. “It all started when I was younger. I met this woman. She was strikingly beautiful.” He paused, smile growing wider. “In fact, she looked like you. Just like you. If there was a picture around, people would believe that you were the same person, that’s how identical the resemblance is.”
He shook his head, remembering those young carefree days of the relationship he’d forged with Elizabeth.
“She didn’t know my secret,” he said. “Or so I thought. As it turns out though, I didn’t know hers. We got into a relationship. We started to trust one another. Or at least,” he said, some of his enthusiasm fading. “I trusted her. I revealed to her my true nature. The same as I did to you, though much different circumstances.”
Cheryl nodded. “She didn’t take it too well, did she? Ran away? Called you a monster?”
“What?” Victor frowned. “No, not at all. Not even close. No, she was amazed by it. Loved it, really. Things were great. I thought she was the one. My mate, the only woman I would ever be with for the rest of my life. We talked about how we would spend the centuries, her by my side.” He smiled at Cheryl. “Being mated to a dragon has its perks for a human, you know.”
“What?” Cheryl asked, her face paling slightly as she stared up at him.
Victor was so caught up in finally sharing what he’d harbored inside for so long, however, he failed to notice the color into which her skin was turning.
“I grew to trust her, to the point that I took her to see my treasure.” He laughed. “I know, so stereotypical, right? Dragon has a horde of gold. But I did, and I was proud of it. I’d spent over a century collecting it. It was to be for us, to spend on whatever we wanted. My mate would never want for anything.”
He looked away. “But it wasn’t to be.”
“A century?” Cheryl asked in a strangled voice.
“Yes, yes. Try to keep up,” he said, trying to ignore the distraction. “Well, I took her to see my treasure. Showed it off. Told her it would be for us. Professed my love to her. Everything I thought I was supposed to do. And do you know what she did?”
“Uhhh.”
“Exactly!” Victor cried. “She hesitated. I was devastated. I went outside to clear my head and wait for her, so we could talk it out. Figure out what the problem was.”
He waited for Cheryl to say something, but she was just looking up at him, waiting quietly.
“Except she never came out of the cave,” he explained. “I eventually went back in, but she was gone. And so was my treasure. All of it. She took it,” he said, the words filling with anger. “All of it. Took it and left me with nothing but shame and a broken heart.”
“But how?”
“Well, dragons aren’t the only creatures the human world doesn’t know about,” he explained. “Turns out your great-grandmother was a witch. Mage. A magic user.”
“Magic?” Cheryl looked unsteady. “Wait. My great-grandmother? You knew her? I—”
“Cheryl!” Victor shouted as her eyes rolled up into the back of her head.
22
There was just too much world-shattering information to absorb. Cheryl’s brain tried to take it in, to hold on to reality, but it just wasn’t possible when she was talking to a massive dragon who only minutes before had been a human. She couldn’t process it, and her brain was shutting down.
“Victor,” she said weakly, the world starting to spin.
Her legs started to fail, growing shaking and unsteady even as her eyes went back into their sockets, vision dimming. She was going to pass out.
Gravity shifted and suddenly she was falling with no way to stop it, and no way to catch herself. There was a loud noise, a rush of wind, and then she was no longer moving.
“Cheryl, it’s okay. Cheryl it’s alright.”
A voice was frantically saying her name, she knew that much, but her overwhelmed brain couldn’t process who, or where she was. Or what had happened. It was too much.
The world went dark.
Pain lanced through her brain and she sat upright with a gasp, unconsciously reaching around to rub at the back of her arm. “Ow! What the hell was that?” she yelped.
“I pinched you,” that same voice said.
Cheryl wavered, and something sturdy and unyielding wrapped around her back, holding her tightly in position. It took her a second to realize it was an arm. A rather large arm.
Another one was draped under her knees, holding onto her even though she was on the ground.
“Wha—?”
It was all she was able to get out.
“Just breathe,” the same voice said from next to her head, speaking quietly, soothing her frazzled nerves. “You got overwhelmed and nearly fainted. But you’re fine. I’ve got you.”
“Saved by the dragon,” she joked, giggling at the ridiculousness of it.
“It was my fault in the first place, so it only seemed appropriate,” Victor chuckled.
Cheryl leaned her head back, focusing on his face. He was close. Really close. She hesitated at the look on his face.
“Are you going to kiss me again?” she asked, her brain confusing thoughts with words, and speaking when she didn’t mean to.
“Um. Only if you want me to,” Victor said. “I was just trying to make sure that you were okay, that’s all.”
She thought about it. “Only if it’s a quick one,” she decided.
Wait, what?
“If you say so,” Victor rumbled, and leaned in to kiss her for the second time that day.
It was as go
od as she remembered. Better, even, because now his arms were wrapped around her, making Cheryl feel safe, but also small. It was comforting, in a way that Victor had never seemed before. From enemies to…to what? What were they now?
Does it matter? He feels so good…
She shifted to get a better angle, reaching up to stroke his face, then his chin and running her hand over the hard, exposed muscles of his shoulders and arm. Her fingernails clawed at his chest as she moaned softly into his mouth, loving the way she could trace the outline of every muscle without clothes to hide them.
Cheryl frowned, her mouth no longer moving with Victor’s as something about that thought prodded at her brain, a second before something hard pressed against her outer thigh.
“Uhh, Victor?” she said, opening her eyes, looking at him for the first time with a brain that was functioning.
“Yeah?”
“I know that your suit got ripped up earlier, but I distinctly remember you were still wearing it when we got here.”
“Ah.” Victor shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah.”
“Why is it that you don’t have a shirt on?” she asked, her eyes naturally drawn lower. “Or pants? Or…um, any clothing at all?”
“Ahhhh.”
She leaned over a little to get a better glimpse between them to confirm something else. “And you’re…”
“Yes, yes, I know, I’m sorry. I can’t control that. It knows I think you’re unbelievably gorgeous, and then we were kissing, and your hands were on me and I…”
“I’m flattered,” she said, “but I don’t know if—”
“I know. You’re not interested, it was just a kiss. It’s fine. Here, I’ll take you inside. You probably need to relax, to think things over.”
He stood up abruptly, cradling her to his chest and headed for the house.
Cheryl started to protest, to say that wasn’t what she had intended to say, but the easy way he lifted her from the ground slowed the protest. That and the warm press of his chest against her cheek as she leaned into him combined to still any words.
Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to enjoy this for a moment.
But only for a moment…
23
It was impossible to ignore the way she felt pressed against him.
Victor tried, however, because he wasn’t sure he was ready to go down that path again. After Elizabeth, there had been a couple of others. Attempts by his hurting brain to try and get back out there, to put the past behind him.
It hadn’t worked.
Now he had something else, something that was all of a sudden startling to feel a little more real, a little more tangible than those, and while it was exciting and intriguing, it was also terrifying. Could he put himself back out there?
That’s assuming Cheryl is even thinking that. She probably just thinks it was a kiss and nothing more. After all, she didn’t want anything more, like she said.
His brain had already forgotten that she’d said she didn’t ‘know’, not ‘no’, too busy was it circling, examining everything, trying to dig deep and figure it out.
The walk across the lawns out back of Drakon Keep seemed to stretch on forever, and yet be over in an instant. Victor couldn’t decide on whether he wanted the moment to last, or if it would be better to just get it over with.
“Do me a favor and grab the door handle?” he asked as they approached a small door set into the stone wall.
“You can put me down, you know,” she teased. “I must be getting heavy by now.”
Victor rolled his eyes. “You weigh no more than a feather to me. Besides, you’ve had a rough afternoon. I don’t mind carrying you.”
Trying to sound calm, internally his heart was racing. Right now, he was carrying her against him, holding her aloft with ease, and ensuring that she wasn’t bothered by any other part of his anatomy. A part that, if she started walking, would surely cause a distraction.
If I could just focus on something other than her touch, her presence in my arms, maybe I could get it to go down, he growled at himself as the door opened and they slipped inside.
“Is this all part of the dragon aspect then?” she wanted to know. “You’re super strong?”
“Stronger. Faster. Heal quicker. All of that, yes,” he said, wondering why he’d never hesitated to tell her the secrets of his kind.
“That must be nice,” she said, leaning her head into his shoulder, eyes wandering the ceiling as he walked them down one corridor and then another.
The soft padding of the carpet underfoot meant it was perfect for helping him move quietly through the Keep. There weren’t many occupants, but the last thing he wanted to do right now was explain to Aaric or Francis what was going on. He didn’t want to subject Cheryl to any further scrutiny. Not after everything she’d endured.
He only breathed a sigh of relief when they were standing in front of his quarters, having evaded everyone. Again, with Cheryl’s help, he got the door open and took her inside, laying her down onto his bed. He immediately crouched next to it, hiding his nudity from her eyes.
More than once, he caught her gaze slipping, but he kept his stomach pressed to the mattress.
“Just take a little lie down,” he urged. “Let your brain process everything you’ve just seen and learned. It…it’s a lot to take in. You’re well within your rights to feel tired, overwhelmed, and confused.”
“I know I should probably be freaking out,” Cheryl said, staring blankly at the ceiling. “This is one of the mind-altering experiences. World changing. And yet…yet I don’t feel scared, Victor,” she said, rolling onto her side to look at him directly, with an intensity to her eyes that surprised him.
Maybe she’s more adaptable than you thought…
“You don’t have anything to fear from us,” he reassured her. “We’re not going to harm you.”
“Even if I go blabbing to the newspaper?”
He shrugged. “Who’s going to believe you? You have no proof. They’ll just lock you up in an institution and call you insane.”
Frowning, Cheryl looked back up at the ceiling. “I’m not going to tell anyway. I…,” she giggled.
“What’s so funny?” he wanted to know.
“Nothing, I guess. I just was thinking that it was fun to be on the inside of the secret. That it was neat. Like, I know what you really are, and nobody else doesn’t. That’s pretty sweet, don’t you think?”
“I think it is,” he agreed, a chuckle bubbling up in his throat. “Yeah, yeah it’s cool. Though I think I’ll miss the days when I could just go out to the middle of nowhere and soar through the clouds for hours on end without fear of being noticed.”
“I’m sorry,” she said abruptly, face clouding over. “That must be terrible for you.”
He shrugged. “I go at night sometimes. It’s a different experience, but it’s still more freeing than anything else I can do. Maybe one day we’ll be able to live alongside humans, but I don’t expect it.”
“Most of us aren’t that open-minded,” Cheryl admitted, her head tilting again to look at him. “Do you hate me?”
The sudden change of topic again caught him off guard. “What?” he asked, trying to wrap his mind around the question. “Why would you think that?”
“You…you’ve been blaming me for someone else’s actions ever since we met. You know now that I didn’t mean you any harm, that it’s all coincidence I look like her. But do you still hold a grudge against me anyway?”
Victor almost said ‘no’ as fast as he could, but just before he started to speak, a little voice niggled at the back of his head, warning him that would be a bad idea. This was a question that bore thinking about. That she wanted to know he’d truly considered the answer to before giving it.
Did he hate her?
She was stubborn. Annoying. Had worked hard to foil his plans, and that bothered him certainly. But that was before. Wasn’t it? They had reached a new understanding now between them. O
ne that would lead…somewhere else.
Victor wasn’t sure what the path before them was. He didn’t necessarily believe what Victor had suggested, but he didn’t have any other ideas either. Maybe she was his mate, though that seemed highly unlikely.
Maybe she was just someone he could get along with and be with for a while. That person who would help him get back on his feet, learn to be comfortable again, to not hate.
Or maybe she was nothing.
His dragon shied away from that last thought the hardest, reacting so strongly it left him with a mild headache that was slow to fade.
Okay. So, she’s more to me than nothing, though I was fairly positive of that myself. What is she then?
Victor couldn’t answer that, not to himself, and not to Cheryl if she asked, but he did know one thing.
“No,” he said with a certainty he wouldn’t have felt in answering her question right away. “I don’t hate you anymore. I’m through blaming you for the actions of others. For my actions. You’ve shown me it’s time for me to take some responsibility. I don’t know what that’s going to mean in the long run,” he explained. “But I think it’s time I find out.”
He reached up and gave her hand a squeeze. “Thank you for that, by the way. I owe you. Now sleep.”
Then he got up, ignoring the way her eyes shot to his groin before immediately flicking back to his face as if they’d never left. It was unavoidable, but he wanted to go now, to let her rest now she had her answer.
“Wait,” she said quietly, and fingers slipped into his hand as he tried to turn to go, holding him fast.
“Yes?” he asked, his own voice nearly hoarse from tension. “Do you need something else?”
“I do.”
He shuddered slightly at the throaty reply. Please don’t. I’m not sure I can resist right now, he pleaded. Part of him desperately wanted to go on, to see where it led, while another warned him it would be best if he left the room.
“What can I get you?” he asked, still not turning back around.
Cheryl pulled on his hand, harder this time, forcing him to turn back around.
“You,” she replied, eyes big and filling with desire.
