by Amelia Jade
“We’re going to Palin’s for dinner. So, on one hand we don’t have to make anything.”
“But on the other,” she groaned, coming awake. “We have to get ready. And shower. I need to get you off of me. It wouldn’t do to show up with dried you everywhere.”
He shrugged. “You asked for it.”
“Stop,” she laughed. “Okay, so what you’re saying is we need to shower?”
“What’s this ‘we’ business?”
“You smell like my…um…listen, you just need to shower, okay?”
It was Torran’s turn to laugh. “Okay fine, but I’m washing you.”
Lilly frowned. “You say that like you think I’m going to object to a spongebath. Yes, yes, you can wash me. Just no getting handsy, mister. I know your tricks.”
He smiled. “Lilly, you know none of my tricks.”
“Whatever. I’m excited to see Sandy. Let’s go. If we go in time I can have an extra sparkling water before dinner.” She made a face. “It’s not wine, but you know, pregnancy and all. I’ll have to make do.”
“So you can drive home then?”
“Are you already taking advantage of the fact that I can’t drink so that you can overdo it with your buddies? Really?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t see the harm in trying. Now come on, shower time.” He rose and pulled the covers off.
“Well you just earned yourself a night of sobriety,” she teased, following him to the oversized shower.
As the first occupants of the ranch they’d gotten to choose the rooms they wanted most. Lilly had chosen the master suite. Well, one of four master suites in the huge house, but the one most up to date. Much of the décor and furnishings were old, but the bathroom was something that had been important to the old owner it seemed. It was huge, and the word luxurious didn’t even begin to describe it.
The square shower could hold nine of him in three rows. Fully half the ceiling was dedicated to a rainfall showerhead. It was utterly insane and overkill, and Torran had been dying to try it out. Now he would finally get his chance, and he’d get to do it with his sexy mate as well.
“Is this warm enough?” he asked, stepping inside and preparing to turn the controls upward.
“No. Too warm.”
His jaw fell open. “Too warm?”
She nodded. “I don’t like the extreme heat. Warm is good. Not cold, just not scalding.”
“Marry me?” he gasped, stunned by this amazing revelation. “You are absolutely perfect.”
Lilly smiled sheepishly. “I like heat elsewhere. Lounging in the sun, the air when I go to sleep. Just not the water for whatever reason. Only in hot tubs can I stomach it.”
“Doesn’t matter. The ability to shower with you and not have my skin boiled off while doing so is just phenomenal.” He stepped aside and let her get fully into the shower and then under the rainfall.
While she soaked herself he grabbed the bodywash and proceeded to start lathering it up in his hands, before draping it across her shoulders. Then he dug his fingers in and slowly began to massage the suds into her skin with smooth circles of his hands. Lilly groaned and put her arms up on the wall as he worked, luxuriating in it all.
He finished her back and moved to the front, caressing her breasts and cleaning all the remains of their activities from her skin. Then he moved to her stomach, feeling the soft skin as he worked, paying extra care to it. While she wasn’t showing with pregnancy yet, he wanted the child growing within to know it was well cared for, and would continue to be as long as he was able.
The child was half Lilly. Half her blood. That, he’d decided, was enough for him, and he wanted the developing person to know that. To understand that he no longer cared, and would raise it as his own. Protect it. Teach it.
While he worked she watched him, her eyes intent on his every motion. She didn’t say anything as he touched her stomach, but she didn’t need to. They both knew what he was doing. What his actions were saying.
Finally he moved on. They didn’t have all day. So he worked her legs and even massaged the soles of her feet for a few minutes. Then he backed off and let her wash between her legs. He was comfortable with it, but something told him Lilly would have felt uncomfortable with him washing her feminine bits, as she sometimes referred to them.
“Have you met Sandy yet?” she asked, rinsing off.
“Not really, no.” He’d used the time to wash himself off, including his face, to satisfy Lilly that he longer smelled of her.
“Well you’d better put your game face on, mister.”
“Why is that? Is she a handful?”
Lilly laughed. “You have no idea, but that’s not why.”
“I don’t get it.”
“To have me, you need the best friend approval, Torran. Come on now. If she doesn’t like you? Well. That’s not good.”
He knew she was teasing him, that if for some reason Sandy didn’t actually like him that wouldn’t be the end of things. It was a joke. Right?
Right?
Chapter Sixteen
Lilly
“You okay there, big guy?” she asked, sliding in to the vehicle.
It hurt to sit, but she suspected that wasn’t just from the horseback ride anymore. Torran’s fingers had done wonders to her sore muscles, as had the warm shower and his soft touches in it, but between those had been some rather vigorous sexual activity. Something that, aside from her brief interlude with him in the woods a week earlier, she hadn’t had much of lately.
“Me? I’m fine.”
“You seem a little nervous. It wasn’t my comment about Sandy, was it?”
Torran climbed into his seat and paused before glancing at her. “Do you think she’ll like me?”
“Wow, that really got to you, didn’t it?” She hadn’t expected him to take it seriously. How could Sandy not like him? He was friends with Palin, and he seemed like a good guy.
“Nonsense. I’m just curious. I want to make a good impression, whether I’m worried or not.”
“You’ll be fine,” she said. “It’s me you need to keep making a good impression for.”
Torran smiled, and Lilly found herself caught up in him once more. How and when things had turned from her goal of “just friends” to this budding…whatever it was. Romance? Relationship? She really wasn’t sure how to term what they were. It was more than friends with benefits, but it wasn’t serious. Not yet at least. She definitely wasn’t ready for that.
Even now she worried that she was just jumping at the first relationship opportunity to come her way. That was part of why she was excited for the get-together. It would give Sandy a chance to observe from an outside perspective and let her know if there really was something between them, or if she was just desperate for someone better to replace Damien with.
“Who all is coming to this thing?” she asked as he fired up the car.
Torran didn’t reply right away, frowning at the dash.
“If you look at it long enough it’s still not going to turn invisible,” she remarked, noticing that he seemed to be trying to look past it.
He shook his head, indicating he wished silence.
Oooook. Lilly sat back and twiddled her thumbs, glancing out the window.
“I think there’s something funky going on with the engine,” he said at last. “It’s made that weird noise several times now. I’ll have to give Palin shit for giving us a piece of crap.” He smiled and shifted into gear.
“I don’t hear anything. I think you’re imagining it,” she muttered. “But back to my original question.”
“Right. Uh, well the two of us, of course. Palin and Sandy. Then Cheryl, and I guess if he got the message in time Rowe as well.”
“Cheryl’s that short bossy lady I saw the one day?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I guess she’s been staying with them to get up to speed on what Torran wants before she comes over here and does her assessment and stuff.” He shrugged. “I don’t know, this is al
l really beyond me. I’m just glad she’s here and I just have to do what she says now.”
“I’m glad to hear that last line. It’s going to make things a lot easier.”
Torran kept his eyes on the road, but she could see him sag in defeat, realizing what he’d said. “Don’t get used to it,” he muttered.
“Too late. Now, take me to the party, driver!”
“Driver? Driver? I don’t even have a name now?”
“But of course not. That’s ridiculous.” She put on her best fake aristocrat voice. “Now, no more talking. I prefer to ride in silence.”
“Bullshit. You like to ride listening to your own voice.”
Lilly gasped in mock insult. “Why, I never! How dare you talk to me this way?”
“I’ll talk to you even worse if you keep it up,” he growled. “And I’ll follow through with treating you that way too.”
“Oh my. I do believe the driver is trying to seduce me,” she said to no one. “Whatever shall I do?”
“Give in or shut up. Please. For my sanity.”
She laughed and rested her hand on the crook of his elbow as he drove, enjoying the gentle contact between them. “Are we there yet?”
“Please. No. Don’t start that. Go back to the atrocious accent, I beg of you.”
“First he says he doesn’t mind following orders. Now he begs. Interesting,” she mused thoughtfully, pretending to stroke an imaginary beard. “Very interesting.”
“What the hell’s gotten into you?”
“Besides you, you mean?”
“Keep it up and it won’t even be that,” he threatened.
“I’ll be good,” she said, acting properly chastised and enjoying the byplay.
“If you aren’t, I’ll have to punish you.”
“Okay, mister. Keep your eyes on the road and your pants on. It’s time we go be prim and proper. Perfunctory. Polite.”
Torran groaned and flicked the radio on. “Who knew that a short drive could be so painful,” he complained as they came up on the turn to Sandy’s place.
The tree-lined driveway was barely marked from the road, only visible if you were looking fifty or so feet back from the road. But Torran knew where.
“I’m hungry.”
Even before she was finished speaking she knew something was wrong as the car started to turn. They were moving way too fast still. “Torran?” she asked, her voice inflecting upward in alarm as the tires started to squeal.
“The brakes are out!” he shouted just before they hit the edge of the road and went over.
The truck hit the gully that lined the roadway on either side and flipped violently onto its side. Torran was suddenly there. Not in his seat, but perched in the cab. Moving faster than she thought possible, he somehow ripped the entire roof from the vehicle as it continued to roll. Then he snatched her up, the seatbelt gone at some point she hadn’t noticed, and the next time the truck was right-side up he jumped free.
They landed upright and watched the rest of the accident play out in real time.
“We’ll be okay,” he shouted as the truck slammed into one of the great trees lining the roadway, warping the frame around the stout oak. “We’ll be fine.”
She was too shaken up to answer him. From the accident, and from what she’d just witnessed. What had she just witnessed? “We should be dead,” she whispered. “Right now. Both of us, we should be dead.”
“We’re not,” Torran said calmly. “That’s all that matters.”
“How? How are we not?” her voice sounded near hysterical. “How did you do that?”
“Lilly, you need to relax.” He made a face, as if he’d bitten into something really sour. “You need to think about the baby.”
The baby. Oh no, the baby! In her astonishment at what she thought she’d seen Lilly had forgotten all about the little one she was carrying within her.
Lilly swayed on her feet. Torran was there, helping her down to the ground. After he was certain she was safe he ran over to the car to inspect it and retrieve her purse. Then he came back and sat beside and behind her, giving her one knee to lean back against as she moaned and gently rubbed her stomach. “It’s going to be okay,” she whispered, wondering if she was trying to convince the life growing inside of her, or herself.
Torran stayed with her, whispering comforting nothings into her ear as behind them the car settled in place.
Eventually the sounds of a vehicle coming up the long laneway reached her ears through the fog that had settled over her mind. “What happened?” she asked weakly. “Why did we crash?”
Behind her Torran went still.
“Torran? What is it? What aren’t you telling me?” She sat up, turning in place so she could look at him right in his eyes. Her gaze pushed past the emerald armor he’d put into place, and beyond that she saw the righteous fury burning deep within him. A fury that surpassed anything she’d seen from the mostly even-tempered Torran. “Torran, tell me.”
Something cracked in him, and he looked away. “Someone cut our brake line.” His voice was icy calm.
She gasped.
“They tried to kill us.”
“No. He wouldn’t.” She said he because they both knew there was only one person who would do something like that. “Would he?”
Torran’s lips compressed into a thin line.
Lilly was afraid to ask what he was going to do about it. She didn’t want to. Torran was fiercely protective of her, and Damien had just crossed a line.
The SUV coming up the lane swerved off the road and came to a halt. Both Palin and Sandy jumped out and ran over to them. Sandy came and nearly tackled her, while the two men moved off to talk on their own.
“Are you okay?” Sandy asked, tears streaming down her face. “Lilly are you okay? Speak to me? Please. Talk to me.”
“I’m fine,” she said quietly. “I’m completely fine, Sandy.”
“How?”
Her eyes were locked on Torran. “Because of him.”
Chapter Seventeen
Torran
“We have two problems,” he growled as they watched the women go into the kitchen.
Sandy was treating Lilly like she was made from the finest, most delicate porcelain, guiding her friend in and asking if she needed ice, or water, or bandages. Lilly stoically put up with it, but she hadn’t stopped staring at him, even while she talked to her best friend.
Torran didn’t want to let her out of his sight, but he didn’t really have a choice. He needed to talk to Palin about things that he couldn’t say around Lilly. After they were settled he pulled the other dragon into one of the other rooms.
“Let me guess about one of them,” Palin said, his eyes looking back out the door toward where Sandy was, probably thinking about his reaction if something similar had happened. “You revealed a bit too much.”
“Yes,” he hissed, knuckles popping as he bunched his hands into fists. “I had no choice, Palin! I couldn’t. You saw the wreckage. She would be dead. Hell, I would be rather uncomfortable after that sort of impact.”
“You don’t need to justify it to me, my friend.” Palin clapped him on the shoulder. “I would have done the exact same thing. The question is, how do you handle it from here on out?”
“Somehow I have to tell her, obviously. She’s already questioned me.” He spat. “I took the coward’s way out.”
Palin lifted an eyebrow.
“I reminded her about her unborn child to distract her.”
The other dragon shifter visibly winced. “Ouch. That must have hurt.”
“I feel like a piece of shit,” he said bluntly. “The fetus is to small and young to be affected by that. I got us out of there before the car could do anything more than flip one time. She will be okay, I could tell. But I needed to get her attention off what she’d seen. It was the most efficient way.”
“I’m sorry it came to that,” Palin said emphatically.
“Me too.” He looked up, his eyes hard
ening. “And it never would have come up if someone hadn’t cut our brake line.”
Palin’s face closed off. “You’re positive of that?”
“I smelled her ex on the bottom of the car,” he snarled, keeping his voice down low. “I fucking smelled him, Palin. That asshole tried to murder my mate and her offspring. Where is Rowe? We need to discuss this.”
“He declined to come,” Palin said. “He told me he’d be arriving here in a few days, and didn’t want to go back and forth.”
“He’s coming back? He visited me in the middle of the night a few days ago.”
“Two nights ago for me,” Palin said. “He is confused, and though obviously he won’t admit it and I won’t call him on it, I think he is feeling unsure of himself as well. There is something eating away at him. I just don’t know what it is.”
“Same.” Torran tried to sound engaged, but his mind was elsewhere. He kept picturing Damien. “I need help figuring out what to do, Torran.”
“What do you mean?”
“Lilly is bearing this man’s child. Yet he tried to kill all of us. Who does that sort of thing? I’d begun to revise my opinion on humans after meeting her, but this…this doesn’t help. I—”
“What doesn’t help your opinion on humans?”
The two men spun. Lilly was standing in the doorway, hands on her hips. In the background Sandy was shuffling from side to side, looking extremely uncomfortable. Torran was aware Palin had clued her in to his heritage, so she must feel bad about not stopping Lilly from listening in on their conversation.
“Well? What does that mean? What are you talking about? Who speaks like that? ‘I revised my opinion on humans,’” she mocked. “You’re lying to me, Torran.”
“No,” he said softly. “Not lying. This is what I hadn’t told you about.”
“You’re an alien.”
“That’s preposterous. I was born on this planet.” He looked at Palin for help, but the other shifter just shrugged and backed away, until he’d put Lilly between them. His point was clear.
This was Torran’s issue to deal with. Fine, he would deal with it.
