“What about mosquitoes?” Daniel asked.
“They kept them away with sorcery,” the rabbit said apologetically. “But you could screen the area.”
So he could. Angie had that pleased energy that had been missing from her aura. She was taken with this place. Understandably. It would be comfortable if painted a more cheerful neutral and filled with simple modern furniture. If only it were not in America.
“I don’t like that you have to walk through the bathroom to get to this deck,” Daniel gave his wife a reality check.
“Hmm. Can we see the other bedrooms, please?”
There was only one more on this side. Spacious, barely lit, but probably excellent for sleeping. The bathroom was almost as sybaritic as the one in the master bedroom. The three in the other wing were only marginally smaller.
“And if we go downstairs,” Melissa said happily, “There is a huge family room as well as the utilities.”
“You mean the water heater and furnace?” Daniel asked.
“And sump pump and so forth,” Melissa said. She flipped on the light switch at the bottom of the stairs, revealing a bright and airy room with wall-to-wall windows and glass doors. “Wouldn’t this make a great studio?”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Angie~
In her excitement at the prospect of making a quick sale, Melissa had forgotten to ask how they had gotten to the Spicers’ place. Angie was content to let the rabbit drive away. She wanted to explore the garden and woods on her own. The house was almost perfect. The only drawback was that the air was foul with malice. But a fairy could fix that so it would be as if the Spicers had never lived here.
“Well?” she asked Daniel.
His reply was cool. “It’s a nice house. Clean lines. Reminds me of a ship. But we don’t need a house in America.”
“I think it’s fabulous. And I can’t stay with Robin forever.”
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”
“Oh?”
“You do know that while you are occupying Robin’s spare room that her friend Gordon Sullivan can’t visit her?”
He was so obvious! “Fortunately, Sully has a house of his own. I’m sure they will find a way to be together.”
Daniel frowned. “It’s not like you to be inconsiderate.”
“All the more reason for me to buy a house. Let’s look at the rest of the garden. I wonder if there is any access to a dock.”
“We should get back to the boat,” he pointed out.
“Are you telling me that when Admiral Lindorm anchors a craft in calm seas that it could float away?” She raised her left eyebrow at him.
“Ever heard of thieves?”
She laughed. “It would take a lot of brazen stupidity to take The Seagull. Everyone around here knows everyone else’s vessels. Even with a paint job, no one would be fooled.”
“We should still make sure we can get to it.” His stolid calm returned.
“I want to explore anyway.”
The landscaping consisted of some tired perennial beds, a bit of lawn, and a wholly unnecessary screen of cedars. The suburban plantings seemed all wrong next to the Old Forest. The edge of the cliff had been given a brick wall with a concrete capstone, presumably for safety.
“I would take all this out. It’s ugly,” she said.
“Good place for a fireling to launch.” He was still brooding.
“Would that be good or bad?” A spot to learn to fly was an asset when dragonlings were adolescents. But all children had to be watched before they grew some common sense. Which was why there were baby gates.
Daniel grunted. “I expect it’s safe enough. Children are just as liable to fling themselves down a staircase.”
“Only when they’re little!”
“Hmm.” He reached for her hand. The old tingle shot up her arm to her heart. “I love you, Angelina Lindorm. I’m pretty sure you still love me. We’re about to become parents. Why are we at odds?”
She gathered herself to try to explain yet again. “I’m tired of being alone, Daniel. Tired of being ‘Poor Angie’ at every family gathering, because my husband is never by my side. When was the last time we went to a concert together? Or took a few days at the farm?”
He frowned. “The last few years have been busy. You knew when you married me what a naval officer’s life was like.”
“Daniel, most Rear Admirals do not go on missions. They sit at desks and tell young men to go get themselves killed. I can’t do it anymore. I won’t sit at home wondering where you are and if you’ll come home this time. And I won’t put my child through that.”
“You want me to retire!”
Did she? “I think you’re right. I do.” She tried to explain. “I thought I just wanted you around more. But I want an end to the endless uncertainty.”
“I’m not ready to sit around and count my hoard!”
“New fathers don’t get much chance to sit. You’d be busy from day one. And you could teach our child to count its hoard.”
“Do babies have hoards?”
“You have approximately eighteen gazillion nephews, every one with his very own collection of pebbles, insects and tadpoles. And that’s just the stuff I care to dwell on.” She gave a little shudder.
He laughed and kissed her knuckles. “Child minding is not what I had in mind as a second career.”
“You’ve never thought of a second career. Not once. Admit it.”
“I’m a warrior, Angie. That’s who I am. A dragon shifter who combats the enemies of his country and his House. In that order.”
She snorted. “Your grandfather treats the Swedish Royal Navy like it’s an extension of his private legion. You and your Uncle Hammond* are at his beck and call.”
“The Eldest has never steered the Navy wrong. Whenever we undertake an operation at his behest, we are acting on rock solid intelligence.” Daniel’s voice rang with sincerity.
“Let someone else act on his intelligence. Lord Lindorm has many sword bearers who could replace you in a heartbeat.”
“It’s kind of you to say so.”
Her dragon was hurt. “No one is irreplaceable,” she said. “You have nephews who can do just as good a job as you do. But there is no other dragon alive who can replace you in my life. I need you more than the Eldest does. More than Sweden.”
“You are the most self-sufficient person I know.”
“People change. I’ve changed.” Or maybe she had just given herself permission to be needy.
The cliff swerved and the brick wall abruptly gave way to a wrought iron gate in desperate need of a coat of paint. “I think this is a stairway to a beach,” Daniel swung it open.
She peered down the wooden stairway. The bottom was lost in a series of switchbacks. She could hear surf crashing against rock, but if there was a dock it couldn’t be seen from here. “I don’t know,” she said dubiously. “It looks rickety.”
“Rot.”
“I’m right,” she insisted. “Look at that missing section of handrail.”
“I meant it’s rotten,” he said mildly. “I don’t want you on those steps until I check them out.”
“You can also fall to your death!”
“It’s a pretty poor sort of dragon that comes to grief from a fall.” He unbuttoned his shirt. “I’ll check it out in dragon.”
“In broad daylight!”
“You’re the one who keeps telling me that the paranormal is normal on West Haven.” He stepped out of his pants revealing thighs like tree trunks and muscular calves to match. His broad chest was as smooth and blank as marble. Her mouth dried.
“Not when there are tourists around!”
“Not on this side of the island. The tours all concentrate on the other side where the whales feed. Stand back.” He crouched and began to shift.
His dragon form was so magnificent it took her breath away every time. As it had done since their nuptial flight. He was deep Lindorm blue as most dragons of his
house were. His wings were twenty-four feet across when he unfurled their glossy leather. His diamond-hard scales possessed the faintest rim of deep green and his tail dart, curving horns, and razor-sharp talons were emerald.
He winked one bright blue eye at her and launched himself out over the staircase with the noise of a thousand umbrellas opening.
*Dragon’s Possession
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Daniel~
The wind caught his wings and lifted him high above the cliff. He took the opportunity to circle over the property. The Spicers had used only a portion of the 150 acres that Melissa Babcock had said they owned. An old growth forest crowded up to the clearing they had made. That must be the Old Forest where the dryads dwelled. The house and gardens almost looked threatened by the dark woods. Interesting.
He could see an overgrown log cabin a hundred yards from the house. Its mossy roof was missing in many places and it was returning to nature. A well in equally bad repair was fifty feet from the back door. Presumably this was a remnant of a pioneer house. He preferred the mid-century home, even if it stank of black magic.
The cliff wall extended as far along from the stairway and looped back to what appeared to be an attempt to run a fence through the forest. Whoever had planned to build a boundary between the Spicer land and the forest had failed. The concrete capstone was missing in places and the bricks beginning to crumble.
On the cliff side, portions of land had given way and sent the wall to the rocks below. If this was his land, he would use beach stone and only wall the portion of cliff nearest the house. This slice of wilderness not supposed to be tamed. Its wildness should be celebrated, not suppressed.
Angie waved at him as he flew over her. She was sitting on the wall gazing out to sea. She looked peaceful and happy. Was she trying to manipulate him by claiming to need him? Or was she speaking from her heart? She had never lied to him, nor he to her.
Not unless you counted the time she had briefly abandoned her organic, curvilinear style for the sharp angularity of a polished-aluminum abstraction. He had not told her that her work was ugly. Instead he had declared it to be a tour de force of geometry. He didn’t think she had been fooled. Her next sculpture had been as deliciously sensuous as her previous pieces.
He dipped his wings in farewell and soared sideways to where they had left The Seagull. The sailboat bobbed securely. The Spicers did have a dock and a boathouse. Theoretically he could sail The Seagull right up to the boathouse. However, it was a nineteenth-century building. The wooden structure had been battered by over a hundred years’ worth of storms and was manifestly unsafe.
Clapboards clattered in the breeze, and the cedar-shingle roof had rotted away in spots. He could look right into the dilapidated building. Not surprisingly there were no boats inside. Just a guess, but the Spicers weren’t sailors. To a Swede, having a summer home on the edge of the ocean and not using it was a working definition of crazy.
Those winding wooden stairs would have to be rebuilt. Like the dock, the last twenty feet of risers had been pulled up above the high-water mark and chained to the cliff. Probably twenty years ago. The chains were rusty. The gray lumber smashed and riddled with insects.
He would not permit Angie to attempt the risky twenty-foot climb. Besides the remaining stairs looked as if a strong wind would blow them out to sea. He tested a railing with a flick of his passing tail. The nails pulled silently out of the decaying wood. The banister tumbled onto the rocks. The smashed wood revealed a nest of beetles.
He landed beside Angie with folded wings. It had been years since she rode on his back. Not since the heady days of their courtship before he transformed her into a dragoness. He didn’t know if taking dragon would really prime a dragonling to early shifting. It seemed deeply unlikely. But he did not think he was going to get his stubborn wife to change her mind with gestures.
“Am I supposed to ride back to the boat?” she asked.
He nodded vigorously.
She waved a hand. Her gesture caused him to be saddled and bridled. Now he remembered. He hated being harnessed. But it was too risky for such a small person to ride him bareback. And the indignity of being carried in his talons might well have an undesirable effect on a pregnant fairy’s stomach.
Angie scrambled up his glassy sides complaining mightily. Twice she slipped back to the grass before she got close enough to the saddle to climb aboard. Rather than a horse saddle, hers was fashioned like the howdahs used to ride elephants.
She clicked her tongue twice and called, “Home, Lindorm,” with something like her old cheekiness.
He launched himself with greater care because his treasure was aboard. The saddle unbalanced him slightly. He had lost his old knack. He let the thermals lift him high. Angled into a broad circle that would smooth out his descent. He didn’t want Angie to experience turbulence, or an abrupt change in velocity.
Gradually they drifted closer and closer to the sea. Angie was humming a tune he had almost forgotten. A happy flying song. Had it been so long since he had flown with his mate?
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Angie~
She trusted Daniel not to dump her into the ocean, but nevertheless she had made her saddle more of a space capsule than some maharajah’s ornamental howdah. Thick shoulder straps and a lap belt prevented her from falling out. Not that Daniel was doing any fancy maneuvering. Their descent was uncommonly fluid.
Daniel kept circling. She had reins, but she remembered that pulling them was useless. Like trying to stop a car by pulling on the steering wheel. Daniel did not take direction. Much better to lean back and enjoy the sights and smell of the ocean. It was more fun to fly herself, but since she couldn’t, this was the next best.
It was almost as much fun as sailing. The breeze intensified the delicious briny smell of the Pacific. A scent subtly distinct from the North Atlantic. Lovely. She removed the hair pins from her braided bun and let the wind pass through her hair. It flew behind her like a flag. Her scalp relaxed. She began to hum.
Beneath her, her dragon began to join her in song. His whistling resonated through her whole body. As if the vibrations reached her womb, the baby began a gentle tapping almost in time with its father’s music. She was being fanciful. Yet her dragon’s flying-music transported her to an earlier time when their love was new and he was wooing her.
It made the old promises of eternal fidelity. Swore she was treasured beyond all other women. Loved more than life itself. She knew these pledges to be half-truths, but her heart responded to them anyway.
She forgot the sea was his mistress. The Eldest his master. Her entire being suffused with longing. Not just a physical sexual arousal, but a psychic yearning. Her aura and his united as they used to do in perfect harmony.
Gradually Daniel drifted down to the sailboat, turning in a wide gentle spiral, so their descent was almost imperceptible. But by the time they landed on the water, every cell in her body was vibrating in time with his. He hovered over the small craft so she could clamber aboard.
One wave of her hand and her saddle and harness vanished. But Daniel did not return to human. He rose once more in the air and soared on the wind, before diving back down to the water. In a display of muscular finesse, he danced for her on the surface of the water, using the enormous strength of his wings to appear to be supported solely by the ocean.
He danced as he had danced on the beach at San Michaela when they were young. Curvetting and bowing and singing his mating song. Dragons were an ancient race, descended from birds. His mating dance was both instinctive and practiced. They had danced it together in happier times.
Every wave of his brilliant wings brought her his scent on the wind. The aroma of fully aroused male dragon. Her male. Her mate. His double-headed dong was fully erect and he waggled it enticingly at her. A corresponding flush spread over her face and breasts. Her pussy throbbed. Her clit grew full and hot. He was doing it deliberately.
But she did not want
him to stop. It was all she could do to resist the urge to join him, to spread her own wings and dance on the rippling waves. But she remembered her baby. Also she was strong, but probably not strong enough to pull off this display of raw masculine power and potency, and dance on water.
And all the while he beguiled her, he sang. The deep notes heated her blood. Thrummed in her veins. She craved him as she had not done in years. Desired a perfect union of body and spirit. A union with her one true mate. By the time he spun in one last glorious display of sexual virtuosity, and stepped into the boat in a sudden transformation, she was on the verge of orgasm.
Even the wild rocking of the small vessel as a large upright male stalked her was exciting. He picked her up and squatted until he was seated. Her legs automatically embraced his naked waist.
“Undress yourself,” he ordered. “Or shall I do it?”
They were likely to drown if he ripped her garments off. It would take too long if he did it. Excuses tossed around in her sex-maddened mind like leaves in a gale. She blinked her clothes away.
Daniel’s mouth took hers in an intimate kiss. His tongue tangled fiercely with hers. This was no gentle salutation such as the kiss he had given her in the store. This was an elemental sharing of breath, spit, and need. Her own mouth was just as greedy as his. Back and forth they dueled in time with one another. First one and then the other exploring the most secret recesses and savoring the flavor of the other.
A gust of wind had him pulling back to check the boat. “It’s fine,” he growled. His hands left her waist to travel over her bump. “Mine.” He kissed her again. But this time, his pace was slower, more the sipping of a connoisseur than the reckless gobbling of a horny pirate.
His cock was a hard pole against her bottom. She reached behind her to squeeze it. “Mine,” she challenged him.
“Always. Yours and only yours.” His hands lifted her and he lowered her dripping pussy onto his cock, one inch at a time.
She found place for her feet to grip on either side of his bench, and eased herself down. He was as hot, thick and hard as she remembered. He filled her loneliness and her aching passage with the sense of homecoming and imminent release. “I can’t last long,” she warned.
Adored by A Dragon: A Shifters in Love Fun & Flirty Romance (Mystic Bay Book 4) Page 8
