His pace quickened. Anticipation, he thought, though he couldn’t pinpoint what it was he was anticipating. He only knew he wanted to get to the house as quickly as possible.
Zed knocked, quietly, in case Abigail had already settled into sleep, and waited to be admitted. He had meant what he’d said when he told her he wouldn’t stay the night in her house, and he respected the fact that the space was hers. He was the perpetual visitor.
She pulled the door open, Abigail still in arms.
“Evening,” she said, and her voice was soft, like maybe she thought any moment now would be the one that Abigail would let her eyes drift closed, slipping into the sleep that would free Paulette from the child’s needs for a few hours.
It was just as he had hoped it would be, thought it would be. In the safety of the house, Paulette had forgone the bonnet, her hair loosely pulled back, locks of blonde hair slipping down from the knot, framing her pretty face. The light from the lit lanterns was yellow and warm, the whole space suddenly filled with that lived-in, comfortable feeling that had been missing from the house before Paulette’s arrival.
He nodded, because he didn’t trust himself to speak, wasn’t sure what to say, didn’t want to lull the baby out of the space between awake and asleep.
It was seeping into him, the ease that came from being near her. The contentment he previously only felt when he was with his hoard, the pieces sliding between his fingers, the sharp smell of metal in the air.
Paulette had moved away from him, toward the bassinet, her head tipped toward the baby, so he could admire the curve of her spine, the way her waist narrowed before the skirt draped in a gentle fall past her hips and down to her feet.
With the fire in front of her, she was surrounded by that glow, her brightness dulled by the intensity of the flames’ light, and she was at one blinding and subdued.
He felt another lurch, a tightening in his loins.
Zed put all the pieces together for the first time. The longing. The anticipation.
Desire.
He didn’t want her to be the woman the world saw as his bride.
He wanted her to be the woman he kept close to him, in his arms, against his body.
He heard himself growl, but Paulette was far enough away she didn’t seem to hear the sound.
Zed made a fist, like he could as easily squelch the want that had reared its head within him. Human women were forbidden to him, and there were few of his kind left. He stretched his shoulders, rotating them back the way he did when he was thinking of his other self, the one he barred from existence when he was in his human shell.
Being a dragon had its benefits.
And it had its drawbacks, and whether he liked it or not, one of those drawbacks was that he was destined to live a life alone, mating only with others like himself during the rare breeding season, and only to reproduce.
There was no reason for him to feel the longing he did for Paulette. She could never be his.
Never.
And then she was bending to lie the baby gently on her bed, turning toward him and stepping forward, an easy, open smile on her face.
“Have you eaten?” she asked, her body moving easily, uninhibited by Zed’s sudden realization, his understanding of the hunger he was feeling.
He shook his head, knowing he should leave, before that need to have her overwhelmed him, before he did something that would endanger them both.
There were a hundred reasons he should leave.
But there was one reason to stay, and it called to him more strongly than all the other reasons in the world.
Paulette was watching him expectantly, waiting for his response. There was still some leftover stew, and she was happy to put a bowl together for him if he was interested.
He stopped by the house in the evenings often enough that she’d started to make a little extra, just in case he came by. And true to his word, he never stayed in the house or made her feel uncomfortable. He just stopped to share the air with them, sit with her at the table, eat the food she’d prepared. And then he was gone. She would slide the bolt in place after he left, watch him fade into blackness as he disappeared back to the mountain.
He had yet to say anything, but she’d also come to expect few words from him. At first, she had thought maybe she was doing something to put him off, that perhaps there was something about talking with her that made him uncomfortable. But, it soon became clear that it was just his way. He had little need for words. When he finally nodded, she pulled the lid off the cast iron pot, the scent of the meat, potatoes, and carrots filling the air, making Paulette think she could use another serving herself.
Funny, but she was beginning to think that ache in her center was something other than hunger for food. She recognized it vaguely, like something she should have been feeling previously, like it was something she had been missing out on.
And she was fairly sure it had everything to do with Zed. The way his dark hair fell carelessly away from his face, the sharp angle of his cheekbones, the hard line of his jaw. When he came this late in the day, the shadow of an even darker beard on his rich honey colored skin. It was almost breathtaking, the picture he made, strong and regal.
His eyes were dark, hooded, and hard to read. She found herself looking into them more than she probably should, but there was something about them that invited her to melt into their depths, to keep searching for something she hadn’t yet found. There was something otherworldly to them, that she couldn’t name or place, that tugged at the edge of her memory.
She’d agreed to this sham of a marriage with barely a moment’s hesitation. Of course she had. He was offering her everything she could hope to have. A roof over her head, money in her pocket, a promise that her baby would be well cared for — if not loved — in any event of her absence.
She wasn’t sure when it had happened; it had snuck up on her entirely — when she had started to appreciate him for things other than that. For the heat that started in her core and worked its way through her when he was near, for the way she saw him watch the baby with curiosity and respect.
When he would come in with fresh produce, or a newly wrapped package from the butcher, a blanket he’d brought home for Abigail or a new pair of stockings for Paulette.
He had become so much more than the arrangement she’d first made with him. And now she just had to figure out what that meant. And whether or not it was the same for him as well.
She filled a clay fired bowl with the stew, steam still rising from it, and placed it in front of him at the small scarred table. Old, she’d thought, when she’d first seen it. Like it had graced this house a long time, and others before then.
He pulled a chair out and sat down before the bowl. Paulette seated herself across from him.
She watched him eat in silence, wondering if she should ask how his day had gone.
But she knew it wouldn’t start a conversation.
Mostly he watched, seemed to absorb whatever information he needed, and that was alright with Paulette. There were a lot of things that could be learned about a man when he wasn’t talking — the things that caught his attention, the things that brought out that little tick in his jaw, that made his shoulders tense suddenly.
He was watching her now, she knew, in between the spoonfuls of his supper. But there was something new in his gaze. It seemed to spark the air between them.
Just as it had when their skin had brushed in the past. A little current that seemed to have no beginning or end and just looped between them, stronger every moment they didn’t step away from it. She could feel it now, even though they weren’t touching, drawing her closer to him.
She realized he’d stopped eating. Not that the food was gone, or cold, or even that he looked especially full. But that new spark she’d seen in his eyes was growing, he was alight with it.
She swallowed hard, suddenly feeling overheated. The chair’s feet scraped against the floor as she scooted back, standing up, one h
and on the edge of the table, the other reaching forward for the bowl. She was going to put some distance between them until she cooled off. Until whatever was in his eyes had dulled.
That was her plan, but his hand reached out, catching her around the wrist, and she froze in place, her hand in his, the bowl beneath her fingertips.
He was surprisingly warm — warmer than she’d thought he would be. And that same heat was coursing through her, spreading outward from beneath his palm, all the way to the tips of her toes.
“Thank you for the stew,” he said, and his voice was rough, low in his throat, like he didn’t use it very often, like the words he said were few and far between, and somehow she had deserved to hear some of them.
“You’re welcome.” Her own voice was on the verge of breathless, and while she thought she should feel threatened by his touch, she felt anything but.
She thought he might let her go. Instead, he stood as well, pulling her toward him, until she was stepping around the edge of the table, moving nearer to him as though she were a marionette caught by his strings.
His other hand moved up to the collar of her dress, popping open the two pearl buttons at the top, peeling the eyeletted fabric away from her neck until it was exposed to his view. His touch.
He was drawing his finger along that space between her jaw and her shoulder, the skin smooth and silken beneath his fingers, her pulse quickening, drawing him close to her.
The hand that had been holding her wrist finally dropped it, but she didn’t move away from him. She stood as she had been, stock still in front of him, barely breathing as his hand skimmed up the length of her arm, over the curve of her shoulder, toward the back of her head.
His fingers were surprisingly gentle as they slipped into her hair and freed the mass from its confines, her hair falling down, loose around her shoulders and down her back.
“Like gold,” he said, his voice captivated and captivating at the same time, and she was stepping in toward him as though compelled, unable to stop herself and not wanting to.
This close she could see how thick his lashes were, the delicate shape of his ear. When he moved toward her mouth, she tipped her face up to his, and when their lips met there was another delicious shiver that seemed to move through them both.
He was gentle, unhurried, like he had just stopped in for a taste. His fingers in her hair and on her skin were trailing heat. She felt the fire spreading through her, barely contained.
Her own hands were moving along his chest, the material of his clothing the only thing between her hands and his flesh, and she was dying to know if his skin would be hot to the touch.
She had thought every man’s touch would be like Robert’s had been. Kind, clumsy, complacent.
But that wasn’t the case.
Zed’s touch was becoming laced with urgency, sweet and demanding and curious and sure, and she was caught up in it, her hands sliding into his hair as she kissed him back, her body pressed between his and the table.
She tasted sweet, like something he shouldn’t have, and when he pulled away from her and her pale skin was flushed, one hand in his hair, the other caught in her shirt, he was thinking he needed to get away from her before he made an even bigger mess of everything.
“I apologize,” he said, the words hard. “I oughtn’t to have done that.”
He pulled away from her, officially separating from her and was at the door before she’d caught her breath.
She didn’t even have time to tell him there was no need to apologize before he had gone.
And she was alone in the house again, the gentle crackle of the fire and the occasional quiet mew of the baby the only company.
Chapter Five
Zed was back in the mountain.
He’d been spending as much time there as possible, on edge, denying himself the possibility of returning to Paulette. He kept revisiting their last encounter, every moment of it in vivid detail.
If he had to chain himself to the caverns, that was just going to be the way of it. There was no he could allow what had happened to happen again.
The kiss, gentle, sweet and provocative, had seared him to the core. Every fiber of his being had been raging, threatening to spill over that brink and into his other self.
He hadn’t been able to contain his dragon that night. He’d fled the little home, the warm lights, the tender, soft body of the woman he desired — the one who had looked shocked first by the kiss, then again by his departure.
Zed had melted into the blackness, and when he’d reached the flat, open western facing side of the mountain he thought of as his secret, sacred place, he’d shed his clothing and let his beast free.
With the darkness complete, he’d stretched his wings, let the cool air rush against his scales, his crest, and with a predatory scream he knew would only add fuel to the fire about the monster of the mountain, he took to the air, moving out toward the endless expanse of ocean, desperate to put time and space between him and Paulette, to exorcise some of that burning energy out of his being.
When he could smell dawn in the air, taste the incoming day, he’d forced himself to turn back to the mountain, to rein himself in.
That part was always difficult. The return. Where he gave up one half of who he was, forced to bury it beneath the human side in order to coexist in the world.
He’d been trying not to think about her. Trying not to remember.
And it was damned hard.
He was hunting more than he should and changing more than he should to escape the hell he had inadvertently created for himself. He was caught in a whirlpool, and he didn’t want to know what was waiting for him at the bottom.
Sometimes he would creep down to the town, slow and quiet, to watch from the shadows. He wasn’t sure what compelled him to do it. For hours he had studied the house, watched it move from the dim lights of evening into the darkness of sleep. He had watched the office, people stepping through the door, until Paulette stepped out, sometimes baby in arms, sometimes turning in the opposite direction of the house to retrieve Abigail from the woman Zed had hired to watch the child.
He told himself it wasn’t strange. It wasn’t unsettling. It was normal to watch the things that belonged to him. The things he cared about. Just as normal as guarding his hoard.
Whether or not he should feel like that about Paulette wasn’t something he spent time considering.
When everyone had long been asleep, Zed would make his way back to the mountain, unwilling to stay the night in the office, knowing he wouldn’t be able to rest with Paulette so close.
The kiss kept running through his mind. How it was. What it could have led to. There was too much unexplored, begging to be revisited.
And that, he told himself, was why he kept returning, loitering on the edge of town like this, studying the door, willing it to open, for her to step out. For things to be different.
She was still in the office, the light burning brightly. Zed checked the sky. It wouldn’t be long now before she wrapped up for the evening, headed home for the night.
He recognized the man as soon as he saw him in his periphery. There was something familiar about the way he moved. The lumbering step, the way his shoulders rolled with each step.
A growl split the darkness, and he realized with some surprise it had come from him. The hair at the nape of his neck was on end, that sensation of danger sliding over his skin in forewarning
In the light of the storefront, the man’s face was lit clearly, the heavy beard, the sun-worn skin, the narrow eyes.
The man who’d attacked him at the base of the mountain. The one he’d caught just a glimpse of. The man who smelled damp and dark, and who’d made it a point to turn others against Zed.
And he was pulling open the door to the little shop where Zed’s woman sat, alone and unprotected.
He was moving quickly, resisting the urge to run, knowing the attention it would bring wouldn’t do anyone any favors.
; He yanked the door open, every bad thing that could possibly be happening to Paulette and Abigail running through his mind.
So, when he saw the man seated across from the desk and Paulette flipping through a stack of papers, her lip caught between her teeth, Zed felt his breath catch, and realized he’d been holding it. He exhaled, waiting for his heartbeat to return to normal.
Paulette looked up from what Zed could only assume were the miner’s claim papers. She had been smiling at the man when Zed had walked through the door. He had seen the gentle curve of her mouth, the angle of her chin. She was the Paulette he spent countless hours thinking about. Those eyes. That openness.
Then she had seen him, a crease appearing in her brow, confusion moving over her features, and that smile had evaporated, and she was just looking at him with detached curiosity.
Of course, he thought. It wasn’t as though he’d made it a point to stop in and see her lately. He’d spent so much time trying to protect himself, protect her, from everything he was feeling that he’d failed to think about how that might make her feel as well.
“Zed,” she said, “how nice of you to stop in.”
There wasn’t anything else she could have said that would have shamed him more, except, possibly, “how sweet of you to take advantage of me in my own home and then not spare me a second glance.”
“Of course,” he managed between gritted teeth. “Just wanted to see how your day was progressing, my dear,” he stressed the words, hoping to remind everyone in the room that Paulette was his wife — for all intents and purposes — and he had no intention of sharing her with anyone else. Ever. “I thought I might accompany you on the walk home.”
“Oh. Well, that sounds quite lovely. Let me just finish up here with Mr. Copeland.”
“I’ll wait,” Zed said darkly, unconcerned with whether or not he was coming off as rude.
Zed stalked to the other side of the room, suddenly very interested in the books he kept there, running his finger over the spines as he continued to listen to Mr. Copeland and Paulette chatter about whatever it was he’d needed. Paulette’s voice was low, and soft, barely carrying over to his side of the room. His voice was bawdy, loud, into being heard.
CLAIMED BY THE ALPHA UNDERBOSS Page 94
