“That would be really nice,” said Ana, when he had set her on her feet again. “Someday.”
Grissom stumbled.
She thought – she didn’t think that – She hadn’t taken it as a proposal them.
Grissom heart sank.
For a moment, he was grieved.
But only for a moment; Grissom quickly rallied. If she hadn’t taken it as a proposal, then he could propose to her again. He had his do-over.
“Unless you were asking me to move in with you?” added Ana, looking worried.
Smiling, Grissom kissed Ana again.
“Come on!” he said, rather than answering. “Let me show you around!”
Swinging Ana up into his arms, Grissom carried his laughing Ana over the threshold – that couldn’t possibly just be for weddings – and put her down in the front hall. Taking her hand, Grissom led Ana through the house, showing her the things that he thought she would like. The tour ended in his bedroom, where he made love to Ana. Twice.
Much later, they were curled up together in his television room, Ana a warm and trusting weight against his side as they watched a movie.
It was a far cry from watching television in Ana’s apartment. For one thing, his television room was larger than Ana’s whole apartment. In it, they actually had room to stretch out, and his electronics were unspeakably better than the screen or speakers on Ana’s little laptop.
For once, his house actually seemed almost… cozy. Grissom blamed Ana for that.
Paint the walls, put up some of her art, maybe juggle some things around, and this place might finally feel like a home, thought Grissom, his arm tightening around Ana.
All dragons hoarded. What they hoarded, however, varied from dragon to dragon. Grissom had always hoarded people and his relationships with them. Grissom was devoted to family and friends. And he – a storm dragon – would walk through fire for Derek, who was both his partner on the force and his best friend. Being a police detective allowed him to protect that which he loved best – his important people.
As his soul’s mate, Ana was his crowning jewel. Grissom finally had his greatest treasure, the one that he had always wanted most.
He just had to figure out how to tell her that he was a dragon, they were soul mates, and he wanted to live happily ever after with her. Piece of cake, really.
Much later, as they lay in bed together, Ana whispered into his shoulder, “I love you.”
Hearing it, Grissom’s heart swelled in his chest. He had been waiting so long to hear those words from her, trying not to rush her, hoping that she would acknowledge the thing that lay between them in her own time.
And now, she had.
His arm tightening around her, Grissom pulled Ana on top of him, grinning at her squeak. He kissed her, pressing his lips to her mouth, the curve of her cheek, the corner of her mouth, and the angle of her jaw. Grissom kissed her jaw again, further down this time and nearer to her chin, and then her mouth again – longer this time; much longer. Grissom kissed her breathless, his tongue stroking against hers and his hand light against the back of Ana’s neck.
When they pulled apart, he murmured, “I love you too. I love you more than anything or anyone else, Ana.”
He could feel the strength of her flush against his hand.
“I didn’t even know that you were awake.”
“I’m glad I was.” He nuzzled her hair. “It feels like I’ve been waiting so long to hear you say that.”
In the semi-dark of his room, Grissom leaned up to press another kiss into Ana’s skin, this one landing against the underside of her chin. Then, because he couldn’t seem to stop himself, Grissom kissed Ana’s mouth again.
She didn’t seem to mind.
“I love you,” she murmured between kisses. “I love you. I love you. I love you!”
The words enflamed him, made his blood boil. He rolled them over again, Ana yelped again as he tipped her onto her back and settled on top of her. Smiling, Grissom set out to show Ana just how much he loved her too.
Chapter 15 – Ana
Grissom’s house was the most beautiful house that Ana had ever been in. She loved its polished mosaic floors and the grand staircase, the lines of which put Ana in mind of a blooming tulip. She loved its unexpected curves, the seemingly randomly placed stained glass windows, and all of its light, bright rooms.
But it was also the biggest house that Ana had ever set foot in. It was so big that in some of the rooms, her footsteps seemed to echo. Grissom’s bedroom suite – and it really was a suite, complete with little sitting area, small library, bedroom area, bathroom, and his and hers walk-in closets – was bigger than her whole apartment. Hell, his bathroom was bigger than her whole apartment. Her bed, although a decent size for her apartment, probably looked like a cot to Grissom. His bed was simply that big.
It was humbling.
There was absolutely no way that one man alone could keep up with the place, not even if he dedicated his life to keeping it up and in good repair. Ana wondered where the servants were.
“Do you do all of the waxing and polishing yourself?” asked Ana as they crossed another shiny mosaic. This one had what looked like an enormous, if particularly whimsical, dandelion in the center of it. It was circled by several green bands of varying widths and designs as well as by jewel colored dragonflies and butterflies.
Grissom laughed.
“No, of course not,” he said. “I have a few professional servants in a couple of times a month to clean, wax, and polish the place for me and keep up with its lawns, gardens, and maintenance. The rest of the time, I have the run of the place to myself.”
There was absolutely no way that Grissom was floating this big, beautiful house full of unique and occasionally inspired architectural choices on a mere police detective’s salary. The property taxes alone would be more than he made in a year, never mind all of the renovations that he had proudly pointed out to her or the small part-time staff of professional servants that he apparently needed to employ to keep up with the place.
It had always been obvious to Ana that Grissom came from money, but she had never really realized what that might mean. And she had badly misjudged just how much money he had come from.
“Does your family mind that you went into police detecting?” asked Ana curiously. “Instead of the business of making more money?”
Grissom shook his head.
“I don’t think that they particularly understand my career choice, but they’re still proud of me,” said Grissom. “Although it probably helps that I’m making my money work for me too. I have a trust fund, and I inherited quite a bit of money besides from the great-uncle who willed me this house. I let another of my uncles manage it for me. He’s quite good at it – and much better than I would be.”
“You sound very close to your family.”
“I am,” said Grissom. “Family is very important to us. My parents wouldn’t even send us off to boarding school.”
“What are they like?” asked Ana, and watched as Grissom’s expression tightened.
“Different,” he said shortly, “but happy together.”
“And your brothers and sisters?” asked Ana, forgetting how many of each he had, but remembering quite vividly that he was one of three sets of triplets.
His poor mother, Ana thought, not for the first time.
“I’d prefer not to talk about my brothers,” he said even brusquely. “They’re ten years younger than me.”
“All right,” said Ana, feeling confused. Why did it matter that his brothers were so much younger than him? Clearly, she had trod on a sore point. “What about your sisters?”
Grissom hesitated a moment before saying, “I have five sisters. The three oldest are Abigail, Beatrice, and Constance. Of the three of them, Abbie and Connie both have kids. Bea doesn’t, and neither do Ellis or Freddie.”
“Ellis and Freddie are the sisters the same age as you, aren’t they?” asked Ana.
�
��Yes,” said Grissom, and something in him seemed to relax. “Ellis is an ornithologist. She’s always been crazy about birds, so it wasn’t really a surprise when she decided to go to school to study them. Frederica is a lawyer. She’s spent the last few years working on getting a new university complex going for Mermaid County.”
“They sound really smart,” said Ana, impressed. Slanting a sly look sideways at her boyfriend, she asked, “So what happened to you?”
“I’m smart enough to know a good deal when I see one,” he said, giving Ana a look that made her blush hotly. Leaning closer, he murmured in her ear, “Want me to demonstrate?”
“Yes, please,” squeaked Ana and, laughing, Grissom swept her off to become better acquainted with his enormous bed.
There were definitely worse ways to spend an afternoon.
“Hey, honey?” said Grissom the next morning. He gave her hand a little tug. “Have you got a moment? I want to show you something.”
“All right,” said Ana, immediately interested. Grissom’s surprises were usually pretty great.
She let Grissom lead her outside into what on a less grand house would be called the backyard. Ana honestly had no idea what it should be called on a house like Grissom’s. The back gardens, maybe? The back lawn? The outdoor entertainment area?
Regardless, he led her there and gently shooed her into the seat that had been left about a third of the way into the lawn. It was a very big lawn dotted by very big trees. In the distance, Ana could see what looked like an overgrown garden.
Grissom knelt in front of Ana, taking both of her hands in his, and Ana’s focus narrowed to him and him alone. He looked so nervous.
Looking at him, Ana’s heart skipped a beat then did a quick double thump in her chest. Suddenly, it was hard to catch a full breath. Was he going to –?
“Honey,” said Grissom. “There’s something that I have to tell you. Or show you, really.”
So he wasn’t.
It was silly to think that he might. They hadn’t known each other very long. It should be enough that he had obviously started thinking about the future as something that they would do together, possibly in this beautiful house. He wanted to give her an art studio.
But silly as it was, Ana still found herself miserably disappointed that he wasn’t proposing to her. She had thought that all she needed was for him to give her a sign – any sign – that he was gone on her too, but now that she had it, Ana found that she wanted more. She wanted everything, including a marriage proposal from this man and a happily ever after with him.
“Honey?” asked Grissom, and he looked so worried that Ana found a smile for him.
So he wasn’t asking her to marry him. Whatever he wanted to show or tell her was sure to be exciting anyway. Grissom was very good at picking surprises that would delight her. And if it wasn’t a delight so much as an unfortunate fact… well, she knew Grissom. It couldn’t be that bad. Whatever it was, they would deal with it together.
Grissom exhaled a long, slow breath. He didn’t look one bit less nervous, so Ana squeezed his hands.
“I’m sure it’s not that bad,” said Ana, hoping to be encouraging. If anything, her attempt at reassurance only seemed to make Grissom more nervous.
“Just… try not to be scared. I won’t hurt you,” said Grissom, and Ana felt her eyebrows jump. Nothing about Grissom had been ever been scary. Why should he start now?
“I won’t be scared,” promised Ana, and then scowled when Grissom didn’t look reassured. If anything, he looked pained.
“I won’t hurt you,” he repeated, firmly, and Ana discovered that while she still wasn’t frightened for herself, she was starting to be worried for him. Clearly, something was very, very wrong, and he was worried about it.
One last squeeze of her hands, and Grissom stood. He took several steps back, paused, and then took several more. Ana watched him go, baffled.
Grissom stared at her very intently for a long moment, and Ana stared back at him, confused. As she watched, fog began to gather around Grissom. In it, his form stretched, becoming taller, longer… inhuman.
There was an awful ripping sound and shreds of fabric – his clothes – flew in every direction. A ragged scrap of denim landed on her foot and was swiftly kicked away when Ana lurched to her feet, her fear a hard lump in her belly. Ana’s heart was pounding so hard that she could feel it in her throat. She could barely breathe around it.
When the mist cleared, there was a real life, honest to goodness, flesh and blood dragon taking up most of the lawn. The dragon was lying on its – his, Ana belated realized, that’s Grissom – belly with his elbows, for lack of a better word, pressed against either side of his ribcage and his forelegs lying long and straight in front of him. His large, arrow-shaped head was lying on the ground between his forelegs. His back haunches were bunched, his rear legs neatly tucked against the sides of his long body, while the length of his tail was wrapped neatly around him, perhaps in an effort to make himself appear smaller.
It wasn’t working.
He was longer than the length of her apartment. Admittedly, her place was roughly the size of a postage stamp, but still. He probably had teeth that were longer than her too. Grissom’s sheer size was staggering, and every square inch of him was iridescent with scales tinted subtle shades of gray and blue-white and very dark blue.
In a flash, Ana remembered that dress that he liked, the one that always made Grissom half wild when she wore it. In it, she would have matched the gray tones in his scales.
No wonder he liked it so much, thought Ana, feeling off kilter and out of step. Does that count as flirting among dragons?
There was no such thing as a subtle movement when a creature was as big as Grissom currently was. When Grissom shifted his enormous head ever so slightly, it drew Ana’s attention to his face. More specifically, it drew her attention to his eyes. Even though they were now at least as wide as she was tall, they were still the same shape and color. They were still Grissom’s eyes, and the look in them was somehow wretched.
It was only then, when Grissom was looking at her so miserably, that Ana realized how hard she was shaking and how quickly she was breathing. Her pulse was thundering in her ears, too fast for her to count individual beats. She was scared and bewildered, because Grissom was a dragon.
Everyone knew that were-animals existed, but they were supposed to be rare. No one ever thought that anyone actually was one, like for real. But there her boyfriend was: crouched in front of her as a long, scaly dragon.
Why is he even dating me? Ana wondered, her heart breaking. Nothing about me is equal to this.
She still reached out to touch him, though. Ana couldn’t not touch the living, breathing, stunningly beautiful dragon in front of her. He was the most beautiful thing that she had ever seen. And it might be her only chance.
And Grissom let her.
Under her hand, his gorgeous scales were cool and smooth and impossibly soft. It was like petting a stream… or a raincloud, given Grissom’s coloring.
Grissom gently huffed, his cool breath ruffling Ana’s loose hair around her face and shoulders. And then he shifted again, cool scales swiftly becoming smooth skin beneath her palm. A handful of heartbeats later, Ana had her hand pressed to a man’s warm shoulder – a man’s warm, bare shoulder. Grissom was as naked as the day that he was born, his clothes only so many tattered shreds scattered across the lawn.
When Grissom reached out to pull her into his human arms, Ana let him.
“Don’t be scared, honey,” he murmured, his arms tight around her. “It was always me.”
“I know,” mumbled Ana. And she did know. In his arms, she began to relax. “You’d never be that sort of dragon. But you are very big.”
Grissom held her a little tighter.
“I am,” he agreed.
“What kind of dragon are you?”
“A storm dragon,” said Grissom, a little note of pleasure creeping into his voice. “The w
eather – it responds to my moods.”
“Of course you are,” agreed Ana, smiling a little as she remembered his coloring. Storm dragons were useful, and Grissom did like to be of service. It went with his whole serve and protect bit as a detective.
Ana had been worrying in a vague, unfocused sort of way that this whole relationship was too good to be true – that he was too good to be true. And now she knew: it was. He was everything that he had seemed to be and more besides – so much more that Ana couldn’t hope to touch him.
Grissom was a storm dragon. People used to worship storm dragons.
Ana was a two-bit artist who still hadn’t made it big, and since getting her job at the coffee house, her feet always hurt. She barely managed to feed herself every week, and Grissom’s habit of ordering takeout from everywhere that he could think of and then abandoning the leftovers in her refrigerator was a total lifesaver. She wasn’t the sort of person that had any business paling around with a storm dragon.
Ana pushed away from Grissom and all of his warm skin; at least she wasn’t trembling any more.
“Why are you even dating me?” demanded Ana, repeating her earlier thought.
Grissom looked like she had slapped him.
“No seriously,” said Ana, when he just continued to stare at her. She felt wild and savage. She felt like crying. “You’re handsome and kind and brave. You are ridiculously wealthy, and your house is a dream. And you are a mystical being that brings rain! And I’m a mess! I’m barely an artist at all! I work a dead end job! And I live paycheck to paycheck!”
Her eyes were burning hot and prickling with tears by then, but Ana soldiered on.
Her voice wavered only slightly when she said, “You’re so far out of my league that I’d need an oxygen mask to pursue anything real with you! I just – and I’m not – I’ve got to go!”
Ana bolted.
She sprinted around the side of the house – it was a lot further than simply going through Grissom’s house – and down the driveway. Ana was running along the driveway, gravel crunching under her every step, when the first fat drops of rain hit her cheekbone.
Her Detective Dragon_A Paranormal Mystery Romance Page 9
