Nora did her best to pay attention. She wanted to know these things about her new clan. But she didn’t want to deny herself the pleasure of Niall’s company either. His strong hands were turning her on, and she wanted to peel his professorial outfit off of his gorgeous body. She wanted to lie naked with him in front of the fire and kiss his handsome face. Nothing was more important than that.
Fallon was still talking, though, and she also didn’t want to lose her new friend.
“We’ve got a hotel room reserved in Galway at the end of the Christmas holiday,” Fallon said. “We can get the important stuff done before you go back to school. We scoped out the dress boutiques online. Can you meet us there on Friday—three weeks from today—or should we pick you up?”
Nora did not have a driver’s license. They’d never owned a car in the coven, and she was in Russia during the years she might have learned to drive. She needed to add that to her list of things to do. She did not want Niall to have to drive her everywhere.
“I can get a taxi,” she said.
“Absolutely not. We’ll come get you. We’re going to rent a big SUV.”
She choked on a moan as Niall’s hand slid between her legs and skimmed over her lacy panties. She sat up and pressed her lips to his neck. “Fallon. I have to go.”
Fallon laughed low in her throat. “I understand. Enjoy your evening. We’ll see you soon.”
24
Niall
Saturday mornings were now Niall’s favorite day of the week. In the past, he’d dreaded Saturdays. They were long, cold, and lonely. He’d craved the routine that the weekdays offered. But now that Nora lived with him, he cherished getting to stay in bed with her all day long.
Tomorrow was the first day of their shared Christmas holiday, and they had plenty of time to do whatever they liked, which he hoped included enjoying the surprise he’d planned for them.
The following morning, Niall kissed the back of her neck as they snuggled in bed. “I have a surprise for you,” he said. He loved snuggling with her in bed, but if everything went according to plan, they would be getting up and getting dressed soon.
“Oh, really?” She turned over in his arms. “What’s it for? No one has ever given me surprises before.”
“It’s to celebrate our engagement.” He kissed her nose. “And I’ll give you surprises for the rest of our lives.”
Her eyes watered, and she blinked a few times. She dabbed at them with the shite. “That sounds lovely.”
He pulled her closer. “Who would’ve thought when I walked into my first hour of geography class that I would meet the love of my life?”
“And who would’ve thought that my dragon shifter professor would end up being the man I married?”
He reached into the nightstand. He handed her a photograph of a vibrant blue sky. White buildings dotted the side of a cliff, which overlooked a cerulean sea. She rolled onto her back and held the photo over her head. “I could stare at this all day. Where is it?”
“Santorini, Greece. I booked us a place there.”
She sat up and stared at the photograph more closely. “I’ve never been to Greece.”
“It’s spectacular. The cliffs would be perfect for soaring if we wouldn’t be seen immediately. So it’s not the best place for shifting, but it’s the most beautiful place in the world, outside of the Cliffs of Moher.”
She looked over at him. “Where are the best places for shifting? I need to know these things now that I’m going to be a part of the clan.”
He agreed. He wasn’t going to pressure Nora, not yet, but one day, he hoped to have a son or a daughter that would need to practice soaring. The Texas dragons had already alluded to that. According to them, Niall and Nora’s baby would be a dragon shifter and would have all the perks and traits that came along with that set of genes.
“Nova Scotia. Venezuela. The Pacific Northwest. Portugal. Chile,” Niall said. “The brothers said there’s a remote island they visit every few months. They can shift freely there because it’s uninhabited. They invited us to go with them. If you want to, you can ride on my back while I’m shifted.”
“I would love that.” So far, she’d only gotten to fly with him when they took that piece of trash Maxim back to Russia. “When do we leave for Greece?”
He propped himself up on one elbow and studied her. “Right now. If you’d like.”
She grinned. “Let me guess. Kellan is sending the jet.”
“Yes, Kellen insisted that we use his private plane at least twice a year.”
“It seems so indulgent,” Nora said with a little laugh.
“If you’re not comfortable, we don’t have to use it. We can get two regular plane tickets.” He kissed her nose again. “And we don’t have to go. We can stay here and enjoy ourselves.”
He appreciated that Fallon had been looking out for Nora and making sure the wedding plans weren’t too overzealous. Their now-American clan members were boisterous, and they made big plans. For someone like Nora, who’d grown up with a very different way of life, he assumed it could be a lot to handle.
She stood up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “It is our engagement. I think I can be indulged this one time. And I do want to go, very much. I’ve never been to Greece.”
“As of tonight, you won’t be able to say that anymore.”
“I thought about renting a house, but I decided to go with this,” he said, pushing open the door of a spectacular hotel room.
He had rented a suite in a luxury hotel overlooking the Aegean Sea. The walls were all white, and the floors were real wood. All the windows were wide open, and the white curtains billowed in the breeze. He lifted her into the air in a bridal carry. “It’s not our honeymoon, but I still want to carry you over the threshold.”
She threw her head back and laughed. “It’s practice.”
He spun her around once and then placed her back on the floor.
They spent the first two days lying on the balcony. The next day she pulled out a tour guide. “I want to travel while we’re here, not just lie on the beach.”
“That sounds good,” Niall said. “We could go north and cross the border.”
“I would love that. We can visit Macedonia, Albania, and Turkey.”
So they did. After they got their fill of staring directly into the sparkling Aegean Sea, they started traveling. In the previous days, they had visited Istanbul. Getting through customs was a pain, but it wasn’t difficult.
The next day they flew to Skopje, Macedonia. They spent a glorious day exploring the city. They visited the ancient Kale Fortress that overlooked the Vardar River and spent hours learning the history of a city that was thousands of years old.
By the time all the museums closed, they were ready to head back to Santorini to spend a few days lying around in the sun and staring lazily at the pool and the ocean. Instead of flying, though, they’d decided to take the train back so that they could enjoy all of the sights of the Greek countryside. It would take nine hours, but it would be worth it.
As they approached the line of people waiting to buy train tickets, Nora grabbed Niall’s arm and squeezed. “Stop.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Someone’s here.”
Immediately he went stiff. “Someone like who?”
“Someone like us.”
He looked around the building but saw nothing out of the ordinary. “A witch? A vampire? A dragon shifter? Can you tell which it is?” He hoped to God it wasn’t a werewolf.
Nora closed her eyes. Her skin seemed to glow as she concentrated.
He took her passport from her hand and held it. She was too out of it to pay attention. But now that he was still, Niall could feel it too. In fact, he should have been aware of it earlier. One of the Macedonian border guards was a dragon shifter. He knew because dragon shifters could feel each other’s presence.
The intensity of the feeling seemed to vary, depending on proximity and the relationship of the sh
ifters. The sensation was close to the same feeling he got when the Texas dragons were nearby, but this sense of awareness was not as strong as the one he got from them. Maybe it was because he’d never met this dragon. Or maybe because the Texas dragons had been part of his original clan, the clan he was born into.
Without warning, a low rumble started in his chest. He bared his teeth.
Mine, his dragon said. Stay back.
Nora looked up at him in alarm. “Niall. What’s wrong?”
Caught off guard by his reaction, he stopped growling at once. He’d been reacting to the presence of an unknown male shifter near his mate. This wasn’t his territory, and the other dragon had every right to be here and to do his job. But Niall’s dragon didn’t like it. Niall would try to handle this rationally, as he did everything else in his life, but his instinct was to grab Nora and run.
“There’s a dragon shifter here. It’s a male. And my very primal reaction to that is to view him as a threat and get you out of here.” He smiled. “Or challenge him.”
Nora’s mouth dropped open. “So you feel hostile toward him? Because I’m here?”
“Yes. Very much so. It’s an instinct to protect you as my mate. It was swift and immediate. But don’t worry. I can control it if you want to stay.”
“But you never felt threatened by the Texas dragons,” she said.
“They are clan members. Some of my earliest memories include them, and they’re all mated. But this male shifter is completely unknown to me.”
“Is he mated? Can you tell?” she asked.
“I have no way to objectively know that, but my dragon’s reaction is telling me he’s unmated.”
She looped her arm through his. “So, a potentially unmated, male dragon shifter, one that you’ve never met before, is working here at the border between Greece and Macedonia.”
“Right.”
“That’s unusual, right? Macedonia is landlocked.”
“We can survive anywhere. The Texas crew picked the place they thought no one would look for them. And they were right. Yes, it’s unusual. In fact, Brynne has made it a goal to search Europe to find others who might be living alone without a clan like she was. She’s planning to start in France, near their cliffs, but maybe she needs to come here first.”
“Or we could try to meet him,” Nora offered.
Niall nodded. “We could.”
Niall wrapped his arm around her and focused. His eyes flew open. He knew exactly where the shifter was now. He stood near the customs window. He wore a navy blue uniform, he was armed with a large, semi-automatic weapon, and his expression was set in stone.
He looked to be about twenty-five, and he was tall and broad, with dark hair and eyes and olive skin. He looked like a few of the shifters Niall had met in Portugal. Could he be related to them?
Is that him? Nora sent the message directly to his mind.
Niall nodded. That was definitely him.
“Let’s introduce ourselves,” Nora said.
He nodded again.
Hand in hand, they approached the guard. Niall did not speak any Slavic languages, but Nora spoke Russian, and Niall spoke French. However, Niall could also speak Portuguese.
“Olá,” Niall said. He was going to take a gamble with this. “Meu nome é Niall.”
The guard’s eyes widened. Niall knew how Irish he looked, with his pale skin, his bright blue eyes, and his reddish-brown hair, not to mention his name. But he was hoping the guard would see beyond his human characteristics and rough Portuguese and notice the dragon hidden inside.
The dragon did not respond. He only gritted his teeth and looked away. Maybe to try in Portuguese was wrong. He’d try English next, and then Nora could try Russian.
“Hello. My name is Niall. We’d like to talk to you, if you have a minute.”
The guard sneered. “I am not here to answer questions.”
Jackpot. His accent sounded faintly of the students Niall had known in Portugal.
“Do you have a break coming up soon? We’d like to talk.”
The sneer deepened. “Please step away now.”
Niall dealt with college students all day. He could tolerate a lot. “Are there others here? Like us?”
“I do not know what you want,” the guard said. “Would you like me to arrest you?”
Nora was apparently done with the charade. “You know as well as I do that you’re not going to arrest us. So calm down.”
The guard’s eyes hardened.
“Davi, please talk to us,” Nora said.
His grip on his gun tightened. “How did you know my name?”
Niall looked at his mate. He wondered the same thing. The guard’s name was not on his uniform, but Davi was definitely a Portuguese name, which made Niall even more determined not to give up on this young dragon shifter.
I don’t know. I can’t read minds, but I was able to see the paperwork in his wallet, she said to Niall mentally.
Well, that was a new skill and could be quite useful, although he didn’t want her to tell anyone else in case they wanted to use it for their own advantage.
She put her hand on Davi’s arm. “I’ll tell you if you’ll come talk to us.”
“Leave now, or I will escort you out.”
Niall really didn’t want to end up in a foreign prison, and he said so out loud, but Nora shook her head. “He’s not going to have us arrested. He’s curious. I can feel it.”
Davi moved then. He grabbed Niall by the arm and started walking, but he didn’t touch Nora, which made Niall think he understood the situation perfectly well. If he’d laid his hand on her, then he’d have found himself a few hundred feet away with his ass on the ground because Niall would not tolerate anyone touching her. If Niall moved against him, he’d have to be smart about it. Bullets wouldn’t hurt him, but they could harm Nora.
Davi alone was no threat to Niall, though, so he let himself be led, and Nora followed along. He pushed them outside the door. Other passengers stopped to stare, probably wondering if they’d committed a crime.
“Do not come back here, or you will be arrested.” He patted his gun in what might have been a menacing way if they were human.
Nora reached up and put her hand on his cheek. “You know you can’t arrest us. We wouldn’t allow ourselves to be put in a cell, just like you wouldn’t go to a human jail.”
He froze. “What do you mean, a human jail?”
“We can’t talk here. Meet us at Kaj Seradot when your shift is over. We’ll sit outside and eat barbecue, then tell you all about ourselves.”
He nodded once and disappeared through the doors.
25
Nora
“Tell me now. I want to know why you said these things about not being human,” the guard said, looming over them.
While they had waited for Davi to show up, Niall and Nora had ordered quite a bit of food. Their outdoor table was filled with chicken kabobs, sharska burgers, and fries with feta cheese. The street was alive with tourists and residents alike. Everyone was jovial—except Davi.
Niall couldn’t feel any deception from the young shifter, just desperation. Was it possible that he didn’t know what he was? How could that happen?
Nora pushed a cup of Turkish coffee toward him. “Drink that. And think. Have you ever noticed that you’re stronger than others? That you don’t get injured? That when your coworkers sneeze and cough, you don’t get sick?”
Davi stared at the table. “Yes,” he said quietly. “How did you know?”
“Because we’re not human either. And Niall is like you.”
“What am I?” he asked.
“You’re a dragon shifter,” Nora told him.
He shoved back in his chair so forcefully that he almost knocked the table over. “What is this madness?” He pointed at her. “You. You are a witch.”
“Yes.” Nora nodded. “I am a witch.”
This time he stood up, cursing in a language she didn’t recognize.
She waved her hand at the chair he’d nearly knocked over. “Davi, sit back down. If you don’t know where you come from, we can help.”
“How?” Davi demanded. “How can you help me? How do you know what I am?”
“We all know our own kind.” Nora put her hand on the table, close to his, but she didn’t touch him. “Close your eyes. Focus on Niall. Think about how he feels different to you than me.”
Davi listened, finally, thank God. Several minutes passed, and then his eyes flew open. He swallowed roughly a few times. His voice was a hoarse whisper. “I can feel it. There’s something different there. I have no memory of feeling it before.”
Under the table, Niall grabbed Nora’s hand. They were getting through to him.
“So you didn’t know that you were a dragon shifter?” Nora asked.
Davi shook his head. “No. I had no idea why I was different.”
Nora wondered how that could be. Was it amnesia? Brain damage? A curse? A spell gone wrong?”
“Who raised you?” she asked. “Humans?”
“I don’t know. I have no memory of being a child.”
Niall looked at Nora. That was not good. Even the vampires didn’t toy with Brynne’s memory when they raised her.
“What do you remember?” Niall asked.
“I remember waking up in Austria. I had an ID card that said my name was Davi Santos and that I was twenty years old. I knew that I spoke Portuguese, English, and French.” He looked down at the table. “And I knew that I was different.”
“That was five years ago?” Nora asked.
Davi nodded, still not looking up. “Yes.”
Nora understood loneliness and despair, but at least she’d known where she came from. She might have wanted to know who her father was, but at least she knew her birthplace. She rejected her mother’s teachings, but that was better than having a huge blank space where her past should be.
Professor Dragon's Virgin (Irish Dragon Shifter Brothers Book 5) Page 11
