Chapter Eight
Present day
S ard moaned. His chest throbbed with a dull ache. Hours had passed since he’d lost consciousness. How cruel of his pursuers to capture him, knock him out, and leave him in this painful state. He muttered, “At least give me numbing spray or a tranquilizer.”
“Best I can do is baby Tylenol and a Band-Aid,” Julie said with her usual invigorating harshness.
His stomach flipped. He snapped open his eyes and struggled to focus. Failing that, he rubbed his eyes. Moving his arms pulled on his chest injury, but she must have done something. The laser injury had scabbed over and didn’t hurt sharply anymore.
Julie sat in a rickety wooden chair beside the bed, just like a scene from his dreams. Her dark hair fell thick and wild around her shoulders.
The soft fabric of her off-the-shoulder teal shirt cupped her thick curves, and her snug black leggings encased her shapely legs like a second skin.
Had his company ever exported off-the-shoulder designs?
Humans had such endless creativity, adding twists and bangles and beads to the most innocuous things, and then acting surprised when any dragon pointed out how exceptional they were.
Just like how, two years ago in this very cabin, Julie had acted surprised when his resolve not to touch her had broken and he’d given in to her intoxicating beauty.
A noise in the next room made him sit up, the memories washed away to reality. The copper-scaled baby dragon— Julie’s son, the one she didn’t have with him —tried and failed to stack cans.
Sard brushed his fingers over his injury. He must prepare for war. “I had a healing gel in my pocket.”
“I used it on you already.”
Ah, that explained why his injury didn’t hurt as sharply, but it was unfortunate that it hadn’t done more. Because, in addition to his own pursuers, he now had to think about who would come after Julie. “Your son’s father hasn’t made contact?”
She narrowed her eyes, then leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “So what if he has?”
“He was very foolish leaving you as he did.”
“I’m glad you think so, but honestly, what were you thinking?”
“Me?”
“How could you carry us here in this state? You could’ve passed out on the way and dropped Copper.”
“As a dragonlet, he would have been fine.”
“But I absolutely cannot fly, and I might’ve panicked and dragged him down with me. We could’ve been really hurt, Sard. When did you become so reckless?”
Pain and fury lanced him. “It’s your fault!”
“How?” she demanded, her tone just as tart. As always, she was not at all intimidated by his roar. “Last I checked, I didn’t kidnap myself from my house.”
“I overthrew the empire for you,” he raged. “I signed a new constitution and destroyed the aristocracy so I could finally be with you, and the whole time, you were going off and having your son with another dragon!”
“You were married ,” she threw back. “You tricked me, lied to me, seduced me, and you never even told me you were engaged?—”
“That’s your fault too.”
Her face went white, eyes wide, and she looked like she was about to attack him. “What?”
“I never cared that I’d been engaged since birth until you had to come along and ruin my peace of mind.”
“Well, you never once told me?—”
“Of course I didn’t. I was trying to avoid you, to keep away from you.
You, looking soft and fierce and voluptuous, a perfect female with secret little streaks of color hinting at what other enticements might behidden beneath.
But even when I tried to stay away, you got into my mind like a drug, made me think about you at all hours of the day and night, made me fantasize about peeling off every scrap of fabric and licking every inch of your skin, teasing you and tasting you while you lay beneath me panting, clinging to me and calling my name.
I couldn’t stand it. I lasted until the very final hours, and then you came to me in my moment of weakness when I couldn’t ignore my fate any longer.
I wanted you to drive me into another life.
I wanted to be carried away by you forever. ”
Her mouth closed.
“I shouldn’t have gone with you, I know.
I told myself I would only look at you, not touch, and I would savor the memories for the rest of my life.
But I couldn’t hold out. I was so close to you, your feminine scent and your sweetness, and I couldn’t stand strong.
Savoring your body was even sweeter than any of my fantasies.
For two long years, I returned to this bed in dreams. You dug your nails into my back, lifted your breasts to my hungry mouth, arched with pleasure for my cock.
Even now, knowing that you’ve chosen another dragon to be your husband and father your dragonlets, I cannot stop.
Your scent, the memory of your buttocks filling my palms, you writhing wet and helpless beneath my thrusts invades my mind.
I have lain with your ghost every night since the moment we parted.
You’re the female who made me forget everything I was and the reason I destroyed everything I am. And you chose another male!”
Liquid shimmered in Julie’s beautiful eyes. Something in the other room rattled, but otherwise, it was just the sound of them both breathing, so close now, but still separated by so much wretched distance.
She cleared her throat. “And, um, the chest injury?”
“I left the marriage dissolution meeting too quickly and foolishly rushed here, unable to stay away from you a moment longer. Hurt feelings translated into gunfire.”
She swallowed. “Your marriage dissolved?”
“And you had such a hold on me that I willingly flew through gunfire to be with you just a little bit sooner.” This confession didn’t soothe his feelings.
It just filled him with conviction. He growled, energized all over again.
“Even if you’ve chosen someone else, I would do this.
If you ever need me, I’ll be there. Because, no matter what the world says, I feel in my soul that you are mine. ”
The cabin was very, very quiet.
The rattling sound got louder. Julie suddenly shook herself, stood up so rapidly the chair tipped over, and ran into the other room.
Sard lay back in the bed, concentrating on how he could prepare to fight Copper’s father.
The male was either ridiculously confident or stupid to leave her without a single scrap of protection.
How could he expect a woman like her not to be targeted?
She’d intoxicated Sard, and he was an excellent judge of beauty.
She came back a few minutes later with an old pot, righted the chair, and sat in it. She crossed her legs, rested the pot on an oven mitt on her lap, and blew over a steaming spoonful.
And then, with a little wobble, but as if she’d taken this entire time to think of a response, she said, “That sounds like a ‘you’ problem.”
“You’re irresistible to dragons,” he reminded her.
“I’m only irresistible to you,” she returned.
“Clearly not only me,” he growled, then lay back again with a sigh and closed his eyes. “When I fantasized about coming back here, I didn’t imagine having such circular arguments.”
“Did you fantasize about kidnapping me?”
“Of course, but the dream-you was more enthusiastic about it.”
“What a letdown. Dream-me is such a tease.” Julie smirked and munched on the food.
Sard’s stomach grumbled. “What are you eating?”
“SpaghettiOs. Want some?”
He leaned over and accepted her spoonful. Her eyes sparkled as she watched him eat off her spoon. It made his chest clench. Feeding a mate was such an intimate act, and she was feeding him instead of her real husband…
He would make her become his again!
Unless… His fangs flexed, and he nearly bit the spoon off.
Her brows pulled together, and she snorted. “Look, eat the food, not the spoon. I made two cans.”
“Do you love him?” he asked fiercely, because that was the one thing he couldn’t overcome with sheer determination. “Copper’s father.”
Julie’s movement checked. Her gaze trailed across his form under the blanket to his toes. She took a deep breath and scraped her spoon in the food. “I’m trying not to.”
Another pang hurt him. He wanted to shout at her. Dragons were decisive. Humans were wishy-washy. Their relationships and feelings were needlessly complex. Maybe it was because they lacked the sharp, long incisors. Plenty could be accomplished with a good, hard bite.
Even though it tortured him, he had to know his rival. “What’s he like?”
“Copper’s father? Oh, he’s an idiot”—she stabbed her spoon into the pot—“overflowing with totally unwarranted overconfidence, yet he somehow always manages to pull off whatever it is he’s planning, whether it’s starting a business on an alien planet or overthrowing an intergalactic government, or…
” She straightened and sighed, looking him straight in the eye.
“Making me start to have feelings again after I swore on everything that I wouldn’t. ”
His heart thumped hard. Perhaps he did have a chance. Overconfidence could be exploited. He made his hands into fists, flexed his claws. “So you’re not sure if you fully love this dragon? How is he in a fight?”
She rolled her eyes and stood up, went into the kitchen, and put some ofthe food into a bowl, handed itandthe spoon with his tooth indents over. “I don’t think you should be fighting anyone right now.”
“If you falter in your feelings for him, I will fight to claim you and Copper for?—”
“Quit it.” She waved her hand. “You don’t know what happened after that day you told me never to contact you again. You missed everything. I nearly died in childbirth, by the way.”
His stomach dropped. “That should never happen at a dragon hospital.”
“I wasn’t allowed to go to a dragon hospital.”
“How could your husband?—”
“Focus,” she said sharply. “You had your ‘taste’ of me, which was apparently my fault, and then announced that our relationship ‘had never happened.’ The dragons here are very loyal to you, Sard, so as far as they were concerned, ‘we’ hadn’t happened.
I didn’t get any treatment, any scans, any help.
I had to go to a human hospital, and I almost died. ”
He felt sick. “Because of your dragonlet?”
“I had a condition we call preeclampsia. Humans get it sometimes. It came on suddenly. The dragon hospital turned me away.”
“I was promised that you would be left in peace.” He gritted his teeth, made fists. “They made me cut ties with you publicly, but I didn’t think… What about your husband’s family? Didn’t he have connections? That should’ve overridden?—”
“I’m still here,” she said firmly, cutting off his questions. “But it was hard. When I was lying on the operating table alone, that was one of the many, many times I cried for you, and you weren’t there.”
A hard lump formed in his throat.
Julie sniffed, wiped her face, and took a deep breath.
She let it out slowly. “You weren’t there, and I recovered on my own.
Now I have Copper to think about. I swore to never, ever love you ever again, but it seems I’m weak to a man overthrowing an intergalactic aristocracy on my behalf, so now I have to think about it. ”
Feelings churned through Sard. That was another thing Julie did to him.
Before her, he’d only felt simple emotions.
He’d needed money to gain enough freedom from his family to do the underhanded, subversive things he’d planned, and he’d been furious at the society that had made him an aristocrat.
He knew better than anyone that the “top” rank was a narrow spire and much too easy to fall from.
But after Julie, he’d felt all sorts of new things.
Longing, hunger. He’d felt the fiery pinch of being in the presence of another person who lit his soul with starlight and showed him glimpses of a different kind of life.
He’d felt pounding fear on her behalf, and desperation to do anything to protect her.
Now, he felt recrimination and grief for how his public declaration had damaged her and for all the hardships he’d missed.
He should’ve sheltered her. He should’ve protected her. He should’ve been there.
But he hadn’t been there.
He set aside the bowl and clasped her hands, cool fingers enclosed in his warm ones. “I swear to you that I will be here now.”
Her chin wrinkled. She cleared her throat, shifted on her seat, but didn’t pull her hands away. “You’re still a dragon with wealth and power. Can you really make promises like that?”
“The empire has changed. Nobody cares what I do.”
“The injury on your chest says otherwise.”
He looked down reflexively, grimaced. “That wasn’t the government.”
“So who was it, then? Your ex-wife?”
“My brothers.”
“Your…your brothers?” She cocked her head, totally confused. “Why?”
“My ex-wife’s family elevated our family’s standing. Even after the rebellion, she was much wealthier and older than us. My brothers are angry I ‘let her get away’ and want me to win her back.”
“Will you?”
“Julie.” He managed to rotate out of bed and rest his feet on the cool wooden flooring on either side of her delicate fuzzy slippers.
He captured her hands again, both of them, and rested them against his scarred bare chest. “If I have not made it clear to you, I pledge myself to you in every possible way. You own my heart, my body, and my soul. I came to life because of you, and you are the only female I have ever wanted. So no, I will not chase after another female, no matter who she is. The only one I want, the only one I have ever wanted, is you.”