Page 13 of Dragon Fires Everywhere (Witchlore #4)

I wake up in my bed with no real memory of how I got here. But I can tell I’m in my bed, with my soft down comforter and approximately twelve thousand throw pillows. So warm and cozy, like the sweetest cloud,

that I don’t want to open my eyes and face the day. I want to snuggle in and sleep some more and—

But something moves. And not a warm, fuzzy thing like Octavius.

My eyes fly open, and Azrael is right there beside me.

His eyes are closed, his breathing even. He’s asleep.

In my bed.

Next to me.

I scramble up and out of bed so fast, I trip over my nightstand. The crystals and books littered on the surface shake and

rattle, some of them even clattering across the hardwood floor.

Azrael opens one eye. Then the other. “Are you always so loud in the morning?” he asks sleepily.

From my bed. My bed. Where I slept.

With him?

I have no words. The last thing I remember from the night before is another wild, joyous free-wheeling ride through the cloudy night. I cast my mind around, but I don’t really remember coming back. Did I fall asleep mid-flight?

Am I hallucinating my entire life?

Because how did we end up in bed together? How am I in pajamas ? I know I was tired, but...

Azrael is regarding me with a smug kind of interest. And there’s something about his smugness that has me straightening.

I’m overreacting. He’s a dragon. He doesn’t understand boundaries. I should explain them to him.

Like a parent to a toddler. Maybe if I do, I will start reacting to him like that and less like... this .

But my voice still doesn’t want to work.

With ease and grace, he moves out of my bed and around it toward me. My instinct is to scramble back, but all that smug helps me hold my ground.

Give him a firm, fair scolding . Explain the overstep, and set a boundary he is not allowed to cross. “Azrael. This is my bed. My room. And—”

“Of course it is,” he agrees, moving past me. But he doesn’t do so without touching me. His hand trails down my spine as he passes, and it’s not sexual —even if my body has a reaction —it’s... affectionate. The kind of thoughtless gesture I see Jacob and Emerson give each other.

But not the kind of careless gestures Emerson and I give each other. The affection isn’t friendly . It’s intimate.

It’s inappropriate , I assure myself.

“I’m starving ,” he says, already halfway out the door. “Do you think we can have some of those cinnamon rolls you’re always on about?”

I could run after him and try my hand at scolding him, but I don’t. I stand where I am. Breathe. Then pick up my crystals

and attempt to move through my morning ritual, a little too aware that my panic isn’t because I don’t want to wake up with him.

It’s more that I know that when I do, after a longer night I can remember fully, that will be that.

It’s that recognition. It’s that ache. It’s a sense of finality that goes along with that finally I felt when I saw him take form.

It’s fate , I think.

It makes me shiver. It makes me wonder. It makes me question my sanity—but only when he’s not in front of me.

And I certainly want to remember what happens between us once it does.

Tonight we’ll sit down, no midnight rides, and discuss the boundaries of my room, my space, my bed . Maybe if I give him rules, I’ll feel more in control of this thing that already feels as if it’s been forever. When it’s been two nights, two long days, and this morning.

I could ask him about it. I know he feels it too. But I don’t want that.

It’s like I know that if I do, there will be no going back.

Not that I want to go back. But I don’t know that I’m ready to give up the option, either.

Today, however, we have Small Business Saturday to help with. I pick up some amazonite I got in Australia and put on my bracelet

made of blue lace agate that I may have once told spell-dim Emerson was my version of a wristwatch. We made our own fun in

those dark days. Today the stones are for communication and patience, which I’m going to need in spades. And not just for

demanding shop customers.

When I make it to the kitchen, Azrael is the only inhabitant, but a large breakfast spread has been left behind. Though I

think, based on the amount of plates and food in front of him, that Azrael has made quite the dent.

I grab my own plate. There are indeed cinnamon rolls, so I take two and some coffee and sit down at the kitchen table. Across from Azrael, rather than next to him. I think this will offer a better mode of communication.

What are we communicating?

I frown at him. He shouldn’t be all up in my thoughts like this. Another boundary we will need to discuss. Tonight , I think firmly. Tonight I will figure out how to handle this. Him.

Me , something in me whispers.

“I’m going to Ellowyn’s shop this morning to help out,” I tell him. Firmly. “Tea & No Sympathy gets more traffic in the mornings,

and always does a booming business this weekend. Then Rebekah will take my place, and I’ll head over to Confluence Books to

help Emerson.”

He eyes the last cinnamon roll on the platter. “I can’t wait.”

“Azrael, you have to stay put.”

But he takes his time eating the cinnamon roll, clearly reveling in it , and though I have always loved a cinnamon roll myself, his enjoyment is almost—

I shake that off. And have to blow out a breath to settle myself.

“I thought the entire point of the spell last night was so that I did not have to stay put,” he says.

“We don’t know if it worked.”

He regards me with steady onyx eyes, the gold threads gleaming. “Yes, we do.”

I look down at my plate. “Look. I’m not saying you have to stay hidden in the house forever, but I think it’s best if you’re

careful. You... you need some better understanding of how the witch world works before you go dragon-stomping through it.”

“I am part of your coven, Georgina. I am part of your life.” That seems to sound inside me, deep. Maybe it rings in both of

us, this breathless inevitability that I have wanted my whole life—but not right now . Maybe that’s why he softens. “I was part of the witching world long before you. Perhaps you do not understand since the

memory of magical creatures has been wiped away, but it is rude to treat us like something to hide.”

I look at him, feeling somehow both contrite and offended. “You know perfectly well that I’m being safe , not rude.”

“I know nothing of the kind. Besides, if the ruse is I’m a human who followed you home from England in a desperate love stupor,

shouldn’t people start seeing us together?”

Then he smiles at me.

And in that smile, I know I’m toast. There’s no way to argue with it. Not when it dances and shimmers inside of me the way it does, and I could feign ignorance...

But it’s real. This is happening. He is waiting. I am resisting .

It feels like a dance, and one I know the steps to, though I shouldn’t.

“Want to dance?” he asks me now, his voice a temptation and fire in his eyes.

I do. Oh, how I do.

But instead, not dancing is how I leave Wilde House with a dragon in tow. We walk to Tea & No Sympathy down the length of Main Street, which is bustling

today. It snowed early this morning, just enough to give everything a festive dusting that makes St. Cyprian look like a snow

globe. I catch glimpses of the gleaming winter river through the alleyways that lead from town to the riverbank. Every time

I see the glimmer of the water, I slow.

It feels like it’s trying to tell me something in a whisper, in a song. Impart some wisdom. But if so, it’s just out of reach.

I want to reach for it. I can feel a longing in me—

A crow caws from its perch on one of the stores, and it jerks me away from that sound.

“What are you looking at?”

I drag my gaze from the water to Azrael. “Just communing with the river.”

He frowns at me, and I get the strangest feeling there’s concern in the way his eyebrows draw together. But I keep marching forward. I don’t have time for river riddles today.

My dragon is riddle enough as it is.

St. Cyprian is out in force this cold, bright morning, streaming in and out of shops decked out for the holiday season. Once

again, I get the kind of attention I never did before this year. Everyone makes sure to smile and say hello, like they’re

trying to curry favor. This must be what it’s been like to be Emerson all these years.

And I keep waiting for someone to point at Azrael and reveal him. I don’t know how anyone could look at Azrael and think he’s

anything other than pure magic. A big, powerful dragon wrapped in a ridiculously hot male human form that I can’t believe

people don’t see straight through.

But I can tell as we pass people on the street—witches and humans alike—that no one looks at him and thinks dragon . They do think hot . I stop counting the second glances and flirtatious smiles when I pass fifty.

And no, I don’t like that at all.

“You’ll need a human name,” I say to him, maybe a little more forcefully than necessary, when a pack of women literally blocks

the bricks to gape at him. “I’m sure the Joywood know your real name, and we don’t want them to make that connection. We don’t

want them to think much of you at all. So it needs to be something boring.”

He is smiling at three octogenarian witches who cast little sparkler spells at him, all googly-eyed, then turns that smile

on me. “I am never boring, Georgina.”

I ignore the smile. “ Nigel is kind of a British name.”

He makes a scoffing noise.

“Edmund?”

“That sounds like someone I would eat.”

We go back and forth, not coming to any agreement as we reach Tea & No Sympathy.

The shop is packed, which is a good sign, but after I weave through the crowd with Azrael prowling along behind me, I get to Ellowyn at the cash register, and she looks like she might start breathing fire on every single customer in her shop.

She sees me, and her eyes narrow. “I want to commit multiple murders,” she announces, loud enough that quite a few customers

hear.