Page 24 of Nine-Tenths

Chapter Nineteen

I turn off the alarm, annoyed it’s morning already. Everything aches in the best way possible, and I think I love you again. I should say it. But then he'll kiss me, and neither of us have brushed our teeth yet.

"I've made a terrible mistake," Dav says, haunted and miserable.

"I will kick you off the side of the bed if you mean the sex."

Dav's eyes pop. "Of course not!"

"I figured." I kiss the tip of his nose because it's there.

Dav reels me in, mouth going to the hickey he left on my neck. Someone else is trying to rise to the occasion, but we honestly don't have time. I peel back and try to will away my semi. Shower sex only really works in romance novels, much to my disappointment.

Of course, because this is my stupid life, the brain weasels strike as soon as my feet are on the floor. "Did you roast the beans to make me think I owed you—?"

Dav grabs my hand. "Never that. Hoarding is in my nature, but not by deceitful means."

"Okay." I try to let go of the fear I didn't realize I was holding onto until just then.

Dav scoots out of bed. "I did it because I wanted to make you laugh." He shakes away the haunted look that crosses his face. "I don’t regret it, but I–"

"Hey," I say. "It’s nothing huge, just some beans, right?"

"Right," he echoes, but I can tell his heart isn’t in it.

"Coffee."

"Coffee." He follows me into the kitchen as placidly as a duckling.

Buck-naked coffee can be a thing, right?

Right.

"The problem is, I should have stopped with peacocking for you," he mumbles into my neck, plastering himself to my back as I conscript my French press into service. "I knew it, and I did it anyway."

Turns out I'm not the only one sporting some morning glory. Well. Hadi can't be mad if we're a little late. After all, it's Dav's last day. As we wait for the kettle to boil, I turn and push Dav just back far enough to give me room. He grabs the edge of the sink as I kneel.

He reaches down, one hand cupping my cheek.

"It’s worth it, though. I love you," Dav says, simple and honest.

Dammit!

The fucker beat me to it.

Hadi is putting in a double batch of scones when Dav and I slink in.

"You don't have to be here." She points at Dav.

He’s already rolling up his sleeves to show off his delicious, delicious forearms.

"The roaster hasn’t arrived. Until then, someone is required to turn the crank." He's bouncing on his toes, already getting things set up, quick and efficient, like he's been doing it this way the whole time. He's humming.

"Turn down the sunshine, Prince Charming," Hadi snipes. "If I didn't know any better I'd say you—" she turns to look at me and squinches her face. "Ugh. Okay, congrats. Yay orgasms."

"I'm gonna go hide in the front now," I say around my own sunshine smile.

I'm most of the way through prep when the door chimes. A group of maybe half a dozen people come inside, and I curse myself for forgetting to lock the door behind us.

"I'm pretty sure the sign says 'closed', folks.

" I duck around the counter, and smash into some sort of invisible…

something. The sheer force of the people entering the café makes me stumble.

You know the way humid air slaps your lungs as soon as you leave an air-conditioned building?

It's like that, but in reverse. Every atom feels magnetized, like I need to grab the counter to keep from being sucked toward them. There's just so much… presence .

Dragons, I realize immediately. A whole goddamn congregation of them.

They're trying so hard to look harmless, but their effort is laughable. Dav’s draconic magnetism feels like subtle charm. This feels like a bludgeon.

They're all wearing bland suits, with some sort of crest embroidered on the front pockets.

Each symbol is different, but they're all cupped by what looks like film festival laurels, held together at the bottom with three maple leaves and a stylized lick of fire.

The people are equally bland, with varying degrees of brown-to-blonde hair and flame-shaded eyes.

Except for Pedra, standing glumly in the back of the crowd, looking like she wants to say something, but is too scared to speak up.

"Are you the man in these photos?" one of them asks.

He's round-faced, aggressively clean-shaven, with the kind of dark, nondescript hair sported by office workers on TV.

There's disgust on his face, which is frankly offensive.

He's holding up a phone, and it's displaying the pic Hadi took, where I'm looking at Dav like he hung the stars.

Bitch better not be a homophobe. I square myself up, doing my best to block their progress into the café. I glance at Pedra, trying to gauge what the fuck is going on, but she won't meet my eye.

"Yeah, that's me but—" The sound of the kitchen door slamming open cuts me off.

"Your Excellency," Dav says from the threshold, and if I didn't know Dav as well as I do, I'd call his tone civil. Now? I'd call it downright frosty.

The man with the phone taps the embroidery on his chest, the emblem of a hand holding a dagger. Dav pulls a lapel pin with a similar design from his waistcoat pocket and pins it on pointedly. The symbol in the middle of Dav's laurels is unmistakably a Tudor Rose.

I've never seen this pin before.

Hadi is standing out behind the counter now, watching with a silent and stony expression. I don't know what Dav told her in the kitchen before he banged out to defend my honor, but it must have been serious. Pedra slides to the side of the group, eyes bouncing between me and Dav.

"Is this him?" what’s-his-nuts asks Dav, staring straight through me, as if I haven't already answered.

"I haven't told him a thing," Dav says.

"I don't understand—" I start.

"And let's leave it that way," the guy interrupts.

"Excuse you," I interrupt right back. "You can't talk to my boyfriend like that, buddy. I don't care who you are."

"I am your Lieutenant Governor," he snaps, ember-dark eyes blazing, and yeah, this dude is a dragon . Dav seems human, until you realize he isn't. This dude… no way you'd ever mistake him for anything but what he is. "As you fall under my control, I hereby order you to stay silent ."

I'm such a goddamned idiot. Lieutenant Governor Francis Simcoe. Right. This is who I'm mouthing off to.

So what?

He's made Dav— my boyfriend , I'd just called him that out loud and we haven't even had the conversation about what we are to one another, so there's me jumping ahead again, shit —upset.

"Fuck you!" I snap back. "I don't belong to anyone but me!"

"Oh, don't you?" He offers me an amused, predatory grin. "That's good to hear." He turns a flinty, superior look on Dav.

I expect my dragon to spit fire, or bluster, or come around the corner and dip me in a kiss. Something possessive. Something to prove to everyone in this weird too-polite stand-off, that I do belong to someone, and that someone is him.

That, after all my protests, he actually is my dragon.

He loves me.

He said so.

"Colin… please. Hush," Dav says instead. He's moving slowly, coming around the counter, but not toward me. He's walking right past the other dragons (holy shit, we're infested with royalty) to stand in front of Pedra.

She cringes and jams her hands into her pockets.

"I didn't know," she says. "I took the beans to a lab and they called—" she gestures to the suits. "I didn't know ."

"I'm not angry with you," Dav says gently. He turns to face the Lieutenant Governor, standing between Pedra and the other dragon, almost like a… claim.

For the first time, there's a corona of red around Dav’s pupils.

His hard gaze looks alien. And I'm not going to show how much this surprises me, I'm not taking a step back, because that's my motherfucking boyfriend right there, who loves me, and I am not gonna look scared of him— be scared of him—in front of people who've treated him as expendable.

"Stand down, Alva," Simcoe says.

Dav bristles.

"Lord, your temper ," Simcoe chuckles with a self-satisfied smirk.

I want to punch him. And I'm upset enough not to think about what might happen to me if I do manage to punch Lieutenant Governor Francis Simcoe, representative of Elizabeth Regina in her colony and effectively the power behind the human Prime Minister.

He'd probably rip my hand off at the wrist and eat it for daring to touch him.

"It wasn't supposed to go this far," Dav growls softly.

"You always say that, my friend, and then it always does."

"I've stopped."

"Damn straight you have."

"There's no need for—"

"I say what there is a need for!" Simcoe roars.

Dav snaps to a swift attention, legs together, chin and chest thrust out. The only thing missing is the salute. Silence descends—heavy, fearful, angry, and shamed.

I want to scream.

I want to stand between Dav and these people who are supposed to be his family, but speak to him like he's a criminal.

Instead I fidget, sliding my hands into my back pockets, shifting from side to side, filled with energy I can't, I won't lash out with.

I don't know what the hell is going on. And knowing me and my comedic karmatic butterfingers, anything I do right now will probably make it worse.

"You never learn , Alva," Simcoe says at length, like he's talking to a kid with a disappointing report card. "Your foolish idealism has gotten the better of you again."

Dav’s chin drops. "You can't compare Colin to her."

"I'm not the one doing so."

Dav sucks in a sharp breath, like he's been slapped.

What the fuck is happening.

I wish I could ask. I wish I could take Dav's hand, squeeze it, show him I’m here, beside him in the shit, like I promised. There's a power struggle happening here that I can't fathom, and if Dav wants to make a statement about who we are to each other, I have to let him make the first move.

He raises his head, finally, meeting the impassive, unimpressed gaze of each of the dragons around the room, one by one. Dav looks to Simcoe last. Simcoe clucks his tongue impatiently.

"Colin," Dav says slowly, softly. "I left something in the Murder Basement."

I know an excuse when I hear it, but I'm not stupid enough to say so out loud.

Dav and I make our way to the door, uninterrupted but watched. I get the creepy feeling that someone is about to shoot out a sticky tongue to reel me back and chomp me up.

"What did you leave?" I whisper, when we're in Hadi’s office. It's creepy as heck with the lights off. Dav closes the door and we’re suddenly in absolutely pitch black. At least to my human eyes.

"It's not something I have left." He crowds me against the desk. "It's something I'd like to leave."

"What?" I ask, following the sound of his voice, the direction of his warmth. The cold worry that has been churning in my guts frosts into my extremities, solidifying into shards of fear in my blood, racing like shrapnel toward my heart. "You said you might be in trouble, but I didn't expect—"

"Nor I," he admits, breathless, harried. "But I ought to have."

"What did you want to leave?" I ask. "Something you think will upset them? Or—"

"This. Colin I—" His hands scoop under my ass and in an impressive show of draconic strength, I'm suddenly sitting on the desktop and he's sliding in between my knees, mouth on mine.

The kiss is…

Holy shit, now this is a kiss.

It's wet, and it's filthy.

He's got one hand on my chin and another on the crown of my head, holding my face up, holding me still so he can dip his forked tongue into my mouth.

"Mmph!" I say into his own mouth, because he's not letting me up for air.

Honestly, I could get on board with this. There's jerks upstairs and we're totally making out, but you know what? If Dav wants to keep kissing me like this until I pass out from lack of oxygen, I am a-o-fucking-kay with that.

I reach up to tangle my hands in his hair, urge him to kiss harder, deeper. I tilt my head back, make it as clear as I can with lips, and teeth, and tongue, and breath, and heartbeat, and skin, that I'm here for him. That I am all his, no matter what he has to say to the pricks upstairs.

And then, just as I'm getting into the swing of things, he's gone. He's eeled out of my arms and out the door so fast I'm dizzy.

A dull prick against the inside of my wrist makes me jump. When I turn on the light, I can see what's jabbing me. His lapel pin, with its ominous sigil, is stuck under the band of my watch. I must have accidentally skimmed it right off his waistcoat when I reached up.

I wobble up the stairs.

The front of the café is empty, save for Hadi, and she's sitting on one of the sofas looking absolutely wrecked. When I say empty, I mean empty . There isn't a single bean in the place. The glass canisters are barren, the mason jars are missing. Even the compost bin is gone.

"What happened?" I pant. I know my mouth is bitten-red, and my hair is mussed, and the front of my jeans isn’t sitting exactly flat, but that’s not why she’s so shaken.

"They're gone."

"Good fucking riddance. Bunch of uptight pricks." I say, then stare in horror at the growing queue of customers. "Shit, though. How are we supposed to make coffee?"

"I think that's literally the least of what they care about."

"We’ll ask the customers to come back tomorrow." This is Hadi's livelihood we're talking about. I can be mad at the self-important royal assholes later. Right now we gotta get the beans going so they have enough time to cool. "Come on, we roast more. Is Dav already in the kitchen?"

"Is he…?" Hadi pulls herself to her feet, coming over to me, stumbling like she's seen a ghost.

"Dav! Start up the roaster, babe!"

"Colin," Hadi says, grabbing my elbows. "Colin!"

"What?" I ask, looking over my shoulder for my boyfriend. "Dav!"

" Colin !" Hadi shakes me once, hard enough to get my attention, expression grim. "You're not listening . They’re gone. "

My heart flops, my stomach flips, and the world under my feet lurches.

"Gone," I repeat, as the smile falls off my face. I take a step away, and Hadi lets me go. Every breath judders behind my ribs, like a knife skidding along bone when someone stabs you sloppily. "That's… I don't…"

"They told him to go with them and he went," Hadi says softly. "There was a limo parked out front, and he got in it, and they drove away."

The pastry cabinet is cool against my back when I slide down onto the floor.

"Oh. Oh ," I hiss, insides churning. "Oh, fuck."

The thing he wanted to leave behind was me .