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Chapter Twenty-Seven

I quit. I had thrown five years of friendship in Hadi’s face, like a complete fuckhead. I have no job to go to. And no reason to be awake.

So why am I awake?

There's no alarm. No one is knocking on the door. Dav closed the curtains. And yet there’s light, right beside my face. Warm, golden light and the soft, gentle sound of birds chirping, and—

"You asshole —" I laugh, bolting up and whacking him with a pillow. "You got a sunrise alarm clock?"

Dav giggles. It’s free and unfettered, and thank god.

Watching the way his eyes squinch and that furrow between his eyes disappear sends desire unspooling down my spine.

When I wind up for another whack, he yanks away the pillow and somehow gets me under him all in the same move and, fuck, yeah .

I trap his waist between my thighs, and leer.

"Are you chafed?" he asks. Wow. A word like chafed should not be sexy. And yet.

"Bit sore," I admit. "But I could go again."

"Best not," Mr. Bossypants Top decides.

His fingers brush idly through the short hair of my nape. I need a haircut. I didn't mind it shaggy before, when it helped hide my face from the paps. But now, laying in this meticulous room, with my carefully groomed boyfriend, (owner? boyfriend ) I feel unkempt.

"How's this instead?" I ask, getting a hand wrapped around both of us. His eyelids flutter. He scrabbles for the lube he'd shoved between the mattress and the headboard last night.

"You're being pretty fucking smug," I point out, neck straining as I lean up to keep my eyes on the prize. Not that he doesn't deserve to be smug.

Dav slips a pillow under my head so my neck won't cramp. "I have everything I've wanted for months. Years, if I'm honest."

One of his hands joins mine, slick fingers twining around us. "Years?"

"How long have I been coming into Beanevolence?"

The name of the café pierces the bubble of joy around my heart like a poisoned dart.

Dav twists his wrist just so when I don’t answer. "Five hundred and thirty seven days."

I snort. "Not like you're counting."

"They weren't all in a row," he protests gently. "That was spread out over, hm, three years? Your schedule changed every semester, and—"

"Stop talking and kiss me, you dork," I groan.

He kisses me. "You started it."

"I know, and, hnnn, I'm regretting it. Just. Yes, like that. Please Dav, like that!"

Like that he does, and pretty soon he's rooting around for something to clean us up with.

It turns out to be a nice soft towel—one of a stack—in his night stand.

"Optimistic, much?" I ask him.

"Prepared," he counters, and reaches across me to turn off the fucking chirping clock.

When he moves to get out of bed, I octopus around him.

"Darling, I do have things to do today," he protests with a laugh.

"I already told you, I'm not a thing ," I joke.

Dav sucks in a breath, clearly not taking it as one.

"It doesn't have to be like they say it is," Dav ventures slowly, sinking back into the mattress.

"What doesn't?"

Dav presses his other hand briefly over the side of my chest, right above my nipple, where the lapel pin would be if I were wearing my blazer. "We can let them think it, but we'd know differently."

"The point isn't that we know differently.

" I roll over to blanket his body, covering him from knees to nose, twining my fingers between his.

He lets me stretch his arms above his head, kiss his chin, each bicep, the little hollow at the notch of his throat.

"The thing that I take exception to is that anyone at all , including one of us in this bed, can, in the goddamned motherfucking twenty-first century, be considered an object to be owned. "

"According to dragons, you are."

"No. That's not what we have, okay?"

"Okay," Dav agrees. I don't know how that will look outside of this bed—will he stand up to other dragons if they call me his property?—but this feels like a good first step.

"Can I at least tell people that I stole you?" Dav asks with a smirk.

"Stole?"

"Your mother is Scottish, your father was Quebecois. Lower Canada, at least in language, remains the domain of Louis-Charles Roi. Your parents immigrated into Elizabeth Regina's territory and I am the victor as a result. "

I snort. "Collecting humans is not a competitive sport."

"Says you." He rolls me over, bites playfully at my cheek. "Victory for the British over the French once again! Huzzah, lads!"

"I think Mum would protest the 'again'," I laugh.

"Would she?" he asks, and then sits back on his heels. He’s got such a contented look on his face that I can't help but reach out for his hand.

Warmth blooms in the hollow of my throat, and I swallow hard against the tears that threaten.

I've cried enough lately. Even if they're happy tears, I'm not in the mood.

"Will your Mum be upset that I'm British? "

"You're Canadian now, Marquess Niagara," I remind him. But his question is like a blow to the gut.

Will Mum like Dav?

Yes, I think she'll like the person he is.

Will she be alright with him being a dragon…?

That, I can't answer.

My family has been tentatively happy for me. But I can still hear it, in every phone call, over every text— Are you sure? A dragon? He hasn't been back in weeks, mo leanbh, who's to say with someone like him? They're so different. They're not like us.

Dav cares what my family will think. Before, it always seemed like the wrong time to introduce them. I was being greedy. I wanted to keep Dav to myself, for just a little longer.

And now.

Now it doesn't matter what they think , I realize. There's something both comforting and horrifying about that realization. Liking him won’t change the fact that this is a forever thing.

Doesn't matter what you think, either, a dark little voice says, but I push it aside.

We're not doing this today. Today is going to be good. Just me and Dav reconnecting, and as much sex as I can get him to agree to.

"It'll be okay," I finally answer Dav.

Eventually , I don't add. He might hear it anyway, though.

He flips his hair out of his eyes, and slaps my butt playfully.

"Up, up, come on! The dawn breaks and the world awaits."

"Oh no," I groan and reach for the pillow to block out his sunny cheer. "Mornings suck, I don't care how nice a good morning grind is. No."

"Stay here until I'm out of the shower, then, lazybones," Dav says, and springs toward the extremely self-indulgent, and extremely fancy en suite.

I don't blame the guy. This place was built back when outhouses were still a thing. If I were him, I'd have converted the whole bedroom beside the master suite to a palatial bathroom, too.

Too trained by my morning shifts at Beanevolence to slide back into a doze, I decide I might as well try to get my clothes in order while I wait for my turn. I didn't fold mine like Dav did, and hope I didn't fling my shirt into the fire by accident.

I reach for my phone, still on silent, then I change my mind and leave it on the nightstand. I’m sure Hadi left me a scolding in my texts, and I'm not in the right headspace to deal with it. The rest will just be Mum and the twins checking in.

Nobody knows yet , I realize.

I let a strange dragon whisk me away on her motorcycle, because I was desperate to see Dav.

In retrospect, it was pretty stupid. Good thing it actually worked out and I'm not dead in a ditch.

Or chained to a wall in her own nest, or something.

God only knows what would happen if one dragon decided to take someone that belonged to someone else.

Is that something dragons might do?

Try to take me away? For… reasons? Politics? Petty disagreements? Power plays?

Dav had seemed horrified when I suggested another dragon might try to horn in on his territory in the bedroom. Maybe that goes for the whole thing?

I have no idea what I've gotten myself into.

Right. Clothes. Focus on that.

I find no clothes on the floor, though.

What I do find is a bathrobe on the back of the door. Dav took his into the bathroom. I saw it. It’s red. This one is hunter green. Which is a color Dav has told me I look good in.

Suspicion niggling, I open the closet. It's a walk-in, which doesn't surprise me, given the number of outfit combinations I've seen on Dav. What does surprise me is the section at the front. It’s filled with dark-wash jeans, long-sleeve tee-shirts, a few dress shirts and V-neck sweaters, all in my size and colors.

I mean…

It's... thoughtful, right?

But also, just a little bit creepy?

Not up there with the worst gothic romance stuff I've read but…

yeah, okay, I'm gonna decide to be flattered by it.

It means he was living in hope. He'd been told we were never supposed to see each other again, but he laid in supplies anyway—clothes, lube, fussy little towels, and I bet my favorite shave gel is in the bathroom.

I don't know when he got these clothes (did Sarah have to go shopping for them?

God, there's fresh packs of underwear on the built-in shelf next to the hangers) but the fact he didn't throw them away means he had hope.

Hope that we wouldn't be separated forever.

Okay.

It's overstepping.

But it's also sweet.

Overstepping for a human , I remind myself. Not for a toppy, possessive, service-kinky dragon . I guess? It's not like I have any other Favorites to compare notes with.

Will I meet other Favorites? I hope so.

It would be nice to have someone who gets it .

If any of them get it.

Stop thinking about it , I scold myself. Today will not be ruined by me being grumpy about a few teeny tiny legal technicalities. You woke up happy. Stay that way.

Just think of the look on Gem's face when you tell her the sunrise alarm clock worked.

As our plans for the day apparently include tromping all over the farm, Dav is in honest-to-god blue jeans with a lumberjack plaid shirt. His ass in those pants makes my mouth so dry I need to drink two glasses of water before we go downstairs.

Breakfast, Dav tells me, is usually a spread for everyone on the estate.

But because he's crazy , we're too early for it, and we'll have to fend for ourselves. And because Dav’s PA is clearly as insane as he is, Sarah beat us down, and the kids—Nathaniel and Martha, both good Loyalist names—are stirring up a pot of porridge.

Dav and I both accept a bowl, topped with maple syrup and cream, and join them at the table as the real sunrise crawls above the horizon.

It paints the vineyard gold. I want to know everything about the way Dav runs the agricultural part of his estate, but my brain is nowhere near online enough to ask.

"It's too early," I complain theatrically. "Don't wanna."

"Master Tudor is always up earlier'n this," Martha tells me, and I bite my tongue.

No.

She doesn't mean it like that.

‘Master’ is just a polite way to refer to a… a young, unmarried man.

Fuck.

Dav looks both startled that the kids noticed, and ashamed. "I was up early so I could spend the mornings with Master Levesque," Dav says carefully.

"Then he stopped gettin’ up at all an’ sleeped all day," Nathaniel adds.

"Master Tudor was feeling ill," Sarah tells the boy, in a tone that says We talked about this . "But he's better now."

Sleeping too much is a sign of depression, the voice in my head that sounds like Dr. Chen reminds me. But sleeping a lot is also probably a way to heal from being whipped.

"Master Levesque," Martha starts, "I think you—"

"No," I blurt, interrupting her. "I want to hear what you think, but, no, decidedly not Master anything. Just Colin."

Martha looks to Dav, dumbfounded. Then to her mother. Both give her a look that says 'humor him.'

"Colin…" When I don't interrupt, she goes on: "You left your token in the kitchen. I polished it for you." She retrieves the pin from the front pocket of her overalls.

My blazer isn’t on the chair, where I left it last night. I wonder if it will reappear in the closet next to all of those new shirts. This is not a habit I want to get into. I don't like the idea of making people clean up after me.

Oh, god, is some poor housekeeper going to have to put away the lube and change the sheets on the bed Dav and I thoroughly befouled? Mortifying .

"You should get a necklace, like me," Martha says, as I'm trying to decide the least stupid place to put the pin on my tee-shirt.

She pulls a delicate golden chain out from under her own shirt and shows me the cameo-style pendant adorned with the laurels, rose, maple leaves, and flames. "It was grannie's."

"She's too young to wear it," Sarah says, watching my internal panic rising. "But she saw the necklace in mom’s wedding photos and fell in love."

"And I'm really careful!" Martha says. "Even when I take it outside?"

"Ha! That’s a big fat no." Sarah holds out her hand. Martha sighs, unclasps the necklace, and pools it in her mother's palm.

If Martha is too young, then Nathaniel is, too. But when I glance over, Sarah oh-so-casually lays her right hand on the table, showing off a golden bangle.

A wash of raw dread shivers up my spine. When I look at Dav, his expression is introspective. Is he plotting jewelry for me? He'd mentioned a signet ring. It could easily be a leather cuff. Or a dog collar.

Shit.

Yesterday, I had thought it would be nice, knowing that there’s nothing and no one who could get between Dav and I for the rest of my life. That this was it. Endgame.

But this is the result.

Branded jewelry, and five generations of indentured servitude, casually dressed up like a cute little family having breakfast together. And this would be it—me, Dav, Sarah, the kids, whatever other servants were close enough to us to be afforded this casual relationship—forever.

"Don’t you like porridge?" Martha asks, breaking into my panic. "We made the maple syrup with my class. Did we do it wrong?"

"No, it's fine," I reassure her, and shove a glob in my face.

It's all fine.

I'll make sure of it.