Hidden Dragons (35 page)

“To love you. As much as I ever loved T’Fain. You, my daughter, became so precious I sometimes thought my heart would break for putting you in danger.”

“I love you too, Dad.”

“You . . . forgive me?”

She could give him a complicated answer, but she knew the humble question hadn’t come easily for him. “I do,” she said simply.

How could she not when he’d withstood torture to protect her?

He straightened on his seat. The dragons had finished eating, and had flopped down for a snooze on the sunny grass. Verdi’s head was draped over Auric’s side. He opened one eye to check that she was there. Satisfied, he closed it again.

“You could have a real life now that you’re done hiding,” Cass suggested. “You know, do what Mom did: find someone to be with who you genuinely like.”

“Daughter,” her father said repressively. “I’m too old for romance.”

The pucker that dented the center of his brow told a different story. He was lying . . . and Cass could guess about whom.

~

Rick expected it would be some time before he and Cass got to talk alone, and he wasn’t mistaken. Adam, understandably, wanted to go over everything with everyone. The pack leader was good at compiling a full picture of a case, seeing the different angles, making sure all the
T
’s were crossed.

Everyone was tired by the time he was satisfied, including Cass’s brood. They’d enjoyed being fussed over by new people, but as that novelty wore off, they retreated into a huddle on his and Cass’s familiar laps.

A number the pack’s significant others joined them at the Levine estate, and that took up time as well. Rick’s longing for his own bed and his own shower was powerful. Wanting Cass with him made the longing more difficult.

Whether she’d want to come seemed troublingly uncertain.

As morning wore into afternoon, Cass’s friend Bridie snuck over to the couch where they were holed up.

“You two look bushed,” she said, crouching in front of Cass. Like everyone, she couldn’t resist petting the dragons. “Do you want to borrow my car and get out of here?”

Cass turned to see what he thought. What he found in her dreamy blue eyes was both mysterious and moving. His memory of them blazing like a conqueror’s while she drained Ceallach was hard to square with how she seemed now.

“We could go to my place,” he said unsurely.

“With the dragons?”

“Of course. Grant is probably there. He’s a good watchdog.”

“Grant?”

“He’s a gargoyle. He has nesting rights on our building’s roof. I don’t expect there’s more danger, but he’ll keep an eye out regardless.”

She smiled, her face so beautiful he ached. “You have gargoyles as friends.”

“We do,” he said, extra glad of it then.

“Yes,” she said. “I’d love to go to your place.”

~

The dragons liked riding in Bridie’s car but not being restricted to the back seat. Convincing them not to scramble up front took some sternness on both Rick and Cass’s parts. Introducing them to Grant on his roof perch atop the brownstone was another surprise for them. The gargoyle was as big as a minivan, with a goblin’s head, a lion’s body, and bat wings. Only his golden eyes had color; otherwise he resembled stone—especially when he didn’t move. His size brought out the dragons’ shyness, though this new magical creature who could fly like they did fascinated them. Cass was fascinated too. Rick concluded she’d never met one of Grant’s race up close.

“Friend of Rick,” Grant said in his rumbling voice. “Thank you for allow me meet dragons. Them very healthy and beautiful.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I . . . I’m honored you think so.”

Grant winked at Rick as they left. His Pidgin English was a put-on, useful for maintaining the stereotype that gargoyles weren’t very bright. His goblin mouth moved in a silent comment that looked like
hubba-hubba
.

Somewhat to Rick’s amazement, Tony had straightened up his place. The dishes were washed, his bed was made up with fresh sheets, and clean towels hung in both bathrooms. Considering Tony’s aversion to housework, this was a miracle.

It seemed a lifetime since he’d been home.

“We could put these guys in the guest room,” he said. Scarlet was sleeping on Cass’s arm while the boys swiveled their heads around from the floor. Having three dragons in his apartment was surreal.

“How does that sound?” Cass asked them. Auric craned up at her and yawned.

Thankfully, they weren’t hard to settle. Of course, once they were tucked together on a heap of blankets, nothing remained to delay the discussion he and Cass were overdue to have.

Almost nothing anyway.

Leaving a crack so they wouldn’t wake up afraid, Rick shut the door on the sleeping brood. “Would you like to use the shower in my bathroom? It’s bigger than the one for guests.”

“Rick,” she said. “You know we didn’t drive to your place so I could shower.”

He walked ahead of her into his room, setting the sword beside the door. His neatly made bed seemed to accuse him of something—stupidity, maybe. Feeling her waiting, he laced his hands behind his neck in frustration.

“I trust you,” he said, the words that seemed most important coming out. “You’re not power-mad or you wouldn’t have leveled down Ceallach’s energy when I warned you to.”

“My father enchanted my mother to fall in love with him.”

He turned, not having expected that response. Her expression twisted ruefully.

“He confirmed it today, but I think maybe I always suspected. Kids aren’t stupid and I—” She blew out her breath. “Even when I was little, I had a phobia about making people like me against their will. The more times a faerie glamours a child, the bigger chance they have of getting faerie-struck. Even when they’re not spelled, the child can get caught up in trying to please whoever affected them. It won’t harm them physically, but it’s not healthy—and they don’t get over it as quickly as adults.”

“So when you were a kid . . .”

“I had to be careful not to dust my friends too much.”

Rick remembered her reputation for being standoffish; Snow White implied cold as well as beautiful. He’d never believed the slur, but there were those who had. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I want you to understand I know what I did was wrong. I shouldn’t have threatened to compel you. I should have found another way.”

He hesitated, then gave in and asked. Right now, knowing the truth mattered more than politeness. “Why didn’t you?”

“I think because I believed it had already happened. The dragons whammied us to want to stay in the cave with them, to want to be closer to each other.”

She thought he didn’t really love her? The idea stole his breath for a few seconds. “Cass, we threw that off.”

“Did we?”

“
Yes
. Cass, I fell for you before the dragons existed, before the dying faerie gave me the magic cuff, before it led me back to you. Look, if I were enchanted, could I hurt you the way I did? Could I even take offense at you threatening to compel me?”

“I suppose not,” she said slowly.

He took her shoulders in his hands, not knowing whether to shake her or laugh. “This is
real
, Cass. It’s too awkward not to be.”

“So, um, does this mean you’ve decided you can live with it? You said you had to decide if you could live with me being able to compel you when you walked out at Jin and Bridie’s house. I mean, I can’t have a power-ectomy. My magic is always going to be there.”

He stroked her arms with his thumbs. “I can live with it.”

“You’re sure? Because—”

“Cass.”

She fell silent and looked at him worriedly. He smiled. She’d proven a point he should have realized already.

“We have power over each other. Probably any two people who care about each other do.”

“Who care about each other . . .”

“Who love each other,” he clarified. “Part of you
is
the person who exulted in stealing Ceallach’s power.” She flinched, but he went on. “Part of me exults in my wolf’s—in being stronger and faster; even in being deadly, if that’s required. That’s only a portion of who we are, not the whole. I promise you, I love you as you are, Cass: magic and all.”

The recognition lifted a weight off him. He wasn’t power-mad any more than she was. He loved her for all the qualities that were inside her, and because she called the most loving part of him to his surface. She made him bigger than he was without her.

In more ways than one of course. His cock was eager to prove its devotion.

Happily, she rose on tiptoes for a kiss. Her tongue teased his lips and slid between them. His grip tightened on her shoulders. He wanted to tug her close and claim her, but her mood was lighter. He ordered his hands to relax as she dropped her feet back onto the floor. Her blue eyes glowed mesmerizingly into his, her thick lashes dark as ink.

The connection between them steadied and excited him.

“I love you so much,” she marveled. “I hardly know what to do with my feelings.”

This was an opening no red-blooded male could resist. “Tony put fresh sheets on my bed,” he said, a smile playing at his lips.

“Should I be embarrassed?”

She was smiling too. Rick chafed her warm shoulders. “More like amazed. I just thought if you needed a suggestion for what to do with your feelings . . .”

“Ah.” Her hands slipped up his chest and down, fingers splayed, thumbs caressing his pectoral muscles and causing them to hum. “You’re thinking no clean sheet ought to go unmussed.”

Her touch bumped over his waistband and closed over his bulging crotch. Rick stopped thinking altogether as she squeezed the pounding there. She must have known how much he ached to have her hands on him. She kneaded every part of his covered erection that her fingers could stretch to. Delicious sensations poured through him, longings that multiplied for everything she did. She made a comment he couldn’t decipher.

“Huh?” he said, not wanting to miss something important.

She laughed, soft and delighted. “Sometimes you are too easy, wolf.”

“Too easy? Are you saying you want me to play hard to get?”

She pushed his chest, and he sat on the mattress edge. Her slender legs fit between his gapped thighs. Holding her with his knees, he slowly unzipped the buttercup yellow hoodie her friend Bridie had loaned her. “You half-and-halfers seem to buy your not-really-for-sweating clothes at the same store.”

She laughed. “We buy them at Maycees. And I promise not to tell you how much they cost.”

“Good.” The satiny inner curves of her breasts appeared between the halves of the lowering zipper. Bridie, bless her, hadn’t loaned Cass a bra.

Rick nuzzled his head inside to close his mouth around one sleek nipple. “Mm,” he said, loving how the peak tightened for his sucking lips and tongue, how her breath caught in her throat, and her whole body squirmed. He held her waist, his knees and hands securing her.

“Rick,” she gasped as he switched to the other breast.

He treated the second nipple like the first and then drew back from her. “What do you want?” he asked, the offer rising from deep within his soul. “Name anything at all, and I’ll try to give it to you.”

Her lush red lips fell open and she blinked at him in surprise. Suddenly, she blushed, her cheeks going as pink as her nick-namesake’s.

“Well, there’s an answer,” he chuckled.

She blushed harder and stammered unintelligibly.

“Spit it out,” he teased, kissing the knuckles of her hands in turn. “Trust me, whatever you’re thinking, I’ve had pervier fantasies.”

“Could I . . .” She swallowed and tried again. “Could I use your handcuffs on you?”

His face split into a grin. He wouldn’t have guessed she was a closet badge bunny. “You want to use them on me.”

“Yes. I know you like to—”

“—control you?”

“Yes, but just this once, I’d like to . . . have you at my mercy.”

Her cheeks were scarlet. He couldn’t resist yanking her chain a bit. “Just this once? What if you really like it and want a repeat performance?”

“Oh shut up,” she said, shoving at his chest.

This time, he ignored the push and kissed her—deeply, hungrily, claiming her as he’d wanted to from the first. When he released her, she was pleasingly out of breath.

“Stay here,” he said. “I have to grab a pair from my weapons closet.”

She watched him go with big eyes, sitting on her heels in the center of his bed, looking like she didn’t believe he was actually doing it.

He returned from the hall with a set and a key, which he set on his slightly wobbly bedside table from the thrift store.

Cass wasn’t paying attention to the differences in their furnishings. “Those are real handcuffs.”

“I don’t have fakes.”

“So . . . no one has locked you up before?”

Her breathlessness entertained him. “No.”

She rolled her pretty lips together. “You won’t hurt yourself? You know, tugging at them?”

Rick let his smile win free. “I don’t know, Cass. Will you make me?”

She shook her head and muttered, then patted the covers. “Come up here. I want to attach your hand to the head rail. Wait—”

He stopped mid-motion and looked at her.

“Please take off your clothes first.”

He set down the cuffs to do it. Cass snatched them up and held them against her breasts.

“I’m not going to change my mind,” he said as his arms came free of his shirt.

She smiled like the Mona Lisa and gestured for him to continue. He was a bit self-conscious with her watching, though—as a rule—wolves weren’t uptight about nakedness.

Self-conscious or not, his cock pressed hard against his jeans. Cass didn’t look away as he unzipped.

“I like your body better than your pack mate’s,” she said consideringly.

Rick was pushing down his jeans. Disconcerted, he hesitated for a second. “You mean Nate’s? You checked him out?”

She bit her lip and grinned. “Your muscles are more substantial, and you’re a bit hairier. You make me shivery when I look at you naked.”

He was glad of that. She made him shiver too. So erect he was throbbing, he stepped out of his pile of clothes. He climbed onto the bed, intending to kiss her. Before he could, she backed out of reach.