Pia Saves the Day (Elder Races #6.6)(20)

Of course, she wanted her husband back. It seemed the time to say something reassuring, but he couldn’t reconcile the warring parts of himself enough to verbalize anything that didn’t sound completely crazy.

Things like, you are not his. You are mine.

I’ll kill anyone who tries to take you away from me.

Forget the time you had with him. Be with me, here and now, not some image of who you think I am supposed to be.

Growling in frustration, he gave up on words entirely, tilted up her head and covered her mouth with his. Her body softened readily, eagerly, against his, and her lips parted for his invasion.

This response should be his, but he couldn’t trust it. The things he felt were dark, tangled, and edged in violence. She thought she was kissing her husband. Instead she was kissing a savage creature. One who might kill anyone, or do anything to have her.

He wrenched his mouth away, and she made a soft sound of protest that went straight to his heart and groin alike. For a moment he thought she might tug on him to coax his head back down to her, and a greedy, ravenous part of him needed her to do it, to show him that she wanted him.

See me. Choose me.

Instead, she let him go and stepped away.

“Do you need more time here?” She sounded breathless.

“No,” he snapped. He watched her recoil, and part of him wanted to rampage through the night in a rage.

Cautiously, she peered sideways at him as she suggested, “Would you like to go back to the house?”

Back to the house, with the silent, empty nursery for an absent child, and the beautiful, serene suite of rooms the other Dragos shared with her.

Clenching his fists, he pressed them against his thighs. This was too volatile, even for him. He had to get in control of himself. How could he expect her to continue trusting him, if he didn’t trust himself?

“Go on back.” His tone was too short, and he fought to soften it. “I need a few minutes alone.”

She hesitated, her face tilted up to his like some rare flower that only emerged in moonlight, and while she tried to hide her anxiety, he could still sense it running through her slender form. “Are you sure?”

With a sudden flash of intuition, he realized what she was worried about. He touched her face. The softness of her skin was addicting. This time, when he reached for gentleness, it came to him readily. “I’m not going to leave,” he murmured. “I only want a few minutes.”

Her fingers curled around his, and she pressed her face into the palm of his hand. She said quietly, “Okay. I’ll see you back at the house.”

Some predatory instinct had him gripping the delicate angle of her chin, carefully to avoid bruising that soft skin. He said into her face, “I didn’t want to stop kissing you.”

The tiny sound of her indrawn breath brushed over his heated skin. Her heartbeat pulsed against the tips of his fingers. She whispered, “I didn’t want to pull away.”

I’m not who you think I am.

I am not the man you so badly want me to be.

He didn’t say it. Instead, he brushed her soft mouth with his lips, and never mind that he really was the other Dragos—this impulse to sensual intimacy was all new. It was the first time it had ever existed in his world, and trapped in a tangle of his own devising, the dragon had no idea how to tell her that.

Letting go of his hand, she stepped back, pivoted on her heel and walked back to the house.

He stared at her retreating form, his muscles tightening instinctively as she disappeared underneath the shadow of the trees. Once he was truly alone, he gave in to the savage, jealous creature inside, shapeshifted back into the dragon and prowled over every inch of the construction site.

He didn’t care what he looked at. He wasn’t searching for any kind of evidence of wrongdoing. That suspicion had been thoroughly laid to rest. The dragon simply picked through the rock and various items for something to do while the real activity happened inside his massive, convoluted mind.

He hadn’t left the gold and jewels back up the mountain for safekeeping. He had forgotten about it, and he’d only remembered when she had brought it up.

Which, he would have said, was rather unlike him. He never forgot about treasure. Never. Except for this time, when all of his attention had been focused on the real treasure in front of him.

There was only one creature he’d ever heard of who could heal with her blood, a creature that had long ago disappeared into myth and legend, and yet he knew that must be her true nature. He knew it like he knew how to make the fire respond to his commands.

Leaving the construction site, he leaped into a short flight that took him over the barrier of trees and landed in the clearing on the other side. Once grounded, he cloaked his presence in case she watched for him and prowled around the massive house.

Look at the scene, so civilized. So pretty.

The lights she had left on for him twinkled in the darkness.

His tail whipped back and forth as he bared his teeth at the house. He did not fit in that civilized, pretty life. He fit out here in the night, where the moon created a world filled with shadows, and other predators knew to slink away at the first sign of his presence.

Dragos.

Cuelebre.

Those were his names, and they said what he was. No more, no less, yet everywhere in that house he had seen the evidence of a civilized man, the man she had mated with, the man who might never return to her.