Pia Saves the Day (Elder Races #6.6)(21)

The man he hated and would kill if he could. The man he did not want to be.

But he did want to take that man’s place in those soft, serene rooms upstairs. That private place, filled with cream furniture and jewel-toned colors, and all the sensual evidence of her nesting. The perfume she wore. The scatter of feminine clothes, and shoes, and jewelry.

Most especially, he wanted to take that man’s wife for his own.

So he would put up with the rest of the civilized life. He would figure out the complexities in that office of his and learn to make peace with the many other creatures who seemed to be part of the total package. Tilting his head, he shapeshifted back into his human form and strode toward the house.

A better man, perhaps the other Dragos she had fallen in love with, might warn her of what he had become.

But he wasn’t a better man. He wasn’t a good man at all.

And unfortunately for her, he was the one who wore her ring on his finger.

Entering by the front door, he tracked her to the back of the house, where he found her in the kitchen, sitting at the table and eating a bowl of cereal.

She had showered, and her damp, combed hair followed the curve of her shapely head. Her sturdy hiking clothes were gone, and she wore thin, soft-looking pajama pants along with a matching sleeveless top that was a deep, ruby red that highlighted the golden tan of her skin. She was barefoot also, he saw, her pink-painted toenails peeping from underneath the hem of her pants.

Glancing at him self-consciously, she said, “If you’re hungry, there’s plenty of food in the fridge.”

He was on fire with hunger, but not for food. He watched her ravenously as she spooned the last bite of her cereal into her mouth. The way her plump, naked lips slipped around her spoon as she took the last bite of food gave him an incredibly painful erection.

Clenching, he fought for self-control. She had undergone a lot of stress, and to the best of his knowledge hadn’t eaten anything for a long time. “How about you?” the dragon asked, striving for a solicitous tone. “Is there anything else you would like to eat?”

Her large gaze slid sideways to him, and he could tell by her guarded expression that he wasn’t acting quite right. “No, thank you. I’ve had enough.”

As she slid out of her seat and carried her bowl and spoon to the sink, his gaze dropped to her shapely ass and thighs, the tight glide of toned muscle sliding sinuously underneath the thin material of her pants.

Abruptly, he said, “I know what you are. I knew when you healed me.”

Setting her bowl in the sink, she turned to face him, her teeth worrying at her lower lip. “I wasn’t really trying to hide it from you, although you should know—we hide it from everybody else.”

He wasn’t surprised. In her Wyr form, her horn could dispel any poison. She could heal with her blood. She could only be captured by unfair means. No cage could hold her. Her life sacrificed could bestow immortality. If word got out about what kind of creature she was, she would be hunted for the rest of her life.

He stalked across the room toward her, slowly so as not to frighten her. Cocking his head, he studied her closely. “You’re cloaking yourself somehow. I didn’t notice it before. I know how to cloak my presence, but I have never seen someone with the ability to cloak as subtly as you do.”

While she might not have realized it consciously yet, some deep, animal part of her sensed that he had gone on the hunt, and she shifted her body restlessly as she leaned back against the kitchen counter. “My mom always said our cloaking was the most important thing we could do for ourselves. That, and knowing when to run and how to hide.”

He would like to see her run. Not in fear, or because she felt she was in danger—those thoughts were as distasteful to him as the scent of her tears. But the thought of chasing her down a dark forest path as she tried her best to elude him… that was a game that appealed to every hunter’s instinct he had, and his erection hardened.

Stepping in front of her, he trapped her against the sink by putting one hand on the counter on either side of her torso. This close, he could hear how her pulse picked up and her breathing shortened. Of all the many revelations in this long struggle of the day, the fact that he could smell her arousal for him was one of the most amazing.

The warmth from her body was a gentle heat that bathed the air against his skin. “Take the cloaking spell off,” he said, in a voice that had turned low and husky. “I want to see you for who you really are.”

A small smile tugged at the corner of her lips. “You never have tolerated any barriers between us.”

He frowned, not sure how much he liked the comparison between himself and the other Dragos, but before he could decide how to respond, that elegant, subtle cloaking spell of hers fell away.

Pale, delicate illumination shone from her skin. He lost every other impulse and stared. The glow was so much like the moon’s silvery glow, yet it was exponentially more precious, as it was drenched with her cool, witchy magic.

He lost himself in awe. The dragon couldn’t remember the last time he had ever felt awe. Perhaps he had felt it once at the morning of the world, in that first, bright dawn. Gently taking one of her hands, he lifted it to his mouth, marveling in the effortless symmetry of the movement in her graceful wrist and arm.

She adapted to his action and took it for her own, as she raised her hand to cup the side of his face. That magic, the immediacy of her presence, sank into his skin and found its way into his old, wicked soul. Forgetting to breathe, he closed his eyes and soaked her in greedily.