He rubbed his face. “I can’t figure out his password.”
She paused, and when she spoke next, her voice had gentled even further. “His password?”
Tilting his head toward the sound of her voice, he realized what he had let slip.
His emotions surged again, a powerful cocktail of anger and frustration. All at once he let it go.
“Yes, his password,” he snapped. He shrugged away from her calming touch and rounded on her. “The other Dragos. The one who has a closet full of handmade suits upstairs. The one who reads contracts and negotiates treaties, and who debates the difference between Wolf and Viking appliances.” He gestured violently at the appliance manuals that had been resting on the desk, and now lay scattered across the floor.
She bit her lip. It was not in laughter. She said softly, “You wanted to buy the best things for my kitchen.”
The walls of the house closed in on him. Grabbing her hand, he snarled, “I’ve got to get out of here.”
Moving rapidly, he dragged her out of the house. She didn’t try to stop him. Instead, she trotted willingly at his side. As soon as they reached the open air, he let go of her hand, shapeshifted into the dragon, scooped her into one paw and launched.
Some flights are lazy, long spiraling glides through the air. This fight was a battle. His wings scything through the air, he flew as fast as he could back to the mountainside where he had rested the day before.
The ledge by the stream was just as they had left it, with the pile of his gifts, her pack underneath the trees, and the stack of firewood and partially burnt wood in the fire ring.
He landed, not gently, but caught himself up before he set her on her feet, which he did with deliberate care. Then he whirled away from her to pace.
She said nothing. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her walk to her pack and settle in the shade of the tree, with her back braced against the trunk.
Tilting his head toward the sun, he considered leaving her and taking a solitary flight. But if he had truly wanted to be alone, the dragon would have left her back at the house, and she was clever enough to let him find his own way through his uncertain, surly mood.
At last, he gave in to the summer sun and stretched out his great length on the hot stone.
He said into the silence, “I am well aware of how crazy I sound.”
He glanced at her sidelong. She had curled onto her side, knees tucked to her chest and head resting on her pack, watching him. Her expression was accepting, even compassionate. How could she look at him in such a way? She, of all people, should know that he was dangerous.
He demanded, “You do know that I am not that man, don’t you?”
Finally, she spoke. “I believe that you are not the man you think you were.”
Scowling, the dragon snapped, “What does that mean?”
“If you look at the details of his life without having his memories, I think it would be easy to get the wrong impression of who that Dragos is,” she told him. Sitting up, she crossed her legs and toyed with a blade of grass. “The handmade suits, the contracts and negotiations… He didn’t do all of that because he was civilized. He did it because he was playing the game.” She met his gaze. “And you are very, very good at it.”
Tapping his talons on the stone, he considered that. Playing a game. Yes, he could understand that.
Rising up on his haunches, the dragon crawled over to her, bringing his head down until his snout came close to her face.
“I snapped at you,” he whispered.
She cupped his snout and smiled up into his gaze. “I’m drawing a line right now. We have to agree to get over that. I know you’re dangerous. I’ve always known you were dangerous. I was not naive about your nature when I mated with you the first time, and I am certainly not naive about it now. You never broke faith with me. You would never hurt me. What you did when you were injured and you couldn’t recognize me is not anything we are going to worry about again.”
A sense of peace threatened to take away his bad mood. He whuffled at her.
“I’m not ever going to be a good man,” he warned.
She pressed a kiss to his snout. “We talked about that once, and I told you then—maybe you’re not a good man, but you make a truly excellent dragon.”
He muttered, “Maybe over time I can make peace with that other Dragos.”
“If you give it a serious try, I think you’ll be surprised at how well you do.” She lifted a shoulder. “And if you can’t adjust, maybe we’ll go somewhere else and do other things. We’re going to live a long time together, and things change.”
The last of his tension eased away. Heaving an immense sigh, he shapeshifted and laid his head in her lap. She stroked her fingers through his hair, and for the first time since the accident, he fell into a truly deep, restful sleep.
The sun traveled across a blue, cloudless sky as Dragos slept.
After a while, she grew sleepy too, until finally she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer, and she nodded off, her hands laced protectively over the back of his head.
Sometime later, he began to stir, and she came awake with a jerk. She rubbed her eyes and looked around. They had dozed the afternoon away.
After nuzzling her thighs, he yawned and rolled onto his back. She gave him a smile as she flicked bits of grass off his skin.
He never got sunburned, no matter how long he stayed out in the sun. Instead, the dark bronze of his skin grew more burnished and rich. After a moment, all the bits of grass were gone and she gave up on that small excuse to touch him and simply stroked his bare chest.
He watched her, his expression more peaceful than it had been in some time. It would always break her heart a little to look at the new white, jagged scar on his brow. She touched it with a finger, swallowing hard.
He’s mated with me, she thought, not once, but twice.
I am so lucky. I am the luckiest woman in the world.
The smile she gave him twisted, because it was simply too small of a gesture to contain the enormity of the emotions inside her.
“I love you, you know,” she told him.
He cocked a sleek, black eyebrow at her. Coincidentally enough, it was the same brow that now carried the scar. “You surely must, woman.”
She chuckled. “Yeah.”
Stomach muscles flexing, he sat up and twisted to give her a lingering kiss. “One of the craziest things that has been running through my head,” he muttered, “is how goddamned jealous I’ve been of that other Dragos.”
She put her arms around his neck. “Maybe I tried too soon to make you feel better about him. I could have used the threat of him to keep you under control.”
Maybe that wasn’t a very funny joke, but she was pleased with the effort. Every time they talked, every joke, every revelation, meant they put one more step between them and what had happened.
He must have agreed because he smiled briefly against her lips. Putting a hand at the back of her head, he deepened the kiss, and it escalated swiftly—a hot, explosive flash fire of emotion.
Coming up on his knees, his face taut and flushed with need, he yanked her clothes off. She was a willing participant, wriggling out of her top before he could figure out the complexities of undoing the buttons.
When he kicked off his jean shorts, his hardened penis bounced as it came free of the material. He pulled her down onto the grass and covered her with his body.
They could find time for foreplay and finesse later. Much later, after the first wave of the mating urge eased, or perhaps, for her, after the memory of the fear and pain over the last two days faded.
They weren’t there yet. For now, he took her in a blaze of heat, and they coupled like the animals they were. Words tangled with motion, and it all became one thing.
I love you, love you.