Authors: Viola Grace
“And now, here you are.” Leah’s hands took in the expanse of the room.
“Right. With nothing to wear. What happened to my clothes?”
“I am pretty sure Regick burned them. Nothing from the vampire’s court is allowed to remain here.”
“Where does it leave me?”
“It leaves you as the bride of the great golden dragon. Now, you finish eating while I get your clothing.” Leah patted her on the arm and was out of the room in a heartbeat.
Zora settled in and poured a cup of coffee before working her way through her fruit cup.
She took a shower and was finger combing her hair when a knock sounded again. “Come in, Leah.”
“I am not Leah. How are you feeling?” Regick came in and leaned against the window.
Zora tightened the towel and checked to make sure only a little thigh was showing. The towel covered her to barely above her knees. “Um, fine. I thought you were Leah.”
He grinned and the sunlight glinted off his hair. “I get that a lot.”
She giggled.
“So, has Leah briefed you?”
Zora took in the heat in his gaze, and she pulled her hair forward and kept finger combing it. “She did.”
“So, you do not need to worry about Olvadi. I have arranged for you to continue healing the vampires he brings to you because you seem to want to heal them.”
“You caught on to it?”
“You have an instinct to take care of those in your immediate vicinity. If you want to forge strong links to the local community, it is your prerogative. I will simply keep you safe while you do it.”
She sucked in a deep breath and blurted out the question on her mind. “What do you want from me?”
“I want you as my mate, and I want you to do it voluntarily. If we were humans, I would begin courtship, but we are not, and this is the way our people do things. An acceptable mate is kept separated from all other dragons while the male attempts to seduce her into bearing his young.”
Zora chuckled, “And at that point, he relaxes his guard.”
“Which is how your ancestresses got away. I want you to want to stay with me because you choose to.”
She swallowed. He had started to move closer, and she tensed nervously. He took her hand and pulled her upright, and she was reminded precisely how large he actually was.
Regick put his index finger under her chin, and when she looked up at him, his kiss warmed her from the inside out. He breathed a sensual fire through her which left her aching. Zora swayed toward him until her towel brushed against his shirt.
The heat in him attracted her in a way no human male’s ever had. She had never considered that she was technically a dragon by birth, but it would explain a lot.
She was unsure of her next step, but she slid her fingers into his hair and pulled his head back. “What is your glamor and can I see you without it?”
He shuddered and she got the impression that she had talked dirty to him.
“Not this afternoon. We will revisit the discussion tonight. Leah is waiting outside and your first introduction as my mate will occur in thirty minutes. As much as I would like to continue this, and I really would like to continue this…”
She could feel his claws trailing against her cheek.
“It is time for you to get dressed. Leah!”
The door opened and Leah came in, her arms loaded with bags. “Regick, please leave. I have work to do, and we are running out of time.”
He sighed, kissed Zora softly and strode out of the room.
Leah kicked the door closed behind him and said, “All right, strip. We don’t have much time.”
Public nudity was something she was getting used to, so she dropped the towel and let the gargoyle dress her. She had a meeting with the mayor to get to, after all.
There was something to be said for gargoyle fashion sense. Zora was wearing a flowing skirt in deep blue chiffon and a long blazer which fell to mid-thigh. Her shoes were three-inch heels and her hair was arranged up over her ears in elegant twists and fell straight back to her shoulders. Regick sat next to her at the meeting, and she stayed close to him during the cocktail hour after the charity ball had been arranged.
“Do you do a lot of this sort of thing?” Zora looked up at him through her lashes.
“Quite a bit. I have more riches than I could spend in a thousand human lifetimes. If the folks around me are more comfortable and feel cared for, they work harder and are more willing to risk their lives in the defense of my property. It is a very bald manipulation, but it has worked well for the last few hundred years.” He shrugged.
Zora chuckled. “I will translate it as you want the people around you to be happy and ignore the rest.”
He slid his arm around her waist and he smiled. “Looking for the good in people. It is an endearing quality.”
“You don’t?”
“I do my research. I know about what happened when you were a child.”
She paused as she sipped at her glass of water. “Wow. You said that right here in the middle of this little gathering.”
“I thought it was clever of me to keep things from getting emotional. You were kidnapped?”
“And my blood was used to repair other vampires. When my mom caught up to us, she burned the entire nest to the ground and we went on the run. It echoed other family experiences a little too closely, she got angry.” She tried to keep a smile on her face as the others on the charity committee glanced their way.
“And yet, you still feel for vampires.”
“I do. They were human once, and they still feel pain and humiliation. Sure, they are arrogant and vain, but they still have feelings. A little kindness helps them remember that.”
“Or they take it as weakness.”
She shrugged and sipped at her water again. “I can give and I can take away.”
Regick was startled. “What?”
“The building blocks come from my body. I can heal the damage or I can return it to the original state I found it in.”
“I think we need to discuss this in private.”
She smiled brightly at him and blew him a kiss. “You uncorked the bottle. Are you upset with what came out?”
He tightened his grip on her waist. “No, but like myself, I believe you are far more than meets the eye.”
She wrapped her arm around him, picked his pocket and showed him his wallet. “You could say that.”
He tucked the wallet back in his pocket. “Something else to discuss.”
“The tip of the iceberg.”
The governor came up and wanted to discuss his policies on shifter work-employment regulations. After all, it wasn’t fair the best jobs went to the strongest shifters while the others had to pick up the dregs.
She was eased away from Regick, and it would have caused her to panic, but she could see Leah behind her in the background as silent backup.
She spoke with the governor’s wife, and the woman was looking at her with envy.
“So, Regick is your mate?”
Zora nodded politely. “He is.”
“We didn’t know he was seeing someone.”
Zora sipped at her water again. “Neither did I.”
“But, you must have been seeing each other.”
“Oh, yes. I have seen all of him.” She smiled brightly as the other woman got frustrated. The gossip wasn’t forthcoming and the woman was starving for it.
Leah eased toward her, “Miss Zora, You have an appointment.”
The governor’s wife sneered at her, “Do you mind? We were having a conversation.”
Zora’s blood rose in irritation. “I am coming with you, Leah. Thank you for the reminder. Madam, speak to Leah like that again and you will never speak to me. Are we clear?”
It was a weird threat, but the woman paled. Zora left with Leah and breathed a sigh of relief when they were out of the cocktail party.
“Thank you. Do I really have an appointment?”
“Yes, Regick wishes to speak with you. He could not extricate himself any other way, so now that you are out of the room, he will simply follow you by claiming the undeniable hormones of the newly mated.”
Zora blushed as they headed for the elevator. “Will it work as a social excuse?”
“With less than a hundred dragons on the earth, there are few, if any, records of their mating habits. It is considered best to get out of the way of a dragon with sex on his mind.”
“That would be sound thinking.”
Leah grinned. “And yet, it is the last thing that you did.”
“It wasn’t really a choice. When you are a woman alone with no physical defenses, you have to choose your battles. When it came to Regick, there was no choice. All the other shifters ran away the moment he walked in the door.”
They went up to the penthouse on the fortieth floor, and Leah waited in the elevator. “He will be up in a moment. Have a nice evening. See you tomorrow.”
She waved politely and the door to the elevator closed.
Zora turned, and she looked at her surroundings. The large recreational space was neatly arranged, and as she went exploring, she found a guest bathroom and the kitchen. The refrigerator was sparsely filled, but it contained her favorite soda and a cupboard disgorged her ideal snack foods.
She poured some in a bowl, put a chip clip on the bag and wandered into the bedroom, where her hands nearly dropped the bowl. The bed was huge, the window beyond led onto a rooftop large enough to land a small aircraft, but it was the arrangement of cuffs and straps on the bed which made her flinch.
She steeled her nerves and crossed the room, touching one of the straps and ignoring the flare of heat in her belly. Before she could get too involved in her examination, she opened the door and walked out onto the rooftop, noting the scarred tarmac and scorch marks.
Zora wandered to the edge of the roof and climbed up on a low wall, dangling her legs over the edge. The wind tugged at her hair and ruffled her skirt as she ate her chips. It was a striking view as far as she could see. The distant mountains would mark the edge of one part of Regick’s territory. She kicked her feet and wondered how much she would enjoy this if she was one of those people afraid of heights. It was a fear she had never understood.
She crunched at the chips and watched the sun redden in the sky.
“I wondered where you had gotten to.” Regick sat next to her on the low wall.
She offered him the chips and he accepted, crunching while the wind swirled around them.
“So, how often do you use that bondage equipment?”
He coughed. “It was supposed to be removed this afternoon, and you were supposed to be in your own quarters.”
“I am guessing that Leah wants me informed.”
“I use them when I have sex with other shape shifters. If you don’t bind them, they can change when things get interesting. I have not used it in months, but it is kept in ready condition.”
“So you were having it removed?”
“I can subdue my own mate without the use of physical restraints.”
“Cocky.”
“Thank you for noticing.” He grinned.
She set the empty bowl down behind them and licked her fingers. He took her hand in his and sucked her fingers, one by one. As he sucked, she felt a low tugging in her sex.
“Why would you want a mate who couldn’t change shape? Isn’t that like… half a mate?”
He smiled while licking at her palm. “You know why dragons are attracted to the damsels?”
“Not a clue.”
“Usually, the villagers staked out the most independent, the bravest and the most intelligent women because their men were weak. Dragons know a good woman when they see it and they don’t pass up the chance at happiness.”
“So, what you are saying is because these women were mouthy, they got sacrificed?”
He trailed his tongue down the edge of her wrist before he moved closer and kissed her neck. “They were sacrificed over and over again. Many lived good lives with their dragon mates, but others left the dragon with enough treasure to start a new life far away.”
“With their children?”
“Dragons don’t let their children go.”
She tilted her head so he could trail the licks and kisses down her neck. “They do in my family.”
“That will be a discussion for a different day. I believe you wanted to know what I looked like without my glamor.”
She shivered. He was trailing his hand between her breasts and undoing the jacket as he went.
“I do.”
“I don’t want to frighten you.”
Her jacket opened, and the wind cooled her skin as his hand warmed it. “It takes a lot to frighten me.”
The hand on her breast scaled over, and the scales spread up his arm, under his shirt and over his face, enhancing the sharp blades of his cheekbones and the cut of his jawline with a ridge of spines extending across his temples into his hairline.
His neck thickened to ridiculous proportions, and his chest and shoulders widened. The wings which became apparent were huge and large enough to support the massive humanoid body they were attached to.
Zora smiled and cupped his jaw, pulling his head to hers. “Still not scared.”
His lips curved against hers, and he wrapped his arms around her, pushing them both off the rooftop.
Zora held tight to him as he slowly spiraled around his building, watching the world go by over his shoulder. When he pulled her down into his arms, she looked into his golden eyes and he kissed her.
His wings began to pump hard, and they rose slowly, back to the rooftop where they had started.
He landed near the doorway and ducked his head as he entered his bedroom. He slid the door closed and settled her at the edge of the bed, kneeling in front of her.
“You are really not afraid?”
She grinned. “You are a dragon. This is what you look like. I am a mutt. This is what I look like.”
“You are not a mutt. You are the product of your ancestresses wanting the best for their daughters. Daughters who did the same as their mothers.”
“They sought means to have their children survive. They had no idea that they would bear daughters.” She stroked his scaled skin, enjoying the press of it against her fingers and palms.
His fangs showed as he smiled, “I would not mind a daughter.”
She sighed, “Let’s not discuss things that will probably never happen.”