Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
FIONA
S tarving for me. He’s starving for me.
I reach for him in the dark, my fingers finding buttery-soft flannel. “In that case, I wonder if you can help me with something.” My voice trembles and my heart stutters.
“Anything,” his deep voice rumbles.
I pull Roman’s engagement ring out of my pocket and hold it between us. “Get rid of this for me. I don’t want it anywhere near me.”
His mouth twists into a grin and he plucks the ring from my fingers. Turning away from me, he draws a deep breath into his lungs. When he exhales, his breath ignites into a blowtorch of fire that jets across his palm. The blaze is intense enough that I feel its burn against my cheeks. My mouth falls open as the gold melts, dribbling through his fingers. When all that’s left is the diamond, he hurls it into the woods, the garish stone whistling through the air until it plunks, with one last moon-reflecting twinkle, against a tree in the distance.
I can’t restrain my laugh. “I had no idea you could breathe fire in this form.”
His expression turns wolfish. “Just one of my many useful tricks.”
Relishing the moment— the lightness and the warmth between us— I run my hands up his soft plaid shirt and encircle his neck, pressing myself against him. This close, I can feel his fever, the heat coming off him like hugging a radiator.
“You’re burning up.”
“It’s the mating sickness.”
“Zaire said this is the worst he’s ever seen you.”
“It gets worse each year, until we eventually go up in flames.”
“Or find a mate.”
He gives me a savage look and I want him, want him in a way that makes every other relationship I’ve ever had feel artificial. I’ve lived in a land of CGI, but I’m finally in the real world where things have texture, scent, and taste. Three dimensions.
I must be projecting my thoughts again because he sweeps me into his arms. His stride chews up the path to the house, and before I know it, we’re back inside, Bones trotting in behind us.
“Find Zaire, Bones.” Connor gestures toward the studio, and the dog lopes off.
Connor helps me out of my coat and then kneels to remove my boots.
“I can undress myself, you know,” I say through a smile because the truth is I’m enjoying this. “I’m not a child.”
He runs his thumb along the arch of my foot, and the warm pressure feels like it runs straight up my inner thigh to my core. When he smiles at me, it’s all dragon, hot and consuming, his penetrating gaze seeming to stir something deep within me.
“I don’t help you undress because you can’t do it yourself,” he says. “I help you undress because it gives me an excuse to touch you.”
His hand drifts up the inside of my ankle, along my inner calf to my knee. But when I look down into his eyes, I notice the neck of my dress has slipped and my scar is showing. I haven’t had sex since the accident. Even a few nights ago, when we made out in the dining room, I was mostly dressed. I know Connor has seen my scar—he saw it when he dressed me my first night here—but my stomach tightens into a ball of nerves when I think about him seeing it again now. The skin along the scar feels thicker than the rest of me. How will it feel between us? The idea of being fully naked in front of him is intimidating. From what I’ve seen of his body, he’s too perfect to be real.
“Fiona…” He stands and cups my face gently.
“Oh fuck! You’re reading my mind again, aren’t you?”
He shakes his head. “You’re projecting. I can’t help it. It’s like you’re screaming down the bond.”
“Oh hell.” I pull away from him and pace into the living room, crossing my arms against the deep discomfort of having my most intimate insecurities out in the open .
“You’re not the only one with scars.”
“Oh? Because I saw you with your shirt off, and there wasn’t a single imperfection on your body.”
I turn around and he’s there. One of his paddle-sized hands comes to rest in the small of my back and I sigh as he pulls me against him. He points to the scar through his right eyebrow. Funny, I’ve always known it was there, but it’s easy to lose sight of it when you’re blinded by the glow of his overall attractiveness. I roll my eyes. “If anything, that one makes you look even hotter. It doesn’t count.”
The sexy smirk he gives me sends my pulse skittering. “It counts. I almost lost my eye.”
“How did that happen?”
“I told you about my brother-in-law trading himself for Carolyn when she was captured.”
I nod.
“It was my job to get her out of there while the Order took him away in those glowing blue cuffs they use. Separating mates never goes well. She became a menace of claws and teeth. We weren’t off Order property when she shifted. The Order attacked, and we had to fight our way out. I had to shift in order to overpower her dragon form and carry her out of there by the neck.” My eyes must pop because he adds, “It sounds worse than it is. She wasn’t hurt, but I met the business end of one of their swords as I fought our way out. Morwyn saved the eye, but I have this.”
For some reason, revisiting this story makes me tremble. The wrongness of it. The pain the Order caused. All at once, I realize that Connor saved me from a terrible mistake when he carried me from that altar. I never actually knew Roman and I’d been rushing into something that could have destroyed me. I’ve refused to fully face it until now, but I know deep in my heart that all Connor has told me about the Order and about Roman is true. And I know now, as if the clouds have parted and I can finally see the clear blue sky, that I hate Roman. Hate everything the Order stands for.
“I’ll start a fire. You’re shivering.”
I grip him tighter. “No. I’m fine. God, you’re like a million degrees.” I press a hand to his cheek. “I just.... It wasn’t fair what happened to Carolyn.”
“At least I have my sister. The fever started again after Roger’s death, but she’s survived long enough to see Mason mated. That meant a lot to her.”
“She deserves that.”
“Tell me how you got your scar.” It’s a command, not a question. “Only fair. If we’re trading secrets, it’s your turn.”
I lick my lips and fist his shirt, pulling him closer. “Wouldn’t you rather pick up where we left off?”
Leading me deeper into the room, he sits in one of the leather chairs and pulls me into his lap. I squirm against the hard length of him under me, wanting him to kiss me again, but when I lean in, he draws back. “This scar of yours...” He traces it through the fabric of my dress, his touch sending another shiver through me. “...it’s an important part of who you are. I want to know everything about my mate. I want no secrets between us when we become one. No reason for you to believe I haven’t accepted every part of you. It’s why I showed you my dragon when I did. Now I need you to show me the hidden part of you. I can wait for this.”
The way he’s looking at me makes my stomach flip, but I see in his eyes that he needs to know my secret before we can take the next step. Maybe it’s time I shared my trauma with someone else. My heart beats faster with anxiety, but I won’t deny him this. “I was in a car accident a little over a year ago. My twin sister, Marion, was driving. The scar is from my seat belt.” He smooths a comforting hand along the back of my head, down my spine. I’ve never told a single soul the entire story. “Marion was wearing her seat belt too, but she had the steering wheel in front of her. When the airbags went off, the force, along with the crash, killed her instantly. I had more room. That’s what they tell me anyway about why I survived and she didn’t.”
He winces, I sense he’s feeling what I am, down our bond. It’s intensely intimate. “To lose your sister like that and then have to recover physically while you were grieving…” He shakes his head.
I take a deep breath. This is a depressing conversation to have when only moments ago all signals pointed to us getting naked. But Connor is right—it’s better if we can share the things that made us who we are. Marion is part of that. If he wanted to, he could enter my mind and see it all for himself, but he’s asked me to willingly share it with him. It means a lot, and if he’s brave enough to listen, I need to be brave enough to share. My voice comes out strained as I continue. “More difficult because we’d only recently reunited. We never knew our parents. We were both abandoned at a religious orphanage as babies.”
“You’d recently reunited?”
“Three years after we graduated the orphanage, Marion joined a convent. She became a nun with the same order of sisters who ran our orphanage.”
“No shit? A nun?” He looks perplexed, which I get because no one was more perplexed than me when Marion took her vows.
“Yes. A Catholic nun. One of the Sisters of Mercy.” I catch myself trailing my fingers through the scattering of ash-blond hair on his arm. I stop petting him, but he makes a disappointed rumble deep in his throat and I start again.
“The convent is why you lost touch?” he asks in a low, gritty voice. “I don’t know many nuns. Their way of life is a mystery to me.”
“She was a cloistered nun. They take vows to live a life separate from the rest of society and rarely journey beyond the boundaries of their abbey. When they join their order, they leave their families behind and consider the other sisters their new family. As you can imagine, that was particularly difficult for me as her twin. She was all the family I had. When she chose them over me, she was orphaning me all over again. I don’t remember my parents giving me up. But I remember Marion leaving me.”
Pain lances through me at the memory.
“But you reconnected.”
I can tell he’s trying to puzzle it all out, and I don’t blame him for the confusion furrowing his brow. The truth is I’ve spent years trying to understand her choices. I take a deep breath and continue. “About two years ago, she called me. One of the things the sisters were allowed to do is take long walks on the property where they’d engage in prayers and meditation. My sister found a sliver of land adjacent to the abbey’s property that she felt repeatedly drawn to, a spiritual connection she couldn’t explain. She thought it was… angelic. I know that sounds weird, but it was part of her belief system.”
Heat radiates off him in a wave that goes straight to my core. I shift in his lap and feel his nose brush the skin behind my ear as he says, “Dragons believe in angels, both light and dark. They’re part of our mythology as celestial beings. Was the angel speaking to her?”
I sigh, leaning more fully into him. His hand lands on my inner thigh, just above my knee, and holds me in place. I hear him swallow. He’s holding himself back, giving me time to share everything. “More like guiding her,” I continue. “The wooded acres were home to a small chapel and a cemetery, all of it run down and long overgrown from lack of use. Marion didn’t even know the land wasn’t owned by the abbey until a For Sale sign appeared. Some steel magnate had died unexpectedly. The family hadn’t even known the property existed until his death, and they sought to unload it quickly.
“Marion wanted it, but nuns aren’t allowed to own things individually. I’m not sure what she’d tried before she called me, if she’d asked the Mother Superior to obtain it or simply wanted it for herself, but one day she reached out. Begged me to buy it for her. The sheer desperation in her voice… You would have thought it was li fe or death. I hadn’t seen her in almost a decade, and she was weeping on the phone, asking for my help. So I helped her. I bought it, under my name, for her. I made the payments. She still had no money, of course. The Alex Rogue series had taken off. But one thing was still missing in my life, and it was her. I wanted my family back, so I bought it for her under one condition.”
“What was that?”
“On the days she was allowed to walk and pray, I required her to meet me on that land. We met every Tuesday afternoon for over a year.”
“In secret, I presume?”
“Oh yes. She was breaking her order’s rules by meeting with me. Anyway, one afternoon she wanted to show me something. She said it was important, and at her insistence I allowed her to drive. To make a long, painful story short, we... crashed. She died. And I got this.” I run a finger over the scar. “Between my medical costs and not being able to make my deadlines because I was recovering, I am officially broke and in danger of losing the very property I bought for her.”
Our eyes lock. Connor’s rapt attention is focused on me with an intensity that makes my breath catch. Marion’s death holds so many questions for me. If I’d told her no that day, or if it had been me behind the wheel. My memory of our last meeting is wrapped up in guilt and confusion. But Connor seems to accept all of it. I adjust myself on his lap, my lips only a breath away from his.
“So that’s how Roman sank his claws into you. You were lonely and desperate.”
Anger sparks and surges in my veins. This again! Fuck, the way he says it so matter-of-factly, as if it’s a forgone conclusion, is utterly insulting. “Lonely and desperate?” I shove against his chest and leap to my feet. “Oh, I forgot. You’re sure I was marrying him for his money! Fuck. You.”
I whirl, my hands balling into fists as I stride for my room, but he snags me around the waist, his rough whiskers scratching my neck when he pulls me flush against his chest and growls into my ear, “Oh no you don’t. Not this time.”