Chapter 29 All the Whiskey #2
“No, Master. I can’t cook for shit, as you well know. But I had it delivered.”
“Tsk. You’re mouthy today. Are you striving to earn a punishment?”
“You decide if I deserve it.”
I grabbed his neck and squeezed, and it made his lips twitch in the corners. “How about you’re nice tonight, and I spank and violate your ass as a reward?”
Leo’s smile was brilliant. “I missed you so much, Davidson.”
Pulling him to my side, I kissed his cheek. “Not more than I missed you. Let’s eat. Then I’ll make a feast out of your hole.”
I made Leo come his brains out fucking him against the wall in the shower and then fisting him on the floor by the bed. He slept deeply, his cheeks a healthy shade of pink.
Yes, we were getting married. We’d waited only long enough to get a decent party planned. Otherwise, I’d have married him as soon as I could have convinced him to. The wedding planner bemoaned my impatience and under protest agreed to the first Saturday in December.
Maybe my tension at work had something to do with the wedding.
Did I have a common case of jitters? Now that Leo was safe and happy, sometimes this ugly idea of inadequacy occurred to me.
He was two decades younger than me. It meant less for dragons, but still.
He was joyful and shining and just miraculous, and I was a grumpy old dragon with a boring tech job.
Yes, he would forever love me because nature said so, but could I keep him happy for the rest of his life?
Those were the futile musings that sometimes haunted me late at night. I watched my gorgeous mate sleep, eating him up with my eyes, and I wished I could do more.
Those sweet full lips, that damned birthmark, how his chest rose and fell, his eyelashes fluttering when he dreamed of something… So pretty and precious and all mine.
I wished I could do more for him.
Hell, he was already spoiled as fuck. Did I really want to add to it?
But he was also devoted to me in ways that sometimes scared the shit out of me, attentive to my every whim, hanging on to my every word, and looking up to me as if I made the Earth turn and the sun shine.
He grew more playful—which I loved—but he was always obedient, to the point he foresaw my wishes and fulfilled them before I needed to say anything.
He was simply perfect.
Too perfect.
What if he wanted to travel, but I was bound to the company? What if he needed more time with me while I was busy with meetings and reports? What if he one day saw through me and realized that underneath the suit and muscle was an aging, bad-tempered man with enough rancor to overthrow governments?
My Leo was so young.
In a way, it had been easier when I knew he needed me to protect him. But he was safe now.
Well, he was carrying my child. That should entertain us both for a few years. But was it enough?
I didn’t dare raise the subject with Lawrence. I suspected he’d laugh at me.
Age was a strange beast. I’d expected some wisdom in exchange for the weakening limbs and deepening lines. But wisdom didn’t come by itself. Life had to happen, decisions and mistakes had to be made, and if you were lucky, you might learn something. Or not.
How did humans deal with this bullshit and bad health on top of it? I could have a heart disease and gastric ulcers and…oh fuck…dementia!
I groaned and swirled the whiskey in my hands, the amber liquid sloshing at the bottom of the bottle. The third bottle.
And still nothing. Not even a little buzz.
Maybe because I aged so easily, with very little of the physical decline humans experienced, maybe that was why I was still so dumb.
The door creaked, and the wedding planner, Juan, entered. He hated me, I knew. He was looking forward to getting rid of me after today. Behind him, Ernest appeared.
“Ernest. Thank fuck you’re here.”
I slurred a little, but only to piss off the wedding planner. He rolled his eyes, gesturing toward me exasperatedly.
“Please, fix it,” Juan said to Ernest. “You have less than an hour to bring him downstairs, dressed and coherent. I’ve got work to do.” And he was gone, the door banging shut.
Ernest sighed, grabbed the whiskey from my hands, found the screw top, and closed it. Then he sat down next to me on the bed.
“You know you can’t get drunk, right?”
I chuckled. “I figured I’d give it one last try. It felt a little blurry for a while there.”
“You’d have to pour it right into your eye, man. Anyway. You need to stop drinking now. You smell like a liquor store after a shoot-out.”
He was right. I needed to shower and get ready.
Leo was waiting. The most beautiful man in the world, waiting to marry me.
My perfect mate. So fucking perfect. Nature had chosen him as my most fitting other half and programmed him to love me.
And here I was, not even having doubts because what was there to question? Just… Argh!
“How do you deal with this?” I asked Ernest, not expecting him to say anything of value, really, but he’d been dealing with it for a couple of years longer than me, so maybe…
“With what? Marriage? A mate? Love? The unbearable lightness of existence?”
I groaned into my palms. “Fear,” I admitted.
“What are you afraid of?”
“I love him, Ernest, and it hurts. My heart, my dick. Everything fucking hurts.”
“But it doesn’t hurt all the time, does it?”
No. But I would have preferred to avoid this debilitating dread entirely.
“What are you afraid of?” Ernest asked again.
My Leo was impeccable, and he depended on me. He needed me to stand firmly on both feet. How could a faulty man like me be his Master and guardian? He’d been hurt so badly in the past, and sometimes I thought that with my temper, I was the least equipped to take care of my Leo and our children.
He deserved better.
“I’ll fuck up.”
Ernest sat unmoving for a while, and then to my surprise, he hugged my shoulders.
“You won’t. He’s a dragon mate. Your dragon’s mate.
There’s a bunch of irreversible chemical reactions, hormones, pheromones, and he’s pregnant with your baby.
You literally can’t fuck up. Your hearts are held together by an eternal, magical bond, my friend, protecting your intertwined souls even after your last breaths. ”
I didn’t appreciate the joking tone of my friend’s voice. If it hadn’t been for the bond, Leo would have left on the first night. “He’ll resent me.”
“If you let him wait alone by the altar, he might.”
I scoffed. I was marrying Leo. There was no question about it. I wasn’t planning to escape—as if I could bear being away from him.
I just wanted something… I didn’t even know what. Some magical advice, some simple trick, three simple ways to make sure your mate stays happy and satisfied even after you hit fifty… Fuck, I was pathetic.
“I’m almost fifty, Ernest.” I had three years left, but who was counting? “Half a century’s worth of gall. I’m an old monster and a tyrant, and he could have the world lying at his feet, but he’s stuck with me for the rest of his life.”
Ernest didn’t give me any advice, the bastard. He slapped my back briskly.
“Okay. That’s enough babying for today.” Grabbing my shoulders, he pushed me upright. I could have easily shaken him off. “How about we talk about hatred and grief when you get back from your honeymoon, huh?”
He was right—I was acting ridiculous.
“Davidson, your mate is getting ready to marry you. He’s putting on a white tunic right now. Can you see him in your head?”
Oh, could I? As Leo’s body filled out with the pregnancy, he seemed to take over my vision. Some days, he was all I could see.
“That man is sharp enough to keep you on your toes and mouthwateringly gorgeous,” Ernest continued. “And he’s carrying your kid. He loves you. You, of all people.”
How that was even possible I’d never understand.
“It’s happening. Everything you’ve ever wanted, what you’ve dreamed about and had given up on, it’s happening. Right. Now.”
“How do you do it?” I whispered. “How do you bear loving someone this much?”
“I look at Lawrie every day and thank the stars for every minute I get to spend with him. And I do my damnedest to make him happy.”
That made sense. “Make him happy.”
“Exactly. An extremely satisfying endeavor. Focus on that. You will take a shower, brush your teeth, drink loads of water, and you’ll get dressed in that fancy tuxedo we chose. Then you’ll go out there and make your groom happy.”
“He thinks I’m strong. Apparently, I’m not.”
“He knows you. The best and the worst. He’s in it for life, Davidson.”
Wiping my eyes—when had I started crying?—I looked around the room. My tuxedo hung on a hook on the wall, wrapped in a transparent bag. “Fucking hell, I haven’t been this out of it in a very long time.”
“It happens to the best of us. Remember when I had to throw Lawrie out of a flying copter?”
The incident with Harry Burnes, my ex-business partner, trying to sabotage us. Fabio Altera hadn’t been the first man who’d attempted to kill me. “How could I forget?”
“I cried in his arms that evening.”
Even months later, when I remembered Leo huddling on the ledge in the mountains, I had to fight a need to smash something.
“This mating thing is not for the faint-hearted, is it?”
“No. Not really.”
It was a challenge.
But I was good with challenges.
I straightened, rolling my shoulders. “He really is mouthwateringly beautiful. Especially when he smiles. I know all of his smiles, and most of them are fake. But when he smiles for real…”
“Go shower and think about how his smile will look under that orchard. We have forty minutes.”
“I’m going.”
I spent the time under the spray of hot water focusing on all the ways I could make Leo smile, laugh, and moan.
And Ernest had been right. The smile Leo gave me under the orchard in our garden, saying he was mine, was his most beautiful ever. There hadn’t been the slightest hint of pretense in it.