Chapter 37 #2
“I waited for you,” I said, the accusation surprising me as much as my answering tears. “You didn’t come.”
Then he was holding me, rumbling and comforting me in a way only he could with such a simple touch.
I cried, wishing I could hug him back, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want him to stop holding me. Not even for a second.
A scuff of noise came from the door.
Konni’s head whipped toward the sound, and he snarled violently.
Marta stood there, frozen with fear.
“Not her, Konni.”
His growl stopped.
She watched him for half a second then glanced at Hestian and Javier. When she lifted her gaze again, it still held fear, but life too. She bent down and reached inside Hestian’s suit jacket. Then she tossed the key to Konni.
He had me out of the cuffs and fully in his lap a heartbeat later. I rubbed my face against his chest, unconcerned with the blood drying on his clothes as I breathed in his scent. It was stronger than ever and soothed me on a level I didn’t understand. My tears slowed.
One of the men groaned. Konni growled again, but I quickly captured his face between my hands to keep his attention on me.
“You can’t kill them. I want Hestian to hurt in ways he never thought possible. He needs to lose everything. And when he’s at his most desperate, I’ll be there with a contract. Somewhere in this world, there’s a man with a very large dick who likes to fuck old men, and I plan to find him.
“As for the other one…” I glanced at Marta, who was still there, watching the pair anxiously. “The baseball bat’s for her. I want her to whale on that bastard until every fear she has is gone. After, he disappears like he never existed, and you help her find somewhere she’ll be safe.”
Konni pressed his forehead to mine. “Done.”
A shaky exhale escaped me, and I wrapped my arms around his waist, holding tight.
“Can you get her a clean blanket?” he asked.
“She doesn’t speak English,” I said, lifting my head to look at Marta.
She was standing closer to us than the pair on the floor, but watching Konni closely.
Konni plucked at the blanket I’d been lying on, then gestured to my bare legs.
She nodded and stepped over Hestian to leave. A minute later, she returned and handed Konni a clean sheet.
He gently removed the ropes from my ankles and rubbed the mark they’d left when I’d gone crazy. Then he carefully wrapped the sheet around my waist.
Keeping my head on his chest, I watched Marta fetch a glass of water from the bathroom tap.
I gratefully drank it.
Konni continued to pet my hair as she refilled it.
“We can’t stay like this forever,” I said.
“We can.”
“They’re going to wake up eventually,” I said.
“I’ll get your friend something she can use to knock them out again.”
“You were on the news, Konni. The police will be here soon.”
“No, they won’t. Unlike Hestian, they know not to get between a dragon and his mate.”
I sighed. “I want to go home.” My voice caught unexpectedly and brought on another round of sparse tears.
“We’ll go home, kitten. I need to make a quick call first to take care of things here, all right?”
I nodded but then realized why he was telling me—I needed to let go of him.
Stretching, I rubbed my face against his neck, inhaled his scent one more time, then loosened my hold. I didn’t want to. Everything inside of me screamed to hang on tight and demand we leave first. But I refused to abandon Marta or the two assholes on the floor.
Reluctantly pulling back, I looked up at Konni. He kissed my tear-streaked cheeks and then my forehead before easing me off his lap and onto the mattress.
Marta retreated a few steps as he stood, watching him crouch between Hestian and Javier to search their pockets.
“I dropped my phone after I shifted,” he explained.
He found Hestian’s phone, tried unlocking it with facial recognition, and swore when it didn’t work. His face was a little unrecognizable.
I snapped my fingers for Marta’s attention and did the universal “call me” gesture.
She nodded and edged around Konni to leave. She returned less than a minute later, but left again after handing him a phone.
He stood and dialed.
I gingerly tested my legs under his watchful stare as he waited for whoever to pick up.
Unsteady but able to stand on my own, I shuffled to the bathroom, but like the traumatized woman I was, I kept the door open so I could stare at Konni while I used the toilet.
Unlike me, he tried not to stare as he spoke softly into the phone.
Once I finished, I moved to the sink and caught sight of my reflection.
Javier had marked me. Red welts rose from between where his fingers had landed, and I could see the outline of his entire hand, spanning from cheek to chin.
My lip was puffy and split, and I had some dried blood in the corner of my mouth, which hadn’t rubbed off when I’d pressed my face into Konni’s shirt.
As if seeing the wreckage made it real, my face started to throb. I washed my hands and face, then used a cold, wet washcloth to ease the swelling.
Konni hung up and moved to stand in the doorway.
“What next?” I asked.
“I’d like to take you to the hospital.”
“I don’t think it’s needed. Other than the face bruise and dehydration, I’m fine. Well, physically. The rest is…I think I just need to be with you.”
His expression flickered with torment even as he nodded. “Okay. I’d still like a doctor friend to check you over at home, for my peace of mind as much as everyone else’s, if you’re willing.”
“I’m willing.” I waited half a second. “Am I going to have to ride you home, or is someone bringing a car?”
He made a sound between a pained moan and a laugh and hugged me hard.
“I’m never letting you out of my sight again.”
Mom cried when she saw me in Konni’s arms.
“I’m okay, Mom,” I said.
Kaya hugged her and spoke softly to her as Konni carried me past them.
“The police and Felix are on their way. We’ll be down again in fifteen minutes. I’ll give them ten tops to take her statement.”
That he was allowing any amount of time was only due to me.
Once Balak had arrived at Hestian’s estate, I’d asked Konni to call the police. Although I could see his confusion, he didn’t ask why. He just did it.
We both knew that someone with Hestian’s wealth and power wouldn’t be detained for too long, but that didn’t matter. Being arrested would be the start of his fall.
While Konni was too afraid to ask questions, I wasn’t.
“Will you tell me what happened?” I asked, my fingers idly playing with the hair at the back of his neck. I couldn’t seem to stop touching him.
His expression grew dark, and I set my head on his shoulder as he climbed the stairs.
“I texted you after thirty minutes, asking for a picture. When you didn’t answer, I tried the bodyguard.
When she didn’t answer…” He hugged me a little closer.
“I found your phone in the fitting room. The cameras had been wiped already. It took an hour to find your bodyguard in a dumpster a few blocks away.”
“They killed her?”
He shook his head. “Badly beaten but alive.”
“We started pulling surveillance footage from nearby stores. We saw you carried out of the boutique, unconscious, and shoved into a van.”
He went straight to the bathroom when we reached our room and turned on the shower.
“We followed the van camera by camera, until we couldn’t.” He set his head on mine again. “I knew you were alive…I could feel you through our bond, but not where. When we had no more leads, I lost it.”
He gently touched my puffy cheek and closed his eyes.
I kissed his bloody chin.
“You wash my back, and I’ll wash yours while you tell me the rest,” I said.
He didn’t smile. But he did get into the shower with me. Instead of the heated looks and breathless moans that usually filled the space, he continued his story while carefully washing me.
Desperate, he’d burned any property tied to Hestian, the Hildcrasks, and the Stonestocks that he could find, convinced that one of them was responsible. He didn’t stop to sleep or eat, but searched relentlessly, terrorizing the city and growing more crazed with each passing minute.
Then, he’d finally felt me.
My fear.
And later, when I’d come to, he’d felt my pain.
While he rinsed my hair, I reached up to brush my fingers along his tense jaw.
“I might need more than ten minutes to tell them everything.”
“Then it can wait for a few days. Hestian won’t be going anywhere. I crushed his femur. I promise he won’t die. Dad won’t let him.”
He reached around me, turning off the water, his gaze showing a hint of the same defeat that Marta’s had. I caught his chin between my fingers and got his full attention.
“We’ll deal with what we’re feeling, but not yet. Give me just a little longer to get this hate out of my system before we start putting us back together, okay?”
He nodded and toweled me off before carrying me out of the bathroom.
When he set me down in the closet and passed me the most unsexy underwear I owned, it almost brought me to tears.
Without knowing anything about what had happened to me, he’d still understood enough to know I wanted nothing to do with sexy lingerie.
At least, not yet.
After I was dressed in comfy pajamas, Konni carried me back downstairs. Without the blood and ash, his exhaustion was obvious.
Kaya and Mom stayed in the living room as I gave my statement to the police and Felix, withholding two tiny bits of information.
Once they left, I looked at Felix, “I want to press all the charges possible for today and for what Mom and I have gone through. Even if it’s not all him, I want it to be loud.”
Felix nodded hesitantly and glanced at Konni. “Do we want to discourage other lawyers from taking his case?”
“No,” I said. “It won’t matter.”
Konni nodded, and Felix stood to see himself out.
His footsteps were still fading when I looked at Konni.
“Hestian wasn’t acting alone.”
He froze mid-bend to scoop me up again.
“He knew about my mark. He kept checking to see if it was fading. He knew not to hurt me too, which is why I was wearing the padded cuffs. He also said he’d given his word to someone that he wouldn’t take them off.
“Someone who knows a lot about dragons was either ignorantly feeding him information or outright helping him.”
Kaya swore in Italian.
“I’ll tell Balak,” she said as Konni picked me up. “And we’ll bring up something for her to eat.”
Konni walked away with me.
In our room, he tucked us into bed and just held me, nuzzling and cuddling. It was exactly what I needed. What he needed too. I felt the moment he gave in to sleep. His hold didn’t loosen, but the nuzzling slowed.
Feeling safe and protected, I let myself dwell on everything. I hated Hestian, and I’d make him pay for everything he’d done to me. And the more I thought about my time with him, the more certain I became that Lianna had helped him.
What other dragon would interfere with a bonded pair?
None. It was against their rules. Only Lianna didn’t seem to like playing by the rules.
Spotting my phone on the bedside table, I picked it up, careful not to wake Konni, and skimmed through my unanswered texts.
So many from Miranda and Wrenly. The last one said they knew I was home safe again and asked to see me as soon as I was able.
I replied that I’d meet them for lunch in the next few days, once Konni was reassured.
Then I checked the news. Konni’s summary of what he’d done hadn’t given the level of his destruction justice. The craziest part? No one was suing for damages. Not a single one of the families.
Palmen had already announced a hefty restitution fund through Steele Corp for any public or civil damages not related to the three families. Not that the damage had spread far outside of those areas. As Konni had said, he’d gone after properties tied to those families. But only the unoccupied ones.
No one had died, although it’d been close when Konni had attacked Dad’s house. I smiled at the picture of a scorched mansion that wasn’t nearly as impressive as the Steele estate. Even stone could burn with dragon fire.
Content, I set the phone aside and closed my eyes.
When I woke, Konni was awake and watching me.
He had food and water waiting for us. We ate, we drank, and we held each other.
If we talked, it wasn’t about anything outside our room.
The light faded. I showered and took my time going through my nighttime routine.
Konni hugged me from behind the whole time.
While the act wasn’t new, the duration was.
Usually, he gave me a little breathing room.
Especially when I sprayed my toner. This time, he simply closed his eyes and endured the overspray.
“I’m really looking forward to tonight,” I said.
He blinked at me, not rising to the bait.
“Why?”
“I missed your cuddles.”
He made a pained sound and pressed his face against my neck.
“There’s something about sleeping with a dragon that just feels so good.”
The puff of his exhale warmed my back.
“We’re going to be okay, Konni. Trust me.”
He lifted his head, met my gaze, and nodded.
“The people who think you’re climbing are idiots. I’m the one climbing, kitten. You’re so damn out of my reach, but I’ll never stop trying to be worthy of you.”