Chapter Twenty-Seven
MINA
I had a mile-long list of things to do when I got home — topped by kiss the ground and block Gordon’s number among more mundane things, like follow up with plumber and roofer. Eventually, I would also have to get to a few really big burning issues, such as Celeste and Gordon.
But the first thing I actually did…
“Are you sure?” Marius panted, pausing in mid-sex above me.
About a mating bite? Hell yes.
“So, so sure,” I mumbled, though it came out a little slurred.
My body was on fire, pulsing with ecstasy and an insatiable yearning for more. More that only a mating bite could quench.
I’d fantasized about it all the way over from London, to the point that the faint glow around my body — and Marius’s — had amped up to a high-wattage radiance.
Only supernaturals could see it, but oops.
We’d turned plenty of heads on the train ride back under the English Channel.
Who knew so many supernaturals made the early morning commute from London to Paris?
Roux and Henrik had moved two rows away, with Roux muttering something like, Please, do us all a favor and get the mating bite over with. All this sexually charged energy is killing me.
Bene had mimicked scooping a handful of something out of the air. Maybe this could be harnessed as an alternative to nuclear energy.
Marius had bared his teeth, and Bene had skittered over to join the others, chuckling.
We’d practically burst through the front doors of the chateau and sprinted upstairs to my bedroom, where Marius had uttered the first of a half dozen Are you sures?
The man was definitely overcompensating for marking me without asking.
“You want to protect me? What better way than making me into a dragon shifter?” I shot back, because that was one of the effects of a mating bite.
He couldn’t fault that logic, so there we were, turning my bedroom into a steam bath. We’d already powered through one round of sex — a warm-up, one might call it — and were now well on our way to the main event.
“You’re really sure?” Marius asked, hanging on by a thread.
(Well, a lot more than a thread, considering how…er, thoroughly the man filled me.)
“Ask me again, and I’ll be the one biting you,” I growled.
His eyes sparkled. “Nothing I’d like more.”
All well and good, but I was happy to wait until I could extend the right set of teeth for the job. Namely, dragon teeth. Until then, I would leave the honors to him.
I tightened my legs around his waist, but he withdrew. Drat the man!
“I said, I’m sure,” I groaned, clutching at him.
But those rippling abs won out, and he shuffled back a little.
“Not stopping. Just repositioning,” he promised, nudging my hip.
We could be tied upside down in a pretzel shape, and I would have been perfectly happy as long as he stayed deep inside me. Since when were dragons so picky?
“You’ll see,” he said.
I didn’t want to see. I wanted to feel, dammit.
“Is dying of lust a thing?” I groused.
He chuckled. “If it were, I would be long dead. Ever since the day I met you.”
He was trying to butter me up, and it was working.
I rolled to all fours and wiggled my rear. “Happy?”
The rumbling sound he replied with assured me he was plenty happy.
Gripping my hips, he slid up behind me, whispered, “I love you,” and powered back into me.
My vision blazed as he moved, deeper and harder. As soon as I caught the rhythm, I moved too, bumping back to meet him.
There was a fair chance I was yowling like an oversexed cat, but my ears were too filled with a roaring sound to tell. At first, I thought that was Marius’s dragon, but no. It came from deep in my soul.
I’d always pictured my mixed supernatural heritage as a ball of cast-off yarn in dozens of different colors. The original strands were forever tangled, and no amount of plucking would ever separate them.
But now, a single, golden thread glittered in the darkness, telling me one tug would pull it free. My dragon heritage?
Marius scraped his teeth along my neck, and I arched up into him.
Yes! Yes! my soul cried in eager anticipation.
Twin points of fire sliced into my neck as Marius bit down — a quick flash of pain, followed by blinding pleasure. I groped around and pulled my lover’s head closer, urging him to bite deeper.
Supernatural energy zapped and hummed inside me, a thousand times more intensely than ever before.
Marius inhaled, sealed his lips around the bite, and—
Whoosh! Flames raced through my veins.
A dragon kiss. I’d heard the stories, but nothing came close to describing that dizzying, sensual heat.
Marius rolled his hips, powering into me one more time, then exploded.
I cried out, deaf and blind to everything but the forces inside me. Suddenly, space and time jumped, and wind breezed past my ears. Cool air tickled my skin. A thousand countryside scents filled my nostrils. My eyes were closed, but I saw the chateau and its grounds from an aerial perspective.
I was flying — at least in my mind — beside a huge, dark dragon. He looked at me with sparkling eyes and shot a plume of fire into the sky just for the joy of it.
At first, it was terrifying, because that fire could incinerate everything around it — including plain old me.
Then I realized I wasn’t a plain anything any more. I was a dragon, like him.
The massive dragon at my side swooped, rolled, and loop-de-looped around me, showing off like an elite fighter pilot.
Much better than a fighter pilot, Marius growled.
My eyes snapped open, and I was back in bed, skin tingling, heart pounding.
Whoa. Had I really been flying? Was I really a dragon?
No, but you will be soon, Marius murmured into my mind.
He’d collapsed behind me and lay there, as limp and breathless as me.
I touched my neck carefully. It was warm and tingly, but there was no wound or blood, just a humming undercurrent of magic inside me.
We’d done it. The mating bite. We were bound together — forever.
Mess that I was, I rolled around to face him. Hug him. Hold him. Trying to process it all.
“I didn’t know you had that much dragon in you,” he whispered, running his hands over my back.
“I didn’t know I did either.”
It occurred to me that if I had ended up with anyone else — say, Clem, a wolf shifter — then that side of my DNA might have been activated. But boy, did I like the idea of being a dragon shifter.
I hugged Marius fiercely. Shifter species aside, he was the only man I wanted. The only one I would ever live a truly happy, satisfied life with.
And if that meant living on the edge from time to time — say, another art caper or a brush with another dangerous supernatural — it would be worth it. I’d never felt as alive as I did with Marius, and I’d never felt as eager to embrace my supernatural side.
“You’re going to have to learn to control it, of course,” Marius warned.
“Ha. I’ve taught middle schoolers for years. If I can handle thirty of them at a time, I can handle one measly dragon.”
In truth, I worried about a dragon running amok with my actions, words, and emotions. But I’d done pretty well handling Marius, Roux, Bene, and Henrik. I could do the same with the dragon that would eventually emerge from within me.
“The trick is to keep that side of you in a separate compartment and only let it out when you need to.” That sounded ominous, but Marius shook his head and framed it more positively. “I mean, when you want to. Like when you want to fly, just for the fun of it.”
“Only if I get to do it with you.”
He grinned. “Believe me, that can be arranged.”
He kissed me, slowly at first, then more urgently, and soon, we were back in the throes of passion. Not that I was complaining.
Afterward, we cleaned up, straightened the bedding, and lay spooned together.
“So, you’re stuck with me now,” I whispered.
He shook his head. “Not stuck. Delighted.”
I nuzzled the arm he’d looped over me, gazing at nothing in particular. Slowly, the row of paintings on the wall came into focus, and I considered them, one after another.
There were a few from my grandparents’ collection, plus the one I’d painted of the chateau on a misty morning, with all my friends represented.
A lion sauntered across the lawn, a tiger blended into the bushes, and a bat flew between the chimneys.
Best of all, two figures stood at in the windows of my suite, one tall, the other a little smaller.
I wove my fingers through Marius’s, thinking back to the morning I’d lain here, fearing I had lost everything.
Then my eyes wandered to the Van Gogh we’d brought back from Mallorca. Having The Painter on the Road to Tarascon on my wall was a privilege I would enjoy for months before finding a way to anonymously slip it into the hands of a museum. As always, I asked myself, How did I get this lucky?
But part of me couldn’t help sighing a little. If only I’d succeeded in finding a more fitting buyer for The Tower of Blue Horses. But it was Jensen’s now and would probably remain locked away from the public for another generation.
Marius must have picked up on the sentiment, because he kissed my shoulder, then rolled away.
I protested, but he only chuckled.
“I’ll be right back. I have a present for you.”
“Well, in that case…” I joked, watching him step across the room to the clothing we’d left strewn by the door.
He found his pants and rooted around in the pockets, giving me a prime view of his ass. Another kind of masterpiece, in my humble opinion.
Then he walked back. I lifted the blanket to let him slide in, then stopped.
“Wait. Your phone?” I protested. The damn thing had only ever brought us bad news.
“Just for a moment,” he assured me.
I let him back in bed, not all too enthusiastically. What could he possibly have on there that would add to this perfect moment?
He scrolled through his pictures — not that he’d taken many — then stopped, grinning at one.
I cocked my head. “Yes?”
He looked up, then set the phone on the dresser.
“Nah. You’re right. This is no time to look at pictures.”
He was teasing, of course, and I was hooked like a prize marlin.
“But my present…”
He grinned and reached for the phone again. “All right, already.” He located what he wanted, then motioned to me. “Lie back. Get comfortable.”
I frowned. Just to look at a picture?
Still, I complied. Otherwise, he would draw out the suspense forever.
“Now close your eyes…” he murmured.
I did, going all warm again. Even if his present turned out to be a dud, this position was awfully convenient for other activities. And we were both naked, so…
I drifted deep enough into a sexual fantasy that I didn’t open my eyes when Marius told me to. But when I did…
I stared at the picture, then at Marius.
“No way.”
He grinned. “Yes, way.”
I jackknifed up into a seated position, grabbing his phone for a closer look.
“Where did you get this?”
“At Anastasia’s, that first time we went there.”
I stared and stared. The picture showed me from the back, gazing at The Tower of Blue Horses.
“I know you said a picture couldn’t capture the painting, but I thought one might capture the moment,” Marius said quietly.
“Pretty sneaky, mister,” I joked over the lump in my throat.
He shrugged. “I don’t always play by the rules, you know.”
Oh, I knew. And boy, was I grateful. And not just for this picture.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “Thank you so much.”
The image blurred as tears sprang to my eyes.
“It’s beautiful,” was all I could manage.
For years, the only image art scholars like my father had of Franz Marc’s masterpiece was a grainy 1940s photo, plus a postcard-size copy the artist had sent to a friend. And for years, my father had investigated what had become of the original, to no avail.
It has to be out there somewhere, I recalled him saying.
It is, Dad, I wanted to whisper. And I saw it. In person.
I held Marius’s phone tightly. Why was I the lucky one who got to glimpse the painting, instead of my father? And would he celebrate the discovery or mourn my failure?
Sometimes, I had the feeling destiny enjoyed tying up loose ends. Other times, the universe seemed cruel and random.
I lay there, feeling a mixture of both. Lucky yet guilty. Happy yet yearning.
Then I wrapped my arms around Marius, reminding myself what the real masterpiece was. Love. Commitment. The chance to build a future together.
“Good present?” he asked, wiping away my tears.
I nodded quickly. “Best present ever.”