Chapter 27
We woke at . . . well fuck me, I had no idea what time it was.
Between the time change of Southern California to Northern Scotland and the fact that for the last week I’d been sort of drifting between daylight hours and nighttime ones, it could have been nineteen-forty and I wouldn’t have been particularly surprised.
Either way, I woke up with Davin lying next to me, so it was a good day. Or night.
I didn’t give a fuck.
He was smiling at me already, even though I wasn’t sure what I’d done to warrant that.
“Already off somewhere in your head,” he murmured, running a finger from the top of my forehead, over the bridge of my nose, to its tip, then letting it fall onto my lips, over my chin, and down my neck.
He followed through, trailing that same finger all the way down my chest, slowly, lazily, and the smirk on his face when he looked back up and met my eye? Dammit, smirks were not sexy. People who smirked weren’t sexy. Why was it different when it was him?
The smirk turned into a grin, and he leaned in to place a gentle kiss on my lips.
Then he ducked under the covers to join those wicked fingers of his, rolling me over onto my back and climbing up to straddle my legs.
His damned wandering finger had almost done the whole job for him, but it took him no time at all to call my cock entirely to attention, licking it like it was the perfect morning treat, then just swallowing it down like he was the world blowjob champion.
“Fucker,” I exclaimed, and under the covers, the lump that was Davin trembled with laughter.
He pulled off for a moment and his face appeared at the edge of the blanket. “Want me to stop?” But he fucking knew the answer, because he didn’t even wait for me to give it before disappearing and swallowing me down once again.
Somehow, as though by magic, it wasn’t until fifteen minutes later, when I’d given in and we’d both gotten off, and Davin and I were just lying there in bed kissing lazily, that there was a scratch at the door.
“Father?”
Davin started laughing, and rolled off me before Twist could so much as give another tiny “mew.”
“Father, it has been many hours and I believe you still live because I can hear movement and voices, but it concerns me that I cannot see you.”
Huh, that was different. But then, I supposed we didn’t usually have a closed door between me and Twist. I sat up and stretched, then climbed out of bed, taking just a moment to put on a new pair of underwear, then opening the door for my concerned kitten. “What, no ‘and I hunger’ to cap it off?”
On the other side of the room, Davin scoffed as he pulled up his fresh jeans over his bare ass.
Mmm, bare ass.
Pity to cover that up.
Maybe the world would be a better place if it had more of that ass in it.
On the other hand, nope. I wasn’t usually inclined to greediness, but in this case, that ass was all mine. The world could find its own joy.
Twist looked up at me, and then across to Davin. “You are both well?”
“We’re fine, kiddo. I promise, when we move in together back home, you’ll be allowed in all the rooms. But you are going to have to keep in mind, sometimes Davin and I need, um .
. . private time. We’ll try to keep it to when you’re eating, but I make no promises.
” I picked her up when she marched over to me, and set her on the bed next to my bag so I could rifle through it and find the rest of the clothes I was going to wear.
It was probably a waste of a good opportunity to wear a cool and clever shirt, but honestly, I didn’t want fucking Tadhg’s bullshit to mess up any more of my good clothes, so plain black T-shirt it was.
I then started to shove all the dirty clothes in next to my clean ones, only to pause in the middle of the action and frown. That seemed . . . wrong. Wouldn’t they all get messed up by being smashed together, commingling scents between clean and dirty?
Davin came up behind me, dangling an odd not-quite-plastic bag over my shoulder. On its side, it declared itself a “recyclable laundry bag.” I lifted a brow at him, so he rolled his eyes. “To keep your dirty clothes away from the fresh ones in your bag.”
Of course.
It really was like he could read my mind, but maybe the inside of my head just wasn’t as mysterious as I sometimes thought it was.
That wouldn’t have been a surprise, honestly.
I was a lot of things, but mysterious had never been an important one for me.
I only wished I understood my brain as well as Davin seemed to.
I had just started picking the dirty clothes back out of my bag, when there was a knock on the suite’s front door. I turned to look, but Davin was already fully dressed and headed out into the main room to answer it.
For a second, I worried.
What if Tadhg had come for us, to ambush us before we could get to his castle? But then Caspian’s cheerful voice called out a greeting, accompanied by the smell of something meaty and delicious, and I pushed the worry aside.
The last thing I needed was to let paranoia take me over.
I finished packing my bag up, and took it, and Twist, into the next room with me. “Surprised you didn’t follow after Davin,” I told her, but she was too focused on climbing up my shoulder and marking me all over to care about anything I was saying.
Damn. I really had worried her by being out of sight all night.
Sometimes I forgot that even as terrifying and badass as she was, she was also still a baby. “I’m sorry, kiddo. We won’t ever close the door on you again.”
“Only on the fecking phone,” Davin muttered, holding up—oh. Right. I’d forgotten about the pants I’d been wearing the day before, with my phone still in the pocket, that had been banished to the main room.
I hoped the phone hadn’t bothered Twist.
She didn’t seem bothered by the phone, though, but by our extended absence. I looked up to meet Davin’s eye. “She really doesn’t like being locked out of the bedroom.”
He shrugged, the picture of nonchalance. “We’ll install one of those corner kitten doors. How big do you think she’ll get?”
Caspian was the one to answer, which was good, because I had no earthly idea. “Just the size of an average house cat.”
“Really?” Davin looked between her and Caspian a few times, then shrugged and handed me my phone and walked back into the bedroom with the jeans.
I guessed he was putting them in his bag, which .
. . was fine. I was sure he was better at packing than me anyway, since my bag seemed just as full as before I’d pulled my clothes for the day out.
Caspian motioned me over to the table in the dining area of the suite, where Nina was setting up a fucking feast for breakfast. She lifted a brow at all of us, including Davin, who’d come up behind us, carrying his bag.
“I hope you guys are hungry. Apparently Kaz decided to order all the meat in the kitchen.”
“It’s for the cat,” Caspian explained, motioning to a huge dish of .
. . well, a dozen things, some of which decidedly did not look like meat.
“I’m not sure her breed has a name. They’re quite rare.
Honestly, before I saw your companion, I assumed they had gone extinct, because I hadn’t seen or heard of one in nearly a hundred years.
To your question, Davin, yes, really. She’ll get to be the size of a house cat like this.
It’ll take a while, though, because they’re rather longer lived than house cats, so like humans, they stay children a bit longer. ”
I took her over to the table and set her down on it, leaning in to inspect the black rounds of . . . “What the hell is that?”
“It smells of blood,” Twist informed me, and I grimaced and pulled away.
“Never mind. I don’t want to know. As long as I don’t have to eat any of it.”
Nina grinned at me, picking up a piece off the plate in front of her and waving it around.
“You sure? Your loss. It’s delicious.” She took a bite, seemed to savor it, and then washed it down with some juice.
“Honestly. The best part of traveling the world is getting to try every cuisine on offer, everywhere. There’s some amazing stuff out there. ”
I mostly agreed, and would try very nearly anything, but black round things that smelled like blood? Not on my menu.
Davin grabbed my bag from my hands and tossed both mine and his onto the couch together, then leaned in and kissed my cheek. “Don’t worry, mo chroí. I’ll eat yours for you.”
Which . . . fair enough.
Caspian came up behind us, slinging one arm around my shoulders and one around Davin’s, which was funny, because he was barely tall enough to manage it with Davin, but also, because Davin accepted it.
Then he leaned toward me and nodded. “I’m with you, personally.
Eat all the things, sure, but there are limits.
We used to eat some things because we didn’t have better options and couldn’t afford to waste anything edible. Now? We can do better.”
Nina tutted in disapproval, but her eyes were shining with mirth. She patted the table next to another plate of food, one without whatever the stuff was. “Come eat, old man. Got to keep up your strength.”
And . . . wait, what?
He did it. Caspian just . . . went over, sat in front of a plate of food, and picked up a fork.
It had been strange enough the day before when he’d eaten the chocolates, but this was a whole meal.
When he glanced up at me, he grinned. “You should be used to strange things by now, Flynn. And seriously, one of life’s greatest pleasures is eating.
I’m not saying it was a sensible thing to do, paying a mage a fortune to make an artifact that made me able to eat real food again .
. . but it’s the best thing I’ve ever used money for.
Three thousand years of joy in one king’s ransom.
The king didn’t mind. He was dead anyway. ”
Nina rolled her eyes like she’d heard the story before, and Davin looked to me as though asking whether Caspian could be taken seriously. Me? I was pretty sure he was telling the truth. What made a better story than a weird but true thing?
Once we started eating, Caspian went all business.
“There’s a storm brewing out there right now, and if we play it right, we can slip in under Tadhg’s radar.
Not that I think he’s got an actual radar.
I’m rather counting on old dragons to be like old vampires, and largely eschew the newest technology.
My point is, we might be able to slip in unnoticed. ”
“Until we start burning things down,” Davin added.
Caspian leaned his head to one side, then made a face like “yeah, makes sense,” and nodded. “Hard to stay unnoticed then.”
“So,” Nina interrupted. “Since you boys are taking a boat out, do I get to spend my day at the hotel spa?”
Caspian beamed over at her. “Your appointments are already made. I’d invite you to come with us, but you’re the kind of weirdo who likes a massage better than stabbing villains. I suppose there’s no accounting for taste.”
“I also like spending time with you, so that’s certainly true,” she shot back. Then he gave her the evil eye, and she glared at him, until they both started laughing.
“Anyway,” Caspian said, seamlessly coming back to the subject at hand. “Boat. Hope neither of you is prone to seasickness.”
Thankfully, we were not.
Less thankfully, a boat in a rainstorm? Still sucked, whether you were seasick or not.
It was a nice boat, run by a group who clearly had military training, given the way they didn’t react at all to the weather, or more importantly, to the way Caspian sat down in the middle of the galley and pulled out two wicked-looking knives.
They were too long to be daggers, too short to be swords, and bent slightly in the middle, with hooked hilts, each made of a single piece of metal. I’d never seen anything like them, or if I had, it’d been in a museum.
But Caspian just whipped them out and started wrapping strips of fabric around the metal hilts, like this was a thing he did every day. Like it was a thing he’d been doing for thousands of years.
Apparently Davin was thinking the same thing as me, because he sat down across from Caspian and asked, “How old are those?”
Caspian made a face, like he was trying to remember, then shrugged.
“I think I had them made fifty years ago or so.” Then he offered up a wry smile at Davin’s apparent surprise.
“Worried I was about to carry Bronze Age relics into a real battle? I had these forged of steel. The latest technology is too good to be ignored, and the ones I used as a child have long since been destroyed anyway. They were also longer. A bit less curved. Nowadays, I can afford to have whatever sword I want forged, exactly how I like it.”
I motioned to what he was doing with his hands, wrapping long strips of cloth around and around the hilts of the weapons. “Why do that? Don’t they make swords that are easier to carry now?”
“They do,” he agreed. “Have for many centuries. But these are each a single piece of steel. No seams to break at. Sturdier.”
Sturdier.
I blinked at the idea of a sword needing to be sturdy. They . . . broke? I really was a child when it came to fighting. “I don’t, um . . . I mean, there’s this spear, but I kind of feel like The Mórrigan didn’t give it to me for fighting. Not . . . like this.”
“And I am certain you understand her intent far better than I ever could.” He paused in his wrapping and met my eye. “But Flynn. You’re a dragon. You’re not going to be fighting with a sword, or a spear, or an axe, or any other human weapon.”
Dragon.
Right.
Was I supposed to . . . shift and bite him? That sounded super gross.
Caspian turned to look at Davin, who was still watching the wrapping of the swords. Knives? I had no idea what the hell to call them.
Did Davin want a weapon, though? Why hadn’t I thought of that before? Why hadn’t we discussed it? But no. That wasn’t Davin at all, I realized with utter certainty. That was why I hadn’t thought of it: it wasn’t relevant.
I’d seen Davin in a fight before. My Davin was a brawler. He hit people with his bare hands, and as a vampire, so those bare hands packed a hell of a punch. No, he was just interested in the weapons, not in having weapons of his own.
Maybe he was being that version of Davin who was super interested in history that popped up every now and then.
But when he looked up at Caspian, he asked, with utter sincerity, “What are you gonna do when they shoot at you?”