Chapter 56
Robyn
Two months later…
The field stretches out in every direction, all long grass and yellow flowers that brush against my legs. There’s a line of trees in the distance and nothing else for miles. Just sky and grass and the warm smell of summer baking off the earth.
It’s so quiet out here.
Ridge stands a few feet away from me, his hands tucked into the back pockets of his jeans, watching me.
“What should I do?” I ask him. My palms are damp, and I rub them on my thighs.
“You don’t need to do anything.”
“I just stand over here and…” I let the sentence fade out.
“Yes. Stand over there looking beautiful and watch.” He gives me a crooked smile that does something silly to my insides. “You want to meet him, don’t you? I mean, you don’t have to. I’d be okay with that. We can do it some other time.”
“I absolutely want to meet him.” I close the gap between us, take both his hands in mine, and kiss him.
“Are you scared?” he murmurs against my mouth. “Is that it?” He pulls back a little to look at me. I see the uncertainty there.
“Yes. But not for the reasons you think.” I take a breath. “I’m scared he might not like me.” My stomach knots up.
Ridge laughs out loud. “That’s not possible, Robyn.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do. I told you before. When my dragon and I agree on something, I’m doubly sure. And when we don’t, he can be a pain in the ass. Do you remember me saying that?”
“Yes, I remember.” I nod.
“Well, he was a complete pain in the ass when I was investigating you. He liked you right from the start.” He tips his forehead against mine.
“And you didn’t?” I tease.
“Of course I did. It just took a little while for me to realize how much. Up until that point, it was one big fight. Now there’s harmony.
He would never hurt you. I promise. I didn’t take my last vaccination, and I’m now in control.
I swear it. I would never do anything to hurt you.
I have my permit that allows me to shift as and when I want.
I wouldn’t have been issued the permit if—”
“Okay, okay.” I rest a finger on his lips. “Do your thing. I trust you and your dragon.”
“You do?” His grin breaks across his whole face, and I melt a little.
I’m such a sucker for this male.
He moves away from me, into the middle of the field, and starts pulling his T-shirt over his head.
Holy shit, but he’s hot. The width of his shoulders, the dark ink that winds up over his biceps and onto his collarbones, the lean cut of his hips.
He gets to his boots next, then the jeans, then everything else, and by the time he straightens up, he’s completely bare in the middle of a field of yellow flowers, and I’m fanning myself like a teenager.
I let out a giggle.
It took us all of a week after we started dating for us to tear each other’s clothes off and go at it like animals. I orgasmed in less than a minute. In the bathroom of a high-end restaurant, no less. It was so embarrassing that we still haven’t been back there.
He gives me one last look. His mouth tilts up at the corner like he knows exactly what I’m thinking.
He winks at me, and then he shifts.
My mouth drops open as Ridge shifts from a man into a dragon. There’s a ripple, a stretch, a sound that’s half a roar and half a sigh, and then he’s standing in front of me on four enormous legs.
He’s a smoky gray, with pretty green streaks running down his back and along the leading edge of his wings. The green catches the sun.
He’s beautiful.
I smile because I can’t help it. Even in his dragon form, he pulls something out of me that no one else does.
He lifts up onto his hind legs, lets out a low growl, and twin plumes of smoke trail from his nostrils. He whips his tail from side to side.
For just a second, I’m afraid because he’s enormous. He has teeth the size of my arm. The fear flickers, but I tamp it down.
This is Ridge. The male I love. There is no part of him that would ever harm me.
He drops back down and then, with one push of those massive hind legs, he’s in the air. His wings catch the wind, and he lifts, lifts, lifts, until he’s a long gray ribbon against the blue sky. He banks left, drops a wing, and comes back around in a slow circle above me.
I’m grinning so wide my face hurts.
He opens his mouth and lets out a stream of fire. It’s red and gold and orange all at once, twisting away into the sky like a banner. The heat washes over me, even from down here. I let out a small noise that’s somewhere between a laugh and a gasp.
He’s showing off.
He’s absolutely showing off.
I love him so much it makes me dizzy.
Ridge banks again and starts a slow glide down. He lands a few feet in front of me, the grass flattening in a ring around him, and then he crouches low, folds his wings against his body, and stretches his enormous head out toward me along the ground.
I take a step closer.
His eyes are the same gray-green they are when he’s a man. He blinks at me slowly. He’s waiting.
“Hello, you,” I say softly.
I reach out and lay my hand flat on the bridge of his snout. The scales are warm and smooth, like sunbaked stone. He rumbles, and I feel it move through my arm and into my chest. He’s purring.
I giggle and stroke him some more, running my palm up between his eyes and over the ridge of bone there.
He huffs a warm breath against my belly, and I laugh harder.
I scratch the underside of his jaw, and his eyes drift half-closed.
“You like me,” I whisper.
A flick of his tail, light as a sigh, like he’s saying “Obviously.”
Then he draws back, lifts his head off the ground, and shifts again. The ripple, the sound, the stretch in reverse. A few seconds later, Ridge is standing in front of me, all naked, his hair a little wild, watching me with the softest look I’ve ever seen on his face.
He’s on me before I can speak. He hooks an arm around my waist and lifts me clear off my feet, and his mouth comes down on mine.
I wrap my legs around him and kiss him back. I push into him and run my hands up into his hair and pull, and I hear him groan against my mouth.
I rub myself against him without meaning to. I love dry-humping him and wet-humping him. Any kind of humping, as long as he is involved.
“Robyn.” He laughs into my mouth and lifts his head. “Behave.”
“You first.”
“Let’s eat. You can have your wicked way with me later.”
“Promise?”
“Cross my heart.”
He puts me down carefully and reaches for his jeans, pulling them on. I watch him button them up.
Then he crosses to a spot under a single big oak at the edge of the field, where he’s stashed a basket and a folded blanket. He shakes the blanket out across the grass and waves me over.
I sit cross-legged in one corner. He sits opposite me, pulling a bottle of champagne out of the basket, and pops the cork in one fluid movement.
“Show-off,” I tell him.
“I’m just getting started.” He pours two glasses and hands me one. The bubbles climb up the side. “To us.”
“To us.”
He leans in and kisses me. Then we both drink.
He puts his glass down and reaches into the basket again. He pulls out a pizza box.
I clap my hands. “You got us pizza. I’m so happy. I thought you might bring out picnic food. Things like tiny cucumber sandwiches and little crackers with cream cheese and—”
“No way.” He flips the lid open. “I know you too well for that.”
I gasp. “Bacon and pineapple. My all-time favorite. You remembered.”
“Of course I did.”
He plucks a slice out of the box, holds it up, and feeds me the first bite. I close my eyes and moan.
“That’s heaven,” I say around my food.
He takes the next bite from the same slice. Then he stops chewing, blinks, and stares at the slice like it just confessed something to him.
“Good, isn’t it?” I smile.
“So good.” He turns the slice over in his fingers, studying it. “I’m in shock, actually.” Then his face does something. A slow, sheepish smile that turns into something a lot more thoughtful. “Do you remember what you said about this particular pizza?”
I frown. “No. What did I say?”
“I ordered the pepperoni, and you said if I’d ordered bacon and pineapple, then…”
I burst out laughing as the memory surfaces. “You’d be marriage material. I did say that, didn’t I? No wonder you were ready to run a—”
I stop talking because Ridge is holding up a small box.
A ring box.
He opens it.
I make a weird sound from the back of my throat.
“I know we agreed to date for a while.” He keeps his voice low and steady. “You haven’t even agreed to move in with me yet. But I love you, Robyn. I love you so much. I want you, I need you, I respect you, and I cherish you. Please, will you be my mate?”
I flap a hand at my own face because I am about to ugly cry, and I am trying very hard not to.
“I really need you to say yes,” Ridge says. “Please say yes.”
I look down at the ring.
It’s a pearl. Not a perfect, shiny round one, but a misshapen, lopsided, and absolutely beautiful pearl, set in a band of rose gold that catches the late afternoon light.
That’s what does it. I ugly cry. I think snot might be leaking from my nose.
Ridge looks stricken. “Oh, no. Is it too soon? Don’t you like it? Please, Robyn, I—”
“I love it.” I wipe my face, and it’s not helping at all. “And I love you. Of course I’ll marry you.”
“Yeah?” He looks like a man who just won the lottery.
“Yeah.” I sniffle. “Yes, you idiot. Yes.”
He pulls me into his arms and crushes me against his chest. Then his mouth is on mine, and we’re both laughing, and I’m still crying a little but in a much happier way. He slides the ring onto my finger.
It’s warm.
“If you don’t like it, I can get you a diamond,” he says into my hair. “Or whatever you want. This belonged to my mother. My father found the pearl himself…not the pearl but the oyster…you know what I mean. He had the ring made for her.”
That sets me off again.
“It’s perfect.” I’m a mess. “It’s sooooo very perfect. Don’t you dare replace it. I love it. Oh my gosh, are you sure you want me to have it? It was your mother’s.”
“Of course, yes. It belongs on your finger.”
The tears start to fall all over again.
He holds me, and I hear his heart under my cheek.
“I want to start trying for a family,” he whispers against my hair.
I sit up. “I’m forty next month. I’m too old.”
“Bullshit.” His voice goes gruff. “You’re perfect, and you’ll be the perfect mother.”
“I’m geriatric.”
“Stop.” He cups my face in both hands. “Do you want babies with me or not?”
I’m crying again. “Yes, I want babies with you.”
“Then let’s start trying right now.”
I laugh through the tears. “I’m taking a contraceptive.”
“Stop taking it today.”
“I took it this morning.” I laugh some more.
He laughs too. “Stop taking it from tomorrow. We’ll practice, starting right now.”
“Shouldn’t we get married first?”
“No.” He shakes his head.
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay?” he says. “Do you mean it?”
“I mean it.”
Then he’s kissing me again, and I am kissing him back. I can’t wait to start a family with Ridge. I can’t wait for what the future will hold.
Tempted by Fire is on pre-order now…