11. Joy
JOY
Joy’s legs were sore, it was true, but she still felt her eagerness to get back to the lodge lending wings to her skis.
The entire day felt magical, like an interlude from a more perfect life. She didn’t know which part she wanted to focus on: Bar’s kiss, the delight of spending time with him in the scenic beauty around them, the pleasure of being able to shift in front of him, his dragon ...
His dragon. Her mind flitted back and forth between all of these lovely new memories, often resting on the kiss, but it also kept returning to the wonder that was seeing Bar in his dragon form for the first time. He was gorgeous and wild and magical. He wasn’t terribly huge, although he had seemed big enough to her as a squirrel. In fact he was perfectly sized, just the correct size. A dragon the size of a house would be hard to fit anywhere. And he was perfectly dragon-shaped in every regard. His scales shone in the sun like copper pennies, and he had wings. Wings!
“Bar, can you fly?” she asked. Her breath huffed in the cold, forming small clouds in front of her mouth.
“I don’t know,” Bar admitted. “I’ve never tried.”
Joy was shocked. “You have wings and you haven’t ever used them?”
“Well, when I was a kid, I did try. I definitely couldn’t get off the ground then. But Mom and Dad came down on me like a ton of bricks for it.” His voice changed, turning inward, growing darker and sadder. Joy wondered if he was aware of it. “They made sure I knew the consequences of anyone ever seeing me fly, so—I just never did. My wings are a lot bigger now. It’s possible that I could be able to.”
Joy couldn’t wrap her mind around the tragedy of knowing that you might be able to fly, but never being able to find out. “You know, I bet where we were today is far enough away from the lodge that no one could see you. If you wanted to, you know—try. Maybe tomorrow.”
“I’ll think about it,” Bar said. Usually when people said that, they were putting you off, but she didn’t hear that tone in his voice; it seemed that he was sincere. “But later, not right now. I think there’s a hot tub in our future.”
The lodge came in sight, and not a moment too soon, according to Joy’s aching legs. Bar had a point; she was definitely using a lot of unaccustomed muscles. Collapse, she sensed, was imminent.
They left the skis in the outbuilding and walked, or in Joy’s case limped, to the lodge.
“You are so right,” Joy groaned, as Bar gave her a hand up the front steps. “I’m glad we came back when we did. I really should have stopped sooner.” But it had been worth it to see his family home and, even more so, for the trust that he had placed in her to take her there.
“I’m changing my recommendation to a good soak in a hot tub followed by a massage.”
“I think I’ll take your prescription, Dr. Grey.”
As they entered the lobby, Leah hailed them from a chair beside the fire, where she was sitting with a book. “Joy, hey! Oh, uh hi there, you,” she added grudgingly in Bar’s direction.
“Hi, Leah,” Bar said.
Leah acknowledged it with a grunt. At least it wasn’t an insult, so Joy decided to count it as a win. “Where have you two been?”
“We went skiing.” Joy tried not to limp too obviously as she came over to her sister’s chair. “I was just, uh—Bar invited me to use his hot tub for my—for my sore muscles.”
“Is that what we’re calling it now?” Leah sighed and dropped her head against the back of the chair. “You’re a grownup. I guess. Just don’t forget what today is. All right? Promise you’ll be there?”
“Cross my heart,” Joy promised.
As they climbed the stairs, Bar said, “I don’t want to keep you if there’s a family thing you should be doing.”
“Later, but not now. My sister and I do our main gift exchange on Christmas Eve,” Joy explained. “We started it the year after Mom died. And the reason was because we didn’t used to do that with our parents. We opened gifts with them on Christmas morning. So Leah and I wanted to try it to ... to make Christmas our own again, and not think about all the Christmases we wouldn’t have again, you know? It was a way of turning it into a celebration for the new family that we had become, as well as the family we used to be.”
Bar squeezed her hand. “I think that’s a great tradition. Of course I won’t keep you away from it.”
Joy looked down, feeling her cheeks heat. “I would like to ask you to join us, but—maybe not the first year. It’s really such a me and Leah thing, and I do want you to be part of that, but considering how she feels about you, and that I’ve only known you for such a short time?—”
“I get it,” Bar said. “Really, I do. I’m not going to horn in on your family Christmas.”
But I WANT you to. She knew that she had to walk a fine line; this thing with Bar was clearly blooming into a relationship, but she didn’t want to start them off by making Leah feel left out. And the touchy subject of Bar vs. the lodge owners didn’t help.
In the upstairs hallway, once they were out of sight from below, they kissed briefly but warmly.
“Ma’am,” Bar said, “allow me to show you the honeymoon suite.”
“I would love that, as long as you never call me ma’am again.”
Bar laughed. She was starting to love his laugh; she got the feeling that he didn’t let it out very often. They went down the hall to the door at the end, and Bar opened it with a key that had a heart-shaped head. He had to jiggle the key to get the lock open, and Joy wondered if Hester had gone so far as to put chewing gum inside it. Probably not? she thought. It didn’t seem like Hester would do anything to seriously sabotage the lodge, even though she would probably have enjoyed inconveniencing Bar.
“Voila,” Bar said, flinging the door wide. “The honeymoon suite.”
It was, indeed, very honeymoon-y. The decor was all pink, white, and red. There was a deep-pile plush carpet that Joy couldn’t wait to sink her bare feet into, and a huge bed with a pink-and-white bedspread and tons of pillows, including fluffy white ones and red ones shaped like hearts.
“I know it’s a lot,” Bar said as she looked around. “I honestly can’t figure out if Ms. Hatherill put me in here to butter me up, or because she’s hoping I’ll suffocate in a pile of fluffy pillows.”
“It’s wonderful. I love it.” Joy slipped off her boots by the door and buried her toes in the carpet, which felt just as luxurious as it looked. “You said there’s a hot tub?”
“Yes, it’s through this door.”
The bathroom was as opulent as the rest of the suite. The sunken tub had a couple of shallow marble steps up to the edge, and then a small flight of wide steps going down into its deep, comfortable-looking depths, also serving as sitting platforms of different heights.
“Holy moly,” Joy said. “Excuse me, I’m going to be living here from now on.”
“In the honeymoon suite, or in the tub?”
“Both,” she said rapturously.
Bar turned on the taps, and water cascaded into the tub. “There are some little bath bombs and bubble bath and things. I haven’t tried them, but we can use them if you like.”
“Just the water looks amazing.” Joy stripped off her socks and sat on the edge to dip her toes luxuriously into the water. Flowing from three taps around the tub, it was rapidly deepening into a rich, lovely blue. Steam began to fill the bathroom.
Bar started to unbutton his shirt, then hesitated. “Listen, I don’t want you to feel pressured or anything, and I’m not sure if we’re on the same page, so—you can use the hot tub, that’s totally fine, we can take turns and I’m not trying to?—”
Joy had taken this long to get up, but once on her feet, she shut him up with a kiss. When they were done, with her arms laced around his shoulders, she announced, “Bar, in case I haven’t made this clear, I want you in the hot tub with me.” She barely managed to stop herself from saying I want you in the hot tub IN me, but sanity prevailed, at least for the moment.
The grin that broke across his face was brilliant and beautiful. “Oh. Oh good.”
Joy finished unbuttoning his shirt for him, and Bar helped her off with her sweater. He unbuttoned her jeans and carefully slid them down over her hips, kneeling along with them, lightly kissing her belly and her thighs.
As she helped him out of his shirt and jeans, she found him lean and stunning, dusted with light brown curls in all the right places.
She turned and he undid her bra, then stroked her back, kissed his way down to slide her panties over her hips.
The urgency she had expected was there in the background, but it felt as if they had all the time in the world. Naked at last, he shut off the taps and led her into the hot tub. They settled into the hot water, kissing and touching and stroking.
Between the hot water and Bar’s hands all over her, she was nearly incoherent with bliss when he stood up, water streaming off him. He scooped her up, water dripping off both of them, and they kissed frantically as Bar carefully stepped up out of the tub.
Joy pulled back enough to gasp out, “We’re getting water all over their floor ...”
“It’ll dry.”
He pushed her up against the wall. She went willingly, pulling him toward her, and when Bar plunged into her, she gasped wordless delight.
He thrust fiercely, holding her up with a hand under her flexing ass while his other arm braced them against the wall. She had never fully appreciated the pleasure of being with a shifter man in that way: she could relax fully, trusting in his strength and reflexes to catch them if they started to fall. She was slick and wet as Bar pounded into her, and when she plunged over the edge, he followed a moment later.
They leaned into the wall together for a little while, riding out the aftershocks, and then Joy raised her eyes to meet his. Bar’s hair was wet, straggling around his face.
“I don’t think I’m done,” she breathed out. “If you are?—”
“Let’s see what happens.”
They went back into the water to wash off, then toweled each other gently and went to the bed. In the middle of that expanse of soft pink and white, they brought each other carefully to the edge, teased one another along, and then crashed over with the attentions of mouth and fingers and tongue.
Afterwards, Joy lay in Bar’s arms, sated and relaxed.
“The room certainly feels warm enough now,” she murmured into his neck.
Bar laughed softly. He reached down to pull a blanket up over their legs.
“I didn’t ask if you wanted to use any kind of protection. I didn’t even think about it.”
Joy waved a hand languidly before flopping her arm back on Bar again. “It’s fine, I have an IUD. I would have said something.”
She buried her face in his shoulder for a little while. Finally she uncurled a bit and looked at him.
“What’s up?” Bar asked, toying with her hair where it lay limp and wet over her shoulder.
“I was just thinking that I do want to—to talk about the thing you asked me about. Back in the restaurant. Remember?”
Bar propped himself up on his elbow. He looked intrigued, though slightly nervous about where this might be going. “I almost forgot about that.”
“I feel like I understand you better now—about the land, and the way you feel about it. I might not feel what you feel, but I know that you’re struggling with selling or subdividing the land because of your dragon. It’s almost an instinctual thing, right?”
“Right,” Bar said. He reached out to run his fingers through her damp hair.
“Well, that’s what it was like when I met you.” Mine . “I felt like I knew you because I did. We’d never met; it’s not like that. And now I’m a lot more confident that you feel the same thing I do, even if it’s not quite the same for you. Maybe dragons are different that way.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Mates,” Joy said. “You know, the fated kind. People who are meant to be together. I knew it the minute I saw you.”
“Fated mates?” he repeated.
“You don’t know what fated mates are?”
“I’ve heard people talk about it,” Bar said. Lazily he traced a stray curl straggling across her chest. “It’s a superstition, that’s all. It’s not a real thing.”
“No—Bar, it’s real.” She looked into his eyes, and all she could see there was her future. “Mates are very real. I know because you’re mine.”