24. Zuri
ZURI
“Next week,” Renee says at the door, holding both my hands. “Shopping center. You, me, Treasure, and those sisters-in-law of yours I keep hearing about. I need everything for this apartment, and you need retail therapy you don’t have to fly to.”
“I’ll be there,” I tell her.
“She will not be on time,” Jalen says over my head. “She’s got a standing appointment with my pancakes.”
Treasure raises her hand from the kitchen table. “I waddle now, but I promise you I still outshop everybody in this valley.”
We say our goodbyes at the balcony door. Malachi, Soren, Sable, and Treasure stay behind to get her settled, and the last thing I see before Jalen lifts us into the dark is Renee in the middle of all those boxes, bossing a gargoyle around by pointing.
She’s going to do fine here.
We fly home over the sleeping town, and Shadow Wolf Creek is even prettier headed back, the streets gone quiet under the moon.
I lean into Jalen’s warmth and quit fighting the truth of it.
I feel full, complete, in a way I don’t have practice with.
I came into this valley with a stolen folder and a life that fit in a tote bag, and my man built me a whole world and pulled it off in a day.
The mountain comes up ahead, and I wait for the climb to the balcony.
It doesn’t come.
Jalen banks left instead and takes us down, low over the treetops, into the valley below the Caves. A clearing opens in the middle of the forest, wide and silver with moonlight, and he sets me down soft in the grass at the edge of it.
“What are we doing?” I ask.
“There’s someone I want you to meet.” He backs away from me, out into the open.
The grass is cool under my bare feet, and I curl my toes into it. “Jalen. What are you doing?”
He smiles at me across the clearing. “He’s been waiting for this moment. Desperate to meet you.”
Then he pulls his shirt over his head and drops it in the grass, and his pants follow.
Any other night I’d have plenty to say about all that man standing bare in the moonlight. Tonight the air feels too big for jokes.
My eyes go wide when it starts.
Heat rolls off him hard enough to bend the air.
He drops forward onto his hands, and the change takes him.
His back stretches. His shoulders split wide, and wings pour up out of them, bigger than the ones I know, then bigger than the clearing’s edge.
Dark green scales rise out of his skin and lock together, row over row, climbing him while he grows.
He goes up past the size of a man, then past the SUV we drove to the diner, and he keeps going until he’s taller than the roofline of my old building.
The ground under my feet carries every bit of that new weight.
A tail sweeps out behind him and drags a path through the grass.
His neck pulls long. His face goes last. His jaw stretches out long, heavy ridges rise over his brow, and he keeps his green eyes on me through all of it.
And then it’s done, and a dragon the size of a house stands in the clearing where my man was.
His scales are a deep forest green, darker than his eyes, and they shine where the moon touches them. His wings settle against his sides, green as bottle glass at the edges, the exact green that caught me in a Stillwater lobby.
My mouth falls open.
He looks down at me from way up in the night, and I know that look from across a breakfast table. It’s Jalen, all of him.
Everything hits me at the same time, too big to sort. The warmth behind my heart swells until I have to press my palm flat over it.
Then he comes to me. Each step rolls the ground, and he folds himself lower and lower until that massive head is level with mine, and he brushes his snout against my middle, so careful for something so big. His breath washes over me, warm enough to feel through my clothes.
My tears spill over, and I don’t wipe them. I put both hands on his snout, and his scales are warm under my hands.
“Hi, boy,” I get out. “You’re so beautiful.”
I rub his head, up between his eyes where the scales run small and smooth, and a moan rolls out of him, deep enough that I feel it through the ground.
Then the warmth behind my heart opens all the way, and what pours through it is him. It’s love, steady and huge, more than one body should be able to hold.
I sink to my knees in the grass, still holding on to him, and I break into sobs from somewhere I keep locked.
He pulls his great head back, and a low sound moves through him. His wings sag off his shoulders.
I can’t stop crying. Trying makes it worse.
Then the change runs backward over him, scales folding away into skin, and Jalen crosses the grass and comes down into a crouch in front of me. He cups my face in both hands.
“Baby, I’m sorry.” His thumbs move over my cheeks. “I just— I just wanted you to meet him.”
I look up at him through the mess I’m making of myself, and I finally say the words I’ve been holding since a booth screeched across a bar floor.
“I love you, Jalen.” My voice breaks in half. “I love you. I love your dragon.”
He pulls back. His face goes blank.
I make myself breathe until the sobs let up. I wipe my nose with the back of my hand and search his face for answers. He’s still not talking.
I grab his wrist. “Jalen. Say something.”
He shakes his head. “I can’t.”
Then his mouth is on mine.
He pours himself into the kiss. His hands frame my face and tip it back, and his mouth moves over mine deep and slow, and the warmth behind my heart opens wider than it has ever gone.
His love comes through it. Under his love comes his dragon, and under them both the bond itself, wide open at both ends.
There’s more than I know how to hold, and he keeps giving it anyway.
I go lightheaded and hold on to his shoulders with both hands, and it’s too much, and I don’t want it to stop, both at the same time.
He pulls back first. His green eyes are shining wet in the moonlight.
Then he gathers me up into his arms, completely naked in the middle of an open field, and holds me so tight I can feel his heartbeat working against mine.
He falls back into the grass and pulls me into his lap, and we stay there staring at each other, trading kisses, smiling into them. We stay like that so long the moon moves. I don’t care. I’m warm in his arms, and I have nowhere better to be in this whole world.
“Now what?” I ask, tracing the line of his collarbone.
He leans in and kisses me tender. Then he pulls back with a playful smirk.
“If all you had to do was see my dragon to get the words out, I should have done this shit sooner. First day you got here.” He spreads one hand out grand. “Like, here you go, boo. Now tell me you love me.”
I pinch his arm and narrow my eyes at him. It doesn’t hold. I giggle anyway, and he laughs right along with me, and there he is. My Messy Jay is back.
He leans in and kisses me again. “Now we have our happily ever after.”
“What about Delilah?” I hate her name in a night this good, but I need to know.
“What about her?” He shrugs under me. “She’s not stopping nothing.”
I roll my eyes at him. “Be serious.”
He takes my chin in two fingers. “Let her come. I’ll be waiting for her. Shadow Wolf Creek will be waiting for her.”
I smile at that. Then I take a look around this wide, empty clearing, and I look down at his stiff dick standing tall between us, and I give him my best sultry eyes. “Can we make love out here?”
“Oof.” My back meets the grass that fast. My clothes go next, his hands everywhere at once, and I gasp when he climbs over me and takes himself in hand. Then he fills me in one long push.
I wrap my arms around his neck and throw my head back, gasping at the sky, and I keep my eyes on the full moon while he pushes himself in and out of me, right out in the open.
He takes his time with me, his dick sliding in and out of me in long, deep strokes, and the grass is cool under my back while he burns hot above me.
“I love you,” he whispers against my mouth, and his hips never stop. “I love you.” He moans it into my neck. “I love you.”
“I love you too, Jalen.” I pull his face back up so he can watch me say the rest. “My dragon.”
He groans deep and drives into me harder, and I say his name up at the stars. I hook my legs high on his hips, and he answers by going deeper still. I come hard with my eyes wide open on the moon, crying out while I clench around him, and the moon blurs.
He pumps into me through all of it. Then his rhythm stutters, and he pushes deep and holds there, spilling hot inside me with a long moan of my name.
He eases his weight down and tucks my head under his chin, still inside me, both of us breathing hard.
Above us the moon sits big and bright and full. I watch it until my eyes fall shut in his arms.