NINE #2
"Well, she simply didn't know what she was missing out on, I wager.
There is nothing like being able to fill the bellies of your loved ones, knowing they were happier for your toiling.
Come, let me show you. I hear Drake has plans to build you a home of your own.
As much as I would be sorry to lose you, I am happy to teach you how to cook for yourself.
And maybe others some day. A mate and offspring.
That is the curse of a mother, you know," she went on, the kind of person who could carry on a conversation all by herself, something I found immeasurably charming.
"You spend so much time teaching your girls to cook, sew, clean, keep house.
Only to lose them to their own. But," she added, tone cheering right up, "then they come back with their offspring, and you get to start the process all over again.
Here, hand me the carrots, angel," she demanded, waving to the jars on a shelf lining a wall to the side of the hearth.
There were dozens of them, everything from herbs and dried flowers to fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, and grains.
Finding the carrots, I brought them over to where she was filling a pot over the hearth.
"We will teach you all this too, of course. Gardening, drying your own stores for the winter. You will be running your own household in no time. So tell me," she went on as casually as could be. "Are you and Drake sweet on each other?"
And that was the afternoon I was exposed to three different kinds of mothers.
The doting one who showed her love through caring for you.
The practical one who knew she needed to hand you the tools that life would require of you away from home.
And, well, the meddling mother who wanted to know when she was going to get more grandbabies.
Luckily, I was saved from answering when one of Nesta's children came barging in demanding a snack.
"Is everything okay with Kieran?" I asked when Drake and I were momentarily alone later that evening after dinner, after he had spent some time with old friends while I helped Aya clean and launder, two very new tasks to me.
Sure, I had needed to clean my clothing in the human realm, but there were machines that did all the work.
There were no machines in The Green. And certainly none here on Draca land.
Just a bunch of women gathered around, scrubbing homemade soaps into fabrics while talking about what they would plant for spring, who was expecting, what young couples had found sweethearts.
Even then, taking a walk through the mostly-empty path leading away from town, my fingertips felt achy and overly sensitive from all the scrubbing.
"Yeah. Kieran is just... angry with the other elders now that he knows he was right in trying to find me, wanting to send people out to look for me. He hasn't had anyone to talk to about it for all this time. He needed to vent, purge it out so it stopped eating at him."
"Did you two... go out and fly together?" I asked, feeling a twinge of jealousy at the idea. Not because I wanted to fly with him per se, seeing as that wouldn't be possible, but because I held this deep-rooted desire to see him Change, to see him freed of that last shackle he still wore.
Almost seeming to read through me, his gaze went down, a small smile on his lips. "No. We just took a walk. Talked. Speaking of, how did your afternoon go? I heard my mother put you to work."
"I asked to help. Then she decided it was her mission to teach me how to tend house for myself. And for a mate and offspring one day."
A low groan escaped Drake. "She didn't use that term, did she?"
I smiled at that, at his embarrassment, finding it sweet. "She did. She also wanted to know," I started, having to take a deep breath to get the words out, and even then they were barely more than a whisper, "if we were sweet on each other."
There.
It was out there.
For better, worse, and my eternal humiliation.
At the words, Drake stopped, turning, waiting for me to do the same.
"She asked that?"
"She did," I told him, nodding, not sure how to read the odd look in his eyes.
"What did you say?"
"Your niece interrupted."
"What would you have said?" he pressed.
I was suddenly very aware of our aloneness, of the three-quarter moon above us, of the blanket of stars, of the way all the light was reflecting off the white snow, making everything dreamy and idyllic.
And, above all else, the nearness of us, the way the warmth always emanated off his body, calling me closer, the way his eyes had a sweet edge, the way everything within me was begging me to tell him the truth, to be open, vulnerable, honest. Even if it was scary, new, uncomfortable.
My eyes skittered around, not quite able to keep contact. "I would have said that maybe someday we could be sweet on each other."
"Maybe?" he asked, head ducking, trying to make eye contact, but my gaze was stubbornly downward.
"Someday?" he added, fingers snagging my chin waiting for my eyes to find his.
"Is there something wrong with today?" he asked, lips curving up ever-so-slightly, eyes intense.
"To be sweet on me," he clarified, thumb moving out to trace up my cheek.
My head tilted slightly, begging for more of the sensation.
My heart was fluttering around in my chest, seemingly free of the binds that would normally tie it.
"I'm already sweet on you," I admitted in a whisper.
"Yeah?" he asked, voice tentative, afraid, maybe, to be hopeful.
My head nodded. "I know it was only days for you, but it was months for me. And there wasn't a single night that I didn't dream about you, wake up in the morning disappointed that it wasn't real."
Whatever control he normally had on himself evaporated in an instant, his hand sliding from my cheek to cup my jaw, the other hand raising to do the same on the other side, his strange eyes searching mine, the red somehow brighter than ever before.
And then his lips sealed over mine.
Soft, sweet, tentative at first.
Until my body melted into his.
Until my lips parted on a whimper.
My body slammed back into a tree, knocking my air out of me for a moment as his lips grew harder, hungrier.
Drake's hands left my face, sliding down my arms, my ribs, my hips, then slipping backward, gliding down, sinking in.
His fingers bruised into the flesh of my ass as he pulled, gently urged me up to my tiptoes, then off my feet completely, leaving me dangling for a short moment before he yanked me up, coaxing my legs to fold around his back, opening me up to him, letting his hardness press against the aching need at my core.
His teeth snagged my lower lip, pulling to the point of pain as he pressed me harder against the tree, as his hands used my ass to drag my body up, then grind it back down against him, making a shudder course through me at the perfect friction.
The moan escaped me, loud, unmuffled, echoing out into the silence around us.
A low, rumbling growl escaped Drake even as his lips ripped from mine, lowering, seeking the sensitive skin down the side of my neck, kissing, licking, sucking, nipping over the flesh as the need became a wildfire in my system, burning, blistering, blinding me to anything else as my legs gave me leverage, allowing me to lift up, then grind back down, his cock pressing right where I needed it most, sparking a flame through my body, a hint of something to come, something overwhelming, an explosion of sorts.
His lips had just sealed over mine again, his tongue dancing with mine until my body lifted and ground down again, needing more, when I heard it.
A cough.
A clearing of a throat.
An announcement of our not-alone-ness.
I jerked back so fast that I forgot where I was, head slamming back into the tree, sending stars across my eyes for a second even as Drake's upper body pulled away as well, half-turning toward the sound of the intrusion.
"Rooms. Rooms are good for that sort of thing," a male voice I decided immediately I didn't recognize - because it was low, deep, growling, and utterly rememberable - said.
"Unless, of course, you want to put on a show," the voice went on as my vision finally cleared, allowing me to sneak a look at the man from under my lashes - too embarrassed for full eye-contact.
"In which case, carry on," he invited, crossing his arms, leaning back against a tree, and shooting us a wicked look.
He was good looking.
I had learned that my ideas of gorgeous dragon-men had been girlish and silly - somehow expecting them all to be beautifully crafted specimens of perfection. Like Drake.
Sure, most of the Draca were all fit, broader than most fae, stronger, corded with muscles - even many of the women, their arms looking like they could endlessly chop wood without so much as getting a muscle spasm. But that didn't mean they were all attractive.
Like any society, there were a few specimens of near-perfection. Again, Drake. Or, at least, I thought so. Then there were also a few truly unfortunate looking people. Then there was a whole lot of in-between people. Not unattractive, but not beautiful.
But this man fell into the privileged few category.
He was stunning to take in with his wide, strong build, his firm jaw, his severe brow ridge, his masculine, but not overstated nose, his full, but not feminine mouth, his dark, inky hair kept long - like, it seemed, most did - but pulled back.
I couldn't make out his eyes from a distance, something that had somehow managed to send off a twinge of disappointment even through my embarrassment.
I had come to have a sort of fascination with their eyes, the way each seemed to have brown with unique starbursts within.
Except for Kieran who had blue with silver, a combination that was almost unsettlingly lovely to see.
So I wanted to see his eyes, even as I really wanted him to stop looking at me, at us in that amused, but penetrative way he was currently doing.