Chapter Nineteen
BEN
Rain pattered softly against the windows. Dominic’s arm was heavy across my body, holding me to him. I could still feel the imprint of him everywhere, on my mouth, my throat, my hips. Beneath my skin, somehow.
My hands were unclenched now, gentle on his arm and entirely different from when I’d wrapped them so tightly in his hair. And the sounds I’d made…
I’d had relationships before, good ones. Sex that was fun, affectionate, and hot. I’d been deepthroated before, for God’s sake. But none of it had ever done that to me. I didn’t understand how he’d done it. An orgasm was an orgasm, surely. Except apparently not.
I hadn’t been Ben anymore. Or maybe I had, and it was just a Ben I hadn’t yet met. A Ben I hadn’t let myself be. Hadn’t known I could be.
And through it all, I’d never once felt unsafe. He had me.
Here I was, naked in his bed and feeling more relaxed than I had with people I’d dated for years.
The thought should have felt alarming. Instead I found myself loving every moment of this closeness.
Dominic’s scent surrounded me, his breaths slow and sure against my hair.
With the rain on the windows, this felt like something out of time. An escape capsule, just for us.
I’d been so sure he’d expect me to leave afterwards. I should have paid attention to his body, not to my brain panicking. I shouldn’t have made him say it. Stay.
I was drifting, lulled by his warmth, safe in his hold, when my eyes finally focused on what was standing on the windowsill.
I blinked at it for a second. Then I twisted in Dominic’s arms to look at him. “Is that a pine cone?”
“Maybe,” he said, drowsiness vanishing from his eyes, replaced by a gleam of lazy amusement.
“So were you Pine Cone Collector Zero, or is Teddy disposing of his collection?”
Dominic huffed a quiet laugh against my temple, and I shivered at how intimate it felt. “I did try to explain he shouldn’t compromise his collection, but he was insistent I have this one. It’s his favourite, apparently.”
Something soft and helpless unfolded in my chest, and I turned away again, snuggling back against Dominic because kissing him the way I wanted to right now felt too much like a statement.
“You’re very good with him,” I said.
There was a brief pause behind me. Then I felt Dominic shrug slightly. “He’s a kid.”
“An extremely sticky and muddy one.”
That earned me another laugh.
“Are you closely related?” I asked.
“He’s Rae’s, so that probably makes him my second cousin twice removed or something equally ridiculous. Who the hell knows with dragon families?”
His arm tightened against my chest, his fingers shifting idly. It sent a shiver of want through me, though I didn’t think it was just physical.
“Something’s been bugging me,” he said, nuzzling against my ear.
Oh, God, I wasn’t sure I was going to survive Dominic.
I’d never suspected he’d be like this. Everything he did, everything he was, screamed he was untouchable—except for when he was being the best fuck of someone’s life.
But now he was like a very warm, very comfortable, very sexy barnacle. One I never wanted to be without.
I shifted onto my back so I could look at him properly, and I loved the fact he didn’t let go of me. He simply adjusted his grip.
“What?” I asked. I thought he’d been building up to a question, though I’d lost track somewhere with the way he was pressed against me, warm and so very naked.
“When you shift. You’re white, but it’s not albinism. So how?”
I shrugged. “I just am. Might as well ask why you’re grey.”
“Yeah, but there are plenty of grey dragons, and no white ones. Anywhere.”
“Outside my family, you mean,” I said. “We’re all white.”
“Huh,” he said, and his brow creased slightly. “That’s not fair.”
“Fair?” I asked cautiously, because I had no idea what he meant.
“You look so bloody dramatic in the night sky, and now you’re telling me there’s loads of you who do that. Definitely not fair.”
My lips twitched at how offended he sounded.
“But there has to be a reason why,” he added. “Doesn’t there?”
“So far as I’m aware, it’s simple genetics. Takes two white dragons to make another white one.”
He looked oddly disappointed.
“You were expecting a centuries-old witch’s curse?” I asked him. “Sorry to disappoint.”
He made an affronted little noise, but then his lips curved. “Would’ve been more fun. Leaving aside the whole bit about you being cursed.”
“If it helps, I don’t think genetics explains why our treasure’s different,” I said. “Maybe we’re more different than I thought.” And that felt suddenly… not good.
Some of my family had been worried about mixing with other dragons for the first time in centuries, but I’d actually been excited. It had never occurred to me that anyone might judge us for the way we were.
“Hey, no,” he said, and kissed me. “Don’t say it like that. Different’s not bad. It’s just different.”
He stroked my hair back from my face, and I leaned into his hand.
Then his eyes narrowed on mine. “What do you mean, your treasure’s different?”
“My whole family treasures history,” I told him.
“But it’s not—it’s not like we have to own the documents ourselves, though God help anyone who tried to raid our family’s archives.
It’s…” I shrugged slightly again, because I knew it was weird, compared to all the other dragons out there. “It’s just the way it is.”
“God,” he said, and he sounded stunned. His hand was still for an instant, and when he moved again, it wasn’t my skin he was stroking but the ring on his right hand.
Made of emeralds and gold, and I guessed one of those was his treasure.
It seemed he was absent-mindedly reassuring himself as he tried to imagine life without treasure.
Evidently, he failed. “That should be illegal,” he declared at last.
Fair enough. I had the opposite problem—I couldn’t imagine being so tightly tied to a hoard of metal or jewels that I’d always worry it might be stolen from me.
He started kissing along my shoulder, and I wriggled. His mouth on my skin felt so good, warm and certain, but it tickled. “Stop moving,” he murmured. “I haven’t got them all yet.”
“What the—?” My last word got swallowed in what sounded embarrassingly like a giggle. God damn it, I’d never known I was ticklish.
“Dominic,” I said firmly, when he finally raised his head and looked at me, eyes glinting. “What exactly are you doing?”
“Freckles. You’ve got them on your shoulders. Which is weird, because they’re not—” He was peering closely at me, like I was an eighteenth-century fake of an older document. “Nope, they’re really not there on your face. How does that work?”
“Let’s just put it down to me being a white dragon,” I told him.
“Oh,” he said, and his eyes lit up. “If a white dragon and a red one had a dragonet, would it be pink?”
“No, Dominic. It would not be pink,” I told him.
“How d’you know? Have you tried? Pink dragons would be awesome.”
“Because if colours worked like that, then the first gold dragon to have offspring with a red one would’ve had rose-gold dragonets. And they don’t exist.”
He looked so disappointed that I had to kiss him. He gave a pleased-sounding little hum, and kissed me back, his hand sliding down my spine in a way that made me shiver.
Then he pulled away. “No. You’ve got to stop doing that.”
“Doing what?” I asked, because okay, maybe my hands were doing their own bit of wandering, with one currently cupping his arse and the other pressed against his chest, but he hadn’t seemed to mind that before.
“Distracting me. I was asking you something.”
“You were campaigning for pink dragons,” I informed him.
“I mean, yeah, and I think I’m going to petition…” he frowned. “Someone. But your family—why did they hide all those years? And why come out now?”
I loved that he felt comfortable enough with me to ask direct questions.
And what he was asking was no great secret.
Well, Rhodri probably wouldn’t want me telling him, but I wasn’t going to think of Rhodri right now.
Not when Dominic’s legs were tangled with mine and he was pressed against me. Still naked.
“We hid away from all other dragons when we lost our throne, and it seems as if the rest of you forgot about us,” I told him.
“Your throne?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow. “Am I supposed to curtsey?”
“I mean, don’t let me stop you, but no, we’re going back centuries, and it was a little principality in south—oh, God.” It hit me for the first time and I stared at him. “Wales. No wonder I love it here.”
“There’re no other reasons?” he said, and trailed his hand suggestively along my thigh.
I shook my head. He was impossible. “As I was saying,” I said firmly, “we fled and hid, otherwise we’d have been wiped out by the usurpers.”
Well, that was interesting. I’d never consciously thought of the Mortimers as usurpers, but that was the word that had come out, and my dragon’s disapproving rumble had vibrated in my voice.
“We survived mainly because our family had enough distant branches to maintain separate lines over the years,” I continued. “Not so much a family tree as several family shrubs growing next to one another.”
Dominic snorted a laugh.
“But everyone memorised the relationship charts as dragonets. Who was closely related to whom, and which branches were acceptable options for romantic relationships.”
“That sounds restrictive as hell.”
“It was,” I admitted. “Though relationships with humans were tolerated, which helped.”
Dominic’s eyebrows rose sharply. Dragons lived alongside humans, had them as friends and colleagues, but serious romantic relationships were taboo. We couldn’t risk our existence becoming known.
“Children were forbidden in those relationships, of course,” I said.
I ached for all the generations before me, for how few chances at love they’d had, and the families they hadn’t been able to build.
“So what changed?” Dominic asked.