Chapter Nineteen #2
“Rob and some of the others managed to give away our existence to a Mortimer,” I said.
“It wasn’t planned or anything. I’m not sure why we didn’t come out of hiding before, when the power structures changed, but we didn’t.
I suppose hiding became a habit. Perhaps it felt safe.
” I honestly didn’t know. I hadn’t really thought about it before. “But anyway, we’re not hiding anymore.”
He was quiet a moment, and then he propped himself up on one elbow to look down at me, his hair thoroughly wrecked from my hands earlier. “I’m glad.”
For an instant, his eyes were intense on mine, then he settled beside me again. “I still think there should be pink dragons.”
“You can’t just invent new dragon colours because you like them,” I told him.
“Why not?”
“Because that’s not how it works.”
“But a pink dragon,” he said. “Imagine it.”
“I mean, you’re not wrong. It would be pretty awesome,” I confessed, and I couldn’t stop looking at him.
He was beautiful. The kind of dark beauty that could drive a man to madness. But lying here with him now, warm and rumpled and thoughtful, he was so much more than that.
I became suddenly and acutely aware that he wasn’t the only one who was still very naked.
Dominic apparently picked up on that immediately, because his gaze dropped briefly to my mouth before returning to my eyes.
“You know,” he said lazily, shifting even closer, “for someone who was determined to spend the day in his archives, you seem remarkably distracted.”
“I am perfectly capable of thinking about history right now,” I informed him with dignity.
Dominic slid one thigh deliberately between mine.
My breath left my body.
“Liar,” he said softly.
DOMINIC
The records room felt different when we eventually made it back there. Like somewhere I belonged.
Ben settled automatically back into his chair beside the heater, gathering up his notes. His visible attempt at concentration was becoming increasingly entertaining now I knew exactly what he sounded like when he lost it.
I should probably have felt smug about that. Instead I found myself unable to stop looking at him. His hair was still damp from the shower we’d shared, crammed together in a cubicle that barely had room for one. A faint mark on his throat showed above the collar of his shirt whenever he moved.
I’d marked him, claimed him as mine. Not something I’d ever done before, but it felt right.
When he first came here, he’d seemed almost aggressively uninteresting.
Calm, composed, impossible to provoke. I honestly hadn’t known what to do with someone who looked at me like I was just another person rather than a category five natural disaster.
Then somewhere between the records room and flying together, he’d become… Ben. Funny in a way that kept catching me off guard. Endlessly earnest about history and yet somehow not boring about it. Careful with people—he thought before saying anything. My polar opposite in that way.
I dropped into my own chair and started to look at the stack of correspondence waiting for me. But three seconds later, I was watching Ben again.
He noticed eventually, glancing up from beneath his lashes. “You know,” he observed, “if you keep staring at me like that, I’m going to get absolutely nothing done.”
“You say that like it’s a tragedy.”
“It is a tragedy. Some of us care about history.” He tried to return to his notes, though I could see the corner of his mouth threatening to curve upwards.
My stack of letters was more or less sorted, so I pushed to my feet to gather another armful of records that neither of us had yet looked at. That necessitated walking past the back of Ben’s chair, of course, and I trailed my fingers over the nape of his neck. He shivered, and I grinned to myself.
But he got his revenge, because later, when he needed something from a shelf, he rested his hand for an instant on my shoulder. Even when it was gone, I could still feel it there. Like a brand.
I’d spent years keeping people at a distance.
The only physical exception was for sex, and that was easy because it ended.
But Ben was sitting beside me in the records room with ink smudged faintly along the side of one hand and marks from my mouth hidden beneath his collar, and all I could think about was touching him again.
At that moment, my phone buzzed against the table. Ben watched as I picked it up.
Study. Now.
My usual irritation at Rhodri’s high-handedness sharpened at the thought of leaving Ben. I pushed to my feet, and without conscious intention, I reached out and squeezed the back of his neck lightly as I passed behind his chair.
“I’ll come back,” I heard myself say.
Even with the door closed behind me, making my way down the main staircase, the kind of spell I’d been under didn’t break. All I knew was a growing resentment that Rhodri, who’d spent years avoiding me, decided he had to see me the instant I finally had something I wanted to do.
I bit it down as I knocked on the study door. If I went in there showing how pissed off I was with him, he’d simply treat me like a sulky five-year-old refusing to eat his dinner. And that would end up with me feeling like I was five years old, completely powerless against his authority.
“Come.”
He was sitting behind his desk. “Ah, Dominic,” he said.
As if it would be anyone else. It wasn’t like the family was queuing up to talk to him. In fact, most of them hurried past this door just in case they somehow got called in.
“You asked for me?” I said. And maybe my best efforts hadn’t stopped me laying a little too much stress on the word asked.
He caught it. I saw the instant of frustrated anger in his eyes before he leaned back in his chair. “It’s Anne’s seventy-fifth today.”
I nodded. I knew. I’d sent a card. A rude one, because Anne would love that.
“I’m paying her a visit later.” His eyes were on my face, searching for something. I had no idea what, so I stood there as calmly as I could. Apparently, I passed his silent test, because he spoke again. “I’d like you to accompany me.”
Bloody hell. Which somehow I managed not to say out loud.
He looked away. “I’m leaving in twenty minutes.”
“I’ll be ready,” I said, and instantly wanted to punch myself.
He gave a brief nod, and I knew I was dismissed.
I took a moment outside his door, in the deserted hall.
Because… this was new. This was good. Even if he’d looked as if he wanted to take the invitation back the instant it was out.
Well, not so much an invitation as a command, but the point was, for the first time ever he was including me in his head-of-family duties.
I didn’t know what had changed. Was it that meeting with Mortimer, when he’d seen I could behave like—what had he called it? A civilised dragon.
Visiting Anne wasn’t exactly the same as bringing me in to strategy meetings. If I fucked this up, there were no stakes. But it was a start. It was more than I’d ever had before.
It felt like he was finally beginning to trust me.
Suddenly excited, I headed up the stairs, taking them two at a time. I was at last being allowed to come into my inheritance—and I had Ben waiting for me. For the first time in years, I could picture a future.