Chapter 33
Thirty-Three
Dirk
I slipped out of Ella’s room, my lips still tingling from the goodnight kiss she had lavished upon me.
The smell of her arousal tickled my nose, courtesy of the panties tucked away in my pocket.
I don’t know where that came from, but damn, was it hot. That memory will serve me very well.
My dragon flexed its wings, unsettled and unhappy. It wanted us to go back inside. Ella was our mate. We should not be leaving her. Instead, we should storm back inside and take what was ours. The tips of my fangs started to descend.
And that is why I am in control, not you. If we did that, we would only push her further away, possibly lose her. Forever. We can wait a bit longer. Or are you too weak?
There was silence, and then a snort, but my fangs retracted.
Exactly.
“Dirk?”
That was Kolar from his spot in the hallway.
Although we were in the tyrant’s private wing of the citadel, Caz still insisted on having guards posted, and Kolar must have drawn the night shift.
Across from him was another member of the palace guard.
I nodded in acknowledgment, though I only vaguely recognized his face.
“Eyes forward,” I said to Kolar, struggling hard to keep a straight face.
“Wouldn’t be much of a guard if I didn’t notice every going … and coming.”
I fixed Kolar with a stare, but he just stared straight forward. His lips may have twitched. Once.
“Goodnight, Kolar,” I said slowly, walking past him.
“Goodnight, Dirk.”
I spun, but his eyes were still fixed on a spot directly across the hall.
Accepting defeat, I continued.
“I told you I’d get you back for that outfit,” Kolar whispered, my dragon hearing easily picking it up.
Shaking my head in amusement, I returned to my quarters, still in a bit of a daze from everything that had happened tonight with Ella. After we had gotten dressed, I’d ordered dinner to the room.
It had been painful, my dick straining against my pants, begging for further release, but strict self-discipline kept me from coming undone.
That time. I had told Ella I was fine, that I would make it, but truthfully I had barely gotten through the evening.
To be so close to her, the taste of her sweet pussy on my fingers, and her soaked underwear in my pocket, had been pure torture.
Now I fell back into my bed with the memories of her nude body in the dim light, and immediately started stroking my cock, her panties sitting under my nose. It wouldn’t take long to give me the release that would reduce the aching in my balls.
Behind my eyelids, Ella danced and moaned once more as I pleasured her with my mouth this time, tasting her fully, making her body writhe and arch as I fisted my shaft, up and down, moving my index finger just over the thick head and back.
Ella cried out my name in my fantasy, and I stifled a loud groan as my dick twitched. I was going to come. My other hand snatched her panties just as the explosion burst from the tip of my cock, and I came hard into her underwear, shaking from the intensity of the orgasm.
I sagged back into the bed, still hard as a rock. After being turned on all night, I would have to jerk it at least once more before I could settle down.
Getting up, I moved to the shower, where I quickly drained what little seed I had left a second time. Cleaning myself up, I then got out, dried off, and stood around, staring at the bed. Something about sleep felt wrong.
But what was it? I couldn’t go to Ella. She was safe with Kolar and the other guard in the hallway.
The other guard. My dragon growled. We didn’t trust him. Didn’t know him, and didn’t want him anywhere near our mate. Even Kolar was pushing it, though we trusted him completely.
Fine, I grunted at my dragon, putting on clothes and walking back into the hallway.
“Take a hike,” I told Kolar and the other guard. “I’ll take tonight’s watch here. You go reinforce the entry to the wing.”
Kolar took one look at me and marched himself and the other guard away, not voicing a word of protest.
I took up station directly across from Ella’s door. My dragon settled in for the night, one eye open, and I did the same. This felt right, felt like where we were supposed to be. My earlier discomfort faded swiftly, replacing by a sense of fulfillment.
As her mate, this was where I belonged. Between her and any possible danger.
I touched my chest again, where fresh marks had come in tonight. At first I had despaired about having none, but not so much anymore. Now I saw them as marks of progress. Each time they came in, I knew Ella and I had reached a new compatibility level.
They were a sign that maybe I could do this after all. Maybe I could be good enough for someone like her.
The hours passed with happy thoughts like that while I also worked through planning for the surveillance we were going to undertake on Mirko’s estate here in Kylma. After my threat, he would undoubtedly be on guard, so anything we did would have to be carried out with utmost care.
Which meant, for starters, finding a way to avoid the spotters he would have set up around his neighborhood.
I didn’t doubt for a moment that, via a cutout man, Mirko would have bribed the various store owners in the area, all of whom would report to him.
He would probably have others too who patrolled the streets, both visible and in disguise.
A treason this deep would require extreme security. Somehow, I would have to overcome it and …
I stiffened at a noise from the other side of Ella’s door. It had sounded like a cry. Pacing over and pressing an ear where door and frame met, I waited and listened.
Was she playing with herself? I started to smile at the thought she might be touching herself to the thought of me.
There was another cry. This one wiped the grin away. It wasn’t pleasure. It was pain, and one I had heard from her before.
She was having another nightmare.
Grinding my teeth, I stood there at the door, listening to Ella.
It was ten times worse now than it had been at the chalet.
Even then it had bothered me, which I should have taken as a sign that something was different about Ella, but the slave collar that had caused the nightmares must have also messed up her dragon.
I’d thought she was past these by now.
Unless someone caused them to return. Was that why she needed time and space? Was our mate bond causing the nightmares?
I lingered at the door, each cry driving a knife into my stomach and twisting.
Mate. Protect. Mate. Protect.
Over and over the thoughts battered my head, my dragon thrashing and circling, upset that we were still in the hallway.
A particularly loud and agonizing cry bordering on a scream pierced the door, and before I could think about it, my dragon sank its claws deep and pushed me inside her quarters. The imperative to be at her side was overwhelming, crushing any thought of resistance.
I was across the open area in a flash and into her bedroom, where I found Ella thrashing under the covers in the grips of a horrific nightmare.
Sliding to a stop next to her, I hesitated, unsure what to do, staring down at my mate, white as ice in her sleep.
“No,” she moaned, twisting left and right, pleading with some demon from her mind. “Please. Why? Don’t take that from me. I want to be a moth—”
She thrashed hard, making noises that made me want to find whoever had done this to her and rip them limb from limb while they were still alive, so they might know the pain she did.
Ella screamed louder.
Touch her.
I pressed a hand to her shoulder, unsure of what would happen.
In seconds, Ella calmed, slumping into the bed with a tiny whimper that became a sigh. Her chest rose and fell swiftly, and then it too slowed as she returned to peaceful sleep, color filling her cheeks once more.
I clenched my other hand in success as our mate bond brought her comfort. I wasn’t the problem after all.
Now I was left with the problem of what to do next. Spending all night leaning over her was out of the question. If she woke up and saw me looming up at the side of her bed, that would be a nightmare in itself.
So I sank to the floor, careful to keep my hand on her shoulder. It slid off once, and her face tightened almost immediately. But once my fingers pressed against her skin, she relaxed.
My dragon was rumbling quietly in my head, full of happiness and more than a little gloat. It thought this was how it should be. What a mate was supposed to do.
However, a new problem was rapidly presenting itself. The mate bond worked both directions. I was rapidly losing the battle with sleep, as peace and tranquility wrapped itself around me like a soft blanket, lulling me down.
At one point I even found myself starting to ease up onto the bed, to snuggle in behind Ella.
That was unacceptable. I was already going to be in a ton of trouble when she woke up.
I could handle that. I would accept her anger at finding me in her bedroom, if it meant sparing her from the nightmare.
But if I started spooning her, I might lose her just as we were beginning to find one another.
There had to be another option because letting her suffer was out of the question as well. Somehow, I had to keep touching her, without more of my body entering into her personal space.
I scanned the room, looking for options. There wasn’t much of use. There was a chair and daybed. Several tables. The door to the bathroom. Her big wardrobe, full of clothing I’d had sent to her, and little else.
What was I going to do?
My eyes settled on the wardrobe once more, deep in thought, as a ridiculous idea came to me.
There is no way this will work …