Elaina stretched, waking from the most wonderful dream. In her dream, she’d been holding a priceless, life-size golden statue of a man, encrusted with countless diamonds, polished silver orbs for eyes, and rubies so deeply colored they were almost opaque for hair.
She hadn’t slept that well for as long as she could remember. And no doubt, she’d needed it. All that stupid stuff with Alex had distracted her from—
Damn!
She opened her eyes and saw the gaze of her distraction inches in front of her, their bodies entangled on a bed. Oh, no, no, no. She moved to pull away, but her leg was hooked over his hip, one hand was up the front of his shirt, and her other hand was inside the back of his shirt.
He smoothed her hair back from her temple. “Shh. It’s okay. You’re safe. How are you feeling?”
“Feeling?” She gulped. Yeah, as if she would admit that to Mr. Arrogant.
“Did the sleep help? Or are you still feeling sick?”
Now his question made sense. “I don’t get sick. I was just tired. I hadn’t slept last night to—” Everything came back to her, and she sat up and scanned the bedroom. “Where’s my bag?”
“Relax.” He rested a palm on her knee and reached past her to the floor. “It’s right here.” He set the case with her most important possessions on the mattress.
She twisted and surveyed the carpet by the nightstand on her side of the bed. “I wasn’t holding it?”
His voice dropped low and teasing. “There wasn’t enough room between us for you to hold that and me.”
Damn it. Don’t blush, don’t blush.
She instead questioned the facts that didn’t make any sense. How could she have recharged if she hadn’t been holding at least her talisman? Had she drained energy from Alex somehow?
She searched his appearance for signs of weakness. “How are you feeling?”
A broad grin stretched his cheeks, and he slid a hand up her leg. “Fantastic.” A shadow crossed his face. “And starved.” He grabbed the phone off his nightstand behind him. “What do you want? It’s almost dinner time, but I can have the kitchen make anything you wish.”
“I don’t eat food.” For that matter, she felt as though she’d feasted on an all-you-can-eat buffet.
He sat back. “You don’t eat?”
For a second, she thought this difference between them would be the one to push him beyond his ability to tolerate. Then he leaned closer.
“Have you ever tried food to experience the taste of it?” When she shook her head, he raised a finger. “More opportunities for me to be your first.”
With that, he once again easily accepted her nature. She’d never thought a human would understand her.
Of course in the next moment, he ignored her protests and made a call to his staff to ask for a bunch of foods she recognized from Stefano’s menu choices. He returned the handset to its cradle and arched his brows in an overconfident expression.
“It’ll take the kitchen about forty-five minutes to get that together. So we have time to—”
“Talk.” She clutched her bag to her chest, scrambled off the bed, and took several steps backward. “How did I get here? Why am I here?”
He swept a hand through his hair. “You fell asleep while I fixed your car. I drove us here, put you on the bed, and you moaned until I held you.”
Her elbows tucked in closer, and she cringed. She’d moaned because, to have a regenerative sleep, dragons needed the security of their treasure. Or apparently, the security of being in the arms of a gorgeous hunk.
“That doesn’t answer my other question. This is your house, right? Why am I here?”
“Did you expect me to drive you all the way to Washington, D.C.?”
He knew about that? Damn, he’d seen her laptop.
“No. But why here?”
“Here is safe. The paparazzi don’t know you’re here, and the people on my staff have signed the tightest NDAs imaginable.” Before she could ask, he explained, “Non-disclosure agreements tied to their very well-funded retirement accounts. Trust me, they won’t leak anything to the media.”
“It’s too late to hide everything. Remember the cop?”
“I took care of that already. Nothing about you had been mentioned on the police scanners or reported yet, and a donation to the Chicago Police Memorial Fund convinced the Police Superintendent to issue a direct order to Officer Reynolds for absolute silence.”
For someone who claimed he didn’t throw money around, he sure used it frequently to buy the outcome he wanted. Not everyone was for sale.
“And how long do you expect me to stay here?”
He rose from the bed and approached her, his T-shirt straightening and covering her view of his abs. “Expect you—? You’re not my prisoner.” He didn’t seem to notice that she backed away from him until she hit the wall. “I still want to help you. This is a safe place for you to stay while we come up with a plan.”
She scoffed and surveyed the room to distract herself from his temptations. The dark wood furniture, deep red accents, and oh yeah, the dragon-carved headboard on the huge four-poster bed left no doubt in her mind whose room this was.
“Safe? Is that why you put me up in your room? So you could keep me safe?”
His lips quirked up in a curve, and he closed the distance between them. His fingers slid through her hair. Against her wishes, her head pressed into his palm.
He laid a gentle kiss on the exposed side of her neck. “You agreed to move in with me.”
Between his touch and whispered words, fire spread through her body, and her arms hung limp at her sides, her bag forgotten. Still, she fought. “That was before everything happened that made it easy for him to find me.”
“No...” Another nibble on her neck. “The only thing that changed between your answer and now was the paparazzi hearing that I visited Uptown today.” He moved lower and placed a kiss on her collarbone. “Neither of us will ever go back there, and I can issue a press release about a charity project in the area.”
He rested his forehead on hers, forcing her to focus on him. “Problem solved.”
At that pronouncement, he swept in for a kiss that singed her insides. He squeezed her against his body, and she couldn’t remember her reasons for disagreeing with him.
“Um, I guess I can stay,” she mumbled to his lips.
Her fingers betrayed her feigned hesitancy. They let her jewels slip to the floor so she could tug him harder to her mouth.
Several minutes later, he leaned back, his eyes twinkling. “Good, because I already had all your stuff moved here.”
“All my stuff?”
Instead of answering, he led her to a walk-in closet twice as big as her old apartment. There, neatly hung and folded, were his clothes on the left and her clothes on the right. At the front of the closet, her multi-locking cabinet with hidden compartment sat tucked into the corner.
She wanted to be mad at his presumption, but she couldn’t manage it. The fact that he’d retrieved her belongings so she wouldn’t lose everything struck her speechless. No one had done anything so thoughtful for her before, much less something this complex and important. The effort he’d put into making this situation work for her outweighed any thoughts of how she hadn’t gotten a vote.
She rubbed the fabric of her clothes for confirmation that she wasn’t still dreaming. The silky material of the dress she’d worn the previous night slid through her fingertips.
This was real. He’d rescued everything. For her.
The lump in her throat got in the way of her attempt to speak. She swallowed and tried again. “How did you get all this?”
“I had James go to your place in his pickup truck. The paparazzi wouldn’t pay attention to it.” One corner of his lips curved up. “Especially since that’s his hunting vehicle with all the add-ons.”
“Thank you. And tell James thank you too, please.” The reality of her new situation sank in to her consciousness. “You really want me here, don’t you?”
His eyes shone. “More than I’ve ever wanted anything.”
Her head seemed to spin as wildly as her thoughts, and she focused on her feet, quieting the internal debate. His attitude proved he thought he could take anything he desired, but it was hard to complain when he used that power for her benefit. He was likely one of the few humans on the planet who could assist her, and she couldn’t help wanting to stay despite the danger.
He probably should have heard all the facts before entangling himself with her. Of course, between trying to get away from him and the desperately needed sleep, she’d never had the chance to tell him everything. Even so, he knew the basics of what they were up against and had done all this anyway.
Too bad dragons couldn’t love, because for once, she wished it could be possible.
She let her fingertips skate along his jawbone, marveling at the strength revealed in him. Her hand stilled when she noticed his skin was paler than before.
“Are you okay?” Maybe she had drained something from him.
“I was busy arranging all this.” He indicated her clothes and kissed her palm. “I didn’t get to catch up on my sleep as much as you did.”
“You didn’t sleep well last night either?”
“Not a wink. Perhaps I shouldn’t have let you leave.”
“What, and miss seeing you make that leap across the alley? Not a chance.” She nudged him toward the bedroom. “Why don’t you rest until your dinner is ready? I’ll organize my stuff in here.”
“I was going to suggest something more entertaining, but I like the idea of you making yourself at home.”
At his exit toward the bedroom, her heartbeat did its usual stutter with his absence. A moment later, her mind cleared. What was she doing? She couldn’t make this her new home. Could she?
Worst case, her father couldn’t get here for a couple of weeks, so she could give Alex a few days, maybe a week, to try to erase the leak of her name and picture on that gossip article. If that didn’t work, at least she’d have her stuff for the next move. In the meantime, she was merely rearranging her things, not moving into her new home.
Of course, the paltry number of outfits on her side didn’t fill even a tenth of the space, but it was enough to hide her locking cabinet. After her safe-box of treasure was secured under the false bottom, the phone rang. The second ring earned her attention. Apparently, Alex had fallen asleep. At the third ring, she stood by his bedside table and hesitated, watching for a sign that he would awaken.
She snatched the handset mid-fourth ring, deciding to let him sleep, and leaned away from the bed to keep her volume low. “Hello?”
“Good evening, Miss Drake. Dinner is ready. Where would you like to be served?”
“Um...” As if she would know?
She glanced at the bed, where Alex grinned, wide-awake. The insufferable man had been testing to see how much she’d make herself at home.
“They want to know where you want dinner.”
She held out the phone, but he refused to take it. “Tell them to deliver the food here.”
The instruction passed on, she hung up and then yanked the pillow from under his head and swung. The pillow smacked him with a satisfying whump. A second later, he wrestled her onto the mattress. She kept rolling—away from him—thanks to her quick reflexes.
She stood on the far side of the bed and held out her hands. “Stop trying to turn this into more than it is. I don’t fit into your life here, Alex.”
He walked on his knees across the mattress toward her. “If you don’t feel as though you belong here, why did you answer my phone?”
“I’m serious. This isn’t a game.” She wished for another pillow to toss at him but settled for a shove against his chest, which barely knocked him off balance from his kneel on the bed. “I can’t be bought, unlike everything else in your life, because my needs don’t have a price.”
He ignored her statement, trapping her wrists as if to drag her back onto the mattress. She decided to lay the truth out for him.
“Running and hiding are what’s kept me alive for the past ten years. If my father learns I’m here, he’ll destroy everything in his quest to track me down, laying waste to all of Chicago to ensure my death. Staying hidden is my only choice, not to mention the best choice for the humans here, and low-key doesn’t fit in with your life.”
Alex froze, his brain belatedly trying to process her words. “Your father? Your father is the 300-whatever-year-old dragon you were talking about?”
Jesus. And he thought he had daddy issues.
A knock interrupted them before he could ask for the details. He stood. “Enter.”
After the table for two in the corner of his room was set for its inaugural dinner, he and Elaina were alone once more. He held out a chair for her. “Please join me for dinner.”
Her reactions to the various foods he offered were fascinating. Every new bite would start with her doubtful, then she’d roll the food around on her tongue, and finally she’d compare it to something she could comprehend. The creamy wild mushroom soup felt “as smooth as gold,” and the sip of Merlot was like “liquid rubies.”
She took a piece of the New York strip steak and coughed. “How do you swallow this?”
He held back a laugh. “You have to chew it first.”
Her jaw worked for a second, and then she grimaced and brought her napkin to her mouth. “Ugh.”
“You don’t like it?”
“It’s like a lump of coal. I don’t know how you stand it.”
He restrained a snort. How dangerous could dragons be if they weren’t even carnivores?
Now that she’d declared herself done with the sampling, he started his questions.
“Talk to me about this father of yours. Why does he want to kill you? And can’t you kill him first? Chop off his head or something?” If he remembered correctly, that technique worked on mythical creatures in stories.
She didn’t answer him. Instead, she picked up the steak knife and studied it for a second. Her arm extended in front of her, and she flipped the point of the knife toward her body.
His stomach clenched at the image, and his mind denied what he was seeing. Time moved slowly, too slowly, and he couldn’t grab her wrist in time.
She plunged the knife into her chest.