Alex bit back a curse as Elaina froze in his arms. He hadn’t meant for his declaration of love to slip out. He’d swallowed the words earlier at her apartment, but after the best sex of his life, he couldn’t help his impulsiveness. When her body moved once more, she withdrew from his hold.
Christ. She balked more than his Mercedes SLS AMG on regular gasoline.
If he was going to get her to stay—without needing handcuffs—he had to get her to trust him. What was the dragon-spoiling equivalent of premium grade fuel?
“I want to help you. What if I added treasure to your collection?”
She halted her retreat. “You’d do that?”
“If that’s what it takes to help you avoid starvation, then of course.”
Her expression became so blank he couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
He caressed her thigh and tried again. “I’ve never liked unfair fights. I want you strong, as strong as you can be. That’s what I mean by wanting to help you. I want us to be a team. A we.”
She leaned farther away from him. “You’re going to help me steal treasure?”
“Not stealing. You can build up your collection and get energy in other ways. I’ve seen it. The harder it is for you to take something, the more energy you get from it, right?”
“It’s more complicated than that.” He circled his wrist in an impatient wave until she conceded, “In general, that’s a fair assumption.”
He rose up on the bed. If he could prove to her that staying with him didn’t mean remaining weak, maybe she’d be less likely to run.
“Do you have to see something to take it? How close do you have to be?” He indicated the nightstand on her side of the bed. “Could you take the ring in the top drawer over there?”
She rolled toward the end table. “The 8.16 grams of fourteen-karat yellow gold, inset with a twelve-millimeter square of onyx?”
“That’s the one.”
“And you want me to take it from you?” Her vocal pitch climbed with her confusion.
“If you can.”
Her puzzlement flickered to being offended before finally settling on determination, just as he knew it would. She huffed, sat up, and stretched an open hand toward the nightstand.
He scooted behind her and rested his chin on her bare shoulder. “That’s right, beautiful. Show me what you can do.”
The muscles of her back tensed against his chest with her concentration. A moment later, prickles spread on his skin where they touched, and the ring appeared in her palm.
“I did it.” She sounded surprised.
He spun her around and kissed her forehead. “I knew you could.”
“No, you don’t understand. Summoning something without having laid eyes on it? And from several feet away? I’ve done that with abandoned pieces before, like a ring that had fallen down a storm drain, but nothing that had an owner.”
“This will make you stronger?”
Her fingers closed around the ring. She inhaled sharply, and her eyes flashed. A charge like static electricity raised the hairs on his forearms.
The fact that he sensed when she bonded to an item emphasized how connected they were. How connected they could be—if only she’d allow it to happen.
“Yes, this makes me stronger.”
She unfurled her hand, and the ring still lay there, but he guessed it would now be invisible to others. And that meant his plan would work.
“Now do you understand how I can help you?”
Her gaze shot up to his. Despite her open mouth, no words came out.
He scooted closer on the bed and cradled her cheeks. “I don’t want you to be weak, and I want you to be able to stay here with me—without stealing. If that means I have to supply you with a steady diet of jewelry...” A grin broke across his face. “Well, I wouldn’t be the first guy to do that to keep his woman happy.”
Instead of happiness, a bittersweet tightness creased her expression. “If only I could stay with you and remain hidden.”
The wish in her declaration gripped his chest. If only... Then everything would be perfect.
“What if I also help you hide from your father? We don’t have to go out in public. I’ll get rid of that article with your name and picture. No one other than my staff has to know you’re here. Just...” He stroked her lips. “Stay with me.”
“You’re saying that you not only promise to provide me with treasure, but you’d also keep me hidden—even if that means we’re never together in front of anyone other than your staff? No more arm ornament appearances? No more paparazzi?”
She was right to question him. These were huge promises, life-altering promises, promises he didn’t know how to keep, but he needed to try. She was worth it. The alternative of letting her go was too horrible to contemplate.
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying.” He met her gaze. “I can give you what you want, what you need. I promise.”
She tucked her legs closer on the mattress, and her empty hand rubbed her abdomen. “Why? Why do you want me to stay here so much that you’d do all that for me?”
Her question proved that she’d dismissed his earlier admission of love. Maybe that was for the best. For now anyway. Time might help her adjust to the idea.
But that meant he couldn’t answer her question honestly. She’d freak out again if he revealed his suspicions of how perfect she was for him. That she challenged him like no other woman. That she fascinated him like no other woman. That she was strong like no other woman. And even though she wasn’t human, that he understood her like no other woman.
Instead of scaring her off with all of that, he gave her an ambivalent shrug. “I’m used to getting what I want. And I want you.”
His answer seemed to mollify her, and she lifted her hand. “You’re okay with me having this?”
He hadn’t wanted to think about the thing.
“It belonged to my father.” He tilted his head and pointed to a spot on his jaw. “This is what that ring means to me.”
Her fingertip skimmed his jawline, and she examined the mark he indicated. “This is a scar?”
Right. Her super-strong dragon scales meant she wasn’t familiar with scars.
At his nod, she searched his face for an answer to a question he didn’t know. “He did this to you? On purpose?”
He nodded again, and her expression twisted into open-mouthed horror. Given the story of her father’s attack against her mother, he hadn’t thought this blemish was anything in comparison.
“How old were you?” Her voice was clipped.
“Eight. I made the ‘mistake’ of getting between his fist and my mother.” His wry smile tensed into a grimace. “I never let him touch her like that again.”
The blue fire in her eyes dimmed. “But you were a youngling—a child.”
“That fact doesn’t stop monsters. He stopped only when I was big enough to fight back.”
She touched his jaw again. “An adult has threatened a pre-Zìwǒ-age youngling only once in all history. But I’m less vulnerable than you, especially back when you were a child.”
The glow of her eyes wavered, and she leaned closer. Her tender kiss on his scar caught him by surprise. He’d never have guessed gentleness was in her repertoire.
She examined the rest of his body. Each mark she found earned another soft kiss, from the indentation at his hairline where his father had smashed a bourbon bottle on his forehead to the faint crisscrossing white lines on his knees caused by his father shoving him onto the broken glass of his mother’s favorite crystal vase. Elaina honored each mark that had protected his mother.
Something inside him cracked at the gesture.
By the time she finished, he was lying on the bed, quiet and acquiescent while she moved his limbs with her search. His eyes were open, but they weren’t focused on the ceiling above him. Memories clouded his vision.
After hundreds of beatings, he’d thought they’d all blurred together. Her recognition of the scars had unleashed the origin of each one in vivid detail.
She stretched out alongside him and touched his temple. “I’m sorry.”
Her voice broke the spell. She slid her hand back from his skin, and a drop of clear liquid clung to her fingertip.
The sight made him feel weak. Hot tension quickly followed, and bitterness filled his mouth. “She should have left him.”
“Why do you think she didn’t?”
A humorless laugh punched the air between them. “I asked her that same question every day until she died.” He forced the words out through clenched teeth. “She claimed he’d have made sure we were penniless and homeless, if we got out alive at all.”
“You don’t believe her?”
The way Elaina worded it—using don’t instead of didn’t—shoved his lingering resentment into the open.
“In public, she still stood beside him as his dutiful wife at every function and accepted all the fancy dresses and jewelry he gave her. You tell me. Maybe she simply loved the money more than she loved—”
He cut off the thought, but Elaina finished it anyway. “More than she loved you.”
She propped herself up on her elbow. “Alex, you’re incredibly strong inside. Stronger than most, dragon or human. I pushed you away, and you didn’t yield. Call it arrogance or call it determination, the fact is, most people would have given up. You didn’t. Instead of stopping you, obstacles have made you stronger.”
Her insight floated past him without making an impact.
She dragged his chin toward her. “I bet that each of his attacks made you more resolved, and that you refused to show him weakness. You took his abuse in stoic silence, didn’t you?”
He couldn’t ignore her direct question and angled away from her. “I cried out the first time.”
“Probably from surprise more than anything else. But after that?”
He didn’t need to answer her. She already knew.
She lay down and snuggled next to him. “You’re understandably disappointed your mother didn’t have the strength to stand up to him the way you did. But you don’t know what kind of emotional abuse she endured once their bedroom door closed every night. Her choices don’t mean she didn’t love you.”
His eyelids pinched closed. Nothing had ever been easy when it came to how he felt toward his mother.
Protecting her had made him feel strong and powerful, yet accusations had always simmered below the surface. Intentional or not, she’d put him into the position where he’d needed to let his body be pummeled to shield her, and he couldn’t help the resentment he still harbored inside.
Elaina’s light touch smoothed his eyebrows, which had furrowed without him realizing it. “Did she ever blame you for his attacks?”
His eyes popped open. “No.” He breathed deep, releasing the tightness around his chest, relieved he could give her credit for something. “She blamed herself, saying parents were supposed to protect their children, not the other way around. She begged me not to do it. She hated what he did to me.”
The memory of that last night washed over him. “I thought she’d finally leave him when I landed in the hospital at fifteen years old with a concussion, a fractured arm, two broken legs, and three broken ribs. My father gave the doctors a story about how I was a drug addict and the dealer had set his goons on me. A simple blood test would have showed me to be clean, but no one questioned my father. It was much easier to believe the spoiled rich kid had gotten in over his head.”
The flow of memories sharpened like acid. “She was so upset I thought for sure she’d tell them the truth. Instead, she...”
The silence stretched out.
After several moments, Elaina drew a shaky breath, understanding what he couldn’t yet say. “She loved you.”
“Then why did she kill herself?” His voice was barely a whisper. “Why did she leave me?”
Elaina kissed the left side of his chest. “Your heart knows the answer to that question.”
The straightforward response reignited his anger. “Because she was weak.”
“No, Alex. Because she loved you more than her own life.” His gaze shot to hers, but she didn’t let him deny her statement. “You said it yourself. She blamed herself. You put up with the abuse to protect her.”
The truth slammed into him, unleashing his thoughts fast enough to make him dizzy.
His mother had killed herself so he wouldn’t need to protect her anymore. She’d sacrificed herself to set him free.
He wanted to be furious with her for coming to such a ridiculous conclusion, but he had to admit things had improved afterward. The months of physical therapy had triggered his commitment to a workout regimen.
By the time he’d fully recovered and was no longer under the doctors’ observation, he was bigger and stronger than his father—or at least big enough to even the odds. And without the worry of needing to be on the defensive to protect her, he’d gone on the offensive after the first punch, eager to finally confront the man in a fair fight.
That was the end of the abuse. Of the physical kind at least.
“She...” He choked out the words. “She loved me.”
She’d loved him so much that she died for him. She’d done it to protect him.
That truth broke through his mental walls, shattering everything he’d believed for the past sixteen years. He’d filled his head with blame, disrespect, and resentment for his mother, for not loving him as much as he loved her.
Despite the abuse she’d lived through before his intervention, he’d never seen her as a victim of his father. He’d seen her only as being weak.
But as with most things, the truth was more complicated than that. Love was more complicated than that. Love wasn’t always expressed in the ways he expected.
Elaina held Alex’s sleeping form and trailed her fingers down his back. There was no longer any question. She cared about this man.
Not only did he understand her better than anyone ever had, but she also understood him. His extravagant donation the previous night to establish shelters for victims of abuse now made perfect sense. Likewise, his determination to salvage his father’s business was, at heart, about proving himself a better man.
She suspected he’d never told anyone his history previously. And he’d certainly never confronted his buried emotions before.
Their families weren’t messed up in the same way, but the similarities gave her insight into his situation. Her hand stilled, and she suppressed a shudder.
No wonder he had that steely resolve. She couldn’t imagine what it would take to willingly allow someone to hurt her. And how much love someone had to be capable of to want to accept pain on behalf of another.
She sucked in a breath until his scent filled her lungs. Her flesh tingled from more than simply the touch of his skin against hers.
This man deserved to be loved. And she wished she could give it to him.
Before she’d wanted to leave him out of fear—now she wanted to stay out of selfishness. Even though she could never be who he wanted her to be, who he was worthy of, she couldn’t muster the willpower to give this up. Her embrace tightened around him at that realization.
Beyond the fact that he did have the power to give her the protection she needed, he was perfect in every other way as well. Any man she was going to be with had to be strong. Alex met that requirement and then some. His inner strength complemented her physical strength, matching it so well she wanted him to be dominating. Most of all, she didn’t want to be alone anymore.
Even if Alex couldn’t remove the gossip article, his promise to shield her from exposure going forward was more important. The chances of her father—who wasn’t even integrated into human society—seeing a single instance of her name and picture within a human newspaper from Chicago were, in truth, laughably remote. And shutting this wonderful man out of her life over such an impossibility would be the height of stupidity.
No, she would stay. She would keep him. And she would be happy for the first time in her life.
Maybe the fact that she cared about him would be enough. For both of them.