Andi let Damian hold her tightly. Something was clearly wrong. She didn’t know if she’d done it, or if whatever was in that box had, but he was hurting. She could see it in his face. She could feel it in his arms and in the ragged way he breathed against her. She buried herself against him, holding him tight.
After a long time when they hadn’t moved, and she wasn’t sure what to do, she asked, “What’s wrong?” He pulled himself away from her, and she looked up. His expression was so dark, so clouded, so serious—far worse than she’d ever seen before. “Damian, talk to me,” she pleaded.
She watched him pull himself from the haunted place he’d been with force, returning his attention to her. “You make me human. You keep me human.” He looked at her with a sorrow so deep that it almost broke her. “I just want to be with you.”
“You are with me.” She grabbed both of his hands, to prove her reality to him. “I’m right here, aren’t I?” But she could almost see the despair lapping at his heels and felt him fading away from her like he was walking backward into a cave. “Damian…please.” She let go of his hands to catch his face. His golden eyes were so dark, and she didn’t know what they were seeing, but it wasn’t her, and the worry she felt for him was worse than when she’d been sitting on his bed just minutes ago. “You’re scaring me.” She pulled his face down to hers and leaned up on her toes to kiss him softly. “Come back,” she whispered, and then pressed her face against his, like a cat, trying to warm him, trying to bring him home, and when that didn’t work, she looked wildly around the room, trying to figure out a way to ground him. She spotted the bathroom door.
“Come on,” she said and tugged him toward it.
He followed her inside, walking like if she weren’t pulling him he wouldn’t know how, and she felt like she was daring losing him just letting go of one of his hands to open the door. She pulled him in and kicked the door closed behind them, hoping that more distance between him and whatever had just happened would help, and then she grabbed the waistband of the silly red shorts he was wearing and yanked them down. “Step out,” she commanded, when they were on the ground around his feet, and he did as he was told—no more, no less.
She let go of the hand she still held reluctantly. “Stay right there, okay?” she commanded and quickly shimmied out of all the clothing she’d just put back on, standing in front of him as naked as he was. But his eyes didn’t search her hungrily and his breath didn’t catch and his cock didn’t rise.
“Come on, come on,” she said, taking his hand again, pulling him into his enormous shower.
She closed the door behind him and then worked the overly complicated mechanism to make the water spray blindly, cycling through settings until she found one that stopped the wall sprayers and opened up some lever in the ceiling, to let hot water drip down on both of them like soft rain from the sky. She positioned Damian directly under the spray and watched him close his eyes.
“It’s going to be okay,” she promised him, reaching up to stroke his dark hair off his face. It was the same promise she made a thousand times at work, sometimes a thousand times a day. And each time she made it, she meant it, she was going to try the hardest she could to do whatever needed to happen to make her promise good. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
She darted out into the bathroom again and grabbed a towel, bringing it in, folding it over and over on itself until it was just a small rectangle, and she set it on the ground. “Kneel,” she commanded, pulling down on his arms.
It seemed to take forever until he did so, his knees on the soaking towel, and then he was the very image of a penitent man, his head bowed before her as the water came down. She hit the button of some soapy substance trapped in glass along the wall and took a squirt of it that smelled like lime and vanilla, and it didn’t matter what it was—shampoo or conditioner or body wash—just as long as she could touch him with it.
“You’re okay,” she repeated, the water over them both streaming down. She stroked her hands through his hair, sudsing it, scratching her nails against his scalp so he would feel her. “You’re here. You’re real.” She played her hands down his broad shoulders, kneading them along the way. She caught his chin and pulled it up, making him look at her. “Damian…do you hear me?” She pushed his hair back from his forehead with one hand. “If you hear me, I need to know.”
He didn’t respond to her for a long while, and then he blinked. Heavy beads of water rolled off his eyelashes, and for the first time since they’d gotten into the shower, Andi felt like he could see her. He didn’t say anything after that. He just rose to wind both of his arms around her waist, pulling her close, putting his cheek on her stomach. She could feel his hot breath on her as the water ran over both of them.
“It’s all going to be okay,” she soothed him, running her hands through his hair and down his back over and over again, petting him, just feeling him breathe. His arms tightened, and his head turned toward her, still bowed, pressing his forehead against the slight rise of her belly. Andi took this as a good sign and traced the outline of his ears with gentle care. “See? I’m really here,” she told him, and then he kissed her, just below her navel.
Andi froze. She hadn’t been expecting that, and she wasn’t sure if it was a good thing as he kissed her again. She trembled. If something was wrong, maybe he needed time to think and recover. Maybe this wasn’t wholesome. “Damian,” she breathed as his mouth moved lower. “I’m good. I just want you to be okay.” He sank back onto his heels in front of her, as his hands moved to cup her ass and bring her closer to him. “You don’t have to,” she protested, pushing gently back on his shoulders.
He paused to look up at her. His expression was still haunted, but at least he had words now. “No, Andi. I do,” he said and started kissing lower.
Each of his kisses held the promise of another until he was pushing his chin against the place where her thighs met, nudging them apart for his mouth. Andi squeezed them together and had one last moment to think that maybe this wasn’t right or good for him, but his mouth was insistent, and his tongue slid between her legs, trying to taste whatever she would give him, and she shuddered and parted for him all at once.
Damian made a rumbling sound beneath her, like thunder for the rainstorm they were in, and positioned himself below the inverted V of her thighs, kissing up, and when his lips met on her clit, she swayed. He grabbed her ass to hold her there, as she wound her hands down into his hair, making a soft sound as he kissed her there again. He rose slightly higher, pressing his face into her so that she could feel the stubble of his chin press into her heat, and she could ride it, the same as she could ride his mouth and tongue. She started whining without meaning to, unable to stop herself, making small helpless sounds as he kept pressing her, kept kissing her, kept drinking her down.
“Please, yes, please,” she breathed, turning her face up to the water above, feeling it beat on her skin, sliding over her body like another set of hands. His hands on her ass were insistent. She could feel the pressure of each fingertip, keeping her close as she began to grind. His tongue pushed under her hood, his lips sucked her clit in, and the roughness of his chin—she wound up on her tiptoes, hips arched, only barely upright and hanging on. Her hands in his hair went tight, and she squirmed, her hips rocking of their own accord, taking what she needed from his mouth and tongue, moaning as he held her there, letting her use him to wind herself tightly, and she realized this was what he wanted, what he needed, to feel like he was here again. If salvation of a sort lay between her legs, then she was going to fucking give it to him.
She looked down at him and saw his eyes were closed, like in letting him eat her out, she was granting him communion. “Look at me, Damian,” she panted out. “I want you to see what you do to me.” His golden eyes slowly opened, and while they were still wary, they weren’t as haunted as they had been. His hands on her ass tightened as he sucked harder at her eager clit. “Oh my God,” she whispered, teetering above him, barely able to stand or stand it any longer, feeling everything he was giving her coil inside her like a snake waiting to strike. “Oh my God, Damian,” she hissed, curling forward until it was too late, and she was hit by the first crashing wave. “Oh my God…fuck…yes!” she howled, pounding her hips against him, giving each wave his name. “Damian…fuck…Damian!” The thrashing sounds of her coming reverberated off the shower’s glass and back on them until she moaned and trembled, the last of her orgasm flowing out of her.
He took his time releasing her, pulling carefully away, and she swayed, coming slowly back into her body. How was she supposed to protect him and make sure everything really would be okay when she could barely stand? Then he was standing too, again, and he wasn’t the same despondent man she’d dragged into the shower with her. He wasn’t back to the version of himself he’d been earlier, but a portion of him had returned to her…and to him. Water poured down his shoulders, rippling down his abs and laying the fine hair of his stomach down in a dark trail to where his cock was now arching up, a dark lightning bolt looking for somewhere to land.
His breath was heavy. His eyes were on her, and Andi pushed her hair out of her face. “Damian?”
“Yes, princess,” he said, his voice low.
“Are you all right?” she asked him, well aware that she didn’t even begin to have a way to quantify that when she didn’t even know what was wrong in the first place.
“No. But I will be,” he said. She watched him swallow, taking all of her in, and then he leaned down to kiss her.
When she let his tongue in, it felt like he was taking all of her, as his hands swam up her body, sending sheets of water cascading in their wake, until his fingers were in her hair, same as hers had been in his just seconds ago, and he pulled her closer, kissing her mouth just like he’d eaten her, with presses and sucks and licks that left her lost and breathless.
Her hands started wandering his body, feeling the slope of his shoulders again, tracing down the front of him, letting the definition of his muscles lead her down, down, down, until his hips rocked for her, begging her to touch him, to take him, and so she did, wrapping a hand around the base of his cock and lifting up slowly, feeling him moan into her mouth at the same time as he arched up. He stopped kissing her and looked down, watching her hand move over him with dark eyes, then said, “I need you.”
“I’m here,” she whispered, and he pressed in.
He spun her quickly before she could even register it and pushed her against the shower’s glass. She gasped at the sudden chill, feeling her nipples turn to diamonds, whirling her head to look behind her where he was grabbing her ass with one hand, using the other to leverage his cock down and slide it between her legs again.
This time, there was no teasing, no subtlety. She felt the wide head of him notch against her and then press up, stretching her to fit him, making her take him in a tight slide as he growled her name. She leaned forward, bracing her forearms against the glass to tilt her hips up to fit all of him, feeling the sharp chill of the glass against her cheek as he pulled out and then thrust again. She marveled at how the cold of the glass made the heat of the still falling water and the place where they met that much hotter, and she made a willing high-pitched sound.
He grabbed her hips to his and found a rhythm, pulling her high enough to meet him, her rocking on tight calves and pointed toes, dragging the entire length of his cock almost out before plunging in again, landing in her with a grunt that said that she was his, that this is where he had to be. She started crying out with each thrust, unable to stop herself, wild sounds of being taken like she was some animal being mounted in the woods. He growled more at that, then ran both his hands up alongside her, reaching down to cup her small breasts in his hands and pinch and pull, using them for leverage to ram himself even more deeply. Then he moved past them, winding up her body and arms to find her own hands, clenched to fists against the glass as she tried to withstand his onslaught. His hands encircled her wrists there, keeping her trapped beneath him. It was like he was holding her there, but it was also like he was helping her to stand—helping her almost to fly—because he stepped closer, so close that each thrust was only a small rough jolt of pleasure as the head of his cock rubbed the back of her, far inside, and he bent over her, biting her shoulder as he plowed her deep. There was no way she wasn’t going to come again, she was going to give him everything—“Damian!” she cried out, merciless shudders running through her body, as he kept her pinned by his cock against the glass. She felt him start to twitch and pull her inside as her pussy grabbed him, and he groaned.
“Andi…fuck…Andi,” he whispered in her ear in a guttural tone, and everything was primal and right. They rocked against one another tight and grinding, each of her waves wrapping him, her channel sore and swollen and insatiable and his spasming cock wanting nothing more than to give, give, give until she was filled up and couldn’t take anymore.
Damian pressed one of his hands flat against the glass and caught her with the other, holding her up as he finished—three more final thrusts like he couldn’t give her up, before pulling himself free with a hiss.
“Oh, God, Andi,” he said, lifting her to him and spinning her around to hold her to his chest, the water falling over them, his cum dripping from between her legs. “Princess, what was that?” he murmured.
She had no words. She swayed again and let him hold her. Each time they fucked, whatever common sense part of her that told her that this was impossible and such a bad idea that there was no point in chasing dreams, much less a dragon, became smaller and smaller, and if she kept doing this with him—kept letting him do this to her—then it would go away, and there would be nothing stopping her from getting hurt at all.
Him fucking her until she was sore was one thing. She could not—would not—let him fuck over her heart.
But his hands were at her chin, pulling her up to drift a kiss across her lips, and she couldn’t tell him no. Fuck, she could barely stand, and when he turned both of them so that she faced the shower bench and put a hand on her back so that she would bend down and hold onto it with both hands, she thought he’d seen the dazed look she surely had, like a woman trying not to pass out.
Then he moved beside her, his hands expertly controlling the shower, pulling a sprayer off the wall to give to her on a gushing setting, where all the water welled out of the center like a fountain. She took it, breathing, trying to find herself again after giving so much up and saw him settle himself to kneel on the towel that she’d folded for him earlier, behind her.
“Damian?” she asked him.
“Use that on your clit,” he told her.
“What? Why?” she asked, her mind still fuzzy as he put a hand on each of her ass cheeks and pulled her open for him, forcing her to show him her most intimate part. “Oh my God…no!” she gasped, snapping alert and dancing forward.
“Why not?” he asked her. He wasn’t prying anymore, but she could distinctly feel the outline of where his hands lay, almost as if she’d been spanked.
“Because!” she protested. “It’s…it’s—”
He chuckled behind her. “Princess, nothing about you is dirty.” He slid his thumb down and he touched her there and she felt a quick spasm of attention roll through her entire body. “And everything about you is mine.”
“We’ll see,” she panted, hesitating and unsure, as he left his thumb on that spot, gently rubbing, not pushing in in the least, just holding space, touching her soft wet skin. She let out a ragged sigh and leaned back into him, offering more of herself, and heard him rumble in response. “But Damian, you can’t go in there just yet, okay?”
“I would never. Not without a lot of lube and patience and permission. It would be a thing we would do together—not in the heat of the moment, but planned, because we both wanted to try it.” He leaned forward, and she felt him kiss the apple of her ass at its highest point. “That said,” he went on, still rubbing the rim of her asshole with his thumb. “You’ve already done so much for me today, Andi. Just let me do this for you.”
She swallowed, as one of his hands reached forward and brought hers into position, so that the water from the sprayer was lapping at her clit, and then both of his hands were on her ass again, pulling her completely open for him. She felt him lean forward, and then his mouth was where his thumb had just been, kissing her tight hole, and she fought not to jump.
This was wrong. It felt so dirty. How could he want her there? A cacophony of reasons why she shouldn’t be bent over in front of him circled in her mind, but as he kept kissing her, she couldn’t help but respond to him, leaning back, letting his tongue dance in delicate circles around her edges, fearlessly flickering against her tightest point, and she felt something in her—impossibly, it seemed—wind again. She took better control of the spraying water now, making sure it was gushing up underneath her hood, and her hips bobbed, unsure if they should rock into the water to satisfy her clit, or stay angled high to be played by his tongue until she moaned.
Damian moaned, too, in response to her. Between her legs, she could see where he was already hard again, his lonely cock straining up, until she bent over farther, and as if sensing her motive, he let go of her with one hand and sent it down to stroke himself.
That…was hot as fuck. And it proved he wasn’t working her over with his mouth just to prove himself a good lover or out of some sense of obligation. Doing what he was doing to her now turned him on. So much so that he needed to touch himself.
Realizing that, Andi gave herself over to the experience, breathing harder as she used the water, trapped between its stream and Damian’s relentless tongue, listening to the slick wet sounds of him pulling his thick cock faster and faster. New nerves sang, and everything felt wrong until it started feeling good, until the goodness outweighed anything she could possibly be afraid of, and she knew that there would come a time when she would trust him to let him put his tongue or fingers or anything else inside her there, as long as it kept feeling just like this. Her hips got that full-tight feeling, like something combustible inside her was going to explode, and she started writhing faster, rubbing herself against his tongue, playing herself with the water, listening to him moan as he brought himself up to the edge alongside her, and somehow, everything felt right. He was making her feel good and she was making him feel good and they were like one of those eternal world-circling snakes that bit its own tail in Nordic mythology, in some endless cycle of pleasure until she reached one hand forward to hold the bench in front of her again so that she had something to brace on and cried out in wordless passion.
Damian growled and rose to his knees, his mouth following her through until she started to buckle, dropping the sprayer, and she turned over her shoulder in time to see him finish himself off, his hot cum spurting into the air and rolling like candle wax down his hand.
“You came again,” she said, breathless, collapsing against the bench behind her.
“Of course,” he said simply, looking up at her with a dark smile. “Do you know how many times I jerked off just thinking of you last week? There’s no way I’m not going to come around you now that I can, anytime I can.”
Andi flushed, even in the heat of the shower, then guessed, “Eleven?”
Damian laughed. “More than eleven. Less than forty. Probably.”
She grinned and sank down to be at his level on the shower’s stone floor, and crawled into his lap, where she tucked herself against his chest and underneath his chin and pressed herself to him. His heartbeat was slow and steady, and she took great comfort in it.
“Are you better now?” she asked him.
He rumbled thoughtfully against her. “I will be. I’ll figure out something.”
“You mean we’ll figure out something,” she corrected him.
He ran his thumb down her arm that he held. “I thought saying things like that was mean.”
“Don’t overthink it,” she warned, thumping her head against him. “But also, don’t make assumptions.”
“Oh, I would never, princess,” he said with a soft snort, though he pulled her closer against him. “Although I think you should know it is killing me to not make some kind of assumption, ass-ump-tion joke.”
She groaned. “If I had known eating my ass would allow you to make shitty puns, I never would’ve let you.”
“Shitty puns, you say?” he teased, and she lightly punched him.
“Ugh. Just…no. Don’t even.” She shuddered. “Make sure you go use mouthwash.”
“Of course. I’m a dragon, not a monster.” He pinched her bottom gently. “Let’s get up and get clean for real and somehow not fuck again for at least twenty minutes, or until I’ve dealt with some things.”
“Do we have to?” she asked, teasing on purpose, but she saw the look in his eyes. If she snapped her fingers, he’d follow her into the bedroom, and everything would start all over again. Hell, they might not even make it that far. She closed her eyes and drew on strength from somewhere deep within, before standing to take a real shower.
Andi had never had a man bathe her before. She’d done sexy things in the shower with men, but none of them had ever decided that she needed to be doted on afterward. There was no point in not washing her hair again, seeing as it was all wet and probably tangled, so when his hands went for it with more of that lime and vanilla stuff, she relented, just to see what he would do. His hand traced through her hair and softly scratched her scalp and then tilted her chin and brought the sprayer over to rinse it all back. She felt rather like a horse being groomed—or a race car being detailed—and it was incredibly sexy and also just incredibly good. Sweet. Wholesome, considering everything else they’d just done.
His hands wound around her body holding soap, cupping and massaging the muscles they’d used so strenuously earlier, until she reached that phase of being awkward, feeling silly for being spoiled, and she moved to do something similar to him when he shushed her.
“You’ve done enough already, I promise you,” he told her, but it was hard to believe.
Then again, all of this was unbelievable—her…him…here—so it wasn’t worth questioning, really. When he was done washing her, he made her get out and get a robe as he washed himself, and she watched his hands trace over his perfect body through the fogged glass, and it did terrible things to her deep inside. It made her want him again, somehow, which was insane at this point. If they fucked anymore, he’d break her, and she realized she just liked seeing him. Even without the nudity. Just seeing him made her happy.
Goddammit.
She brought her hands to her face to remind herself what an absolutely terrible idea falling for someone who was an otherworldly creature, plus who’d never been in a relationship before, was when he called out to her. “There’re extra toothbrushes in a drawer, princess,” and she resolutely turned to attend to her dental hygiene and put her clothes back on.
Watching him brush his teeth was too couple-y, so she ditched the bathroom entirely as he got out of the shower and then found herself in his bedroom with the Mysterious Box. At least it didn’t smell like smoke anymore. But the black mirrors were still creepy, and she wasn’t prepared to watch a crystalline beating heart again if she could help it. Human organs were difficult enough. She had not volunteered to take care of any magic ones.
Damian followed her out of the bathroom not long after, with a low-slung towel around his hips and wetly spiked black hair. He smiled at seeing her, and then let loose a low wolf whistle—not at her, she realized, when the magic cat appeared, yowling.
“Yes, it’s important,” Damian said in response. The cat—which had just somehow poofed in out of nowhere—complained in Siamese, then looked at her and said something else. “No,” he answered. “But the box on my bed…I need you to move it to the room with the Forgetting Fire and erase the door.”
The cat grumbled, doing a feline imitation of a teenager being told to clean their room, before hopping up on the bed and spying the box in question, and springing backward three feet, levitation-style.
“That’s why I need you to erase the door,” Damian repeated. He hadn’t gotten any closer to his bed in the meantime, and Andi had a feeling he was staying away from the box on purpose.
The cat had some additional choice words about the situation and the box—Andi may not have spoken “cat,” but years at the hospital had made her very intuitive about inflection and fabulous at charades—then up-sized itself to a Siamese the size of a miniature horse, taking the box carefully into its mouth and walking out the door.
Andi watched the whole thing unfold, feeling like she was trapped in some kind of old fairy tale where absurd things happened one by one and no one stopped them. She turned to him. “I cannot believe I’m about to say this sentence, but what did your cat say about me?”
Damian inhaled deeply, calmer now that the box was gone. “He wanted to know if you had any cheese.”
“Why?”
He held his towel around his hips with one hand and went into his closet, leaving the door open behind himself. “I can’t say. He just really likes cheese is all. Don’t tell anyone, though; he’s very secretive about it.”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t your magic cat be?” Andi muttered to herself, sitting down in one of the leather chairs. “So, what was in the box?”
She heard Damian pause in pulling on clothing. “A dragon heart.”
“From, like, an actual dragon?” she quipped, rolling her eyes and snorting.
“Pretty much,” he said, emerging. He was wearing a dark T-shirt that fit him snugly across his chest and jeans that clung to his thighs. She was embarrassed by how much she noticed that sort of thing now. He made his way over to her and sat down on the ground in front of her, cross-legged. “I have a confession to make,” he said solemnly.
She braced. Here it comes. The moment she’d been waiting for. When everything between them got flushed down the drain. She stared down into his golden eyes and fought not to cross her arms. “Okay.”
“You may have noticed that I’m magical,” he said, looking up at her with a tight smile. “Even without the dragon thing, I probably would be—something like on the level of Mills, who you met the other night.” Andi nodded as he went on. “So…a long time ago, a great-great-great-grandfather of mine, who was also magical, needed help to stop an epically dangerous world-destroying beast. Something with too many heads, tails, mouths; the painters had a hard time capturing it back then, and everyone who wrote about it sounded like they’d lost their mind. Just know that it was bad, okay?”
“Okay,” Andi agreed, hesitantly.
Damian nodded. “So, to save his people, he met with a dragon—an actual dragon, who was never a person, and always his own creature—as equals, and they decided to combine their powers to defeat the creature.”
He took a deep inhale and rocked back before continuing. “Well, my distant relative was somewhat of an asshole—also, possibly, another family trait—and when he was working with the dragon to defeat the Beast that Eats Worlds, he learned how to overcome the dragon too. So, when they finished the great battle that ended things, my grandfather killed the dragon and took his heart.”
“Why?” she asked and bit her lips.
“Because he didn’t want to give the power he’d gained from the dragon back.”
Everything about him was serious: his tone, his stance, his expression. “So now you have a magic beating heart as a family heirloom. And here I thought photo albums were rough,” she teased, then realized he didn’t find it funny. “There’s more, isn’t there?”
“Yes,” he nodded. “Because of the magic involved, and because of the underhanded way my grandfather did things, the heart—and the power it grants my family—comes with a curse.”
“Which is?” she prompted after he went quiet.
“Eventually, you become your dragon. Permanently.”
“The dragon that you change into? Like, instead of being a prince-frog you become a frog-prince?”
“No. The dragon…it takes over. But it isn’t you, really. Not anymore.”
Andi felt her jaw drop like it belonged to another person. Here she was, finally on the verge of caring about someone, letting him in after everyone else in her life had seemingly ditched her, and he was cursed. Of course.
God forbid Andi Ngo should ever catch a break.
She put her face into her hands and seriously thought about putting her head between her knees.
“This is a lot, I know,” he said, sounding pained. “I tried to get away from it. It’s why I came to Earth, to stop it from happening as fast to me.”
“Then why is it here?” she asked from inside her hands.
“Near as I can tell, my sister brought it with her.”
Which was a whole other thing she’d forgotten to be pissed about. Andi flushed with remembered embarrassment, letting her hands drop. “You mean your sister-the-princess?” she asked. “Like the actual fucking princess and not whatever it is that you call me?”
“Andi,” Damian began like she was being unfair.
“No, Damian.” She cut him off and crossed her arms. “You didn’t tell me you were a freaking prince someplace else. When was that going to come up? I mean, I guess I get that’s not first date material, but it’s not like we’ve gone on many dates, have we? And like…and now, you’re telling me you’re cursed? Like an actual magic curse?” she said. She knew her voice was rising, but no matter how good the sex was, she’d been letting the insanity build for too long to hold back now. “What the fuck were you thinking trying to get involved with me?” She gave him a pause for an answer, and when he didn’t, she went on. “No wonder you haven’t been in any relationships before because…Jesus Christ!”
Her words rang out, and for a moment, everything was empty silence.
She watched his jaw grind before asking sharply, “Are you done?”
“No,” she said back, just as sharp.
He inhaled and exhaled deeply again, clearly gathering his control. “No,” he said, turning the question back on her. “I mean, are you actually done? Because I’m not going to try to apologize to someone who is walking out the door.”
She let her head roll back. Just last night, she’d wanted him to promise that he wouldn’t try to leave her because she couldn’t handle being abandoned again. And here he was now, worried that she would leave him.
Would she have made him promise her a single thing if she’d known all of this ahead of time?
Andi stared at the ceiling. She didn’t want to look at him. This was too confusing, and it made her both mad and sad in turns. But when she was quiet, she remembered the way his hands had felt on her…and how warm just looking at him had made her feel. At peace. Despite everything. She sighed, returning her attention to him at last. “I’m not done yet, Damian,” she said more quietly. “But shit like this makes it really hard to stay here.”
“I know,” he said quietly.
“I already had to watch my mother die of cancer.” And if her feelings for him kept multiplying like spring clover, she didn’t know if she was strong enough to watch him die of a curse. “Surely, you get that it’s hard.”
“I do,” he granted, looking at her with infinite compassion. “I’m sorry there’s not an optimal path to follow, Andi.”
“An optimal path to find out that the person who wants to be in a relationship with you is secretly royalty and magic and also cursed,” she snarked. “Yeah. I can imagine that’d be a lot to try to work into a tinder profile.” Andi gave up and let herself sink down, resting her head on her fists on her knees.
He brought the crown of his head to gently rest against hers. “You do have a safeword you can use if you’d like me to stop talking. They can be multipurpose.”
She shook her head, still hunched over, feeling her head rock against his. From this close, she could breathe him in. No matter that they’d just showered, he had a faint manly scent that was intoxicating to her. It calmed her down and riled her up both at once, made her want to sleep in his arms and rip all his clothes off at the same time.
To be with him quietly forever and right the hell now.
“Fuck it,” she sighed. “Tell me about the dragon. Is he an alternate dimension you? Is he like your twin brother you absorbed in the womb?”
“What?” He pulled back, laughing, sounding confused. “No, of course not. Wherever would you get that idea?”
“Stephen King,” she said from the vicinity of her knees, without looking up. “And because getting taken over sounds kind of horrible.”
“It is.”
Which was why he’d gone almost catatonic not that long ago. Andi took several large breaths and pushed herself back up a little. “So, what changed between you seeing the box here earlier and now?”
“You did,” he said. They were on the same level now, and she wanted to crawl off the chair and into his arms again, and however it was he did that to her, it was not fair. “I realized you’re here. And now that the Heart is here, maybe we—my people and me—can figure out a way to stop it. I was just surprised was all. And deeply disappointed.”
She bit her lips. “So, the time that I saw your dragon—when it saved me from that monster-thing in your courtyard—that wasn’t you?”
“Not entirely, no. I’m there, but I’m like a rider. And while I guess you could say I hold the reins, I’m not always in control.”
“Is the reverse true, now? Can he make you—human you—do things?”
“In general, no. It frequently has suggestions, though,” he said with a soft snort.
“Like what?” she asked.
“I plead the fifth,” he said, shaking his head.
“No. You promised to tell me the truth, Damian. And you wanted to be in the deep end…well, here we are.”
He rocked back, putting his arms behind him to lean on. “It’s a dragon. What do you think it wants to do?”
“Dragon stuff,” Andi said sarcastically, then guessed, “Fly?”
“Yes, that,” he reluctantly agreed.
She thought back to every silly story she’d ever read or heard. “Burn things with fire?”
“Which I never give it the chance to,” he said dryly. “Except for sometimes when we’re fighting.”
She thought harder and remembered the time when the dragon had saved her from the teleporting-demon thing right outside his castle. “And…kill stuff?”
“It enjoys that the most, yes. Although I am there inside it, so I suppose you could argue we both do.” She watched his arm muscles bunch and relax as he talked. “We’re good at it.”
“Uh-huh.” She was trying not to ask the next logical question but also unable to help herself. “Is he around when we…” she began, and then let the words drift because in a conversation full of awkward questions there were still some things she couldn’t bring herself to say out loud.
Damian closed his eyes guiltily. “He pays attention. Yes.”
“And…just what does he think of that?”
“Andi,” Damian groaned. “I should’ve given you a safeword when I had the chance.”
She snorted, remembering that that was just this morning. How had a day with Damian already felt like a week? “It wasn’t my fault,” she teased. “I tried to help you—”
“And I enjoyed it,” he confessed suddenly, cutting her off. She watched a wash of color sweep over his pale complexion. “We both enjoyed it.” His gaze trapped hers, daring her to consider what that meant. “All right?”
“Oh,” Andi said, biting her lips shut again. “Well…then.”
“Yeah.” He blew air through pursed lips and looked pained before he raised a hand to push hair out of his face. “I want you to know I’ve never talked like this—about these things—with anyone before.”
“I can’t imagine why,” she quipped. “This is all quality first date material, Damian. No reason why you couldn’t have ordered the lobster and then jumped in. But don’t worry, I’ll help you set up your dating profile for the next girl after me: ‘Hi, my name is Damian, I like to run marathons, drink craft beers, and burn things.’”
One of his dark eyebrows arched. “I only drink whiskey,” he corrected her, as his eyes narrowed. “And I am seriously considering spanking you.”
“Like I’d let you.”
“Like I’d let you stop me,” he challenged her, giving her a wicked smile that made parts of her throb with ache. “Safeword aside, of course,” he allowed after they both knew slightly too much time had passed.
The way he was looking at her now was decidedly unsafe, and, God, she liked it so much it almost felt shameful. Heat rose inside her unbidden, as the chemical-electrical thing it seemed they shared between them sparked, like a battery being charged. But Andi knew better than to let lust drag her off track. They needed to talk. And there were things that she needed to know if she was somehow going to really let herself do this, to knowingly run toward the spinning knives for this man.
As he leaned forward with intent, she scooted the chair away. “Have you always had it inside you?”
She could almost watch him downshift to idle like he was in a car. “No. It came out for the first time when I was ten.”
“Why?” she asked, imagining Damian losing a game to his sister and going dragon to protest it in the way of little boys.
“Because someone tried to kill me,” he said simply with a shrug.
“Really?”
“Yes, really. Things like that happened where I’m from. It’s not very nice there.”
Andi tried to remember what she was like at ten. What it would’ve been like to discover that she had a monster inside of her. And here she’d thought puberty was bad…. “What was it like?”
“Horrible? Frightening? Awesome? In the literal, not colloquial, sense.” His arms and shoulders bunched up again like he was remembering.
“Does it hurt to change?”
“Yes.” He nodded slightly. “Always.”
She bit her lips again. “Does it hurt the dragon?”
Damian’s brow furrowed and his eyes glazed over as though he were communing with something inside himself, and Andi knew he was. “All the time,” he said quietly. “It feels…chained.”
Andi pushed the chair behind herself back and got on her knees on the floor so that her face was even with his. His gaze was on her again, and she looked deep into his golden eyes, trying to see the beast and wondering if it, too, was looking out at her. “Can I talk to it?”
“No, princess. It cannot speak. We’ve tried.” His gaze softened. “I can tell you what it’s thinking, though if it tells me.”
“Does he like me?”
She didn’t like the way her voice sounded when she asked, all little-girl and hesitant. But she needed to know. If Damian’s dragon hated her or was indifferent, then there was no way the plan coalescing in her mind could work.
She watched Damian think inside himself, and at the same time, saw everything that was “together” about him fall away, as though he were dropping pieces of unseen armor right in front of her until he finally gave her the completely open look he’d had so often after sex.
“Oh, yes, princess,” he said softly. “Very much.”