Bridget plated up the bacon and eggs and sat it down in front of him.
“It’s probably not going to be as great as yours, but there’re no shells or burned bits,” she said.
Bas ate a forkful of eggs and smiled at her. “This is the best meal I’ve ever eaten.”
“Pretty sure it’s your dragon still messing with your head. Just eat so I can take you upstairs. We both need a shower and a sleep.”
Bas nodded and fell on his food. He didn’t speak the whole time and didn’t object when Bridget pushed what was left on her plate at him. She figured the hunger was natural.
Upstairs, Bridget stripped them off and got Bas under the shower.
“Thank you for taking care of me,” he said, his hand going to her bare hip and drawing her close.
Bridget poured out some shower gel and lathered up his amazing chest. “You don’t have to thank me for this. Trust me, I’m enjoying it. I should be thanking you right now.”
Bas chuckled softly. “I wish I wasn’t so tired so I could fuck you senseless again.”
“Something to look forward to tomorrow,” she said and put her hands around his neck. “I’ll settle for a kiss.”
Bas’s mouth dropped to hers, and she met it with enthusiasm. She wanted him to know deep down that she was telling the truth and that she wasn’t turned off by him turning into a dragon. In fact, there wasn’t a single part of him that didn’t turn her on.
“Good to know,” he growled, his hands cupping her ass.
“Hey, hey, stop that. You need sleep, and so do I. Also, reading my mind is cheating,” she pointed out. She slipped from his grip and turned the shower off.
“I wasn’t reading your mind. It shouted it at me,” Bas said, a hungry look in his eyes as he stared at her, wet and dripping.
“Focus, Bas,” she teased. Bridget was tired but was secretly pleased that he liked the way she looked. She didn’t give much thought to how other people viewed her. Bas wasn’t other people.
They toweled off and climbed into bed, naked. It was another kind of intimacy that Bridget never explored because she thought it would make her too vulnerable. She was safe with Bas. She knew that down to her bones. He wrapped his arm around her, and she rested her head on his chest.
Bridget was almost asleep when Bas murmured, “Bridget? I love you too.”
31
Bas was disorientated when he woke later in the day. His days and sleep patterns had been smashed to bits in the past weeks, and it was starting to get to him.
Slay the monster. Get the girl. Win the sleep routine back, he told himself.
Bas did a body scan, and despite the agony of shifting the night before, he felt suspiciously good. He would have to get Apollo to check him out in case the dragon shifting had kicked off some kind of healing ability. He needed to experiment with shifting back and forward as well. He remembered parts of being a dragon and not others, and that worried him.
Bridget was his constant. She was what the dragon had focused on most the previous night. It had let him share their mind when she had begged him to come back to being human, and that had led him back to himself. Shifting back into a human hadn’t hurt at all.
Bridget was still lying curled up beside him. She hadn’t run from his dragon or after it. She had looked after him. Cooked for him. Made sure he had showered.
He would have rejected anyone else helping him when he had been so vulnerable. Bridget was different. His mate caring for him unlocked a yearning in him he didn’t know existed. He had spent so long looking after everybody else that he had forgotten what it was like to have somebody return the favor.
Bas stared at Bridget. The smooth brown curve of her back, the way her shoulder met her neck, and at their junction, the marking bruise that claimed she was his.
He had to tell her. It was getting to a point where he couldn’t avoid it for much longer. She had said the previous night that she loved him. Maybe she would accept him as her mate after all.
As if sensing that she was being watched, Bridget murmured in her sleep and rolled over.
“Morning. Or afternoon? I can’t tell anymore,” she said with a yawn. “How are you feeling?”
Bas placed one of his big hands on the curve of her hip. “Grateful to be waking up next to you. Eager to show my thanks for how well you treated me last night.”
Bridget’s eyes widened. “Oh? And how do you plan on doing that?”
