“What about your family? You can't just turn your back on all of that.”
“I would do it one hundred times over for you. That's what you don't seem to be getting. It is all about you, Laurel, has been since I brought you back. You turned into a beautiful dragon and I have to say, it made me love you even more. I felt like I actually could love you.”
She looked away, and he wanted to pull her closer, but he let her go scamper off into the extra bedroom. There had been many nights that he had stayed up wanting to go down the hall and visit her. He knew that tonight was going to be worse than all the rest. Nathan wanted her too badly. He needed to push it all out of his mind. None of it was doing any good, not when Laurel still didn’t seem ready to take the next step.
He was more than willing.
Chapter 13
Laurel laid in bed for a while, staring up at the ceiling, tossing and turning. Her mind was on the kiss and the way she had run away from him. He had professed his love to her, his desire to be with her and she’d just run. It was pathetic and she admonished herself quite a bit, unsure of what in the world she had been thinking.
The sad part of it was that she was in love with Nathan. Had been for a long time, or at least crushing on him. Love came later, when he saved her and started to teach her the new ways of a dragon. She’d done all of it right next to him and it was hard not to feel anything. Laurel did and she regretted it only because it was so out of place.
Finally, she got up, and the tossing and turning that she had done in the bed turned into pacing. She had all of this pent-up energy that she had to get rid of. Her eyes kept going to the door, and she wondered what would happen if she went down to his room and knocked on it. Better yet, what would happen if she just slipped into his room and then into his bed?
Her face actually turned beet-red when she thought about that. It was hard to imagine, since she was so out of the loop when it came to matters like that. Laurel had always wanted to wait for the perfect guy. She didn’t know what he would look like or what he would be like, but she had just known since she was quite young that she wanted to feel something. Something spectacular.
She felt that way when she was with Nathan. He made the whole world light up because he was in it. That was a hard feeling to stop. It was even harder to walk away from it, and when she really thought about it, Laurel must have realized that she was never going to feel the way she did again. What was running through her body, all the desire, was what she’d always wanted to feel. It’s what she had waited for her whole life, so how could she turn it down?
The hallway was dark, but it wasn’t far to Nathan’s room. Laurel almost turned around and went back several times. She was worried about what would happen when she got there. What if he turned her away?
She paused at his door and put her hand to it. She liked to believe that she could feel him through it, but she couldn’t be sure. Laurel was still learning and honing her skills. She had a lot of both to do.
When she got up the nerve, it was to knock. She couldn’t see herself going into his room without him knowing about it, possibly sleeping, and what, getting into bed with him? Her face flamed just thinking about it. There was no way that she could do something like that. She would be impossibly embarrassed when he woke up and then, what was she ever supposed to do? She had the basics of it all, of course, but she didn’t understand how she was supposed to make him ready or please them both.
The knock was light, but if he was awake, she knew that he would hear it. Laurel only waited a few heartbeats, before he was making noise on the other side.
“Yeah?”
“Sorry to bother you, Nathan…”
Before she could even get the sentence out, he opened the bedroom door and stepped out.
“What are you doing here, Laurel?”
His eyes were dark and cloudy. He wanted her and right then, her body responded in kind. Laurel wanted to say something about all of it, but she was instead memorizing his face. She didn’t think she was ever going to get used to it.
“I wanted to see you. I couldn’t sleep and I thought that maybe you would still be up.”
“Yeah, I doubt I will sleep all night.”
“What? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, you?”
She agreed, but he just shook his head in response. “You’re not okay. Tell me what’s going on.”
“It’s about earlier, that kiss…”
He looked away like he was guilty, “I am sorry about that, Laurel. I don’t know what came over me, but I have to say, coming here right now, like this, is not making it easier. Why don’t you go back to your room and we will talk in the morning, with clothes on?”
He was pointedly talking about the fact that she had a see-through robe on. If he looked closer, he would see that there was nothing on underneath it. When he did notice, she heard a sharp intake of his breath. Laurel looked at him curiously.
“So, you really want me to go away?”
Laurel acted like she was pouting, but he didn’t buy it.
“You know that I want you and if you don’t, I do. I just am not going to be able to stand here and talk to you calmly when you are dressed like that. I know girl power, wear what you want and all, but I can’t think when I can see your rosy-pink nipples.”
