“Yeah?”
“Breakfast is served, Ms. Morrow,” Zaire says through the door. “Will you be joining us?”
“Uh, yes.” I can’t stay in here forever. I need to learn more about this strange connection I have with Connor and about this secret battle he has with the Order. My mind flows back to the dream, to the ache between my legs.
“Whenever you are ready.”
I hear his footsteps pad away and throw an arm across my burning face.
Chapter Seventeen
CONNOR
Fiona told me what she needs from me last night, and I plan to give it to her. She wouldn’t say my name, wouldn’t say she was mine because she doesn’t trust me. She wants to know the truth. Maybe I deserve that. I did try to influence her by using the information I learned from listening to her thoughts. I should have been honest about that. Which means there’s only one way for me to win her back. With total honesty.
Starting today, no more secrets.
This has to work. My mating sickness is worse. I’m burning up with it. And that appetizer last night was like gasoline on an already-blazing fire. I need her. I need her soon and for real. Which means I need to open up to her. The faster I can break down the barriers between us, the sooner we can be bound together in the way the universe wants us to be, in the only way that will heal me.
While she eats her breakfast. I take Bones out andplay fetch. We find a good stick, and I toss it down the trail I cleared this morning when I was up at the crack of dawn, feeling like I could die from the chills and the shakes. I’ve instructed Zaire to invite her to join me when she’s done but not to make it sound like a command. Time together is exactly what we need, but it has to be her choice. Her initiative. She can’t feel manipulated, or I’ll be back at ground zero again.
I’m relieved when she appears at the door in the red Canada Goose parka and Sorel boots I bought for her. Bones lopes over to her with his stick and drops it near her feet, a huge, lolled-tongue smile on his face. She grins and rubs his head enthusiastically, then picks up the stick and throws it for him. My heart clenches at the normalcy of it.
“He’s a good dog,” she says without making eye contact.
“The best. Would you like to take a walk? I want to talk about last night. I owe you an explanation.”
She frowns slightly but gives a nod of agreement. We set off on the trail. Bones picks up his stick and bounds alongside us.
“How’s the writing coming?” I ask, although I know damn well how it’s coming.
“Unbelievable,” she says breathlessly. “It’s like the floodgates have opened and the story is pouring out of me.”
“You’re welcome.”
“For what?”
I glance her way. “Last night you told me you thought you couldn’t trust me. You thought I wasmanipulating you because I didn’t share the entire truth about hearing your thoughts.”
She nods once. “You were manipulating me. You were in my head?—”
“You’re right. I thought I was justified because you couldn’t handle everything at once, not when you were sick and considering… what you’d been through. But I’m promising you now, no more secrets.”
She narrows her eyes. “You’ll tell me the whole truth?”
I look toward the sky. “It would take me years to tell you everything there is to know about dragons and the Saint’s Order, but I promise you that what I tell you from this day forward will be as truthful and as accurate as possible.”
She studies me, her steps slowing as she considers that, then quickening again. “I want to believe you.”
“Well, then let me start with this. It was me in your dream the other night. I helped you break the chain around Alex’s ankle and work through your writer’s block. That’s why you’re able to write again.”
Her eyes widen, her expression turning livid. “Oh my God. Are you saying you were actually there, participating in my dream?”
I nod. “I won’t do it again without your permission. I did it once to make sure you were telling the truth about Roman and the Order.”
Her cheeks flush red, all the way to the tips of her ears. “And what about this morning?”
I shuffle to a stop, my smile broadening into something truly wicked as I take in her blush and connect thedots. “I was not in your dream this morning, Fiona. I have to be physically near you to dreamwalk, and I was in my own room. Why? Did you dream of me?”
