Chapter Six
ARCHER
I’d set my alarm for three am, something I regretted when it sounded in the dark of my room. As I opened the curtains and saw the moon bright in the sky, all regret fled.
Mia had pulled a face when I’d asked if she wanted to come flying over Avebury. I couldn’t understand her reticence. I loved the place. It had an undercurrent of something I couldn’t identify, which drew me here at least once a year.
Instead, Mia asked me to give a lift to someone she’d met earlier. “Hereallywants to go but has no way of getting there. You wouldn’t mind, would you, Archer? Please?”
“I suppose so.” I didn’t want a strange dragon in my car, but it was always useful to have another family owe us a favour. Even if that sounded a little like post-fact rationalisation of the way I’d given in to Mia’s pleading grey eyes.
“Great!” She sat up, eyes sparkling all of a sudden. “I’ll tell Ollie to meet you in the car park at ten past three.”
“Ollie Shaw?” I had the distinct feeling I’d been set up, though I couldn’t tell why. Was she smitten with him and wanted my approval? Regardless, I’d committed now, and she was tapping away on her phone. “Tell him he’s not allowed any food in the car.”
She glanced up, eyebrows raised. “Okay.”
I moved quietly through the silent hotel, and only realised my assumptions when I reached the locked door closest to the car park. This was no modern hotel with a twenty-four-hour reception. I hoped I’d be able to get out without having to open a fire-door, which would start an alarm and wake up AbimelechMortimer. Not a good way to make friends and influence dragons.
To my relief, there was only a Yale lock on the door, and it opened easily. The night was cold, my breath making small clouds in the bright moonlight. I glanced around for Ollie Shaw. I’d give him two minutes but no longer. If he didn’t have the manners—
“Oh my God, that coat isamazing.”
I’d been concentrating on the building behind me as I listened for him, and he’d come from the gardens. His shoulders were hunched and his hands shoved in the pockets of his puffer jacket, but his expression was awestruck as his eyes drank in my perfectly ordinary greatcoat. He wasn’t any less attractive in moonlight, damn him.
“You look frozen,” I said.
“Just a bit.” He gave a half-laugh. “I came down thirty minutes early because I realised I didn’t know which doors would be deadlocked, and when I tried this one, somehow it closed behind me.”
“Let’s go,” I told him, leading the way to my car.
OLLIE
ThankGodArcher Talbot hadn’t been wearing that coat the first time I saw him. I’d have orgasmed on the spot if he had. It wasn’t only the way it swung behind him as he strode but how closely it was moulded to the breadth of his shoulders. How the hell was I supposed to sit beside him in the car without whimpering?
He led the way to a big estate car. I’d assumed he, like Mr Shaw, would drive a high-end car with leather heated seats, and all sorts of tech at the driver’s fingertips. This car wasunmistakably pragmatic and elderly, and when I climbed in, there was a faint but enduring scent of metal.
There was also another scent.I breathed deeply, drinking in the sort of warmth a body has when the person’s just woken up and underneath that something more—Archer smelledsogood. My dick appeared to have forgotten it was an unearthly time in the morning and was waking up to greet the day.Shit.
Time to stop sniffing and start talking and hope that would get rid of my growing problem. “Thanks for this,” I said. “I haven’t got my full licence yet, and Jack didn’t want to come because he has to be by his phone in case Lisa needs him—she’s pregnant—and there’s nowayI could ask Mr or Mrs Shaw.”
He'd manoeuvred the car easily out of a space that looked too small for even a mini to fit into, and he spared me a quick glance as he put it in gear. “How are you related to them?”
“I think they’re my third cousins?” I was hazy about how cousin categorisation worked after first cousins. “I’m simply along for the ride because Jack’s wife couldn’t come.” As soon as I’d blurted it out, I swore to myself. Maybe he’d be more interested in me if he thought I had status in my family. “Jack’s next in line to be head of the family and my best friend.” Great, that made me sound about five years old.Shit.
He didn’t say anything further, but I noticed he put the heater on. It was just beginning to warm the air when he pulled off the road into an empty car park and I looked around in surprise. “We’re here already?”
“Be back here by seven,” he said, opening his door.
It was only after I’d climbed out that I realised. “I won’t have my phone, so how will I—”
“Sunrise is at six thirty-four.”
“Oh, okay. Thanks.” And it wasn’tfair.The impatience in his voice, the competence he had toknowthat, all of it had mein a helpless puddle on the floor. Not helped as I watched him stride across the tarmac, coat billowing sexily behind him.
Following at a distance, I was easily able to see him in the moonlight on this almost cloudless night. I had to follow him because I had no idea where I was going. I didn’t intend to get too close—this might not be his territory, but dragons liked their personal space.
Having trailed him into a field, I began to feel awkward about the fact I was still following him.
