“It’s definitely not hurting as much,” he said. “But can you believe what Rufus said? I can’t wait to read up about King Arthur and his knights and to visit the fake Round Table again. You know it has all those names on it? I wonder Tristan or Galahad are there. It’ll be different looking at it now.”
“The Galahad connection doesn’t surprise me,” I told him.
“Even after what I did to you last night?” His grin brought back vividly the way he’d deep-throated me until I’d been practically wailing with how good it felt.
“Not that kind of purity,” I said. I ran my hand over his arse, lingering long enough to squeeze, suddenly wishing we didn’t have visitors. Ollie’s arse was perfect, and damn near heaven to sink into. What had I been saying? Oh, yes. I firmly removed my hand from where it had, of its own accord, started to trace the centre seam of Ollie’s jeans, causing his colour to rise.
“The sort of purity I think Mark was talking about isn’t physical,” I said. “It’s of the heart. And you’re full of that kind of goodness.”
Ollie’s cheeks flared even redder, and I decided to leave this conversation for when we wouldn’t be interrupted. One day, I’d get him to believe how special he was. It wasn’t going to be easy,going against all those years when he’d been made to think he was lesser, but I wasn’t someone who gave up.
Chapter Thirty-six
ARCHER
“All this Arthurian stuff is amazing,” Mark said over tea and biscuits. “Don’t tell me you have the Lady of the Lake in your moat.”
“No unclad women have been seen there in recent times,” I told him. “And sorry to disappoint you, but the only swords in my forge are brand new ones, so Excalibur isn’t lurking around here somewhere.”
“You have swords? Can I see them?” Mark leaned forward eagerly, surprisingly bloodthirsty for a theologian.
“Mark.” Rufus’s voice was soft and apologetic. “We should probably do a bit more transcribing first.”
“Oh, right, sorry. It’s just, this house is incredible.”
“Wait till you see the maze,” Ollie told him.
As Mark’s eyes lit up, and Rufus looked intrigued, I realised that, although we weren’t doing it quite the way Margaret Teague had suggested, we were forging new connections with other dragons and making friends.
To my surprise, I liked it.
OLLIE
Rufus and Mark worked hard on transcribing the family tree. Afterwards, Rufus went through a fair bit of the bible looking for what he called marginalia. He didn’t find anything.
“Do you want us to keep this to ourselves?” Rufus asked Archer when they’d finished their work.
Archer shook his head. “I’ve no time for people who hoard knowledge for power. Feel free to tell anyone. I think Evelyn’sgoing to be turning up on our doorstep before much longer, in any case.”
They spent some time delightedly exploring the library and looking around the forge, the gardens and the maze, before having supper with us. After we saw them off in the dusk, I turned to Archer.
“So the valuable thing was this big bit of dragon history that everyone had forgotten?”
“Looks that way,” Archer agreed. “Valuable in a way that Mark would appreciate, but why would Chris have been after it?”
“Maybe he assumed valuable meant money.”
Archer heaved a sigh. “I’m going to sort out the Chris situation tomorrow. It’s just as well I made better progress on the swords than I expected, or I’d be running behind.”
He’d had an entire afternoon when he hadn’t thought once about work and his responsibilities. I determined not to let him slide back into that rut.
“Well,” I said, moving the couple of paces that separated us and tucking my fingers through his belt loops to tug him closer still. “It seems Mia’s away again tonight, so what could we possibly do?”
His eyes darkened as he looked down at me. “Have anything particular in mind?” This teasing was new in him, and I liked it.
“I seem to remember mentioning something about walls,” I mused.
So I only had myself to blame when I ended up face first against the bedroom wall, where he’d put me as if I weighed nothing, my legs apart and jeans around my knees as he opened me up with his tongue.
