“Yes. Hideaway Cove gave me a home when I thought nowhere in the world would be safe for me and Tomás. Let’s make sure that if anyone comes needing sanctuary like that again, there’s space for them.”
He raised one eyebrow. “My family’s experience with the duskfire does mean I have a great many contacts in the construction industry.”
“See?” she teased. “I knew your magic wasn’t all bad.”
Bonus Epilogue
Maya
Gold lay in piles around the bed. Corin had brought Maya back to his hoard and, this time, the hum of treasure was like sugar on her lips.
Was she becoming more of a dragon, or did she just love making love to her mate on this huge bed, surrounded by shiny things?
This time, he was looking for something specific.
A ring.
“Can I help you search?” she called.
“Certainly not. I demand you stay exactly where you are.”
“Exactly?” She lay sprawled on the bed, laden down with jewelry and heavy-eyed with sated lust. Well. Ithadbeen sated. But that was all of twenty minutes ago. An eternity. “I’ll stay here if you promise to join me.”
He stalked back to her. “I told you I prized the human form of marriage. I’ve made you mine through the traditional draconic ritual.”
“Several times,” she grinned.
Black fire flared in his eyes. “I’ve bestowed the treasures of my hoard on you, and they pale in comparison to your own beauty. Now I need to give you a ring. To make you mine in all ways.”
“A ring from your hoard?”
He hissed a curse. “Of course. What was I thinking? You’re right, as ever, Miss Flores. I’m a dragon. I must do things properly.”
Corin
“I thought we were going tobuya ring,” Maya admitted as they approached the cave on the beach. Corin’s gold-sense was itching; they were getting close. “How do you even know this is the right place?”
“What better place to keep your hoard than the remote desert island your cruel cousin banishes you to every second Tuesday?”
Maya gasped. “Thisis one of the retreats you’d send them to when they misbehaved? I’d play up, too.”
“Don’t be fooled. It isn’t all tropical idyll.” Corin led the way through a tangle of lush green growth.
“What’s wrong with it? Mosquitos? Venomous snakes?” She looked apprehensive.
“Possibly? I was talking about that fact that it gets so hot.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “It getshot?”
“The humidity is atrocious.”
“Maybe if you didn’t walk around wearing several pounds of gold woven into your merino wool suit jacket…” She flicked him under the chin.
“I left my jacket in the helicopter,” he said coolly.
“Oh? Not planning to leave fragments of it around your cousins’ hoard, to mock them?”
“Now that you mention it…” He flexed fingers like claws. His dragon liked that idea very much.
