He looked over toward the edge of the roof. “I better get back down there. I hope you can find your own way down, presumably by stair instead of the more direct route?”
She took a hard breath at that and looked at him, sure he was insulting her. There was a grin on his face, and it was not an unkind one though, and she felt better. “Yes, and thank you for saving my life. Really.”
He turned away and then turned back. The heady aroma of his sweat and the soap he used hit her, making her nipples go taut and her core to clench. He said, “Of course I would never let you fall, not when I was near enough to catch you.”
That hit her right in the heart. No, he would never let her fall. He was not that kind of man. Of dragon. Of anything.
Sorrow hit. Why oh why did she have to meet the perfect man and have to lose him? It was obvious she would lose him. This was his world and no way would he leave it and she was not sure if she could stay there. Maybe there was a law about that too. From what she understood, the ones who came and were allowed to stay all had magical powers, and she definitely did not have anything close to that.
That she thought that he was perfect made her heart contract. She barely knew him, and she was playing a dangerous game. The truth was, Christy had been right. Hookups had never been her style, and she tended to place more of herself than she should into a man’s hands after she had slept with him. She got too emotionally invested way too fast.
It was no wonder she was getting caught up like she was. It had been too long since she had felt any kind of desire for a man or known intimacy—and what they had shared had not been just sex: it had been intimacy. At least for her. But she had no idea of what he thought about that or if that had just been some no strings attached sex with a human. For all she knew, dragons thought of sleeping with humans as sport.
He stared at her face and that thought, can he read my mind, hit again, forcing her to look away. Her arms fell away from her midsection and then went back up, that time over her chest. She wanted to kiss him, wanted to step forward and just let her mouth rest against his full and wide lips for a moment and see if he responded, but so what if he did?
He was virile, and he had a libido. He might want her in his bed but he was a dragon, and she was a human, and he had been so mean at dinner, even if he had apologized for it afterward. Not to mention that he really was a king and there was clearly something going on, something that demanded his total attention, and she was getting in the way: something he was bound to find highly unattractive.
Max lifted a hand. Those strong fingers of his tangled into her hair, fisted it, and her body immediately responded. She went toward him, her lips parting and her pupils dilating as his mouth came down on hers, fusing his lips to hers and then giving her a fast but incredibly passionate kiss that took her breath and stole all the thoughts right out of her head. Her limbs trembled. His fingernails grazed the flesh of her scalp, leaving tingling little trails there. His mouth tasted of food and mint and something else: something mysterious and delicious.
Then he broke that kiss off, leaving her blinking and dazed. He said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t do this with you, Heather. I can’t.”
Then he strolled to the roof’s edge and jumped off it. She heard his wings beat the air a few times, felt the updraft from those strong and leathery wings on her face, cooling her flushed skin.
She had to resist the urge to go to the edge, to peek down and watch him do that mock battle. She had to stop lusting after him. She was distracting him, and it was a pretty good bet that she was a distraction he could not afford just then.
He was definitely a distraction she could not afford. It would be way too easy to forget how soon she would have to leave and that there was no way they could be together and to open herself up to something that would definitely end in her getting more hurt than she had been in her entire lifetime.
“My life back home isn’t perfect or awesome, but it’s mine. I don’t know that I’d want to stay here once the novelty wore off. I mean, there’s not even electricity. There are lights, but I think it’s magic that keeps them on. Talk about a blackout waiting to happen!”
She was still thinking about those things when she opened the door to the room she shared with Christy to find Christy pacing the floor, her feet moving so fast it looked like she was about to break into a run at any minute.
Heather said, “Whoa! What’s up?”
Christy spun on her heel to face her. Her eyes held both hurt and anger. “He stood me up. No, scratch that. He showed up, said he had something of real importance to deal with, and then flew off and left me alone out there in a goddamn meadow!”
“Oh no!” Heather asked, “Did you just stay out there then? You were gone a long time.”
Christy flopped down into a chair. She waved a hand at the ceiling. “Yeah, I did. These humans were out there hunting truffles.”
“Huh?”
“Truffles, you know, mushrooms. You should see those things. They’re huge, and they’re amazing too. At first, I was wary, like what if they have some kind of tolerance to whatever poison the truffles might have in them because they have been eating them their whole lives, but I tried one anyway. You know I have always been a sucker for the finer things. Then, because I ate a bit, I got roped into helping to hunt for them. That’s how things work here. Everyone does something to help. Or so they told me as they handed me a bag and a stick and told me to get to digging. For all I know they just wanted free labor.”
Heather hid a grin. Christy had a flair for the dramatic, but at that moment she was using that flair to offset her very real disappointment. “It’s a good thing you don’t like him.”
“I know right? If I did, it might have hurt my feelings. Not that I really have any. One cannot be in my field and have feelings.”
“You do know it’s okay to say you like him?”
Christy’s upper lip curled backward off her teeth. “I’d die before I said that.”
That meant she did like Blake. Heather knew her well enough to know that Christy got out her toughest armor when confronted with emotions she did not know how to handle. Liking a man always brought out the tough in Christy.
Christy tucked a strand of hair behind one ear. She peered at Heather’s face. “You look upset yourself.”
Heather let her fingers smooth a small wrinkle in her dress. “I fell out of the window.”
Christy’s eyes went as big and round as saucers. “You did what? How? Are you okay?”
She sighed, “Yes. Max caught me and saved my life.”
Christy stood again. “Really?”
Heather’s hands cupped her elbows. “Yeah, it was pretty…well.” It was exciting, after she had realized she was not about to die after all. It had been incredibly sweet, and it had made her feel safe and protected too. Of course it had. To her. But to him, it had likely just been a minor annoyance that had interrupted something he found more important. She swallowed back a hard lump in her throat and offered, “It was crazy.”
Christy’s eyes went to the windows. Dusk had begun, and purple and blue shadows cloaked the open window casement. “Sounds like it. Listen, I’m pretty beat. Do you mind if I just turn in?”
“No, not at all. I was just thinking the same thing.” Heather eyeballed the wide and long bed. That she would much rather share it with Max was no shocker. That he was probably done with her hurt.
Dragons. How could she possibly know what any of them were really thinking?
