He said, “Before the humans all created just the one village below the castle, they lived wherever they wanted to. The world was new then and there was a lot of room. There were farms nearby, and my parents used to hold a ball every full moon.”
There was a smile on his face when he said the words and she stared at him, seeing real happiness on his face for the first time. She said, “You must miss them a lot.”
His gaze was direct. It didn’t falter. “That’s the thing about being a dragon. Our lives are long, and so are our memories.”
They stepped toward the house. She said, “So we are having dinner here? Is there food here?”
He said, “Yes. I come here a lot and I keep things here. It’s probably a little rougher than you’re used to but I think it will do.”
He opened the door and stood to one side, ushering her in. As she went past him and went to step over the threshold, his hand came down, light but so warm and there, right on the base of her spine. That gesture, so courtly and somewhat old-fashioned, made her head spin. How long had it been since a man had held the door open for her to enter first and then guided her through with a light touch? She couldn’t even remember.
She had been so afraid of complications, so afraid of actual dating, that she had allowed herself to be deprived of the things that made courtship so special.
That gave her pause. Was this a courtship? If so, what did he really want?
She’d come there to find out if he wanted her or just what she could give him. Now it was her chance to find out, and suddenly she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer anymore. If all he wanted was for her to bear his child but didn’t want her, she was going to end up with a huge heartache, and that was something she just simply could not afford.
If you want more, if you want her, she is going to have to decide to leave her world behind forever and live in this one.Blake could not live in her world. She had seen how badly he fit in there for herself that day in the coffee shop.
The door opened into a large room that featured a massive fireplace and old but still lovely furnishings: carved chairs and tables, a low upholstered sofa, rugs made of some woven fabric, and to her surprise, a very lovely instrument similar to a piano.
A large kitchen, hardly modern but entirely serviceable, took up most of the far end of the room. She went to it and stared at it. That they had some power was something she knew. They got it from some magical source, and she knew that the kitchens in the castle relied on ice and a sort of cellar system for keeping things cold. It was the same there in that house but on a much smaller scale. She ran her fingers over the top of the stove and asked, “Does it burn wood?”
Blake said, “Yes.”
He was very close to her. She could smell that unique smell that was solely his, feel the heat emanating from his body. Discomfited by the way that her nipples were steadily tightening underneath her bra and the urgent pounding in her lower body, she took a step to the side and turned about to look at the piano-like instrument. “Is that a piano?”
“It’s called a pianoforte. Do you play?”
She shook her head regretfully. “I always wanted lessons, but my mom could never afford them.”
No, but she could afford to go out with her friends and track down men that might be her next husband.
That thought made Christy’s heart nearly stop. Her mother had hardly been an example of how to have a relationship. As a result, Christy was woefully unprepared for one, something she had always known and had always been angered by. She found herself wondering, at that moment, if her mother’s predilections for going out to bars and picking up men had been something that she had passed on to her daughter, like a genetic inheritance.
Blake said, “I could teach you.”
That shocked her out of her reverie. “You play?”
He gave her a slightly sarcastic smile. “Don’t look so surprised. We live for centuries you know; we have to do something to pass the time.”
There he was, that smirking jerk that she wanted to slap right in the face. She gave him a quelling look, and he grinned at her, completely unabashed. Her minor irritation broke apart, and she found a smile starting to surface. Not only that, but a larger understanding, one she had not been able to grasp during the time they spent together before, also came up. Blake was a lot like her. He hid his feelings behind sarcasm and witty comebacks.
She said, “Well, I’d like that. Since you are like a thousand years old, maybe we should do it soon before your fingers go all crooked and gnarled from arthritis and we have to put you on a cane just to walk.”
His mouth sagged open. She shot him a triumphant look. He blinked a few times and then his head went back, and he roared laughter. He chortled out, “Ouch. We don’t age that way, by the way. We don’t get arthritis.”
Christy said, “Good to know.”
If they had a child together, her child would never have arthritis. That was actually good to know. Blake moved past her and toward the cellar. He said, “Wait right here. I’ll be right back.”
He opened a small door to the left and vanished down what looked like a set of rickety stairs. Christy drifted back over to the windows and stood looking out at the front yard. There was a small winding road that snaked along right outside the fence that marked off the boundaries of the property. She found herself wondering where it went.
His footsteps came back up the stairs, and she turned and asked him that question. Blake set the small bags that he had brought up from the cellar down carefully on a counter and said, “Well, before the Orcs destroyed it all, there were several really large villages out that way. The humans had a lot of kids. They outgrew places and moved on and made new ones. At one time, there were about a hundred thousand humans scattered all across this countryside.”
Her mouth fell open. “Are you serious?”
He nodded. “Oh yes. You have to remember that we had already been here several hundred years then and when the wizard cursed us, there were over three thousand humans on the battlefield that came with this.”
