Even though Liam had responded to the news so much better than she had feared that he might, she still felt reluctant to let go of the moment.
Turning back to Liam to search his dark blue gaze, she said, “You can always change your mind and come too, you know. You sure you want to stay here? It’ll be sunny and warm in L.A. And while I can’t promise, we might be able to sneak away for an afternoon at Disneyland, if you want.”
“No,” he said. “I’d like to go to Disneyland someday, but I’d like to go some time when you know you can make the trip. This week, I really want to stay in school. We have a football game on Friday night. I want to play in it, and besides, you said this is the last trip you’re gonna be making for a while. And you’ll be back by next Monday, right?”
“That’s right,” she replied. “I’ll be home on Monday by the time school lets out.”
He shrugged. “Okay. Do you want to watch the rest of the movie with me when you get back?”
“Of course I do.” She leaned over to poke him in the ribs again. “Unless you want to go ahead and finish it tonight, which is okay too. If you watch the rest of it, we can start a new movie when I get back.”
“Okay.” He laughed and squirmed away from her finger. “And hey, maybe by the time you get back, this peanut won’t be hiding anymore.”
“You never know.” She grinned. “Peanuts do tend to have a mind of their own. But you were ‘Peanut’ when you were little. Do you think we need to come up with another nickname to call this one?”
“Nah,” Liam said. “I outgrew that a long time ago, so we can call this one Peanut too.”
She looked sideways away from him, adopting a shifty expression. “Does that mean I get to have your bunny now?”
“No way!” he exclaimed. “Keep your paws off my stuffed animal!”
Laughing, she told him, “I’ll keep my hands off him for now. That’s all I’m going to promise. If you ever feel the need to get rid of him, you know he’s got a home with me.”
“Yeah, I know.” He grinned.
Behind her, Dragos shifted. “Time to get this trip started. The sooner you leave, the sooner we can put this week behind us and move on with our lives.”
Taking his cue, she rolled onto her knees and stood. Liam stood as well.
Pia called out, “Eva!”
After a few moments, Eva appeared in the doorway. “You bellowed?”
“Pia’s ready to leave for the airstrip,” Dragos told her. “Is the Escalade loaded up?”
“It sure is.” Eva bounced on the balls of her feet. “We’re ready to roll as soon as you are.”
He nodded. “Get the car warmed up and wait for us outside, will you? We’ll be out soon.”
“Sure thing.” Eva disappeared down the hall.
Pia turned to Liam. Good gods, he was almost as tall as she was. She said, “Remember …”
He ducked his head with a self-conscious grin. “I know, I know. No unexpected growth spurts while you’re gone.”
She waited a moment when he stopped speaking, then prompted, “And?”
“We’ll Skype every day after school.” He added quickly, “Except for Friday, because there’s the game. And Hugh’s going to tape it, so you can watch it when you get back.”
“That’s what we’re going to do, first thing after school on Monday,” Dragos told him. “We’ll watch it together.”
“Okay!”
Pia watched as Liam hugged Dragos. When he turned to her, she was ready. She threw her arms around him and kissed his cheek. He whispered to her, “I’m so glad I get to have a Peanut too.”
“Me too, darling.” She kissed him again. “I just know he—or she—is going to look up to you and adore you, and want to play with you all the time.”
“I can’t wait. I’ll even learn how to change diapers!” His brows twitched together, and he added, “As long as they’re not poopy.”
She burst out laughing. “Wow, that is excessively good of you.”
He kissed her cheek quickly and stood back. “Have a good trip!”
“We will,” she told him. Liam threw his thin, lanky body onto the empty couch and turned the movie back on as they walked out of the room.
Then, as Pia followed Dragos to the front of the shadowed house, she said to him, “Unless, of course, we don’t. Because I swear to you, Dragos, I’m beginning to feel like we’re travel cursed. Something always happens when we go away.”
“Like I told you once, we’re lightning rods. We don’t have to go away for things to happen,” he said sardonically. At the front hall closet, he pulled out Pia’s coat. “Things happen when we stay right here at home too.”
She would not look at the thin white scar on his forehead. She had obsessed over that wound more than enough already. A few months ago, when Dragos had been seriously injured, that wound had ruled her life and haunted her nights.
Now, he still suffered partial memory loss, but he had remembered everything that mattered to her, everything that was vital to their lives and happiness. More importantly, he had healed until he was as strong and healthy as he had ever been.
And they were going to have a new, mysterious, fiery little peanut.
So she patted him on the cheek as she told him, “I’m too stinking happy to care. The universe can bring it. We’ll deal with whatever may happen next. We always do.”
He bent his head to kiss her. “Damn straight, and we always will.”
The kiss quickly turned scorching as he slanted his mouth over hers and deepened it, cupping the back of her head and plunging between her lips with his tongue. She stroked his hair, savoring the feeling of the silken strands flowing through her fingers and the sensation of his warm, firm lips caressing hers.
He had been drinking coffee while watching the movie, and the dark, smoky flavor lingered pleasantly on his tongue. Murmuring in pleasure, she kissed him back hungrily.
The mating frenzy between them had flared when they began to try to get pregnant. Now, only a few short weeks later, it had eased back somewhat but it hadn’t gone to sleep entirely.
Pia was beginning to think it never would. She could never get enough of him, never, and now, if they weren’t able to steal away for a few private hours, it was likely they wouldn’t be able to be together for a whole damn week, which was another reason to hold a grudge against that unnamed idiot in Washington.
Dragos lifted his head, and in the shadows of the front hall, his gold eyes flared incandescent. He looked hungry, and angry. It was all the warning she got.
Grabbing her by the waist, he lifted her into his arms. Laughing and trying to muffle the sound, she managed to hook an arm around his neck as he strode the short distance to his office.
“What are you doing?!” she whispered, breathless from trying to hold back her giggles.
“I’m taking my wife.” Slamming the door with one booted foot, he carried her to the massive desk and swept everything out of the way as he set her on the polished surface.
Her body knew what was coming next. Her pulse rate ratcheted up, until she felt she had a fever, and a hungry ache throbbed in the private place between her legs. “I thought we didn’t have time for this.”
“Screw it,” he growled. “We’ll make time.”
Chapter Two
Dragos knew he was throwing off heat as if he were on fire. He felt like he was burning up. He loved the fact that she never minded his heat. When they were in bed, she cuddled close, even in the warmest weather.
She spread slender hands across his chest. Her plump, inviting lips were unsteady as she whispered, “What about the roads?”
“They won’t freeze in the next ten minutes.” Undoing the fastening of her jeans, he hauled them and her panties off, taking her slip-on shoes with them. Then he yanked her legs apart.
She burst out laughing again. “Eva’s outside in the car!”
“She knows her job,” he muttered. “She’ll wait.”
Dragos knew
when he got like this, there was no reasoning with him.
But fortunately, when he got like this, there was no reasoning with her either.
She didn’t waste any more precious time arguing, not when he could tell she wanted this as much as he did. Arousal perfumed her scent. He took in deep breaths, gripping her shoulders as she worked to get his jeans open too.
When she did, and his stiff, aching erection spilled into her waiting hands, they both sucked in a breath.
It was a terrible thing to grow to need someone the way that he had grown to need her. For so many millennia, he had been content to be a solitary creature. The dragon in him was baffled by the unrelenting drive he felt to be with her, and stupefied at the experience of being in love.
Because he did, he loved her. He didn’t love often, or very many people, and he was content to have it that way, but she consumed his life. She burned him up, until there was nothing left but his essence, taken out of his massive body and flying weightless again in the endless, unmeasured spill of profligate golden sunlight, just as he had once flown in the earliest days of his very long life.
Their lack of time lent urgency to their actions. She pumped his cock once, twice, three times, spiking sensation along his nerve endings until he could have spilled right then and there into her welcoming hands, but he didn’t want to climax that way. He wanted to bury himself into her velvety soft, tight sheath.
As he yanked her soft sweater up, she obligingly raised her arms. Shimmering pale blonde hair tumbled over her laughing, sensual expression. He tossed the sweater to the floor and greedily filled his palms with her round, soft breasts, framed prettily by a cream lacy bra. Bending his head, he licked and bit lightly at the luscious swell of flesh. When he put his mouth over one nipple and sucked at her teasingly, through the material of the bra, she moaned and hooked her legs around his waist, trying to pull him close.
It was impossible—he couldn’t suckle at her breasts and still come up to nestle against her pelvis. After a last hard pull and nip at her breast, he gave up, straightened and put an arm around her hips to pull her to the edge of the desk.
As she wriggled eagerly into position, he put a hand between her legs, fingering her soft, delicate folds. She was wet for him, but he already knew that from the arousal in her scent. Relishing the liquid glide of velvet flesh against his callused fingertips, he probed until he found the tight, stiff little pearl he was looking for.
She sucked in an unsteady breath as he caressed her, tightening her fists in the material of his shirt. He could feel the muscles in her inner thighs shaking against his hips. For a few moments, she thrust her pelvis against his hand, mimicking the rhythm they found when they were joined together, until his blood caught the rhythm, pulsing urgently through his veins.
Then she pushed his hand away, hissing, “Stop being so damn considerate and get inside me already, will you?”
Laughter welled up. Gods, he loved how frankly sensual she was with him, and her unabashed enthusiasm for sex.
She took hold of his cock again, rubbing her thumb along the broad sensitive head until moisture came out of the tip. Then she positioned him at her entrance, and gripping her hips, he pushed inside.
It never got old, never. Each time, he caught fire like it was the first time. When he planted himself deep inside her, she let her head fall back. Her gaze was unfocused, and her breathing came in short, quick pants.
Bending over her arched torso, one arm wrapped around her hips, he fucked her in short, hard jabs. The friction was excruciating, delicious. She was delicious. He bit at her neck, sucking at the delicate skin.
She raked her fingernails down his back, leaving trails of fire. Relishing the small pain, he growled and accelerated his pace. His erection felt huge, impossibly hard and thick. If he didn’t spill soon, he was going to go crazy.
Slipping a hand between their torsos, he searched for her clitoris again—and as he connected with the tiny peak of flesh, she sucked in a breath, whined and climaxed. The ripples took her over. He could feel her pulsing around him, and that sent him over the edge.
Groaning, he pumped into her, jetting with each thrust. She bit and licked at him, until he lifted his head to take her mouth with his. They fused together, kissing wildly, muscles clenched as the last of the pleasure spiked and then eased on a slow ebb.
When it had passed, she wrapped her arms around his neck. He hugged her tightly, and they rested against each other for a moment until he felt her racing heart begin to slow.
“Okay,” he said, as he rested his mouth in her tousled hair. “Now you can go.”
Bursting out laughing, she smacked his arm. “After you completely destroy me, mess up all my clothes and tangle my hair, you’re going to boot me out?”
He grinned. “Well, I lost track, but I suspect our ten minutes might be up.”
“Ugh, men!” Her hold on his neck loosened, and her thighs eased away from his hips.
Before he let her go, he had to take her chin and tilt her face up for one last hot kiss. Damn, he hated to let her go. “All right,” he said reluctantly against her soft lips. “The half bath is right across the hall, and nobody’s in the front of the house—you make a run for it while I straighten up your clothes. I’ll bring them to you.”
“Okay,” she whispered. She stroked his face. In the shadowed room, her eyes looked dark as midnight and impossibly deep. She smiled at him. “I love you.”
He kissed her again, hard. “Love you too. Get going, before I change my mind and keep you here.”
She lingered to search his face. “You wouldn’t.”
“Damn straight, I would.”
“But all the demesne leaders, and the human administration, agreed on this.”
“Fuck them. Fuck the agreement.” He angled out his jaw. “Nobody tells me what to do, or where to send my family.”
* * *
Oh lord, he was serious.
Only a few moments ago, while they were making love, he had looked so intense, he almost set the air around him on fire, his eyes glowing like gold coins in the darkened office.
Now he looked intense for an entirely different reason, and just as sexy. His dark brows had lowered, and his face had hardened into his most stubborn expression.
Shaking her head, she hopped off the desk. “I don’t have time to argue with you about this,” she told him. “We already decided—it’s not worth antagonizing all the other people we have to live with on this continent over this one thing. You need to save all that obstinacy for times when you really do need to dig in your heels. If you’re going to pick your battles, Dragos, this one isn’t worth fighting.”
He said between his teeth, “I hate decisions by consensus.”
“I know,” she crooned. “You handle it so much better when you can be an absolute dictator, don’t you, honey? It’s been very hard on you since the planet has become so populated, and we’ve all had to learn to get along together sometimes.”
“Well,” he said, his tone truculent. “It has.”
Her shoulders shook. Gods, she adored every inch of his growly, autocratic self. “We’ve put it off long enough. Now I’ve really got to go.”
Reluctance clear in every line of his body, he stepped aside, and she made that dash for the half bath across the hall.
Once inside, she cleaned up, washed her face and hands, and ran her fingers through her tousled hair. A quick rap sounded on the door, then Dragos opened it to slip her clothes inside, and she dressed quickly. She hopped out of the bathroom again in two minutes flat.
He was waiting for her, still glowering, holding her coat in one hand. As she shrugged into it, his arms closed around her tightly in one last hug. For that one moment, she felt entirely enfolded and utterly safe.
Then he let her go, and together they stepped outside.
The rainy snow splattered them as Dragos opened the front passenger door of the Escalade that waited idling at the curb. Inside, Eva lounged in the
driver’s seat, looking lazily amused and not at all surprised.
Pia turned to Dragos. Wet drops sprinkled his ink black hair.
“Do you have your next dose of medication?” he asked.
She nodded. “I’ve got it in my purse. I triple-checked.”
“And I have the backup dose, just in case.”
When she had collapsed in D.C., they had found out that she was pregnant. They had also discovered that this would be their last child.
It had to be, as Pia’s body had developed lethal antibodies to fight off carrying Dragos’s children. Sometimes it happened, when two very different kinds of Wyr mated.
Dr. Medina had likened it somewhat to the human Rhesus factor, only unlike humans, who could prevent dangerous sensitization with an injection of Rh immunoglobulin, there was no way to prevent what had happened to Pia.
Once her body had turned that corner, nothing in modern medicine could turn the clock back again. Not even her own magical nature could save her. While she had extraordinary healing Powers, her body had grown to recognize the fetus as an intruder and was fighting to protect itself. She would miscarry any future pregnancies.
She would be able to carry this new, precious peanut to term, but only with the help of the drug protocol that Dr. Medina had developed for her, in the form of a shot she had to take every two weeks.
Uneasy at being so vulnerable and dependent, after the first two doses, both Pia and Dragos had insisted they learn to give her the shot in case Dr. Medina wasn’t available to administer it. Pia was due to have her next shot in two evenings.
Dragos touched her cheek gently with the callused tips of his fingers, lingering over the kiss. Then he pulled back and told her, “Have a good flight. I’ll see you soon. I’ll get in touch with you in the morning, after you’ve landed.”
She nodded and gave him a smile. “Sounds good. Talk to you in the morning.”
Eva put the car in gear while Dragos slammed the door.
As they drove away, Pia glanced back. Dragos never moved to go back inside. Instead, he stood watching her leave.