Page 43 of The Dragon’s Captive

“Everything is faster here,” he said. “It is more different than I could have imagined.”

“It used to be like the dragon realm,” Kate said. “I mean, hundreds of years ago there were still kings and fortresses, but things have advanced since then.”

“An advanced civilization built on the backs of mayflies,” he said, shaking his head. “This world is an exercise in contradictions. It never stops moving. It never stops to think. It goes on and on, one thing happening after the other, people rushing here and there…”

“Oh, my god,” Kate said, dropping her chopsticks into the box. “You like it.”

“I certainly do not.”

“Yes, you do,” she laughed. “This is just like when you used to lecture me for being willful and careless and all the rest of it. You love this place and you can’t admit it to yourself.”

“It is interesting,” Vilka admitted. “There are so many things here I do not understand. I admit, I am curious.”

“You defeated Avastias,” Kate reminded him. “You can handle anything this world has to throw at us.”

“My father thought as much…”

“Your parents tried living on an island with a running portal months after the biggest military strike in history,” she said. “We can live here, hidden in plain sight. I can continue my research at the university, we will never have to want for money thanks to your ability to manipulate precious metals.”

“And what happens when we wish to travel between the realms?”

“My portals aren’t big and noisy,” she said. “Mine are discreet. They’re not going to be detected. We can use the funds from the jewel working to buy a place—nothing too extravagant… we can have a life here, Vilka. And Mika can grow up as the dinosaur she really is.”

* * *

Vilka smirked at his mate. She was right. The city was intoxicating, the sheer mass of humanity, each going about their various businesses in a great sprawling, interlinked mass. This was what he had been missing. And this was what Mika would miss too if he denied her the chance to be human.

“It’s probably not always going to be perfectly safe here,” Kate admitted, fidgeting nervously. “It will definitely be messy. Humans aren’t creatures of order. We’re little sparks of chaos who come together to make great things. But that’s part of you and it’s part of Mika and…”

“Kate,” he said suddenly, standing and offering his hand to her. “We are going back to the room. Now.”

He watched her face fall and saw her lips twitch as she fought with herself not to argue more. Kate was not submissive, never had been, but she was doing her best to try to convince him of what she wanted and she was smart enough to know that getting mouthy and starting one of their infamous battles of wills wouldn’t help matters.

He took Kate back to her apartment, away from the noise of the city, or at least, some of it. There he drew her into his arms and kissed her thoroughly. She was tense at first, but relaxed under the massaging of his tongue and the slow rubbing of his hands over her body. He loved her curves, more ample now than they had ever been. Motherhood had softened her and he adored the changes. Slowly he began undressing his mate, removing the cloth that dared stand between him and her body with more patience than he truly felt.

“You need a reminder,” he growled gently. “It has been too long since we were together as we should be.”

“What do you mean?”

The soft tone of her voice and the shy little glance of her gaze told him she knew exactly what he meant.

* * *

Did she need a reminder? Had she forgotten? Surely it was impossible to forget anything about Vilka, his forceful masculinity, his otherworldly handsomeness. He was a warrior who had drunk from a world eater, bested a beast so large and so frightening there had not been a single other soul to face it. That experience was written on his body, in the scars he still carried across his torso, shoulders, and arms. They were hidden now beneath his all too human clothing, but she knew they were there, and suddenly it became important to see them.

She put her hands to his chest and began to undress him as he undressed her, baring his body as she had not in quite some time. Perhaps it had been the rigors of raising a small person. Perhaps it had been the difficulty integrating into a dragon world. More likely, it was simple guilt that had cast something of a pall over their lovemaking. It had not been an entirely celibate few years, but the passion that had characterized their first months together had waned into a slow burn and where they had once unleashed their most basic instincts upon each other with little in the way of restraint, they had become hesitant in a variety of ways. They had not spoken of it directly. Instead they had allowed themselves to be distracted by the many rigors of life, but Kate suspected they had both been keenly aware of it each and every day.

As his shirt came off over his head, Kate reached for him, yearning for skin to skin contact. When they had first met, his body had been almost unbearably desirable. Slabs of muscle in perfect formation, his frame tall and broad. The perfection nature had given him was now marked with the battle he had fought not for his life, but for hers and for everybody else’s. Nobody in this city knew what he had done for them. Everybody who had passed them by had done so without the slightest awareness that but for the tall man with the dark hair and magnetic eyes, the city would be in ruins. He had spared New York the fate that had befallen Los Angeles. He was the only reason that she had a city to come home to, that Mika had a place to be born. Millions owed him a debt of gratitude he would likely never be paid.

“Do they frighten you still?” He looked down at her as she ran her fingers across the deep marks in his flesh, thick with scar tissue.

“They’ve never frightened me,” she said, looking up and into his eyes. They were as charismatic as ever, but held a sadness that made a lump rise in her throat.

“I’ve seen you wince and shy from them when we make love,” he said. “I know I am not the man I once was.”

She let out a gasp of shock. “That is what you think? Vilka. I have shied from these because I am the one who put them there. I caused you this pain. I woke the beast that hurt you. I am not frightened of you when I look at these marks. I am reminded of what I did to you.”

Tears welled in her eyes and he leaned down and kissed them away. “I have told you so many times that it was not your fault,” he murmured, running his hands over her naked body in slow, comforting caresses. “I was the guardian of Avastias, and I was guardian because of the actions I took long before you arrived. You did not know what you were doing. There was no way for you to suspect that you would wake a beast that great. I did what I was supposed to do, nothing more.”