She still couldn’t believe that the explosion had left Theo with no scars on his human body.  His chest and back were both completely smooth, colored only by his dragonmarks.

Lazy Saturdays gave her plenty of time to enjoy those.  She traced them with one finger, following their winding tracks around his chest and shoulder.  His skin there was even hotter than it was everywhere else.

“Can I see your wings again?”

Dr. Mendoza had cleared him for takeoff two days ago, and Theo had hit the skies like they were a swimming pool on the first day of summer.  He had made his first flight solo, flatly refusing to risk carrying her when he wasn’t sure what his wings would bear.  Since then, he had taken her for a few trips.  She still couldn’t get used to sitting on his back, his scales hard but as soft as scuffed velvet.  Somehow that was more striking than the way the earth fell away beneath them, the city and farmland below turning into a patchwork quilt.  She was more used to flying than she was to riding dragons.

Theo said, “You’re going to make me vain,” but he rolled over onto his stomach and, concentrating, let his wings bloom out of his shoulders.

By now she knew that this technically qualified as showing off.  Theo’s ability to shift slowly and partially was vanishingly rare even among dragons.  He had called it his talent show trick.

Jillian could juggle a little, but she didn’t think that really compared.

It was incredible, following the fine but steel-strong bones of his wings down to the smooth human skin of his back.  His wings had healed so well that only the very thinnest and whitest of scars showed in places against the red.  She ran her hand down the length of one.  She’d never forget that he’d gotten those saving her.

“Will you take me flying tonight?”

“Tonight and every other night you like,” Theo said.  He hesitated.  His face still partly turned into the pillow—she didn’t think anyone else would have noticed how shy he could still be sometimes when he thought the stakes were high—he said, “My lease on my apartment comes up for renewal at the end of next month.  I was wondering—”

“We could get a place,” Jillian said.

She didn’t like the slight sinking sound in her voice, but she couldn’t help turning to look around her apartment as if she could, by X-ray vision, see through to the Steeplechase’s funnily endearing ugliness.  She loved it, but her apartment was too small for two, and she would choose Theo over any amount of quirky charm.

And she couldn’t ask him to live in The Steeplechase.  Unlike her, he actually had taste.

“We don’t have to,” Theo said quickly.

What was she doing?  The last thing she wanted was for him to think that she could ever again have a home without him in it.

She poked one wing.  “Okay, hotshot, put these away so we can talk face-to-face without you getting crimped.”

She watched intently as Theo folded his wings back into his human form, stashing them away in hoard space.  She still couldn’t pick out exactly how they vanished.  It was like the visual equivalent of trying to remember something that was on the tip of your tongue.

Theo turned to face her.  He had the serious look he always got when he was convinced the right thing to do was to wait for the other person’s decision.

He said, “I don’t want to rush you.  I know you love me.  If it feels too much like a whirlwind and you want to go a little more slowly, I’ll understand.”

“You would?  Because I wouldn’t get it if you wanted to slow down at this point.  I mean, I’m your mate, you saved my life—”

“You saved mine back.”

“—and I took half your money.  We’ve basically been married and divorced already, when you look at it that way.  I think fast is our natural pace.”

He smiled that crooked smile that she always wanted to kiss off his mouth.  “Maybe.  But Dimitri’s hoard really doesn’t qualify as half my money, you know.”

“It’s a metaphor.”

“It is a metaphor,” Theo said haughtily, “that diminishes the size of my hoard.”

“Believe me,” Jillian said, lowering her hand down below the sheets, “I know your size everywhere it counts.”

The smile turned into a much more wicked grin.  With a casual demonstration of shifter strength, he flipped her so she was the one on her back.  He knew how much it turned her on for him to treat her as if she were as light as a feather.  Her legs parted at once.

His mouth joined hers.  He tasted like cinnamon and cloves, making each glide of her tongue along his into something especially decadent.  His lips were just slightly chapped, which made them register more against her own, stirring her, making her more sensitive.  She felt like her whole body was humming.  What he could do to her with just a kiss was obscene.

And she loved that she had the same effect on him.  He was already hard, his cock immense and needy.  She knew that if she really wanted to, she could bring him off within a minute.  She did want to.  She should—certainly he had spoiled her enough that she should return the favor—but then he sank down with his mouth between her legs and any thought of doing anything but lying there and holding on for dear life was beyond her.

She whimpered as he lingered on her clit and then outright moaned as he slid two fingers into her.  It was such a tease to have only a taste when she wanted everything.  She was always so greedy for him.

It would have scared her to need someone so much if he weren’t him.  She always knew he would give her whatever she needed.  She could always trust that he needed her back.  She could always trust him to look at her and see beauty and honor.

She lifted her hips, bumping herself against his mouth.  But she could never hurry him when he wasn’t in the mood to be hurried, and now he only raised his head and looked up at her with an unbearable glint of playfulness in his eyes.  His mouth was shiny from her.

“Patience, Treasure,” he said.

Treasure.

He had never called her that before.  Not like that.  But he’d said it not like he was introducing a new endearment but like it had come as naturally to him as her name.

With the next brush of his tongue, Jillian came.  She clenched her hands around fistfuls of sheets and thought, Treasure, treasure, treasure.  She felt like she was lit up like a pinball machine, the word flickering around her, activating pleasure centers wherever it bounced.

Somehow she needed him even more after she’d come.  Right now, another orgasm wasn’t what she needed to feel fulfilled.  What she needed was for him to be inside her.  She wanted his face level with hers.

She got it because he too had run out of patience.  He sank into her in a single thrust.  She tightened around him, her inner walls tense with pleasure.  Theo made a soft sound that could have been a gasp.

Jillian stroked her hand down the side of his face and waited until those gorgeous emerald eyes of his found hers.

“Not slow,” Jillian whispered.  “I want what you want.  I fell for you fast and hard.  You don’t ever have to worry that I’m going to regret that.”

Theo exhaled.  His muscles were quivering a little with holding himself still despite his obvious desire to move.  “Fast and hard, Treasure?”

“Fast and hard,” Jillian confirmed.  She grabbed at his back.  “My treasure.”

Fast and hard for a shifter was something transcendent for a human.  Jillian felt like she was being lifted out of her body.  It felt like flying all over again, with her being dazzled by what the two of them were doing together but also just astonished at the fact of him, so strong and so gorgeous.  She came a second time and then, for the first time in her life, felt herself edging towards a third climax.  She gritted her teeth.  She would shake apart, she couldn’t, it would be ridiculous—

But it was Theo.

They came at the same time, Theo’s body tight against hers and her body tight around his.  Fireworks went off everywhere.  Even as they disentangled themselves, she could still feel aftershocks running through her.  She was exhausted and now in desperate need of a shower, but nothing in her life had ever been as worth it.  She was going to give up her career and philanthropy and devote herself entirely to sex.

Well, she was going to take a sex vacation, anyway.  Maybe when they moved.

Now she was so sex-crazed that she was thinking in porn titles: One Hot Housewarming.

But there was one thing she had to say, since they were trying to be clear about what they wanted.

“Could we...”  She took a deep breath.  “I know this building is a hideous monstrosity and that all of Riell will disown you if they ever find out you live in it, but I really like it.  And management always puts out free sugar cookies in the lobby on Wednesday afternoons.”  She didn’t know why she thought that would be her strongest selling point.  “Could we maybe see if they have any bigger apartments available?”

Theo hesitated.  “I’d been thinking about a house—maybe a townhouse—”

She wouldn’t go so far as to say her heart sank.  Most of it, like the rest of her, was still on cloud nine.  He was right, anyway.  It made way more sense for them to start investing in their future.

“Which is why,” Theo said, “I looked to see whether or not The Steeplechase had any townhouses.”

Cloud ten.  “Do they?”

“They do,” Theo said cheerily.  He grabbed his phone off the nightstand.  “I asked Tiffani to go to a vacant one yesterday as a spy and take some pictures.”

Jillian gasped.  She flipped through the photos so quickly that at first she could barely tell what she was seeing.  She felt like a kid on Christmas morning.  She made herself slow down.

The cherubim-painted gargoyles were present in the form of giant stone lions the management had inexplicably decided to paint like bulldogs.  The shutters were all a baffling shade of blinding ochre.  The building was mostly brick, except for where it turned into limestone for a quarter of a wall for no apparent reason.  Every bar of the wrought iron gate was topped with what looked like an elaborate rainbow-colored swizzle stick.  Someone enterprising and highly offended had spray painted TEAR THIS PIEBALD MOTHERFUCKER DOWN on the sidewalk leading up to it.  A neighborhood kid had drawn a hopscotch court over that, utterly unconcerned with either the profanity or the request.

“It’s perfect,” Jillian said.  “It’s the most hideous thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”

“And it has two bathrooms and comes with a billiards table,” Theo said.

“Is it cheap?”

“As you said, it would have to be, wouldn’t it?”  He made a small, contented sound as she flung her leg over him and snuggled up to his side.  “I can fly you there tonight and we can take a look ourselves.”

“It’s not just that it’s ugly, you know,” Jillian said.  “I wouldn’t want the inside to look that way.”  She gestured around to illustrate her point.  Her apartment might be overcrowded, but it wasn’t entirely unbearable to look at.  “It’s just... these places have heart.  They’ve been around for years, too.  The foundations are good, they were built to last.  And they stay up no matter how often someone says they should come down.  They just keep being themselves.”

“They’re strong,” Theo said.  “Like you.  I can laugh at the outside as long as we get to make our part of it beautiful.”

“We can absolutely make our part of it beautiful.  All the handmade lace you could ever want.”

“I like the outside being... humble.  Whatever we do with our home, it won’t be to brag, it’ll be to make a place for us, a beautiful place.  A pearl inside an especially hideous oyster.”

He stretched and then an amused smile crossed his face.

“And it irritates our family,” he said.  “That’s a bonus.  Izzie will die of embarrassment the next time she visits.”

Our family.

Hers and his: one and the same.

“Just promise me one thing,” she said.  “No nutcrackers.”

“Never,” Theo said.

He sounded like he could see their whole future.  Or at least he believed in it.  So did she.

Their shared fairy tale: never, forever, always.  Happily ever after.

* * *