Chapter Four
Emerging from dark, wisps of swirling dreams, Emily grew aware of strange sensations. Heat, like a hot pad lie against her belly. Intense thirst. Light shining against her closed eyes. A soft, feather like cloud embraced her. Music. A deep tenor voice, so sad, so filled with love and grief, it bore into her heart and made her want to cry. And the waft of salt water from the air mingled with pine.
With great effort, she lifted her eyelids. Slowly, her surroundings came into focus, a room strangely familiar, but unfamiliar. Sunlight washed the bed chamber in white. She glanced to her left and her breath caught.
She was in his chamber—Blake’s bedroom.
She reached up and pulled her hand through her hair, finding it knotted and twisted. Had she fallen in bed with him?
No, her mind relived its last recollected thoughts.
Emily shot straight up in bed, but the sudden movement flung her back again. She flipped back the covers and gasped. She still had the dragon’s egg. She flipped the covers back over her nakedness. Her eyes scanned the room.
Slowly, the song came to an end.
Emily’s heart beat wildly in her chest. Aunt Margaret! Jacques?
She had to get out of here. She squinted trying to see out the window. If it was morning, then she missed the ferry!
Jacques wouldn’t have gone without her. She sighed in relief; at least she still had one option of getting out of here.
She didn’t know what had come over her. She pressed her hand over her lips remembering Blake’s kiss. A feeling stirred within her, a craving she had suppressed long ago.
She tossed her feet up over the bed and held onto the egg. Where was her harness? Her skin tingled around the egg. Slowly, she removed one hand, as not to drop the egg. Its shell pressed deep into the folds of her skin. Her breasts rested against the top of the egg.
She rubbed the shell, no longer coarse, but smooth and warm. What happened while she slept?
Slowly, she removed her other hand. “This can’t be,” she whispered.
Her father would know what to do. She wouldn’t panic. Not now. Jacques had trained her better than this.
She didn’t spot her dress anywhere. Or her shoes. She didn’t need shoes. She needed to get out of here.
Emily folded the bed sheet from behind her. She grabbed the long narrow-folded fabric in the middle and wrapped it around her breast. Then she crisscrossed it and worked her way down over her now egg protruding belly and hips. Crisscrossing it back up under the egg she tied the two ends off to the side.
She walked across the room, listening for the singing voice, but it had faded to silence. She leaned against the heavy wooden door. Pushing it open she heard voices through the opening.
“You sure you can’t cut it from her body?”
Her arms wrapped around the egg. A shiver spread down her spine, causing her to tremble.
“How else do you suggest we separate the two?”
Of course, they would want to keep the egg and dispose of her.
It was hard to identify the owner of the voice. Blake’s? Or no, this voice was deeper, it echoed down the hall.
“It’s complicated.”
“How?”
Emily strained, leaning harder against the door. It creaked and froze.
“She must have—”
Footsteps moved in her direction, Emily shut the door and waddled her way back to the bed. She placed her hand underneath the egg, her usual quick movements encumbered.
Behind her, the bedchamber door opened. Darkness from the hall cast a glowing halo around Blake.
“Finally, she awakes.” A sly grin curved his lips, one that reached into his eyes.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Better to distract him, keep calm, until she figured out her next move. Egg attached to her flesh or not, she wouldn’t give it to him. Not without a fight. His kind didn’t appreciate the life still preserved inside.
Keeping his eyes trained on her, he circled her slowly. “I wondered how long it would take to get you tangled in my bed sheets again.”
“And now you know.” She had seen that look in his eyes before, undressing her in his mind, but not like this. Not when his eyes caressed her so intimately with their stare.
“Unfortunately, there is still a matter of Saturday evening’s performance.”
“Saturday? What day is this?”
“Tuesday. Apparently, attempted robbery is exhausting.” If this was his way of trying to joke with her, she didn’t find him amusing.
“Attempted? More like successful. I still have the egg, don’t I?”
“You’re lucky to still be alive.”
“Don’t tell me. You’ve decided to cut off my hand instead?”
“Is this some sort of payback?” His voice turned hoarse with emotion. It tugged at the part of her heart she’d locked a long time ago.
“Payback?” She crossed her arms and glared at him. He really didn’t know her all that well.
“How much did you think you could get for a dragon’s egg on the black market? That’s where you would sell it, wouldn’t you? It’s illegal otherwise to sell a live egg of any wild species. Even if you import it, you couldn’t sell it unless you hollowed the shell like the ones your aunt paints. Is that what you were going to do to my fiu?”
Emily tilted her chin up. “We don’t sell live eggs on any market, nor do we steal them.”
“Really?” If looks could kill she would have been dead two seconds ago. “If you don’t steal what do you call coming into a man’s home and taking his fiu? I believe they call that kidnapping.”
“It’s not kidnapping, either.”
“What do you call it then?”
“Rescue. Saving, Preserving life. You choose.” She kept her arms wrapped around the egg.
“The only thing I see needing rescuing around here is you, Emily Reese Kovak. There are other ways to get back at a man then taking his only child.”
“Child? Yours? But that would mean…” Emily’s chest grew heavy. Pressure from inside the egg slammed against her ribs. She groaned, not from her situation but from her aching side.
“It appears we both have our secrets.”
“I never lied to you.”
Knowing it didn’t stop her heart from quickening as he sank his fingers in her hair, tipping her face up to look at him. “You never loved me either. Why else would you have bolted when you discovered my dragon side?”
Keepers didn’t mate with dragons. It was what got her ancestors in trouble in the first place. Her heart skipped a beat. Is that what he really thought? She’d left him because she discovered his dragon side?
“Says the one with a dragoness. Tell me did she know? Did you return to your lair that morning after you bedded me?”
A mistake. One she would not make again in the future.
Blake stiffened, his eyes, those of a feral dragon. Rage imprinted on his human face as he released her.
Emily didn’t move. Her gaze locked on the bedroom door behind him. Once she got close enough, she’d be able to escape. She’d been young, native, to think he cared for her.
“Melsunia has been gone from this world for nearly a century. She died protecting our fiu from a pack of hunters.”
Lost for words, Emily blinked. She felt worse than a heel. Of course, he would be a widow. Several years her senior in human years, he could be centuries old. At least their curse hadn’t taken away their prolonged life span.
She sat on the edge of the bed. “Of course, she did.”
Which is why he was free to lie with whomever he wished. Her included.
“Not that it matters now, but I’m sorry for your loss.” And she sincerely meant it.
“It matters a great deal, especially as it seems you and I are going to be together for a very long time. Trust is most important.”
“And why should I trust you?”
“Because I’m the only thing keeping you alive in this Manor.”
“So, that is it? I assume I will have to stay here until this little one cracks its shell. Then I’ll no longer be of use to you and you’ll dispose of me.”
“I can’t very well let you go, can I?”
“No, I suppose not. At least until it hatches.”
“You’re still not leaving the manor. For some reason, my fiu has grown quite attached to you.”
“No kidding.” She rubbed the egg.
“You may go anywhere you wish here in the manor. Naomi and Olaus will see to your needs.”
“And what needs will you see to?”
A slow, lazy, smile spread across his face.
She rubbed the egg, it soothed her, calmed her rising anxiety. She couldn’t get involved with him. She made that mistake once. Besides, it wasn’t her he wanted. Feeling protective of the egg, she remembered her mission. She wouldn’t let her family down, and Emily didn’t plan on becoming a disappointment to them.
“It’s forbidden,” she said, breathless. If only she could control the pressure from the egg on various spots against her lungs.
“Not if we are one.”
“You can’t be serious.” Dragon to dragon, human to human, a shifter to a human…maybe… But she was not any ordinary human—she was a descent of the dragon riders. She wrapped her hand around the pendant still resting near the valley of her breast.
“You didn’t think I could allow you to have my fiu without first taking you as my mate, did you?” Golden flecks exploded in his eyes.
“I can’t!”
Narrow slits replaced his pupils. “If you’re worried about your fury, he sends his blessings.”
“He’s not my…” Suddenly, she found it hard to breathe. Jacques! “What have you done to him?”
“He and your aunt fled the manor after knowing you would survive.”
Jacques wouldn’t have left her here. Not without planning on returning for her. “How do you know he and I aren’t together?”
“You just confirmed it.”
She opened her mouth to retort, but then snapped it closed. What had she done?
She would curse him if her addled brain could think of a good word to curse him with. Then she’d think of another for Jacques for leaving her here.