Chapter Eleven: Gunnar

 

 

They got a late lunch at a diner with checked red-and-white tablecloths and a waitress who knew Melody's name. This whole place was like something out of a movie, Gunnar thought. He kept plucking at the sleeves of his new shirt. He didn't know how to feel about any of it.

The one thing he was sure about was that it didn't really matter where he was as long as Melody was with him. She pressed her knee against his under the table, and they lingered over coffee long after their burgers were gone, talking about anything and everything and nothing. She told him about growing up with an emotionally distant record-producer mother—they left the dragon thing unspoken due to the risk of eavesdroppers as the café began to fill up with the dinner crowd—and he talked about growing up with Nils.

"He took care of me after our parents died. He was really all I had. I can't blame everything that went wrong in my life on Nils, it really isn't fair—"

"It seems fair enough to me," Melody said stubbornly. "He's the whole reason you were in prison in the first place."

"Yeah, but I made a lot of mistakes all on my own. Like I said, I never really knew what I wanted to do with my life. Even after I decided I didn't want to follow in Nils's footsteps, I still just ... drifted. Worked as a bar bouncer, moved crates in a warehouse, took on some construction jobs, that kind of thing. I kept feeling like I wanted to do something else with my life, anything else, but I never could figure out what."

"Well, what are you interested in?" Melody asked. "If you could do anything, anything at all—if money didn't matter—what would you like to do?"

If money didn't matter. For her, of course, it didn't. For him, scraping by at jobs that were minimum wage or temporary or seasonal—or all three—life had always been a lot more uncertain. He'd sometimes wished that it was a hundred years ago, when a guy like him could just jump on a tramp steamer headed for unknown ports. These days, getting the good union-wage jobs that might lead to a life like that wasn't easy. Even joining the Army wasn't open to him, with his criminal background and lack of a high school education.

So he'd tried not to fantasize about a life he couldn't have. He just kicked around from one dead-end job to another. He'd thought that if you didn't have dreams, you couldn't be disappointed.

But now he was starting to realize that if you didn't have dreams, you couldn't achieve them, either. Dreams were a map of the future. You might not make it to every point on the map, but without a map, you'd never get anywhere at all.

"I think I'd like to travel. I've never really been much of anywhere." As soon as the words left his mouth, he instantly regretted them. Melody was clearly not a traveling type. With all the money in the world to do whatever she wanted, she'd settled down in a small town and started a bookstore. He might as well have just flat-out said I'm planning to skip out on you. Except that wasn't what he'd meant at all. Floundering desperately for something else, he grabbed at straws. "And ... uh ... finish my GED? I'm pretty close. I've been working on it in prison—" Oh great, there he went, talking about prison again. Thanks, mouth.

But her face was open, unjudging. "I can help you with that last part," she said. "We have study guides and that kind of thing. I've helped other people do it. There's not a library in Autumn Grove, it's too small, so I try to fill some of the functions with my bookstore that people might go to a library for. And I am absolutely dead serious about helping you get tested for dyslexia, too."

"And you wouldn't mind all that work?"

She brushed the side of her hand along his. "Stop acting like it's some terrible burden for me to spend time with you, Gunnar. I like spending time with you."

"Same here," he murmured, closing his hand around hers.

Melody beckoned the waitress for a refill on her coffee. "You know," she said gently, when the waitress had gone to help another customer. "I think I'd like to hear about prison. What it was like for you."

Gunnar shook his head vigorously. The last thing he wanted was to expose his mate—his soft, beautiful mate—to the experiences he'd gone through. "No, you don't. It's not a nice place, definitely not something you'd want to know about."

"Oh, come on. I'm not that fragile."

"It's not because I think you're fragile, it's because there are some things most people don't want to hear about, and prison life is one of 'em."

"Did you know my dad is a mobster?" Melody asked conversationally, stirring a packet of sweetener into her coffee.

"... what?"

"Oh, he doesn't call it that. But that's what it amounts to. I told you my dad's rich and he's not especially scrupulous about where the money comes from. You might have been thinking 'shady business deals' when I said that, but it's a lot more than that. I used to help him keep the books, so I know how many pies he's got a finger in. You said prison isn't nice; well, neither is my dad, and neither are a lot of the people he deals with."

Gunnar sat back in his chair and looked at her with new appreciation. His entire view of her had just tilted on its side. The sweet little bookworm was a dragon mob princess. What a weird world.

"Why didn't you tell me earlier? I thought I had to be so careful around you ..." He laughed out loud; he couldn't help it. "Hell, if you used to be a mob accountant, you could probably teach me a thing or two about the shadier side of the world."

Melody turned pink and looked around hastily. "I wasn't a—a mob accountant! I just helped Dad with his—oh, shit." It was the first time he'd heard her swear. "You're right. I was."

He was full-on grinning now, probably showing every one of his teeth. "I can't believe it. You look so sweet."

"I am sweet!" Melody protested, crossing her arms over her librarian cardigan. That didn't help much; from Gunnar's point of view, it just drew his attention to the curves filling out the soft gray fabric underneath her clamped arms.

"Never said you weren't."

Her blush flamed hotter. "I shouldn't have told you."

Gunnar set down his coffee cup and reached quickly across the table to rest his hands on her arms. Melody reluctantly unkinked her arms and let him take her hands in his.

"I'm glad you did," he said sincerely, looking into her eyes. "I thought we didn't have anything in common at first. But we do. We both like books, even if we don't like the same books. And I don't have to be careful with you, not like I thought. You're tougher than you look. Dragon scales under the skin."

Her coral-rose mouth curved in a reluctant smile. "I'd still like it if you'd be a little careful with me."

The words were demure, but libido stirred in him again. He wanted to lay her out on soft white sheets, not just make love to her in the back room of a bookstore ... pamper her like she deserved to be pampered.

"Always," he promised, reaching to touch her cheek.

Melody leaned her face into his hand like a petted cat; then she blinked, looking out the window behind him. "It's getting dark out there. How long have we been in here?"

"Awhile, I guess." He glanced out at the dark street, lit with iron lampposts that looked like something out of an old photo. "Is there anywhere to have fun around here?"

"Fun?" Melody said, as if she'd never heard of the concept.

"Yeah, you know. Dancing, or ... fun."

"I don't know. Since I got here, I've mostly just been busy with the bookstore. When I have free time, I—"

"—read," he finished for her.

"Yes," she said, blushing again. "There's the biker bar, but that's all I know about locally. Anyway, I guess we should be getting back to the farm before Ben comes to drag us back."

"You want to?"

"No," she admitted, curling her fingers in his hands. Her eyes glimmered with mischief. "What do you think they'll do to us if we stay out past curfew?"

"You want to find out?" He was grinning again. "Ever been to a biker bar?"

"I don't want to go to a biker bar!" Suddenly her eyes lit up. "You know what we can do, though. Remember that thing I said I'd show you after dark? I think it's getting dark enough."

His heart flipped over. In his chest, his bear stirred. "Yeah. I'd love to see that."

Melody left cash on the table, including a more-than-generous tip, and they went out hand in hand into the evening. The sky was still deep blue rather than black, painted with dying sunset colors over the mountains. The air was warm and fragrant.

He expected Melody to go back to the bookstore and her car, but instead they walked down Main Street past a gas station and a closed auto repair place. Beyond that, the town petered out into fields and woods.

Gunnar slowed, clutching at Melody's hand.

"What?" she asked him, looking up at him, startled.

"Fireflies," he breathed.

They were everywhere out here, dancing in the dusk. The edge of the woods was full of them.

"Haven't you seen them before?"

"A few, here and there, in parks, but not often. I'm a city kid, remember?" He stared around in wonder. The town wasn't far—he could hear the traffic on the highway—but it felt like they were completely alone. There were no house lights anywhere in sight, nothing but the glimmer of the fireflies, like a whirling dance of captive stars.

Melody took off her glasses. Without them, her eyes looked huge. "Hold these for me. And ... this." She hesitated briefly before slipping the necklace over her head and placing it carefully into his hand.

He wanted to ask what was inside the locket—as tenderly as she handled it, whatever it was must mean a lot to her—but she was already walking away from him, into the field. "Wait," he called. "Aren't you going to take off the rest of your clothes? I, uh—I can hold them for you too."

Melody turned around. She pulled the pins out of her hair and it unfurled like a black flag, tumbling over her shoulders. "Since I'm a dragon, my clothes shift with me," she said, tucking the pins into her pocket. "But jewelry and accessories don't, unless they're in a pocket. I have no idea how it works."

"That's convenient, though, about the clothes." He tried not to show his disappointment; he'd been looking forward to watching her get undressed.

"I know. It's handy." She clasped her hands in front of herself. "Ready? Make sure no one's coming."

"It's just us," he breathed. She was a vision in the dusk, painted in shades of black and gray and white, surrounded by fireflies. Her hair flowed around her in an inky cascade. He had to talk her into wearing it down more.

Melody bowed her head and closed her eyes.

Her shift was a rippling, flowing thing. She didn't change so much as poured into her new shape. A torrent of silver flowed from her, lengthening into her dragon's long neck and delicate head with two curving horns, expanding into a pair of great wings arching above her back.

Her dragon was silver, with deep gray eyes flecked with gold. As she stood looking down at him, Gunnar felt his bear straining inside his chest, wanting to burst out and hunt with her in the dark woods. He couldn't help thinking what a striking pair they'd make, his white polar-bear fur and her silver scales.

But they hadn't both agreed to shift, and someone had to stay human to deal with passers-by. They were too close to town for Gunnar to feel comfortable shifting. People might catch a glimpse of a dragon and write it off as a hallucination; everyone knew dragons didn't exist. An enormous white bear was a different story.

"Well?" Melody asked, and he jumped. "What do you think?"

"I didn't know you could talk as a dragon! I can't talk as a bear."

She laughed softly. If her human voice was musical, her voice as a dragon was a dozen times more so, different harmonics layered over each other until it was like an orchestra had tuned itself into the approximate cadence of human speech. Her name had never seemed so appropriate.

"Like the clothes thing," she said in that magical, musical voice, "it's another thing we can do that most shifters can't. Unless you're a parrot shifter or something."

Captivated, he stepped forward. "May I touch you?"

"Please," Melody said softly, lowering her long, slender head.

He placed a hand carefully on the side of her face. She closed her eyes in bliss, and he stroked her. She was warm to the touch; somehow he'd expected her to be cool. The skin around her lips was very soft. As he ran his hand along the side of her face, the soft skin changed to the dry, warm texture of her scales. He rubbed under her jaw and felt her pulse beating beneath the fine, overlapping scales on her neck.

"Melody," he said, and she opened her eyes. "You ever take passengers?"

She blinked slowly. "I ... think I could do that. I've never tried. I know my father can."

She folded her legs beneath her, lying down so he could mount easily. After carefully tucking her glasses and locket into the pocket of his jacket, he climbed onto her back, while she twisted her head around on her long, supple neck to watch his progress. She held her wings low to the ground, half folded, to keep them out of the way.

"Is this comfortable?" Gunnar asked, settling his legs just in front of her wings. She was firm and muscular between his legs; he tried not to think too hard about that. It was human-Melody he pictured, not dragon-Melody, but in either case, getting a raging hard-on while riding a dragon seemed like a bad idea.

"It feels fine," she said. "You can hold onto my spikes."

She had a row of hornlike protrusions marching down her spine, stopping just above the shoulders where he was clinging on. Gunnar gingerly gripped two of them. "No chance I'm gonna hurt you?"

"I don't think so. I'll let you know."

She stood up carefully and gave herself a little shake. The scales rippled under him like the fur on the back of a cat. "Ready?"

"Ready." He hoped his voice didn't sound as tight to her as it did to him.

"If you fall, I'll catch you," Melody promised. She beat down, hard, flattening the grass in a rippling circle around them.

It took a lot of flapping to get them airborne—Melody herself looked pretty heavy in this form, and Gunnar wasn't a small guy. For a minute or two, he thought they weren't going to get off the ground at all. Then she seemed to find the rhythm of it; he felt the wind catch them, and suddenly they were above the trees, going up in a rising spiral.

Gunnar clenched tighter on her spikes.

"Okay back there?" Melody asked, twisting her head around. It didn't seem to interfere with her flying."

"No worries." It came out breathless; he managed to steady his voice. "You?"

"Just fine."

He could see the town now, the lampposts and the streets they'd just walked down; he could see the flicker of headlights on the highway. Melody continued to climb, her strong downbeats driving them higher in the night sky. Beneath his legs, her muscles flexed rhythmically, holding them both up with seeming effortlessness. He wasn't sure if it felt the same way to fly as it did to swim, but he was reminded of the handful of times, in his urban polar bear existence, when he'd managed to go night-swimming in a lake or harbor. Perhaps someday he'd get to go swimming in the ocean.

The cool night air flowed like water over him. He drew it deep into his lungs. Above them, the stars seemed very sharp and clear.

"Are you comfortable?" Melody asked. She circled in a great wide sweep. "Too cold?"

"No, I'm fine." He looked down past her wings, and slowly his death-grip on her spines began to ease. She was right, she'd catch him if he fell. It surprised him to find that he trusted her to do that.

And I'll catch you too, he promised her silently. Always.

"Do you want to go somewhere?" she asked. "It seems like a shame to come up and just land again."

With the night wind flowing through his hair, Gunnar turned his face toward the distant glow of city lights in the night, and grinned. "Hey, you got to give me a makeover today, and took me flying. How about I take you dancing at somewhere nicer than a biker bar?"

There was a hesitation, just long enough to make him worry, and then he heard the smile in her voice as she turned her head toward the city. "I'd love to."

 

***

 

At first they flew over a dark ocean of trees, with the scattered lights of houses below. As the houses and the roads grew denser, Melody angled for the dark, coiling loops of the river cutting through the countryside. She skimmed upriver with her wingtips almost touching the dark water, and came in for a neat landing on a stretch of unlit access road beside a pier. Gunnar slid off her back an instant before she collapsed back to her human form.

"Done this before?" he remarked.

She smiled. "My favorite flying is usually with my father on his estate, because we don't have to hide there. But don't forget, I grew up as an urban dragon. I know all the tricks for flying in the city. It's easier to hide in bad weather, such as rain or snow. But not nearly as comfortable for a passenger. Could I get my things back, please?"

Gunnar handed back her glasses and the locket. "You got any preferences about where to go?" he asked as she fastened the locket around her neck. "Got any favorite clubs or bars?"

She laughed. God, he loved her laugh. "I'm not exactly the nightclubbing type. For that matter, neither of us is dressed for clubbing right now."

She'd left her hair down. Gunnar ran his fingers through the silky black strands. "You want to do some more clothes shopping?" he asked. He'd never thought he might actually want to go shopping for clothes, especially after spending an interminable time at it earlier that day, but now he was picturing Melody in a dancing dress—dark red to complement her black-and-white coloring, or silver like her dragon, hugging her curves and rippling around her when she moved ...

Melody caught his hand and laced her fingers through his. "I think we're fine as we are. We'll set a new trend."