Chapter Twenty-Four
Michelle
“Oh, I keep meaning to give this to you.”
She stirred, the sheets falling off her breasts as she sat up. Kase slipped from bed, padding across the floor completely naked. Tilting her head to the side, she admired him from the rear. “You have a cute butt,” she said.
And it’s all mine.
The stray thought dragged her back over the past three days, since they’d returned to his place following their harrowing escape from the cave. She’d been near hysterical for the first twenty-four hours, working to process everything she’d seen and heard.
Not only had her life been in mortal danger, but the world as she knew it had been rocked to the core. Once in a positive way, and once in a completely shocking manner. The biggest of course was that Kase was a dragon shifter. Actually. No word of a lie, she’d witnessed him turn into a huge platinum-scaled lizard that took to the sky.
She’d not yet worked up the courage to climb on, but Kase had made the offer. Eventually, after she’d taken some more time to accept it wasn’t an illusion or magic trick of sorts. A practical joke gone awry, perhaps. No, it wasn’t any of those, but the idea of being astride his back as he launched into the sky, without anything between her and the ground, was terrifying.
While that was the biggest change to her world, it wasn’t the most important. That would be the blossoming of her relationship with Kase. Like a rose, it had grown up around them, but only now was it unveiling its beauty to the both of them. They had spent nearly every second together since coming back, and it only left her craving more of him. Knowing that Kase felt the same, knowing it on a level she couldn’t quite explain, made her smile every time she thought about it.
Like right now.
“Thank you,” he said, giving his hips a shake as he reached into a bag on top of his dresser. Walking back over to the bed, he slipped in underneath the covers and pressed something into her hand.
“What’s this?”
“It’s for you.” He pulled back his hand to reveal the object.
It was a key. “I already have a house key,” she said with a frown. “What’s this for? And I swear, if you say your heart, I’m going to be so unimpressed with your originality.”
Kase chuckled. “No, my heart has no more locks upon it. You’ve stripped it bare, and I’m okay with that.”
She smiled happily and snuggled into his embrace. “You’re cute. But seriously, what’s it for?”
“It’s for a vault at a bank nearby.”
“A what?”
“A vault. They didn’t have a safety deposit box big enough.”
“Big enough for what?”
“The rack I had to use to store all backups of your research data.”
She gasped. “You saved it all? I thought you were lying to Everett about that. Then it just…it just sort of slipped my mind.” Embarrassment at how easily distracted she’d let herself become since returning flooded her face, warming the skin.
Was it that, though, or was it perhaps something else? Shame, maybe, that she’d allowed herself to come first when her father so desperately needed her in the lab working on a cure. Instead of doing that, she’d let herself indulge in the pleasures of the flesh and the mind with Kase, thinking only of her own happiness.
The lab was trashed, though, so how could she go back to work anyway? No sense in berating herself so severely over taking a few days, right? Maybe with data in hand, another lab would take her in, let her get back to work. That was something she would handle in the morning, not now.
He nodded. “Of course I did. I wasn’t thinking straight about a number of things, but I wouldn’t just flush away all that work you’d done. Took me several solid hours that night to get it all.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have been stealing it in the first place,” she joked, elbowing him under the covers.
Kase took it stoically. “Can’t steal something that I own.”
She shrugged, not wanting to get into even a light-hearted argument with him. “What matters is that you saved it. Thank you. Now I can go about finding somewhere to let me work on it.”
Kase frowned.
Her eyebrows came together. “What?” she asked, puzzled over his reaction.
“What do you mean about finding somewhere to work on it?”
Michelle pulled away from him slightly, propping herself up on one elbow. “Kase, I can’t not finish what I started. We were so close to finding a cure. My father is sick; I need to do this. If you think I’m—”
A long, meaty finger pressed itself to her lips, silencing her. She lifted an eyebrow, letting him know that what he was about to say had better be damn good for shushing her like that.
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t finish it,” he admonished gently. “It’s not the what. It’s the where that I question.”
“Huh?”
He snorted and kissed her gently. “Sometimes you’re so blind it’s funny. I love you dearly, you know that, right?”
Michelle nodded. “I do. It’s one of the things I love about you, that you always tell me.”
Kase smiled. “Why, then, do you assume that I’m not going to have the lab rebuilt and brought back up to speed?”
She licked her lips, trying to come up with a good answer. “Uhhhhhh.”
He laughed and tackled her into the sinfully comfortable bed. “You actually didn’t think that?”
“That’s going to be horrifically expensive, Kase… I can’t ask you to do that.”
“I know.” He stroked her head, pushing hairs behind her ear. A second later they popped free, her mane never one to obey. “But you’re forgetting something.”
“I am?”
He tapped himself on the chest. “Me dragon.”
“You dragon.” She mimicked. “So what?”
“What do dragons like most?”
“Women.”
He pondered that answer. “Okay, maybe you have a point there. But what do they like most after that?”
She thought it over. “Gold?”
“Treasure. Exactly.”
“I don’t get it.”
“The money isn’t an issue, is what I’m trying to say. I’m going to rebuild your lab. Not just rebuild, though—expand, upgrade, whatever it is that needs to be done, it’ going to be done. No expense spared. You’ll have what and who you need; all you have to do is tell me and it’ll happen.”
She gaped. “Are you serious?”
“Deadly.”
“Kase!” she shrieked, throwing herself at him, pushing him down into the bed as she smothered him with hugs and kisses. “You’re too amazing!”
He laughed and pulled her tight. “There’s a catch, though. Something you have to do for me.”
Michelle stopped moving, sitting up straight while straddling him, watching his eyes roam across her body. “I suppose I can do that,” she whispered, reaching behind to stroke him.
“Not that,” he said, laughing. “I don’t want to exchange money for favors with you ever. No, it’s actually bigger than that.”
She pursed her lips. “Kase, I don’t know. You’re already pretty big for me and…”
His laughter had her bouncing up and down. She loved to watch him laugh—it was one of the most energetic things in the world, always bringing her mood up if it was down. He really was a once-in-a-lifetime catch.
“Anything for you,” she said, settling down comfortably onto him. “Anything, my love.”
Her love. He had her love. All of it, and then some. In mere days she’d gone from caring for him, to unabashed, unashamed love. Truly, madly, deeply do. It scared her to feel how far she’d fallen, but there was no denying it. Not anymore.
“Careful before you say that. I haven’t told you what it is.”
“Well, spit it out already.”
“I want you to come overseas with me while it’s being constructed. I have somewhere that I’m needed. A battle I need to fight.”
“Another fight?” she asked nervously, her mood sobering swiftly.
“Yes.”
“Against who?”
He squirmed underneath her uncomfortably, but made no effort to free himself. “I’ll explain it later; it’ll take a little bit of time to bring you up to speed. But let’s just say that there are more than just shifters out there, and some of the creatures have it in for humanity as a whole. Some humans and some dragons have banded together to fight them. Some of my friends are there, and they could really use as many of us as possible.”
She knew he meant dragons. “It sounds dangerous.”
He nodded. “If we lose, it could be. But we haven’t lost yet.”
“You want to bring me near a warzone? Where are we going?” She figured he meant somewhere in central or South America, where things were more lawless and unregulated.
“Northwest United States, near the mountains,” he said weakly.
“I can honestly say that I did not expect you to say that.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t choose it. But that’s where.”
“For how long?”
“Until it’s over, or the lab is rebuilt, whatever comes first. I know your research is important, and I want you to put all your effort into that. I’m just greedy and want you all to myself until then.”
Michelle wasn’t sure. “I guess Jacob can handle overseeing the repairs. We work well as a team, and I’ll just coordinate by phone and email. It’s not ideal, but it’s a pretty small price to pay compared to what it’s going to cost you.”
“I would spend every penny I had if it made you happy,” he said. “Thankfully, this won’t require me to. But I would.”
She hugged him tight. “I love you, Kase. I hope you know that.”
“I do, Michelle. My love. My mate. I do.” He kissed her, and she let him.
“I think I’ll just take care of this for free today,” she said, wiggling her hips as something began to push into it.”
Kase grinned.