Carla
The sun was setting over the western mountains, the high slopes turning almost purple as the haze of clouds distorted the light. It was a magnificent sight, and one she was most grateful to be watching. A sunset like this was not something that came around often, and their building provided the perfect vantage point for watching the boiling ball of orange-yellow flame disappear below the massive upraised points of land.
Carla lay lengthwise on a couch, several large cushions propped up behind her so that she could lean back comfortably without having to move. Thorne had set it up for her after their evening meal, a delicious steak and potato dish that he’d whipped up from somewhere.
Her eyes narrowed in thought. Something had changed within him. All day he’d been almost…well, the only word she could describe was doting. Not overbearing or fawning, which she would have considered obnoxious, but definitely putting forth an attempt to make her happy.
It irked her to admit his efforts were succeeding. Despite her abrupt end to the day before, he still seemed destined to do his absolute best for putting her in this position. To her, he’d gone far and away above anything that was necessary. As he’d called her out, this was half her fault as well. She could call up Colonel Mara and admit the truth at any point, but she was stubborn, just like Thorne. They certainly had that in common, among other things.
“I’m going to have a glass of wine,” he announced suddenly, rising from the reclining chair on the other side of the coffee table from her.
The shattering of the quiet that had been in place for the past hour or so forced her to return to the present.
“I’ll take one too, actually,” she decided on a whim. “If you don’t mind.”
“Absolutely not! I think they stocked us with both a red and a white. Do you have a preference?”
“No. Whatever you’re drinking is fine. No sense in wasting anything.”
“Are you sure?” he pressed. “I don’t mind opening the other bottle for you, really. It’s not a big deal.”
She smiled at his insistence. “I’m positive, Thorne. I’m a big girl. If I had a preference, I wouldn’t be afraid to tell you.”
She could almost sense him wilting just a little at the reminder that she could fend for herself. What has gotten into him lately?
“What are you hiding?” she asked when he returned.
“What?” His brown eyes went wide, the gold tones shining through clearly as he set the glass down in her hand.
It was, she noted, only a little over a third full of the dark full-bodied red liquid, as was his. No attempt to get her drunk there. Smart man, she conceded. Getting drunk with him again seemed like a recipe for complete disaster. If she did, she’d probably end up pregnant or something else ridiculous.
That thought brought about unbidden images of Thorne as a father. To her surprise, he actually seemed to fit the mold rather well.
What are you doing, girl? Stop it!
“You’re hiding something. Something you don’t want to tell me. I’m assuming because I’m not going to like it.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, it came to her what it had to be about. “You finally talked to Colonel Mara, didn’t you?”
Thorne paused with his wine glass halfway to his mouth. Topaz eyes flicked over to her, and paused there for a moment. Then the glass continued in an upward motion, and he drained the entire thing in one go.
For whatever reason Carla found that funny, and she ended up laughing. The jovial sound turned bitter as it all coalesced in her mind, and by the time she fell silent, neither of them thought her to be in a particularly happy mood.
“She isn’t letting me go back anytime soon.” It wasn’t much of a question.
Thorne shook his head. “She’s not letting you go back anytime soon.”
“What the fuck!” She snarled the final word, tossing back a sip of wine violently. “This makes no sense! What the hell is her purpose in keeping us here? I don’t understand.”
Thorne was halfway standing up when she fixed her stare on him. “Do you have any ideas?”
He froze, half-crouched, once more looking like a deer caught in headlights.
“What did she tell you, Thorne?”
Licking his lips nervously, Thorne glanced around the apartment. “I’m going to refill my glass,” he announced, and before she could object he was back in the kitchen, popping the cork and filling his glass. To the brim.
“It’s really not good news, is it?” she asked sourly.
“Uhh, I mean. I don’t think it’s bad news,” he said.
“So she did tell you something.”
He paused to think. “No, not really. It’s more that I realized something I’d been blinded to, and suddenly it all makes a lot more sense.”
Carla sat up. “Which is what, exactly?”
“Ahh.” Thorne looked away.
“Tell me,” she said, her temper getting the better of her.
Her words got his attention, but when he looked back at her, Carla felt the full weight of his stare, and it was immense. For the first time since she’d met him, she suddenly saw the dragon side of him. She’d always heard of people having “old-eyes.” eyes that had seen a lot, and suddenly she understood all those sayings.
Although she wasn’t sure on his exact age, she knew it was longer than any human, not including his time spent asleep.
“Are you sure you want to know?” he asked, his voice somehow deeper, more ancient.
“I…” She tried to swallow, the lump in her throat making it uncomfortable.
Then all at once the Thorne she knew was back. “I’m not sure you’re ready, Carla. Even if I did tell you, you wouldn’t believe me. You’d call me full of shit, thinking I was only saying it for one reason, things like that.”
“What the hell was that?” she asked, referring to his little personality switch.
“That was me.” He shrugged. “Mixed with my other half. I don’t take well to being yelled at.”
“No fucking kidding,” she breathed. “That was some powerful stuff.”
“I may look like you right now, Carla, but I’m not. You know my true nature. What I am. What do your legends tell you about dragons?”
“That they’re finicky, have big egos, and are quick to anger when disturbed.”
Thorne grinned. “Got it in one. You missed two things though.”
“Oh right, treasure! Right? Dragons love their treasure. I read that book when I was younger. The one with the bobbits!”
Thorne looked confused.
“Never mind,” she said. “You wouldn’t know.”
“What is a bobbit?”
“Little thing. Small-sized human, but not a dwarf.”
“I see.” Thorne shook his head. “Yes, treasure is one thing. The other…” he paused again, looking away.
She watched his broad chest rise and fall as he took several deep breaths. What the hell was bothering someone like him so much that it made him nervous to speak? Carla was proud of her achievements, of her training. She could defend herself from most people. But compared to a dragon? He shouldn’t feel threatened by her in the slightest.
So why the hell was he so nervous?
“The other is our mates.”
“Your mates.” She pursed her lips. “Which, while I remember almost nothing about that day, is what I recall pretending to be that got us into this situation in the first place. Correct?”
Thorne looked at her. “You really don’t remember much?”
She snorted. “Look, buster, I may be a badass battlesuit bitch, but you had me drinking pitchers of beer and doing shots of hard liquor. I can hold my own normally, but your tolerance is insane! I was an absolute wreck that night, spent it around the toilet. So no, I don’t really remember a damn thing besides that, and drunkenly kissing you like some boot camp newbie!”
The big man laughed at her description. “Well, you certainly didn’t kiss like one.”
Flames erupted across her face at the pronouncement, and she hurriedly buried her embarrassment by drinking deep from the wine glass. She could barely even remember the kiss!
“You never told me what it was that I wouldn’t believe,” she said into the cup, still refusing to look up.
“I was getting there,” he explained. “Giving you a lead-in. But very well. What I’ve been wanting to tell you, but wasn’t sure how to, was that what started off as a joke now isn’t.”
Carla waited for him to finish breaking it down for her, but he never did. “I don’t follow. What isn’t a joke?”
“This,” he said heavily. “Us.”
She blinked slowly, comprehension refusing to form, though she felt like it should be.
“Carla, what I’m saying is that you are my mate, as insane as that might seem.”
Her jaw fell off. Not literally of course, but if she were a cartoon it would have just detached from her face and hit the floor. She stared at him agog for a full thirty seconds before even attempting to make a sound, let alone form a word.
“Carla? Are you okay?”
She laughed, motor control finally restored. There was no way he was being serious. “You’re funny.”
Thorne sighed and looked away. “See, I told you that you wouldn’t believe me.”
“Oh come on!” she protested. “You can’t pull that hurt look with me.”
“I’m not pulling anything,” he said, looking at her straight on again. “Carla, you are my mate. The one woman I’m destined to spend my life with. It seems crazy; I get it. I understand that. I pretty much expected you to react like this, but it still doesn’t make getting laughed at while vulnerable any easier.”
She just stared in shock. He was serious. Dead serious even. How could this be? “But it was just a joke. We made it up to try and get a laugh, to have some fun!”
“I know. Trust me, I know. I just never allowed myself to consider the fact that maybe it was fate that drew us together, and I just took it as a joke. But when I finally stopped to think about it, the answer was clear.”
Carla rubbed her eyes. “Right.” She drew out the word, giving herself time to think. “I’m your mate, so you say.”
“You are.”
The absolute belief in his eyes bothered her, so similar to what she’d expect of a fanatic of any sort that it grated on her nerves. How could he just be so certain?
“So then that means if I kiss you, I’m going to fall head over heels for you and we live happily ever after? Is that it?”
Thorne shook his head, smiling gently. “No. That’s not what it means. If you did decide to kiss me now, sober, two things would probably happen.”
“Do I turn into a frog?” Carla was being rude and she knew it, but her brain couldn’t process the situation fast enough for her to think it over rationally.
“Of course not.” A sliver of steel entered his voice at his obvious frustration with her snide remarks. “One,” he continued unfazed, “you’ll remember it.”
Okay, she probably deserved that.
“And two, you’re likely to feel an intensity that you don’t expect, that has no logic and defies your belief.”
“Bullshit. I’ve kissed you before. I didn’t feel anything ‘special.’”
Thorne shrugged her denial off. “We were both drunk, and hadn’t had time to get to know each other at all.”
Impulsive as ever, Carla rose to her feet. “Fine. Let’s kiss again then. I’ll show you; I won’t feel a thing. You’re wrong, there’s noth—”
All of a sudden Thorne was there. His body pressed up against hers, both hands running over her ribs and across her back as he covered her mouth with his. Her back arched involuntarily, pressing her chest up into him.
Bursts of electricity rippled across her flesh, leaving goosebumps and hairs standing on end as it went, traveling from the base of her neck down her spine and out into her arms and legs. Carla’s eyes, wide at first, closed as she nearly melted into the kiss, overwhelmed by the heated passion and instinctive connectivity between the two. Their lips moved synchronously together, their tongues flicking out and across one another as if they’d done it hundreds of times before. There was no awkward bumping of teeth nor smearing of tongues across closed lips. Everything just fit like it should, naturally.
Thorne bit down gently on her lower lip, tugging on it as he pulled away. Carla opened her eyes to see twin circles of topaz staring back at her, pale and shining bright with enjoyment and perhaps even just a bit of delight.
But it was the look of near smug assurance on his face that snapped her back to the present. He had the look of someone who had just proven a disbeliever wrong.
Unwilling to admit that the kiss had been anything out of the ordinary, she squared herself away, shoulders back, expression neutral.
“That was good,” she said, not wanting to tear him down. “You know how to kiss. But I’m not ripping my clothes off nor begging you to do it again.”
She very carefully buried her mind in a deluge of non-Thorne thoughts as it tried to call her a liar in any manner of uncouth ways. Now was not the time to admit that he was right. Carla needed to get back to her unit.
“Oh. So you didn’t feel anything?”
“Just your tongue and bit too much saliva in my mouth.”
Thorne made a coughing-laugh sound that indicated he knew she was full of shit, but thankfully he didn’t push the issue.
“It was just joke gone wrong, Thorne. I have to get back to base, to my squad. They need me.”
Crossing thickly muscled arms in front of him he stared at her, the lines of his jaw tightening over the several-day-old stubble. His cheeks, never sharp to begin with, were drawn into stark relief as he looked troubled for the first time.
“Why are you so adamant about getting back there?” he asked, wanting to understand.
“They mean a lot to me,” she said, refusing to meet his gaze.
“It’s more than just that,” he pushed.
“Of course it is!” she cried. “They’re back at base, preparing to face the worst threat that humanity has ever had. Something so bad it could erase us as a species completely and utterly. Yet while they’re doing that, doing the job that I signed up to do, here I am gallivanting around town like an oblivious civilian while making out with super-hot dragon-men like some sort of…of…I don’t know!”
She threw her hands up in the air in frustration. “I took an oath, Thorne, and if you can’t accept that or understand that, then you definitely are not my mate.”
Spinning, she stormed across the room, mad at him, herself, and everything conspiring against her just then.
The door slammed behind her satisfyingly.