Chapter 10
To Chloe’s relief she didn’t faint this time. She rose to her feet in surprise, but she didn’t faint. Maybe she was in too much shock to be able to? Or maybe it was that the dragon—Nathaniel—was so beautiful, he took her breath away? Fierce and huge, admittedly, but fearsomely beautiful at the same time.
“Are you able to breathe fire?” That was her first question? Well, yes. Because the truth was she was in shock. Deep shock. The sort where stupidity reigned rather than any sense of self-preservation.
He chuckled throatily. “Yes. But I won’t do so now,” he assured her. The voice was deeper than Nathaniel’s normal tone, but it was still recognizably him, when he used that compelling voice to get his point across.
The dragon was Nathaniel.
Nathaniel was the dragon.
Chloe moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Can I touch you?”
“Please.”
Chloe’s emotion had turned to awe of the magnificent creature standing in front of her. Twenty feet tall, with a huge scaled head: those familiar green eyes, a long snout, with a wicked row of sharp teeth top and bottom of the huge jaw. Massive wings were folded against its—Nathaniel’s—sleek back, front legs tipped by the long and lethal claws she had already seen once. The back legs were thicker and much more powerful, with a long tail as thick around as her waist that could no doubt do a fair amount of damage on its own.
She deliberately didn’t look anywhere intimate; she didn’t need to know if Nathaniel was as aroused in his dragon form as he had been when human.
Nathaniel is a dragon.
Chloe’s gaze returned to those deep green eyes. “It’s really you.”
“Yes.”
She reached out and touched the shiny silver-green scales running down his side. Touching the dragon filled her with the same calm as touching Nathaniel. The firm flesh quivered and warmed beneath her hand.
“My dragon desires you too,” he admitted unapologetically when Chloe gave him a questioning glance.
Her eyes widened. “I hope you don’t think I’m going to—”
“No.” A chuckle rumbled in his huge chest. “What I feel in human form, my dragon feels also. When I make love to you as a human, my dragon makes love to you too.”
“Phew.” Chloe breathed a sigh of relief. “You really are beautiful.” She sounded as awestruck as she felt.
The ruff rippled down the back of his long neck.
In pleasure at her compliment?
Chloe believed so. This was incredible. Nathaniel was incredible.
And everything she had believed about the world up to this moment in time had been firmly tipped on its ass.
She had no choice now but to believe Nathaniel had been telling her the truth all along. His mother was the goddess Arianrhod. His father had been Uther Pendragon. He had been alive for fifteen hundred years.
Dragons were real. The Welsh Otherworld, Annwn, existed too, even if it was an invisible island. Which meant Arthur and his Knights of the Rectangular Table had also been real, and Arthur was the half brother of Nathaniel and his dragon brothers.
Does that also mean I’m meant to be the fated mate of a dragon shifter? That I have some dragon DNA?
A bubble of hysteria rose up inside her but was quickly quelled.
This was too awesome, Nathaniel was too awesome in dragon form, for her to go into panic mode now.
She couldn’t stop touching that leathery silver-green skin. “Are there other…mythical creatures that really exist in the world too?”
If it was possible for a dragon to wince, then that was what Nathaniel did. “There’s an unwritten rule… Myths often have substance in reality,” he amended guardedly.
“In other words, yes,” Chloe said dryly. “Vampires? Werewolves? Other shifters?” A tiger shifter would be incredible to see. She had always had a special place in her heart for tigers, at the same time as she knew it would be capable of ripping her throat out or killing her with one swipe of its claw. A little like Nathaniel in dragon form…
Nathaniel’s silence now spoke volumes.
“You know,” she said casually, “I’ve never really been into older men, and almost fifteen hundred years is a lot older, but I might be willing to make you an exception.”
He gave another chuff of laughter. Which, Chloe freely admitted, was decidedly unnerving coming from a dragon the height of a house.
Nathaniel seemed to sense some of her unease. “I’ll never hurt you, Chloe.”
She didn’t think he would. Even in human form, his strength was formidable, but she realized now he had never used it against her in the way he could have.
“Seen enough?” he prompted at her silence.
Chloe wasn’t sure she would ever get tired of looking at the magnificent creature in front of her, but she accepted she and Nathaniel needed to talk rather than Chloe and the dragon. Well…Nathaniel needed to tell her what he knew about this fated mates thing, and Chloe needed to listen this time, something she hadn’t really been doing because she’d thought he was off his head on drugs.
She gazed up at the starlit sky. “It’s beautiful outside. Can we stay up here for a while and talk?”
“Of course.” Nathaniel nodded, knowing he and his dragon had chosen their mate and mother of their offspring well. Most women—human women—would have run off screaming into the night when he shifted, and never looked back. Not his indomitable Chloe. Now that she had seen the truth with her own eyes, she wasn’t about to run away from him or his dragon.
He had seen his brothers shift enough to know what Chloe would see next. A shimmer of iridescent silver-green in the air, and seconds later, Nathaniel standing in front of her, once again dressed in black T-shirt, jeans, and boots.
“Amazing,” she breathed softly as she once again sat on the crenelated wall edging the roof. She tilted her head. “Your eyes are green, and so is your dragon. So am I right in thinking Deryk’s dragon is gold and Dylan’s blue?”
Intelligent too. “You are.” He nodded. “We’re all different shades of our eye color. Except Grigor. He’s red,” he explained at Chloe’s questioning glance.
“Like the dragon on the Welsh national flag?”
“Yes. He was also born first.”
“Maybe a sighting of him in the past is the reason for the red dragon on the flag?” Chloe mused. “After all, he’s been around fifteen hundred years too.”
Nathaniel grinned. “I’ll mention it to him.” He could easily imagine his stern eldest brother’s disgust at the suggestion he had ever allowed himself to be seen in dragon form by humans. Not by humans who would live to tell the tale, anyway. That thought sobered Nathaniel. “Were you scared?”
“Shocked, to begin with,” she admitted. “But it—you, are so incredibly beautiful and powerful, it’s impossible not to just gaze at you in awe.”
“Thank you,” he accepted gruffly.
The two of them sat in silence for several more minutes, Nathaniel because he was waiting to hear what Chloe had to say next, Chloe because she seemed to be trying to collect her thoughts before speaking again.
“So,” she finally broke that silence. “What do we do now?”
“Well, I suggest we wait and see what, or if, Dylan finds anything in our blood, before and after…” He broke off with a wince.
“Before and after sex?”
“Yes.” There was no point in Nathaniel lying to her. “I’d also like to take you to my cave.”
She blinked up at him. “Your cave?”
“It’s in Iceland.”
As far as Chloe was concerned, this conversation was becoming surreal again. Yes, she was totally in awe of Nathaniel’s ability to become dragon, and the idea of being his fated mate wasn’t as scary as it had once been either. But this idea she was going to have sex with him just so his brother could take another lot of blood from both of them wasn’t particularly romantic. In fact, it was far too clinical for her liking.
She didn’t have too many hopes and dreams when it came to her life partner, having dated too many duds in the past. But she didn’t think it was asking too much to hope the two of them would actually have spent some time together getting to know each other, were maybe in love, before they decided to spend the rest of their lives together.
As for going to Nathaniel’s cave in Iceland with him…
She gave a cold shiver at the thought of it.
Nathaniel chuckled softly as he saw that shiver. “My cave is volcanic rock. It’s also summer, and there’s a hot spring in the center of the cave if you feel cold.”
Her eyes lit up. “A hot spring? Really?”
He nodded. “It’s also dry and habitable all year round.” He’d keep his dragon eating raw fish to himself for now. He would spend most of his time in human form this time anyway, and there was plenty of kindling and firewood locally. They could easily make a fire for cooking.
“This is your dragon cave, right?”
“It is.”
“Do you keep all your treasures there? Hey, you said there’s some reality to the myth,” she rebuked as he snorted.
“I keep some of my treasures there.” He gazed at her without blinking. “In future, you will be my greatest treasure.”
Chloe’s eyes widened, a delicious shiver of anticipation running the length of her spine. Maybe it wasn’t necessary for them to spend a lot more time getting to know each other before they went to bed together, at least.
Except…
This fated mates thing wasn’t emotional, but seemed to be as a result of something in her blood that appealed to Nathaniel’s dragon.
Was that enough reason to go to bed with someone, let alone consider the possibility of a lifetime relationship?
Considering the number of couples who married because they thought themselves in love and who later divorced each other due to incompatibility, perhaps the dragon’s way was more reliable.
Besides, sitting next to Nathaniel wasn’t enough to quell the desire once again rising within her and needing to be assuaged. She’d heard of an itch needing to be scratched, but this skittering of ants-beneath-the-skin feeling was unbearable. Maybe once she and Nathaniel had sex, that itching would stop.
“I really don’t want you to bite me the first time we have sex together.”
“I’ll try not to. But I can’t make any promises,” he added apologetically.
“You have to more than try, Nathaniel. I can’t… I don’t know you that well yet. I don’t want you to complete the mating until we’re sure we can spend the rest of our lives together.”
“I’m already sure.”
“That’s nice.” She gave him a tentative smile. “But I need a little more time. So could you more than try? For me?”
A nerve pulsed in his cheek. “Yes.”
“Okay.” She stood. “Let’s go inside and do this.”
“Do this?” Nathaniel questioned slowly as he rose to his feet.
“The sex.” She nodded, her cheeks flushed.
Nathaniel frowned. Despite having been born in the fifth century, just, he wasn’t a chauvinist. But to date, he and his dragon had always been the ones to do the pursuing when it came to the conquest of women. Okay, maybe he was a little chauvinistic when it came to women, a throwback from that earlier age. But having Chloe be the one to bluntly suggest they go to bed together was a little lacking in spontaneity.
Which was perhaps inevitable after Dylan’s statement he needed to do blood work after as well as before. Well, after didn’t necessarily have to be here.
Chloe eyed him quizzically. “Have you gone off the idea?”
“Hell, no,” he assured her vehemently, his cock giving a lurch of protest at the suggestion. “I just… Let me talk to Dylan for a few minutes first, hm? Did you bring warm clothing with you like I asked you to?”
“Yes…”
He nodded. “Then go and put it on. Coat, hat, gloves too. Pack some things into a backpack, a few changes of clothes. I’ll do the same and meet you back here in ten minutes.”
“Where are we going?” Her eyes widened in alarm. “Iceland? We’re going to Iceland right now? How are we going? No,” she protested as Nathaniel raised a mocking and pointed brow.
“You seem to be having a conversation with yourself right now,” he mused.
“Your dragon isn’t going to fly me anywhere.” Her face had gone pale again.
He smiled. “Trust me, you’re going to love it.”
“Will I be wearing a parachute on my back and an emergency one on my front in case you drop me?”
“No.”
“Then I’m not going to love it!”
“Anything?” Nathaniel demanded impatiently as soon as he stepped into Dylan’s laboratory.
Dylan looked up from where he’d been studying a slide under his microscope. “In a bit of a hurry, are we?”
“You have no idea,” Nathaniel muttered. The shift to dragon and then back again had only increased his desire to make love to Chloe. Being apart from her, even for these few minutes, made his cock hard and his skin crawl. He knew Chloe had to be suffering the same way, probably worse, which was another reason he needed to get this conversation with Dylan over with.
“Oh, I think I might,” his brother mocked before sobering. “The aphrodisiac had increased in your blood since you went to London to collect Chloe.”
“I didn’t need a blood test to tell me that!” His cock had been constantly hard since the moment he saw and touched Chloe again.
Dylan smiled ruefully. “There’s something besides the aphrodisiac in Chloe’s blood. An unexplained anomaly that I believe to be compatible with dragon DNA.”
Nathaniel’s heart sped up. “Is it going to be enough that I won’t kill her when I do mate her?”
“You’re going to do what she asked and put off completing the mating?”
His gaze was challenging as he met his brother’s. “Yes.”
“Then why are you asking me whether or not the mating will kill her?”
“Because I’m going to try not to mate her.” He closed his eyes briefly before opening them again. “I have no fucking idea what will happen once I’m inside her.”
“Okay.” Dylan straightened. “How did Chloe react to seeing your dragon?”
His smile was tinged with pride for the fact Chloe hadn’t freaked out. “She loved him.”
Dylan smiled ruefully. “She’s a gutsy woman, I’ll give her that.”
“Enough so to be a dragon’s mate?”
Dylan pursed his lips. “She was definitely in a lust fever when you went to her apartment?”
“Yes.”
“It stops when the two of you touch each other?”
“The fever, but not the lust.”
“You aren’t able to compel her?”
“Not at all.” He was still surprised by that.
“Then, yes,” Dylan nodded slowly. “I think there’s enough dragon DNA in Chloe’s blood to indicate you won’t kill her— Nathaniel!” he called sharply as Nathaniel would have left the laboratory. “I’m still going to need to do the blood work after the two of you have had sex.”
“You’ll have to wait until we get back.”
“Back from where?” Dylan frowned. “Where the hell are you going?”
“Iceland. And we don’t need any company. Not you or any of the brothers,” he added grimly.
“Grigor isn’t going to like this.”
Nathaniel scowled. “After what you and Grigor kept from the rest of us, he can kiss my ass.”
Dylan winced. “What about Chloe’s family if she just disappears?”
“Her mother is dead. She hasn’t mentioned her father, so I think he might be too. I don’t think she has any other family. Except me,” he added with satisfaction.
His brother still looked troubled. “We’ll need to check more deeply into her family history at some stage.”
“But not tonight,” Nathaniel stated firmly.
“No, not tonight,” Dylan conceded, rising to his feet to cross the room to where Nathaniel stood in the doorway, obviously restless to return to Chloe. “But I want you to take notes of what happens before, during, and after you’ve… This is important, Nate,” he cautioned as Nathaniel gave a disbelieving snort. “You might be the first of us to find his mate, but you might not be the last, and it would be helpful if we knew exactly what to expect. Whether you bite Chloe or not, if she’s your fated mate, then I believe the barb at the base of your cock will also make an appearance when the two of you have sex.”
“Damn it, I’d forgotten about that.” He’d always known the barb was there, but as it had never done anything when he was with other women, he hadn’t given it a thought for years. “What does ‘make an appearance’ mean, exactly?”
“As it’s similar in design to wolves, if Chloe really is your mate, you’ll knot her. Your cock will stay locked inside her for ten, maybe fifteen minutes,” Dylan explained at Nathaniel’s blank look. “You’ll keep ejaculating the whole time because your seed is trying to take root.”
“Shit…” Nathaniel groaned. “You mean Chloe could become pregnant from us being together just the once?”
“Only if you complete the mating and probably only if she’s ovulating at the time.”
“That’s a lot of probables.”
“Hm.” Dylan nodded.
“What about contraception?”
His brother gave a grimace. “I’m not sure if human contraception is going to be effective against dragon sperm.”
“Fucking hell!” Nathaniel ran an agitated hand through his hair.
“If anything goes wrong, and you need me…”
Nathaniel sincerely hoped, prayed, that wouldn’t be necessary.