Page 22 of The Dragon's Flamebound Mate

I let out a breath. “Those were my exact plans. Then I started second-guessing, thinking perhaps we should do something else, go someplace else. I haven’t had to do this relationship thing before.” Waiting for my mate had always been my plan. I’d been beginning to think that would never be in the cards for me. I was so happy to be proven wrong on that.

“I’ll teach you.” He winked again. That wink was going to be my undoing. “Do you shift at all on the weekends? Go out flying?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Once I start thinking about formations I want the team to work on, I practice them myself. See how they feel, see what comes naturally, what doesn’t, find out if there’s any way I can help work them through it.”

He nodded. “Well, I can’t exactly do it that way, but Icanfly. And soon, I’ll have a different set of wings.”

I raised a brow. “That’s right, you will. Do you feel any different?” I quickly glanced at his abdomen and looked away.

“You’re so cute when you’re shy and unsure,” he said. “I don’t feel any different, yet. I’ve been trying to see if maybe I sense something, but nothing so far. It’s very early, mate. I may not even be pregnant.”

I hated the look of disappointment on his face. “I know.”

“Would you like me to be feeling different?” Both hands were on his middle. We’d talked about the possibility of having kids few times, but we hadn’t talked about our feelings around it.

I nodded eagerly. “I can’t wait to build a family with you.”

“Me too. I still want to work, though, and coach. Our family will come first, of course, but I’m not going tonotwork. I hope you know that.” He grabbed the back of his neck. “The childcare here is amazing. It isn’t like we’d be choosing between quality care and home care.”

I wasn’t sure if that was him explaining it to me or if he was trying to convince himself.

“Only the best people have been hired for that department.” Which was mostly true for all of them, but doubly so there. “And I figured you would want to keep your job. You worked too hard to get here to have to start all over again.” I hesitated. “Maybe it’s time for me to retire. It’s not like I’m fresh out of school myself.”

He shot me a glare. “No, mate, it isnot. I like working with you.”

“All right.” He hadn’t left room for argument, so I wasn’t going to give him one. Besides, I liked working with him too.

“You think about dinner—either takeout or if we want to make something, or… I don’t even care what we do as long as it consists of food. I’m going to go shower. I was combing through a lot of dusty books.”

“That sounds great. I’ll queue up some of the footage I have. We can put it on the big screen.” We had set up cameras in multiple locations with the hope of catching every move from different angles. It didn’t only matter what they looked like from the front, every single movement counted.

“Perfect.” He gave me another quick kiss and skipped into the bathroom.

“I think this is going to work out just fine,” I said to myself as I heard the shower turn on.

No part of me felt like cooking and even less of me felt like driving to town for food. I dug through the freezer and found a pizza. There was nothing delicious about it, but it would do.

Pizza in the oven, I cued up the footage and checked the timer. There was still 7 minutes left on dinner.

“Plenty of time.” I shucked my clothes on the way to the bathroom. “Knock, knock,” I called into the cracked doorway. “Any room in there for one more?”

“Only if that one more can reach the spot in the middle of my back that I keep missing,” he teased.

“That one more is the king of back scrubbing.” I walked into the bathroom and under the shower with him. “Fair warning, dinner will be ready in six minutes.”

“Six?”

“Yep. Six.”

“Then why aren’t you kissing me alre—”

I reached behind his head and puled him to me, giving him a searing kiss, one that was a promise of things to come.

Spoiler alert: I burnt the pizza. Totally worth it.

Chapter 12

Ash

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