Page 10 of Hungry Like A Dragon
Chapter 3
Petra woke to the sound of a crying baby. Again.
Story of her life, for the last three months, anyway.
Snapping her eyes open, she glanced around from her prone position on the couch. Late afternoon sunlight streamed in the sliding glass doors of the guesthouse she called home. The crying was coming from the bedroom. That’s right; she’d put Sadie down for a nap and then sat down for a sec…and fell asleep. Again.
Groaning, she rolled off the sofa and climbed to her feet, stumbling through the room, heading to the bassinet, where her daughter lay on her back, her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth open on a wail, her tiny fists flailing.
So stinkin’ cute.
“Okay, okay, the gravy train is here,” Petra muttered as she scooped the child into her arms. The babe impatiently nuzzled her chest, searching for the source of her food.
Petra tugged down the camisole that had become practically an extension of her body, and little Sadie Renee latched on like a champ. Hungry little bugger.
As frustrating as the lack of sleep was, Petra smiled while she smoothed her hand over the fine, dark hair on her daughter’s head and returned to the living room to make herself comfortable on the couch, the only piece of furniture available to sit on in the small space.
Her phone was lying face down on the rug. She must have dropped it when she fell asleep. Picking it up, she noted yet another text from Gabe. The man was relentless with the questions regarding her wellbeing.
The accidental charge on Gabe’s Amex had been straight up a result of not enough z’s. There was no other excuse. And she’d been so damn careful, too, ever since she discovered she was pregnant, four months into this mission to find Gabe’s mother.
Why hadn’t she told them? Any of them—but especially Noah. He was the father, after all. He had a right to know she’d given him a daughter. He had a right to know his life would be forever altered.
She didn’t have an excuse, not a good one, anyway. Not one that wouldn’t infuriate Noah when he finally found out. Which he would, one of these days. Eventually, she’d have to go back, whether or not she figured out the answers she’d been sent down here to seek. Hell, she was surprised Gabe had given her this long without demanding concrete answers.
Gods, she’d been so irritated with herself when she realized the reason she was so nauseous and her boobs hurt like fucking hell was because she was growing life inside her womb. Why in the name of the gods had she seduced Noah anyway? What had she been thinking?
As per her usual, she hadn’t been, at least not clearly. Why had she seduced him? She’d asked herself that question a thousand times over the course of the past year, and the best answer she’d come up with wasn’t a particularly good one.
She’d been caught up in the result of the conversation with Gabe. The one where he had attempted to convince her she actually was good enough to complete this mission he’d sent her on. She’d momentarily had a bit of self-confidence, and as soon as she saw Noah, her dragon sat up and started begging like a dog, and Petra had wondered if she could do it.
Could she seduce him? Could she finally do something right?
Except she hadn’t—done it right, at any rate. Oh, sure, the moment had been spectacular; that orgasm unquestionably the best of her entire life.
The resulting child was the part she’d screwed up. Sadie’s existence made her life infinitely more complicated, and not just for the typical reasons first-time parents generally encountered.
She should have called Gabe as soon as she figured out she was pregnant. He no doubt would have told her to come home. Except that would have defined her as a failure—again.
And, yeah, she definitely should have let Noah know that he was going to be a father. But that, well, therein lay the real problem. Petra had sworn to herself a long, long time ago that she would not take a mate for any other reason except love.Any other reasonactually meant getting pregnant without being mated first. That was where she truly messed up. She’d had the baby first, and once her family found out, they’d push her to mate with the father, and Petra refused. She would not complete that circle; she would not be like nearly everyone else in her family.
She would not be part of a loveless relationship for the sake of the kid.
So she’d avoided telling anyone and avoided going home and done her best to ignore the guilt she felt over not telling Noah.
She sighed and shifted Sadie to the other breast. Even though she dreaded going home, she also really, really wanted to. To sleep in her own bed. To get back to her own life. To raise her daughter within her own colony.
Which meant it was time to get back to the job she’d been sent down here to do in the first place. Even if that also meant she was now juggling two jobs and raising an infant, alone. It was her own damn fault, so no pity party for her.
Luck had, for seemingly the first time in her life, been on her side shortly after she’d realized she was pregnant. She’d wandered into Nola Kids, taken one look at all the totally adorable baby clothes, and burst into tears. Pacey Jorges, the owner, had rushed up to her with a box of tissues and a hug and hadn’t let Petra leave until she’d confessed her story.
Not all of it, of course. Pacey was human, so Petra left out any references to dragons and curses. Had she not, the woman likely would have sent her to a mental institution instead of offering her a job and cheap rent to live in the tiny guest cottage tucked behind the significantly larger 1860s Greek revival house Pacey called home.
Bonus that Pacey’s niece, Rebecca, was living with her while attending college at nearby Tulane University. Not to mention Rebecca loved children and was available to babysit anytime she wasn’t in class.
One would think Petra lived a charmed life. If only it was the one she wanted to live.
“Okay, baby girl,” she murmured as she lifted the child onto her shoulder and gently patted her back. “Let’s get that gas out and then fall back asleep for at least twenty minutes. I need a shower.” Never, until three months ago, had she considered showers to be a novelty, a privilege, a damn-near euphoric experience.
