Page 30 of Mikhail
She shuddered. She found within her a new drive, not to reclaim her life in London, but to save his here. To prove to him that life was still worth living. She reached up to stroke his cheek and traced his brow with a gentle caress. She’d seen the beast he was, but she was notafraid.
“I’m here. You’re not alone.” She hoped Mikhail’s dragon could hear it too. “Stay withme.”
10
And though I came to forget or regret all I have ever done, yet I would remember that once I saw the dragons aloft on the wind at sunset above the western isles; and I would becontent.
?Ursula K. Le Guin,The FarthestShore
Fitful dreams and haunted,shadowy nightmares chased Mikhail through the halls of his mind as he slept. The dragon stirred, trying to reclaim control as images of Elizabeth, his sweet Gloriana, betraying him played over and over. For five centuries his dragon had held the pain of the past at bay. But the moment Piper Linwood came into his life, the fortress around his dragon’s heart had begun tocrumble.
He had dared to desire a mate once before, and it had cost him everything but his life. The dragon inside him didn’t want to take a risk like that again. It had nearly killed him. And Piper… She could be his mate. The chemistry was there, and the hunger in her blue-gray eyes when she looked at him made it all but impossible to keep hisdistance.
He had to have her. Even if it meant hisdeath.
As the dreams faded into the recesses of his mind, he could feel the delicious heat of a woman’s body on top of his. The smoky scent of burning logs and the slight chill of his clothes all came together in a slowly building awareness. His body was still cooler than normal, but the icy dread that had been drowning him when he’d crawled from the water hadreceded.
A delicate scent, floral with a hint of honey, teased his nose, and he took it in deeply, like he was scenting a freshly poured glass of wine. Piper’s hair was spread out across his chest in wild tendrils. He moved one hand to twine a lock around one of his fingers. His dragon rumbled in confusion. It desired closeness, intimacy, but it was afraid after everything that had happenedbefore.
He understood. More than forty years confined to an English prison, unable to transform, unable to escape, had almost turned his dragon feral. If he hadn’t been so devastated by Elizabeth’s death, he would’ve let his dragon go unchecked. London would have indeed burned to the ground from hisrage.
Instead, when he’d seen her funeral procession, all of the fight in him had died. He’d had long years to think over what she’d said to him, and in the end she had been proven right. Though she had learned the truth, she had been powerless to do other than what she had. As a queen, she could not act upon her desires and what she wanted, only what she must do for herpeople.
He wondered for a moment about the man who had taken his place, chained and tormented in a tiny cell. Though there could be no happiness for Elizabeth and Mikhail, she had hoped there would be some measure of justice. Perhaps there had been, but it had not made his life any easier tobear.
Mikhail returned to the present, studying the way the firelight caught amber and bronze in Piper’s light brown hair. It was a beautiful mix of colors. He remembered that she’d tried to remove his jeans earlier and smiled. The time for that would come soonenough.
Familiar footfalls caught his attention. Belishaw came out of the kitchen and paused when he sawMikhail.
“You’re awake,” Belishaw said, his eyes hard and serious. “We need totalk.”
Mikhail frowned. He did not want to talk. Not about the beach or how his dragon had tried to endhim.
“Tomorrow,” Mikhail replied. “I assume you will stay here? Or are you going back to London?” He hoped his friend would stay, though Mikhail admitted he wanted Piper all tohimself.
“I had intended to go back, but I think you need me here. Piper won’t be able to stop your dragon if it triesanything.”
It filled Mikhail with a quiet joy to know he and Belishaw had formed such a deep friendship over the centuries, but he didn’t want to be aburden.
“She is the key. The closer I get to her, the farther the past is pushed away. The dragon can’t fight herforever.”
His friend’s eyes filled with understanding. “You mean to mate withher?”
Mikhail glanced down at Piper’s sleeping face, her slightly upturned nose, kissable lips, and the gold-brown lashes on her cheeks. Henodded.
“I think I do.” His answer still came as a surprise. “My dragon and I both sense she is a truemate.”
“And the fact that she is mortal?” Belishawasked.
“Elizabeth was as well, and I didn’t care,” Mikhail reminded him. “I never expected to live as long as my father. My brothers are still alive. They don’t need me to carry on the Barinov name. I would rather be happy for seventy years than alone for the next five thousand.” It was a decision all dragons eventuallyfaced.
“Speaking of your brothers…” Belishaw cleared his throat. “I was able to track them down. Rurik has to stay in Russia, but Grigori and his mate are coming straight here. They were visiting her family inAmerica.”
“Grigori has a mate?” The news shocked him. Strong, sensible, disciplined Grigori had never seemed like a dragon who would give in to his instinct tomate.
“Hedoes.”
“Is she a dragoness?” he asked. Somehow he couldn’t picture a female dragon responding to Grigori’s overly protective nature too well. He must have found one very tolerantfemale.
