Chapter Nineteen

If they had done more than kiss and cuddle me, I’d have gone with it, but a part of me was still hesitant. I wasn’t leaving and I loved them, but it was more like being a teenage virgin who was creeping ever closer to making love with her boyfriend but isn’t there yet. We stayed up all night in the theater, screening and ignoring one movie after another as we got to know one another better in all the best ways.

Killian had been rough and always left my lips swollen and painful, sometimes nicked by the hard pressure of his teeth. To the point I avoided kissing him, and he never seemed to mind that much anyway. He could climb on me and pound away until he emptied himself, without any protection of course because he didn’t like it. And he also liked the idea of “breeding” me, a word he’d actually used only once, but it still rang in a wounded spot inside me. He’d succeeded in that, but lost the results.

Nix and Keir stroked me so gently, my arms and throat, the sides of my breasts, my belly, but nothing more intimate than that. I’d had friends who talked about make-out sessions that went on all night, but that had never been my experience.

Until now.

We did eat popcorn and candy at some point, but mostly we were just being together and talking and kissing, and the hours flew past until suddenly Keir glanced at his phone and grunted. “I need to go get ready for work.”

“What?” I couldn’t believe it. “It can’t be that late…or early.” I went to the blackout curtains covering the long windows. Pulled them aside, to find the sun had already risen. “Oh my goodness.”

Nix came to my side and dropped a kiss on my cheek. “Why don’t you go get some sleep?”

“I should make you breakfast.” I ducked past him. “If you have to go on no rest, you should at least have a full stomach.”

“No need at all to do that,” he protested. “We can eat in the cafeteria.”

“Go get dressed, and I will make you a quick egg sandwich.” I shooed them toward the door. “Because I want to.”

I saw them off about fifteen minutes later with their sandwiches and travel mugs of coffee then settled back on the giant sofa to actually watch a movie. Which of course turned into me falling asleep right away in a comfy ball.

But whatever dreams I was enjoying were gone in a flash at a rattling sound outside. I jumped to my feet and was halfway to the windows when I paused. Opening the heavy blackout curtains would be obvious to anyone outside, especially since I was on the first floor where presumably the person was. So, instead, I tiptoed out of the room and up the stairs to my suite. The windows were only covered by sheer curtains up here, and I peeked out to try to see, hoping not to be noticed.

Whatever or whoever had made the noise was not in my line of vision from the bedroom or bathroom windows, and I began to wonder if I was overreacting. Maybe it was just a cat or some other animal out there, a stray dog even. Shrugging off my silly fears, I started down the stairs again. I wanted to straighten up the home theater area where we’d left pillows and blankets and popcorn boxes and candy wrappers lying around. The house was always so neat that I knew it was unlike the dragons to keep things messy like this. They were working away on zero sleep, and I had a good nap. It was the least I could do.

But just as I stepped off the staircase, right in front of me, the doorknob rattled. I covered my scream with my hand and backed up. Everything was secured, right? Nobody could get in here without an alarm going off…somewhere.

Would it be here and scare the intruder or just at their offices? I had no idea how any of it worked, only had a code so I could go outside, which I had no desire to do now. And no plan at all.

I flew back up the stairs, wanting to at least be as far from the person breaking in as possible. And I had very few doubts who it was. Back at the windows, I had no view of the front porch at all. But what I could see was a truck with the dragon’s logo on it approaching from the corner. I held my breath, and the vehicle pulled into the driveway.