Chapter 22

22

Sensations battered Lilis from every direction, through her muscles to the core of her bones. Pain. Cold. Anger. Protective?—

Simon!

Oh gods.

Her memories returned relentlessly. The fire endirim and his knife. His promise to go after Simon and…

“Lilis…”

Her breath stuck in her throat at the sound of Simon’s rich baritone. Why was her conscience torturing her in his voice?

Because he called for you, begged you to help him. And you couldn’t.

She struggled against consciousness, fighting to get back to the nothingness. Where she didn’t think or feel. Or remember.

There was no pain in oblivion.

I’m so sorry, Simon.

“Lilis, I’m here. Come back to me, please…” Simon’s voice spread outward from where it anchored in her heart, filling her entire being and pushing her closer to a precipice. Lilis had no idea what lay at the bottom, but she was ready to jump.

I didn’t leave you. I failed you. And it hurts too much to stay…

“You’re safe with me.”

What?

Those words, so unquestionably Simon’s, made her pause. A heavy weight lifted from her chest, and her breath came easier than before. Something warm combed through her hair with tender caresses, drawing her away from the abyss.

Light pierced through the darkness. Smells returned. Sandalwood, cinnamon, heaven.

And mint?

Lilis blinked at the black and tan blob in front of her. Slowly, her vision cleared to reveal an unusual version of Simon peering down at her. Every feature of his face scrunched with concern, and his full mouth was drawn into a frown. “Simon?”

“Lilis!”

Relief transformed him into the Simon she knew. Her throat closed, and she lifted one hand to his face, certain it would pass through his image. But his cheek was warm and solid against her palm, the stubble of his unshaven face tickling her. “Am I dead?”

He shook his head and kissed her palm. “Not for lack of trying.”

“Are you?”

“No. I’m right here. And I’m not going anywhere.”

Relief flooded her, driving out all other emotions and leaving her a messy puddle of confusion. She covered her eyes with her hand, trying to physically hold back her tears.

“You scared the crap out of me, Lilis. What the hell were you thinking?”

“I was protecting you.” Her tone, defensive and small, was the sound of her nightmares. She’d always imagined begging forgiveness from the ghosts of her lovers—of Simon’s former selves. Making those same arguments to him now hit too close to home.

She hiccupped and pushed herself upright before she could dissolve into tears. The room spun, and every last muscle in her body felt stiff and tight from disuse. How long was I out? And… “Why do I smell like a polar bear that broke into a spearmint field?”

“I lathered you with Tiger Balm. I figured if dang shen could really work, it was worth trying more Chinese cure-alls.”

“More Chinese… wait, you gave me dang shen ?” Lilis rubbed her temple. Her brain felt like it was pushing against her skull as it filled with Simon’s confusing information. Maybe holding her head would keep her brain from exploding. “Why am I here?”

“Too much protecting.” Simon delivered his joke as a rebuke, and Lilis growled, her anger a welcome exchange for her other messier emotions.

“You didn’t think that when you called for me . When you begged me to help you, and I was too weak to fucking move. How am I even?—”

“I wasn’t begging you to help me.”

“You screamed my name!” A large white bandage on Simon’s arm caught her eye, and she reached out a shaking hand before pulling it away again. Shame forced her gaze away from him. “I tried to get to you, and I… I couldn’t.”

Simon took one of her hands in his, lacing their fingers together. She stared at their intertwined hands. Another man might have forced her to look at him, but not Simon. He’d wait for her to return to him, just as he returned to her life after life after life.

“Ignore the bandaid, Lils. I called your name because your dragon friend told me you were dying.”

Fear lanced through her. “ Dragon friend? ”

“Chinese guy with his head up his rosy serpentine ass.”

“Longwei did that to you?! I’ll fucking kill him!”

She tried to get to her feet, but Simon held her still.

“If by ‘that’ you mean this small cut…” he peeled back the gauze to display a thin cut on his arm, already healing. “Then don’t bother. He wanted you to think I needed your help so you’d transform.” Another frown overtook his face as he covered his injury. “You told me you’d revert to a dragon in the end… and Big Red told me you were dying .”

Lilis swallowed. Simon had faced down a dragon demon and hadn’t blinked at the danger.

“Lilis, I screamed your name because I thought you were decomposing in front of my eyes. Not because I needed you to save me.”

You abandoned me in Madurai!

She squeezed her eyes shut and blew out a breath, shaking her head. Simon’s description didn’t feel right. It fought with the images in her memory, the two refusing to align.

She looked up into Simon’s dark cedar eyes. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“What do you remember from Divit? From the man you were when I left you in Madurai?”

“You mean from that day?”

She nodded.

Simon closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and held it, thick brows furrowed. Finally, he blew out the breath. “Not much. The trees and the heat. The way the city looked from above, like a blossoming flower. Why?”

“Can you remember what you felt? When I left?”

He ran a hand through his shaggy midnight hair. “Frustrated. Pissed.” He snorted. “Nothing new, really.”

Lilis tried to brace her weight on her free arm, to find stability as the world seemed to slide out from underneath her. But she couldn’t find balance.

She tipped to one side, and Simon caught her. “Woah. Lilis are you okay?”

“No.” Get over it. Stay strong. But she couldn’t.

“What is it? Why are you asking about Madurai?”

Lilis inhaled his scent, the cinnamon, vanilla, and musk calming her. “Because you’re wrong.”

Simon inhaled and shook his head. “Lilis, I know you were there when it happened. I can’t explain how, but I do get strong emotions, deep impressions from?—”

“You never complained. This is the first time you’ve put up a fight about me protecting you. Ever .”

Simon arched one eyebrow. He opened his mouth, then silently shut it, cedar eyes roving the room without seeing, slowly growing wider as he seemed to search his memories.

Finally, he turned his attention back to her. “That can’t be.”

She offered him a small smile. “It’s okay. They—you always trusted me. Luqa, Divit, Caelius. Even Henri. You never tried to stop me. Because you knew I’d do anything to keep you safe.”

Keep him safe? No. That was a damn lie. Or at least a half-truth. Because she’d always needed to keep herself safe, too. If she played protector, she’d never have to let the men she loved see the final hidden bit of herself she kept locked away.

But her walls were crumbling. She clutched at them, but they turned to sand more quickly than she could build them back up, and words she’d never said before escaped before she could stop them. “I’m not strong enough, Simon. Because I would rather run away from you than suffer through the pain of losing you again.”

She shuddered. Her admission left her feeling cold and exposed but lighter for having voiced her fears out loud. “What do we do?”

Simon stilled. He leaned forward, placing a tender kiss on her lips. His mouth slid across hers slowly, as though tasting her for the first time and inviting her to taste him in return.

“We start with me protecting you. ” He reached behind him and held out a bloody towel.

“Aw, for me?” Lilis wrinkled her nose. “You shouldn’t have.”

Simon rolled his eyes and unraveled it to reveal a shimmering steel blade, notched and twisted slightly to give it an angular stab designed to go through even the toughest materials.

Like dragon scales.

“Well, that explains why it felt like a pitchfork kabobbing my insides.” Lilis tried for a joking tone and failed miserably. “How am I still alive after that?”

“I guess I’m more Chinese than anyone wants to admit,” he answered with a self-deprecating laugh. “Cinnamon Chew told me about the recipe from Traditional Chinese Medicine to flush the poison from your stab wound. He just didn’t know how to prepare it.”

Lilis eyed the knife with distaste, and her dragon regarded it with even more suspicion.

“Tell me what kind of poison is on it. If it’s similar enough to other toxins, I might be able to find a faster-acting antidote at the hospital.”

Her dragon tried to resist the change, to shy away from the weapon that had dealt them so much damage. But they needed the information. Lilis shifted her face just enough to scent the knife. And froze.

“What is it?”

She swallowed. “Nothing.”

“Lilis, please?—”

“I mean there’s nothing on it. No poison.”

“You told me to take it out when we were in the forest. That it was poisoned and keeping you from healing.”

“I was also delirious from getting my ass kicked.” Lilis shivered.

“But the other dragon?—”

“Longwei’s an idiot who couldn’t smell gas if you farted in his face.” She ran a hand through her hair, responsibility weighing heavily on her. “Simon, I’m sorry. I can’t beat him.”

“You don’t have to. Jesus, Lilis, when are you going to get it that we’re in this together?”

“But you’re?—”

Human. The same human who faced down Longwei for you.

Simon watched her and nodded definitively. He seemed to recognize the conclusion she’d arrived at. “He might be stronger than you, but he has both of us to contend with now.”

She stopped fighting. There was no reason to keep it up. What was the point?

And it felt so good to let go . She held out her hands to Simon, and he smiled and helped her to her feet. Everything in her protested movement with a shiny new spectrum of aches, pinches, and tingles that recalled the battle to her. Every blow that fucking endirim had dealt her, every cut.

“Come on.” Simon’s voice brought her back to the present with him. “Let’s get you healed up the rest of the way.” He helped her hobble through the yard, through the trees, to the fire pit beyond.

Standing at the edge of the fire pit, Lilis raised her arms above her head, and Simon lifted her shirt off. The raw hunger in his eyes took her breath away, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her breasts into his shirt and kissing him with abandon.

He broke the kiss and pushed her gently away, breathing heavily, a visible tent forming in his flannel pants.

“I need you to have all your energy back so I can burn through it.”

She shivered at his dark promise and called her dragon forward, expecting agony and disorientation given the extent of her injuries. But it replaced her limbs smoothly with its own, filling her with energy and awareness.

With a contented sigh, she blew a stream of fire onto the small pit and flopped into it like a cat tipping over onto a pile of important papers. The flame warmed her underbelly. Relief flooded her muscles and scales as her powerful blood flowed through her veins, sending repairing strength to every limb and ligament.

Simon watched her the entire time, and Lilis unfurled her wings and stretched, showing off for him. Letting him really see her. Her dragon preened, pleased with Simon’s clear fascination.

Rolling to her back, Lilis twisted this way and that, absorbing as much heat as possible. She flipped again, catching sight of Simon and the small smile on his face as he watched her enjoy herself as much as a puppy tumbling through in the grass.

Mine .

In her dragon form, the hunger overtook her before she could blink. She called her dragon back, withdrawing into herself and shrinking to human size.

She stalked toward Simon. Surprise sparked in his eyes the instant before they darkened with pure want . As soon as her lips touched his, he growled, pulling her against the hard planes of his body.

His hands cupped her rear, holding her in place against his heavy erection as he kissed her roughly, desperately, like he couldn’t get enough. His tongue invaded her mouth, sending sparks of pleasure along her nerve endings and making her gasp.

Without breaking the kiss, he walked her backward to a nearby tree, shielded from view. He whipped his shirt over his head and leaned into her. She gripped his sculpted shoulders, running her hands down his arms, across the solid wall of his chest, to his toned back and firm rear. His muscular bulk pressed her firmly into the tree trunk.

Possessing her.

She shivered at this side of Simon, desperate for her and taking from her what he wanted. What he needed .

Her hand slipped between their bodies, finding his cock straining against his flannel pants. She reached in through the gap in the front and wrapped her hand around him, remembering the way he’d thrust against her and moaned the first time he’d taken her. His breathing sped up as she moved up and down his full length, not even bothering to lower his pants for better access. She just needed him inside her.

Now.

Knowing fingers found her folds, separating them to play with her wetness and tease her. “ Lilis .”

His powerful body shuddered in her arms, and one finger slid inside her, making her cry out. But it still wasn’t enough. Her legs trembled with her arousal, and she rubbed herself against him.

“Now, Simon. Please .”

He grunted in her ear, removing his finger and replacing it with the thick head of his cock before she could even feel empty. He took her lips in another thorough kiss as he pressed into her slowly, inch by inch, until he was sheathed to the hilt.

And then he moved.

He thrust deep and hard, forcing the air from her lungs, filling her so completely and fully she thought she might never be able to separate herself from him again.

This man.

Mate. Her dragon asserted its opinion of Simon and pushed at her consciousness, pulsing power through her as Simon pounded into her. Her senses expanded into a prism of light and energy, ready to bond with Simon as?—

“No!”

Simon stilled immediately and withdrew, his eyes widening. “Lilis? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She panted, resting her forehead on his toned shoulder as she battled against her other half. “Nothing’s wrong with you, Simon. Please don’t stop.” She sank back on the erection he’d pulled out of her and squeezed with her muscles. Another tremor went through him, but he still didn’t move.

Instead, he pulled back. “Look at me, Lilis.” His voice was commanding, and Lilis obeyed without thought. “Tell me you’re okay, and I’ll keep going. Otherwise?—”

“I’m more than okay.” She bit her lip and ground against him. “I promise, Simon. And I’ll explain it all to you. But not right now.”

“I’m going to hold you to that.”

“Okay, but don’t stop holding me now .”

A devilish smile spread across his sinful mouth. “Deal.”

Before she could draw another breath, Simon resumed pounding into her at such a pace she could barely match his thrusts. She buried her face in the crook of his neck, licking the salty skin there, and he adjusted his angle ever so slightly, nudging her g spot each time.

“Simon!” Pleasure crashed over her in a wave, and she came on him in a burst of sensation.

He continued to thrust, gripping her ass tightly and angling her to go even deeper. His grunts grew louder until he finally stiffened against her, growling and kissing her ear before collapsing into the tree at her back.

She panted, unable to discern whether his heartbeat or hers thudded against her chest. Simon kissed her cheek, neck, and hair, continually showering her with affection. And Lilis nestled into the comfort of his arms, happy. Relaxed.

Safe.