Chapter Thirteen

ALEX

After Nate's comment in the camping shop, I spent the afternoon on a hair trigger. The drive to the river was a special kind of hell, sitting so close to him but unable to touch, and by the time he pulled up at the end of a dark lane, I was already growing hard. That made climbing the fences a little interesting, but finally, we were on the riverbank.

Nate laid out the rug he'd bought while I sorted out the lanterns. I managed to get the batteries the wrong way round on my first attempt—not my fault, Nate was bending over at the time—but finally, both lanterns were casting a bright yellow glow over the rug. I lay on it and reached a hand up to Nate, pulling him down until he was lying on top of me and finally, I could kiss him. Last night had been good. Being able to see Nate so clearly was even better.

As our open-mouthed kiss grew more desperate, we rocked against one another, shoving hands under clothes, searching for skin. He stripped my top off, and then he poised above me, looking at me. His eyes were hot as they roamed over my body. I reached up and tugged his jumper and t-shirt off, and he helped me get them over his head before I pulled him back down.

I was kissing him and pushing up against him, needing him but not willing to stop touching him long enough to undo my jeans. Thank God he finally took control of what had been swiftly turning into a teenage dry hump and trailed kisses over my chest, stopping to lick and mouth my nipples. I arched up under his hot, wet mouth. Making a pleased sound, he did it again before closing his teeth around one. I pressed against him, wanting more, wanting it even harder. He alternated bites and licks, and then he rubbed his cheek and the beginning of stubble over my sensitised nipples.

"Fuck," I said. Panted, really.

He grinned at me for an instant before continuing with his little licks and kisses over my stomach, his hands working at the fastening of my jeans. I was breathless, watching him. His hair gleamed softly in the lamplight, and his eyes when he looked back up at me were dark and intense, yet there was a teasing glint there which I knew meant I was in for the time of my life.

And I was. His lips closed softly around just my tip, and then his tongue—dear God, the things he knew how to do had me fisting my hands into the rug. Otherwise I'd have wrapped them into his hair to keep him doing that, always. When his warm, wet mouth finally slid down on me, he just kept going, and it was nothing I'd ever felt before, pressure and liquid warmth surrounding me until I was lost, groaning in helpless pleasure. Gag reflexes and Nate Mortimer had apparently never made one another's acquaintance.

With that, and the way his clever fingers, slick with lube, were teasing my arse, I lost it far sooner than I'd like to confess.

I was still floating somewhere in the night sky when he lay down beside me. We kissed, and he tasted of me and him. Something about it felt perfect.

He was making little breathy sounds into my mouth, and I remembered he hadn't yet come. I didn't stop kissing him as I undid his jeans and found the thick heft of his cock, so ready. And then it was my turn to slide my mouth down on his hot length until he was thrusting and whimpering.

He cried out as he came, a sound of pleasure and longing escaping into the night.

When I lay beside him once more, he smiled at me and trailed his finger over my lips. "Sorry I came in your mouth," he said. "I should have warned you."

I know some guys don't like it, but I do. So long as I don't think about it too much.

"S'really not a problem." My words slurred slightly in the afterglow. I rested my head against his broad shoulder, just for a moment, and he drew me closer.

I stamped on the little voice that reminded me it was only sex and that we'd both leave Bath soon. For now, I let my mind drift happily as I lay in Nate's arms.

NATE

Alex shifted slightly in my hold, and despite the risk of him feeling it, I obeyed my urge to press a kiss against his hair. It was okay—he didn't stir. I glanced at my watch, luckily on the arm Alex wasn't lying on. I wasn't interested in the time so much as checking in with pieces of my treasure. Tonight, although they sparkled beautifully in the lantern light, they seemed cold, hard, and remote. A world away from the warm, sleeping dragon in my arms.

All too soon, Alex woke with a jerk and a snort. Somehow, it was adorable.

"Oh, God, I think I drooled on your shoulder," he said, sitting up. "Sorry."

"You can make it up to me later," I told him. "If we're quick, we'll have time to fly and still get back without Taylor opening the door to us in his pyjamas."

Alex glanced back over his shoulder at me, his face alight with laughter, and my heart twinged. God, he was gorgeous, and never more so than when he laughed. I had no idea how he could still be single. Cornish dragons must be both blind and stupid.

"I'm going swimming," he informed me, rising to his feet and stretching.

I'd tried swimming as a young dragon and hadn't liked it. I hadn't mastered the trick of closing my nostrils the way that seemed to come naturally to Rufus and had ended up spluttering and choking in the shallows while he'd been chasing fish in the depths of the Thames. But Rufus and Alex enjoyed it. I wondered if I should give it another chance.

The fact I'd be swimming withAlex had nothing to do with my decision to try again.

The Severn was fast-flowing and wide, and there was plenty of room for us to dance around each other in the water. Snapping my wings was as effective at creating speed underwater as it was in the sky. It wasn't quite the freedom of flight where the entire sky was mine. But the weightlessness, the sheer fun of chasing Alex, only for him to turn on a sixpence and chase me right back until we were rolling and tumbling together in the depths of the river, was just as good as flying.

I was panting slightly as I climbed out of the water and shook myself, following Alex's example. There'd been no return of that strange impulse to venerate him that I'd felt last time we'd been together in dragon form. Now, when I looked at him, I just saw Alex.

Wait. Alex's voice sounded in my head before I could shift. I want to see you properly.

He shifted and then lifted the camping lantern to see me better. The top of his head reached my shoulder, but compared to my bulk he seemed so small and fragile. Neither were words I'd normally apply to Alex, but dragons are big.

Acutely self-conscious, I stood there and let him look me over, nose to tail. I wasn't sure what held his attention. I was just a normal dragon. Wings of semi-translucent membrane were folded against my back, and my scales glinted in the lamplight as I turned my long neck to look away from his continuing observation. My tail curled around me, its arrow tip stroking my chest in an unconscious search for comfort, and my dark-gold talons flexed uneasily into the earth while he looked me over so appraisingly. Smoke trickled from my nostrils as my breathing deepened in discomfort.

"Should have known you'd be gold," he said, which didn't make sense as my hair was darker than gold. Unless, perhaps, he meant because of my family and our love for wealth. I hadn't forgotten his pointed remarks about bankers when we'd first met. But he looked delighted and approving as his gaze moved over me, so I wasn't sure that was what he meant.

Even with that expression on his face, I hated that he was looking at me for this long. Alex had a way of seeing things clearly. If he kept looking, he might be able to see who I really was. Once he did, he wouldn't be able to get away quickly enough.

ALEX

When Nate had shifted back and was towelling himself dry, I ran my finger down his spine until he shivered.

We didn't have time for another round, but I wasn't ready to go back to the house, where I couldn't touch him. I wanted to keep this physical closeness with him, and so I trailed my fingertips down his back again, over the knobs of his spine, feeling the tiny twitches my touch caused as it went.

He turned towards me, looking up from under his eyelashes, his face full of invitation. That purr was in his voice. "Is there something I can do for you?"

He hadn't done that with me for a while, that flip into giving me a come-on. Almost like he was a sexbot or something. My dick was practically standing up and saluting, but another part of me, somewhere deep inside, didn't like it.

Reluctantly, I shook my head. "We're pushing it already, time-wise," I said. "We should get back."

I watched him covertly as he navigated us back to the main roads, trying to figure out what had just happened and what my subconscious recognised that my conscious mind, ruled by my dick, hadn't. It slowly dawned on me that the reason I hadn't liked it, unlike previous times he'd done it, was because I now knew Nate. And when he gave me that blatant, practised come-on, it was as if Nate disappeared.

That made no sense. Except, as I turned it over in my head, perhaps it did. Nate had said he'd done a lot of clubbing after he and Charlie split. Was that a club persona, where the personality, the person didn't matter, and all that mattered was getting laid?

Was that all he saw himself as, a body to fuck? Or did he think that was how I saw him? I knew he wanted nothing more than friendship with me, but friends didn't treat one another that way.

It still wasn't quite making sense. He wasn't usually like that when we were together, not lately. What had been different tonight? What had happened just before he flipped into it? I'd been looking at him, drinking in his beauty as a dragon. He'd started to look uncomfortable, so I'd stopped looking long before I'd wanted to.

That discomfort he betrayed…perhaps he'd been self-conscious. Perhaps that come-on had been to distract me from studying him. But could Nate really have been self-conscious? He was one of the most confident people I'd ever met. He had the charm and easy conversation of someone who spent their life socialising with influential types. Nate would never be stuck for something to say to a stranger at a cocktail party. Nate was the sort who'd be invited to cocktail parties in the first place.

This was wild speculation and I didn't know if I was right. What I did know was that Nate was like a three-dimensional puzzle. Just as I thought I had one side sorted out, another dimension formed a pattern that made no sense.

That wasn't going to stop me trying. I wanted to know who Nate really was.

"How did you become a banker?" I asked him. "Did you just wake up one day and think that was what you wanted to do with your life?"

His hands tightened briefly on the steering wheel. I only noticed because I was watching him so closely. "It's what our family does."

"So you didn't have a choice?"

He glanced at me with a slight smile. "You say that as if it's a bad thing. It makes my dragon happy, multiplying treasure. We're doing it for our clients, but at the same time, we're increasing the bank's bottom line."

"What if you'd found you didn't like it? Could you leave?"

It wasn't my imagination—his hands definitely tightened. "Leaving the bank would mean leaving the family."

And no dragon would want to be alone. I thought I'd better change the subject. "Has Fiona cornered you yet?"

He grinned. "She won't make that mistake again. She now has a near-encyclopaedic knowledge of the development of breeches in Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries."

No one got the better of Fiona. No one except Nate Mortimer, apparently. I knew there was a reason I liked him. That I more than liked him. That I was—hell, that I had already fallen for him. Damn it.

There was nothing between us except my wishes and longing, which grew stronger the more time we spent together. No one other than my dad and Margaret had ever gone swimming with me before. I know how that makes me sound, but dragons are born to fly. I was never important enough to anyone for them to forgo that for me. Nate had.

I shook my head, impatient with myself. I was a sentimental idiot who was about to get his heart broken all over again, and yet again, it was my own fault. Nate had told me it was just sex between us. That hadn't stopped me falling head over tail for him.