20. Corin

20

Corin

He was not ready.

Even his experience taking Tomás off Maya’s hands the other day so she could sleep was nothing compared to this. Then, he’d had Apollo and Felicity to help. Three adults to one shifter toddler had been a sensible ratio.

Evidently, Tomás behaved better for his mom’s friends than he did for mom herself—especially when the end of the meal meant, not a day playing with his friends, but the dreaded sleep.

Food was thrown. Cutlery was thrown. Clothing was thrown. The ceiling was redecorated yet again. Maya hadn’t been exaggerating.

Except … maybe she had been. Because the panicked look in her eyes told him that even she hadn’t been expecting quite this level of toddler trouble.

“Is there anything—” he tried to ask as she scooped another blob of pasta sauce before it could fall off the edge of the table.

“I’m fine! It’s fine! This is … depressingly normal.” Her shoulders slumped. “Not depressing. Lovely and magical and— okay. Tomás, I am getting the feeling that you are not interested in this dinner! What can we do about that?”

Tomás gurgled and flipped his plate over.

“Bath time!” Maya declared with manic excitement. She turned to Corin. “This shouldn’t take long. Just … make yourself at home? And once he’s in bed we can talk about what’s bothering you.”

That settled it. He might be out of his depth around toddlers, but there was no way he was going to let her deal with this nightmare bedtime and then sort out his problems alone.

It was time to take action.

The sheer quantity of splashing from the bathroom told him everything he needed to know about how bath time was going. By the time they emerged, Maya was as wet as Tomás.

“Pajamas!” Maya called out in explanation as she disappeared into Tomás’s room.

Of course, the moment they came out again, Tomás transformed into dragon shape and slithered out of his pajamas. Maya picked them up with a sigh.

“Normally this is time for bottle and a book,” she said, “But…”

As leader of his clan, Corin had years of experience cementing his authority among other dragons. He had the most powerful duskfire in generations. He was the only person who ever managed to keep his cousins in line. Using his dragon’s authority, and a hint of its power, to ensure everyone behaved came as naturally to him as breathing.

And how well has that worked out for you, with everything falling to pieces the moment you look away? His head throbbed with tension at the reminder of the reason he was in such a bad mood when he came to meet Maya.

Perhaps a different tactic was needed.

He braced himself.

“May I try something?”

She eyed him. “Some magic dragon parenting skill you’ve been hiding up your sleeve?”

Corin flexed his fingers. “Not … quite.”

Tomás scurried to the front door and scratched at it, obviously refusing to believe it was no longer playtime.

Corin took a deep breath.

This was not going to be pleasant.

“Ahahahaha!” he bellowed. “While this tiny dragon is out adventuring, I shall steal his hoard!”

Tomás’s head whipped around. “Sssss!”

“I’ll go steal it now, while he’s distracted!”

He sounded like a cartoon villain. Which was the point. Maya looked like she didn’t know whether to burst out laughing or hide her face.

If this didn’t work, he would have to go hide in his own hoard for a very long time.

“Only the most powerful dragon would be able to stop me from making off with his hoard!” he declared, bounding—very slowly—up the stairs.

Tomás was after him in a flash. He zipped through his legs and scampered to the top of the stairs. Corin followed him, still laughing like a deranged Dracula.

“Is this really going to help?” Maya asked, worried. “I can’t help but notice you seem to be winding him up, not calming him down…”

“Trust me.”

She eyed him suspiciously. “That sounded like you’re trying to convince yourself.”

He grimaced and continued his exaggerated stalk up the stairs. Tomás was standing in front of his bedroom closet, wings raised, tail lashing like a whip.

“Ohhh nooo,” Corin said, dramatically reeling back. “I’ve been found out! The powerful dragon is defending his hoard!”

“Scree!” cried Tomás, delighted. “Raar! Raar!”

“What a powerful dragon,” Maya croaked weakly. She was leaning against the doorframe. Sagging against it, if Corin ever dared use such an inelegant word to describe his mate.

“You’ve defeated me,” Corin told Tomás gravely, and sank, defeatedly, to the floor.

The energy buzzing from Tomás’s mind changed. The frenetic sense of wanting to do a thousand things at once, none of them sleep, was gone, replaced by a smugness so intense Corin felt himself smirking. As though he was the one who’d just successfully defended his hoard.

Instead of the one who hadn’t even noticed when it was stolen from.

His dragon grumbled, but even that reminder couldn’t entirely puncture the overflow happiness from Tomás’s victory. Something inside him softened as he looked down at the little dragonling—then up, as Tomás flew into the cupboard to retrieve his hoard-box.

“Oh, so now you’re gonna show off everything Mr. Blackburn failed to steal from you? Is that it?” Maya asked, helping him.

“Sss!”

“Okay. At least you’re not—” She winced and shook her head. “I’m not even going to tempt fate by mentioning it.”

They sat together on the rug as Tomás prowled over his treasure. The sun was long gone, but the bedside lamp cast a warm glow over the gold and jewels, making them glitter enticingly as Tomás picked through them. He held up the pieces one by one to be inspected—and to wait for Corin to compliment them, and bewail his failure to steal them away—before whisking them away safely behind him again.

Maya nudged him. “You look happier.”

“I’m pleased to have solved your problem,” he said, avoiding the truth.

“Hmph. That problem isn’t solved until he’s actually asleep,” she retorted. She searched his face. “That’s not all, is it? You were in a towering bad mood when I got off work.”

“I can’t deny that. And you’re right. I do feel better now.” The stress was still there, but it was … muted, under whatever this strange, satisfied feeling was.

“Seeing Tomás with his hoard helps you?” she asked wonderingly. He was wondering the same thing. “But—it’s not your gold.”

“Strange, isn’t it?” He shrugged. “My mate’s child has a hoard worthy of a great dragon. All is right with the world.”

“It worked, though.”

“Yes. Somehow, it worked.”

Play. It was such a foreign concept to him. Even as a child, he’d never roughhoused with other dragons. The rules against stealing children’s hoards didn’t count between children, but none of his cousins had ever dared touch any of his treasure. Not even in pretend.

A heavy weight dragged on his heart. Wasn’t it a good thing that they respected him even then?

He sat back, and let his uncomfortable thoughts fade to a background rumble as his dragon looked out contentedly through his eyes. Necklaces, bracelets, rings, and circlets—Tomás’s hoard was a very respectable, traditional selection for a young dragon. The watch was an excellent modern touch. The fact that the watch had once been his own … he couldn’t quite put words to the feeling. Usually, the loss of part of his hoard would leave him in a worse mood than a visit from the Dans, but the sight of Tomás with the stolen watch filled him with a pride that was different to what he felt about his own hoard. A pride that was mixed with excitement to see the little boy grow and come into his own as a dragon shifter.

Maya sighed and scootched her feet under herself. The movement brought her closer to him, until their thighs pressed together. “I suppose it shouldn’t come as a surprise, given you…” She shook her head, color rising on her cheeks. “Never mind.”

He cocked his head and inspected her. Was she embarrassed? Or…

He reached out, light as a greenscale trying to lift a coronet from a grand dame and just as obvious. She rolled her eyes at him and took his hand, pulling it onto her lap and tucking it between her own.

He had seen her hands a thousand times. A very few times, in their old life, he had touched them: when she passed something to him, or in the confusion of reaching for something at the same time. He knew the delicacy and quick confidence of her touch on the other side of too many layers of clothes when she brushed his jacket before a meeting or fixed his tie.

He knew the touch of her lips against his. Her fingertips exploring his face and his body, with that same quick confidence. The way her whole body tightened as she came, the curl of fingers at the nape of his neck and the shuddering gasps that followed.

But every time she reached for him felt like the first time.

He wanted to engrave the moment in gold and keep it in the very heart of his hoard.

“I’ll have to add this to the list,” she said quietly. “What to do when Mr. Blackburn is unhappy? Placate him with reassuring spreadsheets, stories of his enemies’ poor decisions, or show him a baby playing with a heart-attack’s worth of expensive jewelry. I have to admit, I wouldn’t have guessed that last one. But it’s good to discover a new way of cheering you up.”

“You don’t need to manage me.” Flirtation was all very well, but he needed to be clear on this point.

“I’m not.” She took the change in tone in stride, relaxing into him. “But you were in a bad mood, and I wanted to make it better. I know how I’d do it at work. But we’re not at work. You’re not my boss anymore. I need some way of helping you that isn’t showing you all your investments in a spreadsheet.”

He almost choked. “Excuse me?”

“Another thing you never noticed? I’m so terribly pleased to have been of service,” she murmured blandly. She registered his confusion, and the corners of her lips tucked into a private smile. “Even before I knew you were a dragon, I figured out that looking at spreadsheets of how your investments were doing cheered you up. Or graphs. Oh!” She threw her head back and laughed, then fixed him with a devilish smile. “Or stories of how badly things were going for your competitors. Let’s try one of those.”

This woman , he thought, dumbfounded, as she leaned in close as though about to share a delicious secret.

“Did you hear,” she purred, in a voice that sent fire rushing through his veins, “that old Montfort tried to stake a claim in this town, and ended up blown head-over-heels into the sea? His dragon looked like a puppet with its strings cut.”

He laughed—and to his surprise, the tension in his skull was entirely gone. “You’re incredible.”

“It’s kind of you to notice.”

What could he say to that? He’d always known his mate was the most important woman in the world. But although they’d worked so closely together, he’d never really known her until now.

And the more he got to know the real Maya, the more he fell in love with her.

“You’ve always known exactly what to do,” he told her ruefully. “How long have you been manipulating me like this?”

She grinned at him. “Only since the first time you came back from family business with a face like a thundercloud and I had coincidentally scheduled a meeting with the CFO. And then after your next trip away, when you came back looking like the end of the world was nigh, and I told you that—what was it? Something about the Fairlies…”

The Fairlies were another dragon clan. Did she know that? “I remember. Tucker Fairlie and Robert Bonlieu’s failed island festival. Hundreds of ticket-holders airlifted off a tropical island because it sank.” That was the public story, at least.

“A sinking island. It sounded like something out of Gulliver’s Travels. And when I told you what happened, you almost smiled. ” She shook her head.

Almost smiled? He remembered the iron control with which he used to hold himself in Maya’s presence. How had she seen anything of him past that, let alone enough to want him?

And he remembered the island, as well. “That was a better story than you knew. Bonlieu is Robert’s mother’s name. The man has enough aliases to fill a phone book. He reinvents himself every few years, new name, new hair color, new idiotic schemes, but the most important thing about him is that he was born a—”

“Monfort,” Maya interrupted.

“You knew that? His grandfather cast him out of the clan years ago.”

“Of course I knew. The Montforts were the bane of my life and the ace up my sleeve. If you stumbled over any of them unawares, I would spend the rest of my week placating weeping restaurant owners, designers … a poor swan boat sailor whose boat you sank…” She giggled at his stricken expression. “And any story about things going badly for them were like Christmas for you. I paid very close attention to anything that any Montfort got up to, either to avoid them like hell or add them to my storybook.”

“You’re terrifying.”

“Thank you.” She was glowing. “I was good at it, wasn’t I?”

“But you don’t know the whole story.”

“Oh?”

They were speaking in lowered voices. Tomás was still atop his hoard, refusing to acknowledge the way his eyelids kept thudding closed, insistent that he was still a fully functional member of the waking world and not sleepy at all.

Corin softened his voice to a lilting croon. “The festival wasn’t held on an island. It was on the back of an ancient shifter.”

Maya gaped at him. “It wasn’t—no. It was an island! A … sinking … island.”

“Which appeared on no maps, and hasn’t been heard of since?”

“I thought it must have been one of those artificial islands, like they have in Dubai. And they did something to damage poorly constructed foundations. Too much bass, or something.”

“There were no foundations to damage. The island was an ancient, giant sea turtle.” Corin reveled in the wonder in Maya’s eyes. “You said Tomás has a story before bedtime, didn’t you? Here’s a good one. Dragon shifters tell stories about the ancient sea turtle, and the treasure he keeps hidden beneath his shell. Tucker and Robert must have thought the partygoers would keep him occupied while they hunted out the treasure. Like a plague of mosquitos distracting him from a pickpocket. Instead, the old shifter took the obvious step of simply removing himself from the situation.”

“And they didn’t see that coming?” A variety of expressions passed across Maya’s face. “That seems … really dumb.”

“You will soon discover, if you haven’t already, that dragons have a great propensity for being really dumb .” Corin heaved a sigh. “Gold-lust makes fools of us all. And if that wasn’t bad enough, we build a culture of grandstanding and hoard-theft that turns our foolishness into something to strive for. And you discovered all this about me before you even knew what I was.”

“Spreadsheets and gossip.” Her eyes danced.

His heart was full of stars. “I was a fool to lose you,” he murmured, and suddenly her mirth melted away, replaced by a sharp look that pierced his conscience. “You already hold the key to my heart. Maybe I should be thanking whoever stole my clan’s treasure, not trying to hunt them down.”

“That doesn’t sound very draconic of you,” she murmured.

“Neither is playing the big, bad dragon for a hatchling. But here we are.” He nodded towards the pile of gold.

Tomás was curled up on top of it, soundly asleep.

Maya’s eyes widened. “Oh god,” she whispered. “Is this really happening?”

“He’s asleep.”

“I don’t think I can dare to breathe. It’s not even nine. It’s—” She checked the clock on the bedside table. “It’s seven thirty. ”

He leaned closer to her, until the heat from her body made him feel drunk. “What are we going to do with all this time?”