21. Maya

21

Maya

She knew what he was suggesting. She would have been interested, too, except the single mouthful of pasta she’d managed to get in her own mouth at dinner was not enough to fuel any activities more strenuous than napping.

Luckily, Corin agreed. Food first. Then … other things.

“I’ll call Avi,” he said, his phone already in his hand.

“No, no. I’ll put something together. Leave the poor guy alone.”

“Leave him alone?” Corin raised one perfect eyebrow at her as he dropped his phone back in his pocket. “I brought him here to cook for me. The man’s barely glanced at the kitchen since he arrived. I think he’s taken up surfing. ”

“Let him enjoy his vacation.”

“Which I am paying for.”

“That’s how vacations work, sir. You let people out of your sight, and keep paying their wages.”

“Sounds like a scam.” He moved to join her as she pulled things out of the fridge. “How can I help?”

“You know how to work a microwave?”

He stared at her sternly. “Yes.”

“Don’t look at me like that. You dragged a whole chef here to boil your eggs in the mornings.”

“He does an excellent scramble. And I’m not that incompetent.” He paused, eyes scanning the kitchen. “Which one is the microwave?”

She laughed and showed him which cupboard it was in.

The thought of sitting at the table again made her eye twitch, so they took their plates to the living room and settled onto the sofa. With the drapes pulled and the lamps on, the room was cozy and snug. Everything she didn’t associate with Corin Blackburn.

Except, when she looked across at him, he fitted perfectly.

“You don’t mind that it’s leftovers?” she asked, because apparently if nobody else provided a rod for her back, she was happy to make one for herself.

He frowned down at the plate. “I thought this looked familiar. Caro’s work?”

“She boxes me up a few extra meals each week. I wish I could say I spent my time whipping up home-cooked meals on the stove while Tomás played sweetly at my feet, but…” Her voice trailed off. “Well.”

“You’re doing an excellent job.”

There was no sarcasm in Corin’s voice, no matter how hard she hunted for it. “I guess once I’m your mate I’ll have someone else doing the cooking anyway, right?”

“An army of chefs at your beck and call. If that’s what you want.” He twirled spaghetti onto his fork. “There’s no once you’re my mate. You already are. Anything you want is yours.”

“We don’t have to make it official, first? I know that whatever the claiming ritual is, it’s out of the question, but there isn’t anything else?” Her cheeks heated as she remembered a particular wine-fueled conversation with Felicity, and belatedly connected the dots with what Corin had said they could under no circumstances do.

Fuck. Damn his magic.

“You are my queen. I will not allow any dragon to refute that, regardless of whether we have carried out the claiming ritual.”

Corin’s eyes were burning. Unfair. How was she meant to concentrate?

She’d managed to keep her mind on her work all the years she worked under him— no, not under him like that, brain, stop it— but now she couldn’t keep her thoughts straight. He’d never looked at her like this back then. That was part of it.

And now she knew what it felt like when the fire in his eyes engulfed his self-control.

She shivered. Down, girl. Shoulders down. Chest out. Breathe and focus.

And remember, he’s feeling the exact same way you are.

She closed her eyes briefly. Okay. That last point doesn’t actually help things. Except…

He’d been in a terrible mood earlier. And she could guess why.

“Your investigation is going nowhere?” she guessed.

“Worse. They sent through the report.” He sighed. “I can’t make head or tail of it! Pages and pages of—”

“Can I see it?”

He pulled out his phone, then hesitated. “You’re not my assistant anymore. No translating spreadsheets to make your boss feel better.”

“This is all for my own curiosity. Don’t worry.”

He sighed and handed his phone to her. She raised one eyebrow. “No disclaimer on how this is restricted information?”

“You’re my mate,” he said, as though that outweighed NDAs. “But this isn’t what I planned for this evening. I’m meant to be wooing you.” Corin made a frustrated noise. “Which I feel I was doing well at, before I started whining about my own day.”

“You were. But please. These days, the most intellectually strenuous thing I do all day is reset my boss’s email password. My brain is dying of boredom. So please. Please. Give me a problem to solve.”

“Can’t I bother you in another way?”

That was a low blow. She aimed lower. “We’re meant to be working on the stolen treasure problem together, aren’t we?”

A muscle in his cheek twitched. Okay, she got it. Even with all his grand proclamations, it was still hard for the big bad dragon to give up any control.

The same way it was hard for her.

She prodded him. “Talk.”

“Very well. Give me your feet.”

“What?”

“Give me your feet, and I’ll give you my phone.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. What was he planning? “Deal.”

The sofa was a two-seater, just long enough for her to stretch her legs onto Corin’s lap. He ran his fingers along the tops of her feet and around her ankles. She could get used to that, she decided.

She opened the document and scanned through it. A thorough investigation into the security of Blackburn Enterprises’ interests. Commissioned by CEO Corin Blackburn, managed by his grandfather, collated by an anonymized research sub-group.

Hah.

“So, the report—”

Corin dug his thumb into the tight muscles along the bridge of her foot, and she saw stars.

“My main problem,” he said, his tone one of intense concentration, “is that I drove away my most valuable employee six months ago. I didn’t realize until she was gone how great her influence on me and my company was. Without her, I’m lost.”

His thumb did terrible, wonderful things to the one spot on her ankle that was always stiff at the end of the day. “Umph?” she managed to say.

“The months since she left have been remarkably absent of crisis. All the systems and processes she set up continued to work as intended. Her replacement is very capable. But in an emergency…” He sighed. “I can’t get anything done .”

Her lips quirked with amusement. He looked so frustrated . “How so? You’ve been in contact with your clan, right? What’s the holdup?”

“You tell me.”

She read through the report.

“Huh.”

“You see?”

“That’s a lot of pages of nothing. That’s … hrmm.”

He stopped massaging her feet. “What did that ‘hrmm’ mean?”

Did he really not know? Maya’s blush calmed down as her brain moved away from oh god that feels good to business-mode.

“Well, all you were asking them to do was check who’d visited the vault, right?”

He nodded.

“And they can’t tell you yes or no or even ‘we don’t know’?” She grimaced. “It’s a simple question. If they can’t answer, then, well…”

“What?”

She tapped the phone. “This is a lot of nothing meant to disguise the fact that there’s something they don’t want you to know. They’re not lying to you. Nobody lies to you. They’re just … putting off the truth.”

He frowned. “How can you be so sure?”

“Because that was my life for five years, Corin. It was literally the first thing everyone told me when I started the job working for your grandfather. Never tell Mr. Blackburn ‘I don’t know’ and never tell him something he doesn’t want to know unless you’ve already fixed the problem. When you took over, it was business as usual.”

“I … always thought you were just extremely competent.” There was a strange undercurrent in his voice.

She huffed. “I am extremely competent. Though I’m surprised your grandfather put his name on this, given it’s blatantly a whole lot of nothing.”

Corin’s face sobered. “If anyone broke into the vault, no blame would fall on the rest of my clan. All the fault would be mine for not protecting the clan’s treasure.”

“Not your grandfather’s? Didn’t you tell me it was his job? A retirement perk.”

He shook his head. “I was clear when I asked them to investigate. If there was no sign of anyone accessing the vault, they could safely tell me so.”

“Did you say it with creepy lights glimmering in your eyes, and your magical wings shadowing around your shoulders?”

He looked at her in surprise. “I am the leader of my clan.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” She sighed. “Okay. So, if the answer was ‘We have no record of anyone accessing the vault, I guess someone broke in and we don’t know how’, they would have told you?”

“They would have no reason not to.”

“So they do know who did it.”

He froze. Shadows deepened around him—cold and dark.

Gee , she thought. I wonder why the rest of your clan is so freaked out by the thought of upsetting you.

“They know,” he whispered.

“And it’s so bad they’re scrambling to figure out the best way to tell you.”

Corin swore. “I need to fix this.”

“I’ll add it to your schedule.”

He turned a look on her that was so full of longing and wonder and self-recrimination that her heart leaped into her throat. “How did I ever think I could survive without you?”

“Oh, now you regret chasing me away,” she joked.

“I regret everything.” His voice was low and dangerous, but his fingers massaging her ankles were perfectly firm and gentle. “I regret lying to you. I regret every step I have taken to be the dragon I thought needed to be the head of my clan. The formidable Corin Blackburn. A role I have played so well.” He let out a heavy breath. “And where did it get me? I’ve terrified everyone under me so thoroughly, they won’t even give me a straight answer. And the person who actually kept everyone in line all these years … was you.”

His gaze went distant. Whatever he was thinking about, it made him tighten his hold on her legs. The shadows surrounding him retreated. “I didn’t even see you doing it,” he said quietly. “How did I not notice?”

She shrugged, then bit back a moan as he pulled himself out of his thoughts and ran hard fingers along the knots in her calves. “Um. Um. That was part of the job, sir— Corin. I wouldn’t have been a good assistant if I was getting in your face all the time.”

“I never appreciated what you did for me.” He dug deeper into the knot, his fingers firm and sensitive. “That ends now.”

How did he know exactly where the sorest parts of her feet and ankles were? She found herself sliding down until she was almost lying on the sofa, all liquid and melty.

“I like the sound of that,” she said. “It’s nice to be appreciated.”

“Why did you never say anything?”

“Did you not just hear me? You not noticing I was doing anything meant I was doing it right.”

“You are my mate .” He grumbled beneath his breath. “That means that from now on if you catch me doing something stupid like not honoring everything you do for me, you tell me.”

“Is that an order, sir?”

“Miss Flores. Yes, it is.” He leaned towards her, trapping her legs and pinning her against the arm of the sofa. “And when you tell me, I’ll make sure to appreciate you properly. The way you deserve. The way you have deserved since the moment you walked into my life.”

It was so hard to move in the face of all his him -ness, but she managed it. Maya straightened, slowly, pushing herself upright until she was staring slightly downwards into Corin’s face. “You walked into my life. I’d already been running that office for years.”

“And I’m a fool for not seeing it.”

“A fool who’s in a much better mood than he was when the evening started.”

“Of course I am. I’m with the most important woman in the world.” He buried his face in her shoulder and breathed deeply.

Maya eyed him thoughtfully. “Another technique to add to my toolbox,” she mused, deliberately teasing.

“Excuse me?”

“Managing upwards. One of those skills you never noticed I had.”

His eyes were dark with lust, the pupils almost completely blotting out the midnight blue of his irises. There was something animal and wild about it, even as his eyebrow curved sardonically upwards and he said in a voice rich as honey, “You’d better not consider yourself to be managing upwards now. You’re my equal in all things.”

“Managing sideways, then.”

“Hmm.” He tipped his head on one side, and then rolled over, pulling her on top of him. “And maybe a little managing down?”

Her cheeks heated up at the implications. “I’ll see what I can fit in my calendar.”

They made it up to her bedroom. Barely. And then slowed down, luxuriating in the knowledge that they had the whole night ahead of them.

Maya was dozing off when, somewhere forgotten in the bedsheets, a phone chimed.

Corin’s jaw clenched. “Damn—”

“That’s your clan ringtone. Answer it.” Maya sat up, sweeping her legs beneath her. Corin gave her a yearning look.

“There is nothing I want less than to answer that phone.”

“How about the Dans knocking on the door, having toppled every piece of essential infrastructure from here to the West Coast?”

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Swung his feet off the bed and stood up with a curse.

Maya lay back, burying herself in the cushions. So this is what happiness feels like , she thought. And not only happiness. Anticipation. Not the creeping dread of not knowing what was around the corner, but a quiet excitement about what the next day would bring. And the day after that, and the day after that. Like waking on Christmas morning every morning.

With Corin beside her.

A little thrill of excitement went through her. She rolled over to watch him, and the sight of him, completely naked, hair a mess, frowning at the glowing screen of his phone, was unreasonably funny. She stuffed one hand over her mouth and didn’t quite manage to stifle a giggle.

“Yes?” He stared at her, one eyebrow raised.

“Can I assist you at all, Mr. Blackburn?”

His raised-eyebrow look turned into a smolder. “I believe it is my turn to help you, Miss Flores. That was the firm I’ve tasked with locating Tomás’s biological father.” He put down his phone. “It’s done.”

“You couldn’t have said that in a way that made you sound less like you just ordered a hit on him?” Maya winced, digging herself more deeply into the nest of pillows on her bed.

“You’re assuming I didn’t order a hit on him.” He raised a hand as she sputtered. “That was a joke.”

“I don’t know if I’m in the mood for jokes! They found him already?”

“Not yet. But they have a strong lead. Some video footage from the bar where you met him.”

“Do you recognize him?”

“I didn’t look at the footage.”

“But…” She curled in on herself. “You probably know who he is. You must know all the dragon shifters in the country, let alone the ones who visit your city. What if he’s one of your enemies?”

“Because all other dragon shifters are my enemies?”

“Yes!”

“I think Apollo is beginning to tolerate me,” he mused. “No. I haven’t looked. Better the professionals discover his identity, rather than me looking at a blurry picture of some strange shifter and getting the wrong idea.”

“But what if—” She bit her lip. “You chose me. But what if finding Tomás’s father makes things harder for you? What if…”

He took her face in his hands and kissed her. “Maya. Everything is going to be okay.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because I refuse to let it be otherwise.” Grim humor sparkled in his eyes. “I am the head of the Blackburn clan. Dragons around the world fear my power. Tomás’s father could be my worst enemy, and it wouldn’t matter. Not if we are together.”

She put her hands over his and sighed. “All right. But do you have the footage?”

He brought it up on his phone. They stared at it. Zoomed in. Flicked between the various shots the investigators had sent through.

Zoomed in again.

“You know in cop shows where they enhance the crummy images?” Maya said at last.

“I am assured it doesn’t work that way in real life.”

She sighed. “Well, if your team can find him based on that, they’ve earned their fees. Blond hair, gray suit…”

“Do you remember anything else about him?”

“He wore glasses? Wire-rimmed ones, not chunky. And I thought maybe the blond was a dye job. Should I be telling this to the detectives?”

“Let them earn their fee themselves.”

Maya still looked troubled. He didn’t blame her. She already felt like her failure to track the man down was something to be ashamed of. But if the man had disappeared so completely … maybe there was more to it.

He pushed aside his own doubts. “The investigation may take several days, but it’s under control. Meanwhile…” He pressed his lips together. “My grandfather has been assuring me he has the vault investigation thoroughly under control. After this report, I have my doubts. But there is something I need to discuss with him in person.”

Maya’s eyebrows rose. “You’re going to go up to your grandfather, in person, and tell him you think he’s handling things wrong?”

“You think that would be a bad idea?”

“He was my boss for years before you took over the reins, Corin. Who do you think taught me that Blackburn men are all terrifying assholes?”

Corin grimaced, considering. “He can be strict. Don’t worry. I’m not planning to go in and tell him how to bury treasure. There’s something else I need to discuss with him.”

His eyes softened; loving, warm, and the slightest hint that he was bracing himself. “I intend to ask him whether he knows any way to control or dampen my duskfire so I can properly claim you as my mate. I have wasted enough time cowering behind my own pride. If there’s anything I can do—”

Anguish slashed across his features.

“Including admit your lack of knowledge to the man who trusted you to take over the family?” she asked gently.

“Don’t feel sorry for me,” he forced out. “If I had been less prideful, less concerned about my position—”

“I am the Blackburn clan leader’s mate,” she said, holding his hands to her face and not letting him turn away. “I’ll feel however I damn well please.”

“My queen.” He kissed her.

And for a while, they distracted each other from their scheming.