9. Maya

9

Maya

She had thrown herself off a cliff, not knowing if there was water or razor rocks waiting at the bottom. All those pieces of a puzzle she’d told herself weren’t part of anything, because the truth scared her too much.

“You are here,” he repeated. “The only treasure I have any interest in protecting. Because you are my mate.”

The world stopped spinning. It should have been the perfect moment. The realization of the suspicion that had built the moment she saw his reaction to the idea that another dragon might have sent treasure to her. So many things that suddenly made sense.

So many things that suddenly didn’t.

And he’d admitted it, not in the unthinking heat of passion, but in the calm, dry voice she most associated with the man she’d longed for since the moment she first saw him.

It was at the retirement party for her first boss at Blackburn Enterprises. Corin’s grandfather. The company had put on a gala dinner to farewell the old guard and welcome the new. And she had met his replacement.

Time had stopped then, too. The room had fallen away. There was only him. And her, more aware of her body than she’d ever been before. Of her pulse quickening. Her breaths coming deeper. Her skin aglow with longing for a touch she’d never stopped wanting in all the years since.

It hadn’t been a perfect moment then, either. He’d looked at her for one timeless moment—and turned away, a muscle twitching in his jaw.

This time, he didn’t look away. The shadow-wings reappeared at his shoulders, outlining him in pure night.

“Fate has bound us together. A bond neither of us had any say in.”

Her mouth was dry. “We seem to have resisted it well enough so far.”

“We were both able to resist it for so long while we were in regular close proximity, but after being apart for so long, returning to one another’s presence was like a rubber band snapping tight. Yesterday—it never should have happened. I wanted—” His face twisted. “That doesn’t matter anymore.”

“It never should have happened?” Her voice tightened. “Nothing happened! You didn’t even kiss me!”

“I wanted to.” He tore his eyes from hers, covering his face with one hand. His shoulders heaved with heavy breaths. “And so much more.”

Her own breathing was ragged. At last they were finally getting it all out in the open.

“Why did you come here if you know that’s what might happen? If you never wanted me—” She swallowed. She couldn’t say it.

“To protect the most precious treasure in the world.”

“Me,” she whispered.

Slowly, like night escaping the first rays of sunlight, Corin’s shadowy wings disappeared. He let out a ragged breath. “So now you know.”

“And you’ve known this entire time.” Her thoughts whirled. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“To keep you safe.”

“To keep me safe? ” Her head jerked back. “And do you think you achieved that?”

He let out a bitter bark of laughter. “No. I think you kept yourself safe. I think you survived your world turning upside down, you built a life here, and all I have done is cause you more problems.” His eyes were the deep dark of the ocean, simmering with strange lights and shadows. “If I had been the clan leader I was meant to be, no one would have dared steal from me, and you never would have been drawn back into my life. You would have been happy here. Safe.”

“Safe, maybe,” she acknowledged.

She would have never seen him again.

Exactly as she’d intended. As they both had intended. Except she hadn’t known all the facts when she made that decision.

He had.

A hollow formed in her stomach. All those dreams. All the longing, the desire, the need…

His eyes found hers, and whatever he saw in her expression made his lock down.

“What do you want to happen, now?” he asked.

What did she want? Maya stared at him, her ears ringing. Want? Wanting things was—it was irrelevant. She had always done the things she was meant to want—the degree, the nice apartment, the good job—and look where that got her.

She’d done the things she thought a good girl might do to defy expectations—the one-night stand at the bar, that one failed attempt to be free and careless and exciting—and see where that had got her.

The only thing she’d ever really wanted was something she had never let herself consider having.

Him.

“I want—” She swallowed. “I want Tomás to grow up somewhere he’s surrounded by people who understand him. I’ve just got my feet under me here. I’m building a life for us both. A home. I need—I need things to work out here.”

Corin’s gaze became even stonier. “Without me in the way.”

“But—” Maya snapped her lips shut.

Corin’s attention was suddenly all on her. Not that his attention had wandered from her at any point in their conversation, but now it was … different. Intense. Charged.

“Yes?” he asked, his voice calm and polite and the look in his eyes anything but.

“If you’re going to be here anyway, and we—we have to deal with the consequences of being close together after so long apart, maybe it would be better to relieve the tension deliberately.”

Corin’s eyes were pure fire. “You think that would be an efficient course of action, Miss Flores?”

“I do.” She licked her lips. The air seemed to hum all around her, alive with potential. “You’re right. I could deal with … this … when we saw each other every day, and I could manage while we were apart, but ever since we saw each other again? It’s making things … difficult.”

“Difficult.” His voice gave nothing away, but his eyes told her everything. “I admit I have been experiencing the same … problem.”

She couldn’t breathe. Was she really suggesting this?

“The only problem is, I don’t see how we can make it work. I don’t have time for seducing anyone. I’m meant to be working right now. My mornings and evenings I’m busy with Tomás. Weekends—” Oh god. She was talking herself around. She really could make this work with her schedule, if she tried. “I can organize a playdate for Tomás. Or—”

“Your nights are free, I assume.”

She stared at him, open-mouthed. His voice had been like honey and wine. How did he make it do that?

“Yes,” she said simply. “My nights are free.” If you don’t include my no-breaks marathon of dreams involving you , she added silently.

“And you appear to be free right now.”

“Oh. Um, well. Technically, I should be at work, but…” Oh god oh god oh god. “…Potentially?”

He stalked closer to her. His movements were still restrained, but that was nothing unusual. He always gave the impression of strength coiled tight behind his angular shoulders and veiled eyes, but now she was seeing a glimpse of what he was hiding.

And she wanted more.

“If I were free now,” she said, licking her lips, “what might you have in mind?”

His eyes fixated on her lips. They parted as though the pressure of his attention was enough to push them apart, the way his finger might, or the hot urgency of his own mouth.

Then his gaze moved, roving slowly down her body. For a moment, that dark fire flickered in his eyes; but when he lifted them to meet hers, they were the same pure sea glass green she’d seen so often in her dreams.

“A great many things,” he said, his voice rumbling through her.

His words barely registered. She couldn’t see past the desire blazing in his eyes, and the possessive way his gaze had raked over her, as though he were cataloguing every inch of her bare skin. She couldn’t think past how much she wanted to run her tongue along the muscles in his neck and tear open his collar to get at more of him.

He still hadn’t explained why he thought giving in to their feelings now would hurt her less than everything else she’d been through since he met her, but the thought didn’t even manage to turn into a question before he kissed her.

He tasted like coffee and the smooth burn of expensive whisky. She knew exactly what sort. A distillery so boutique they had no web presence; the Blackburns purchased their whole output. She’d tasted it, once, stealing the last sip from a glass her boss had left on his desk at the end of the night. A hot, guilty pleasure.

“Should we—” she began.

“Let’s not waste time,” he whispered against her lips as he pressed her up against the wall. “We have everything we need here.”

There was probably a good reason they shouldn’t fuck up against the wall in her front room, but she couldn’t think of it right now. Corin was hard and hot against her. He was so big that it didn’t matter where she looked or where her hands blindly grabbed to hold on, because it was all him. His chest, broad and firm under the layers of his suit shirt and jacket. The bulge of his biceps and strong forearms around her.

The thick ridge of his erection against her stomach.

Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. Her breath quickened. Desire soared inside her, a symphony, a wave building and building and so ready to crash down.

She pushed his jacket aside and tugged on his belt buckle. Corin swore.

“What?” she demanded. “I told you. I have to get back to work. We’re short on time.”

“Then let me look after you first.”

He kissed her again, devouring her, and slid one hand into her jeans. The shock of his touch made her jump. Then he was delving under the thin fabric of her panties, his big, blunt fingers going exactly where she needed them, caressing her slickness, pressing—

“W-wait,” she stammered. “It’s been … a while…”

It’s not like it shuts up shop if you don’t use it often enough , she berated herself, biting her tongue so she didn’t say it out loud.

Corin stopped moving the moment the words came out of her mouth. “I can stay like this,” he murmured, his fingers sliding oh-so-deliciously up to her clit. “Whatever you need.”

“I want you inside me.” Her body strained towards him, her hips rolling forwards for more of his touch. “But—slowly…”

“We can take it slowly.”

She wanted to take him all. He pushed her against the wall again, his fingers unbearably gentle as she moaned into his neck.

“My Maya,” he murmured, kissing her mouth, her jaw, her neck. He traced circles around her entrance until she was panting for more. “Is this good?”

“ Yes ,” she panted.

He pressed one finger inside her and she gasped into his shoulder. “This?”

“Y-y-y…”

He pushed deeper, curling his finger inside her, and nothing had been like this, not with anyone ever before. All his focus was on her. When her breathing hitched, he stopped, and when she inhaled again, deep and smooth and melting against him in a silent plea for more he pushed another finger inside her, stretching her, exploring her most private place. His fingertips brushed against that sensitive spot inside her again and she half-cried out, her body tightening.

Another finger. She kept waiting for it to hurt, to have to twist her tongue around words again and ask him to stop, wait, let her body catch up because it wasn’t used to this—but it never did. He was relentless and gentle and her body opened to him like a flower to sunlight. As though she could be this person she never had been before. Sexy and sensual and risk-taking and maybe it wasn’t a mistake after all, maybe this was how it was meant to be. Her and Corin. Finding each other after all this time.

“I can’t wait to find out if you taste as good as you feel.” Corin’s palm pressed against her clit from the outside and his fingers thrust into her and oh, god, it was all over, she was gone, lost, tumbling over the edge of an orgasm so intense that for one blinding moment, nothing else existed.

She came to like waking from a dream, hazy and half-drunk, and discovered she’d been biting down on Corin’s jacket shoulder. She let go. Her teeth had left a mark.

“That’s one way to stop yourself from screaming.” Corin tipped her head up and kissed her.

“I…” She stopped. She wasn’t sure what she’d been going to say, but whatever it was, it drifted out of her head with the rest of her thoughts. “That was…”

He moved against her and the ridge of his cock jutted harder against her stomach. A new curl of need stirred inside her. Already? She asked herself, and the answer was right there: Yes. Already. Every time. Whenever. Right now.

She fumbled at his belt again. Corin groaned, leaning into her hand. Offering himself to her. She rubbed him through his pants with her other hand as his stupid belt buckle kept not fucking working, what was wrong with it, this was simple technology , how could she have run Corin’s life for years and now she couldn’t even figure out how to undo his freaking belt ?

She looked up, an apologetic smile warring with a bubble of humor at the situation. “I might need to upskill a bit in this department,” she laughed, and something broke behind Corin’s eyes.