Chapter 17

17

My head feels like I just spent a week binge drinking on a yacht in the Mediterranean with a millionaire playboy. Ask me how I know what that feels like.

No, I didn’t sleep with him; I was there because we hit it off as friends and he was interested in my other friend, who I invited along because she would have been pissed if I didn’t give her the opportunity to get with a rich Italian. They were the ones fucking all over the yacht. It was beautiful watching their lust bloom into genuine affection and then love. They’re getting married next summer. I’m going to be the man of honor.

I slowly creak an eye open, thankful for the dim light. I’m in a bed, so that’s a nice turn of events from the dungeon. The bedroom has at least seven tables sitting in various places around the room. A couple of them have miniature tables on top of them. It’s kind of cute. The lamp on the corner table offers a dim light, but the light coming in around the curtains is almost as bright. On the wall is a huge poster of Darcy; it looks like he was caught on camera in a candid moment, and it’s sexy as fuck seeing his laughter immortalized in a poster.

Next to me, Darcy’s sleeping face peeks out from a cocoon of blankets that we’re not sharing. I have my own blanket wrapped around me, and I love this for us—not all couples need to share blankets. Some of us like to burrito, and sharing precludes being able to do that. Not that we’re a couple. I’m just saying that since we’re sharing a bed for the first time, it’s nice to set the right precedent just in case a hookup turns into an extended sleepover.

Since he’s still asleep and I really need to pee, I slowly roll away from him toward the wall, where there’s another table on my side of the bed and a cuck-chair upon which rests a set of crutches. I carefully ease into a sitting position and take stock of my situation.

Missing foot: check.

Missing implant: also check.

I was hoping that part was a nightmare.

Tears well up again, and I don’t bother to hold them back as I reach for the crutches. On the plus side, I guess the skin has healed, and I’m not in any pain from the destruction of my walking apparatus. Not sure how that happened, but I’m guessing magic.

I use a crutch to help me get up, and then I crutch hop my way to the door that looks like it probably leads to either a closet or a bathroom. I open it, and it’s the bathroom, so I hop inside, hitting the light before shutting the door. I take care of the bladder situation first, and then stare at a disgustingly dirty face in the mirror as I wash my hands. I guess that’s what sleeping in a dungeon will do to a person.

I know it’s superfluous to wash my hands and then have a shower, but I’m a grubby mess from head to toe and it makes me feel better.

“I wonder how he got me out.”

I never doubted that he would come for me. He made a very deliberate blood bond between us specifically so he could get to me—there’s no way he wasn’t coming for me. I just wish I’d been conscious for it, but I guess my injury was bad enough that I passed out, probably from blood loss or something like that. Shock maybe. A lot of things can go wrong when someone rips a metal rod out of what’s left of your tibia.

I’m not generally a violent person, but I really hope Darcy murdered whoever did this to me, because fuck that guy.

I carefully get into the shower before turning the water on. It’s cold as fuck for a minute, but eventually it warms up, and I let the heat of it wash over me. The shampoo smells like orange blossoms, and that helps soothe some of my frayed edges. I really fucking hate the loss of my limb, but as long as I can get home, I’ve got my old socket prosthetic in a storage locker in the basement that I can pull out. It’s not going to fit exactly right, and I’ll have to get used to it again, and I’ll need to make an appointment with my prosthetist…

A sharp cry of frustration erupts out of me at all the shit I have to get done before school starts in a couple weeks, and even if I can get in to my prosthetist immediately, it’s still going to take months to get the refit, and maybe they won’t even do a second implant because the bone might be too fragile after having the first one ripped out—

The door slams open and the curtain rips open, revealing Darcy’s sleep-lined face, wide-eyed and worried. He immediately scowls upon seeing me standing there with a hand braced on the tile. “I thought you fell,” he grouses and shoves the bikini briefs he’s wearing to the floor.

“I will never not love the sight of your cock,” I say, completely unwilling to move even an inch in the shower, because slipping and falling is an actual concern when you only have one leg and there isn’t a no slip pad on the floor of the shower. “But there’s no room for you in here.”

Darcy snorts and steps in behind me, pulling the curtain shut before his hands find my hips. “You’re on one leg and there isn’t a bar in this shower to hold onto. I’m not letting you stand in here on one leg all by yourself.”

His words hit me hard, and my tears start up again. I take a deep breath and let myself feel the loss. I give myself to the grief again, sobbing quietly and letting the water wash them down the drain. Darcy’s hold on me changes from a grip on my hips to a hug from behind, and that helps. The company helps.

“I’m sorry they took your leg. I didn’t realize what they’d done until after you’d escaped.” His voice rumbles through me and soothes a part of my grief, but mostly the words startle me.

I swallow to clear my throat and turn to look at him as best as I can. “What do you mean after I escaped?” I ask. “How did I escape?”

He raises his brows with a frown on his lovely face, gingerly helping me to turn to face him. “Do you remember how you escaped the dungeon?”

I give it some thought, but end up shaking my head. “I assumed you’d rescued me while I was passed out from the shock of losing my limb.”

The way Darcy smiles at me, like he’s proud of me, empowers the part of me that had to learn to love myself. “You rescued yourself. You’re a shifter. You turned into a Hell dragon and dug your way up from the dungeon to the courtyard. You killed Adam—the motherfucker that abducted us—and then we went dancing in the volcanic spires. You passed out after eating the fires of your home turf and shifted back to your human form. That’s when I saw that they’d cut off your leg. By then the spires had already healed it, so I couldn’t do anything about it.”

I shifted into a Hell dragon. That’s… incredible. “I wonder why I don’t remember that?”

Darcy rumbles thoughtfully. “You don’t have much Hell dragon in you. The ancestor of yours that was one bred into your line eleven generations ago. He’s why y’all only throw boys. Hell dragons evolved to only reproduce boys because the females were always infertile. It’s been a million years of evolutionary selection that made it so that Hell dragons only breed males—well, mostly. There’s always that possible one-off when a daughter is born, but that only happens once in a thousand years anymore.”

Surprised that he could possibly know any of that, I ask, “How do you know?”

Darcy’s expression falls flat as he deadpans. “I’ve got blood magic running through these veins, Peach. As soon as I tasted yours, I knew what you were. I can smell power running through the vein.”

“Oh. Who knew a little bit of blood magic was enough to tell you my genetic history?”

He huffs a soft laugh. “Very few people can do it, and I ain’t letting a single one of the others near you.”

“Thank you for protecting me, but why don't I remember?”

Darcy rubs his hand up and down my wet belly and presses a kiss to my sternum. “The human brain is a complex system, and sometimes it chooses to forget the things it doesn’t think it can process, but more than likely it’s because humans can’t see magic.”

“I can see your array,” I remind him.

“Sure, but you can’t talk to the gargoyles, which is the standard for inclusion in the intergalactic community, which means that at least some of the human blindness to magic is still active for you. The translation spell is glitchy with humans. Sometimes it translates everything for you, sometimes it only translates some languages for you. What I’m wondering is how you shifted at all if you can’t remember doing so. That’s the strangest part of this whole thing.”

While I think about that, I reach for the body wash, pouring some onto a washcloth. Darcy takes it from me, and I balance myself on the shower rod and the tiles as he scrubs the washcloth over my body, front to back. It’s nice being pampered like this, and gives me a moment to dive deep in my own head.

What happened when I shifted? I remember waking up in the dungeon and the pool of magma. I remember how much pain I was in. It was infuriating that they stole my implant, that they ripped it out of me. I was thinking about…

“I was furious that they stole my implant. Ripped it right out of me. I couldn’t believe they would take my leg like that. Who fucking does that to a person? I asked them to leave it alone, and they just ripped it right out of me. I was so angry. I still am; I’m furious with them for doing that to me.”

“Implant?” he asks.

Oops. I never did tell him about my situation.

“I lost my leg when I was a baby. I had an osseointegrated prosthetic, which just means that they put the attachment for the prosthetic limb into my bone. It’s sort of like having dental implants.”

“That’s no less alarming than them cutting off your leg,” he growls, and I agree; no matter that it wasn’t made of flesh and bone, they took my foot and it’s just as bad as if they had cut off my other foot. “What happened next?”

“I wanted to get out, but I knew you were coming for me so I wasn’t worried about that, but the anger… I don’t remember anything after that.”

“The big emotion probably set you off. You shifted because you were furious. In danger and angry. Makes sense. You were beautiful as a dragon, Peach. The prettiest one I’ve ever seen.”

I smile at the compliment. “Next time take a picture so I can see myself.”

“If there is a next time, I will,” he promises, moving under my arms to wash the back of my body.

We fall silent for a time as I experience the intense pleasure of having someone else wash me. My lovers don’t usually stick around long enough to get an invite to shower with me, and Stalker Steve never wanted to be reminded of my short leg, so he didn’t join me.

Darcy cleans me thoroughly, washing every inch of skin from my neck to my toes, and all the cracks and crevices between and leaves me with an unsatisfied erection. I’m not even mad, because he's just as hard as I am when he slips around to my front again. He’s going to stick it in me when we’re done here, I just know it. Well, I should ask.

Did I ever think I was a big dick kind of guy before meeting him? No. I did not. I liked seeing them, but having them in me was a pipe dream, and I was fine with the ones I’d had. After the dicking down he gave me, I’m pretty sure that I’ll be missing Darcy’s for the rest of all time.

“Please fuck me,” I beg softly, bending a little to press my forehead to his.

Darcy reaches out to run his fingers over my cock. “Peach, I’m planning on fucking you for days.”

“Oh, good.” I was hoping this would turn into an extended sleepover.

He backs away and opens the curtain for me, holding my hand in a tight grip. “Step out and get yourself dried off while I wash up. I’ll meet you on the bed, and you better have three fingers in that ass when I get there.”

Shiver. Why is bossy Darcy the sexiest version? Well, I guess I also like the Darcy that threatens to kill my stalkers. Maybe all the versions of Darcy are sexy. He is wet dream material.

I let him help me out onto the bath mat, dry myself off, and check the drawers for lube. (I find it in the top drawer of the bathroom. In the second drawer are the toothbrushes and toothpaste, which is a configuration with priorities, if you know what I mean.)

After brushing my teeth, I crutch-hop to the bed. Head down, ass up, I work myself open with no small amount of glee.

I’ve barely fit my third finger into me when he struts out of the bathroom flanked by a billow of steam, hard cock raring to go.

Damn, he’s sexy.