Page 6 of Her Dragons

“Oh,” I said.“I never asked what you guys like in music.People think classical music like what I was playing is prehistoric, and they don’t pay any attention to jazz, which is what I play most.”

“That was Beethoven, wasn’t it?”

His question made me smile a little more broadly.“Yes, it was.You recognized it?”

“Well, from being around Uncle Robert I picked up a couple of things.Not that I can play like you, or even like him.But you get exposed to stuff.”

“Right,” I said.

“You mind if I join you?” Jake asked.

My heart felt as if it had suddenly tripped over a bump in a rug or a crack in the sidewalk at that.He’d just asked to sit that achingly gorgeous, almost nude body down on the stool besideme, as if it were nothing.Of course, to him, being a Drake, it was nothing.Drake males had no shame about their bodies, and no reason for it.Nature had gifted them not only with a second, reptilian body, but with exquisite human forms.

“No, I don’t mind,” I said, and I slid over to one side of the stool to make room for him.Jake sat down next to me, putting that exquisiteness within less than an arm’s length from me.My pulse quickened a bit.

“You really are good,” said Jake.

“Thank you,” I replied, blushing a bit.I looked away from his handsomeness, but only for a second.Jake’s face was far too handsome not to look at.“When I left Mark’s penthouse, I didn’t know when I’d have another chance to sit down at a keyboard.I had a portable electric piano that I took with me when I moved in there.Mark didn’t have a piano.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Jake, cocking an eyebrow and smiling crookedly.“He’s not someone I’d think of as a cultured guy.”

Sighing, I said, “No, me neither.But he let me bring my little electric piano with me when I moved in with him.When I left — when I snuck out while he was drunk — I had to travel light because I wasn’t even sure where I was going.Leaving Mark, I didn’t shed a tear.But my piano was the most precious thing that I had.I cried over that.Mark would have no use for it, but there were times when that piano was like the only friend I had.”

Sorrow crept into my voice.I lowered my head and stared at the piano keys in front of me.Reflexively, Jake reached over and touched me on my shoulder.It was the kind of thing you’d naturally do to comfort someone who was sad and hurting.When he did it, at first, it felt so good, so warm, especially because Jake was so beautiful.But then I was seized with the thought, He’s touching me!Because of Mark, I’d learned toassociate touch not with warmth and gentleness, but with pain and being controlled.Gasping, I whipped my face around to shoot Jake a look of sudden alarm.

Jake instantly realized what must be happening, and quickly pulled his hand away.His face reddened slightly.He was quietly mortified at himself.“Lily…oh, I’m sorry.I wasn’t thinking.”

Sharing his mortified feeling, frustrated that I would feel shock instead of gentleness at his touch, I said, “It’s all right.It’s not your fault.You’re not him.”

“No, but I should have known better,” said Jake.

“You’re the kind of guy who does know better,” I said.“You’d never do the things he did.You’ve never hurt a girl in your life, have you?”

“I don’t think I have,” Jake replied.

Creasing my lips a bit, I said, “I can tell.You’ve only ever been good to women.You’re the way that a man ought to be.Not like Mark.Do you know what he used to tell me?”

“What?”

Sadly remembering, I said, “When I moved my little piano into his place, he said it didn’t go with his decor, but he’d put up with it.Like he was the Drake version of Nate Berkus or something.Right then, I should have known what I was in for.The little criticisms and digs started as soon as I was in the door.Mark would tell me that he was the only audience I’d ever need from then on.I didn’t have to play for anyone else but him, and I’d never want for anything again as long as I had him.He had this way of making me feel good when what he was really doing was owning me.And sometimes, he’d have people over and ask me to play something for him and his guests.I always felt like he was putting me up on display, like his own personal museum piece.It made me uncomfortable sometimes, but I did it.”

“He used you to entertain his friends, huh?”

Frowning, I said, “Yes, there were these guys who would come over sometimes.They were other Drakes.There was something about them that made me nervous.You know how, sometimes, some people will just get your hackles up and give you a creepy kind of tingle?These guys were like that.I had this feeling that there was something about them that was trouble.It was like they didn’t belong in a penthouse, or any other place where there was cultured society, you know?Like…like…”And I stopped myself, realizing what I was implying.“Jake, I’m sorry.I forgot about…”

“What — Drake gangs, like the one Mark and Alex were in?You can say it.Listen, Alex was never a crook and never got in trouble.”He paused and considered.“Well, almost never.But he was never a crook.You thought there was something ‘off’ about the guys that Mark hung with, though…?”

“Definitely.Something about them wasn’t right.They never talked about anything shady when I was around, or when they knew I was there.But there were these hushed conversations, and times when they’d shut up when they saw me.I always tried to dismiss it, because I didn’t know anything about that part of Mark’s past, and as far as I was concerned Mark was this upstanding, go-getting young executive on his way up.Why would he be associated with shady characters?But I always wondered about him being friends with people like that.Once I asked him about them, who they were.”I shut my eyes, my brow creasing and my jaw clenching.“That was one of the first times…”

When I couldn’t go on with that thought, Jake finished for me.“One of the first times he turned on you?”

I nodded yes and shut my eyes tighter, squeezing thin tears from them.

My voice cracking, I said, “That first time, I got the back of his dragon hand and a slap from his tail, it was so shocking.He knocked me across the room.And he looked at me, sprawled out and shocked on the floor, and he went back to human and looked like a scared little boy.He came to me and picked me up and held me.He told me he didn’t mean it and said how sorry he was.And I forgave him.The man who’d taken me in, acted like he cared for me, wanted to give me a decent life — it must have been an accident.Mark couldn’t really be like that, or so I told myself.It would never happen again.”I opened my teary eyes again.“But it did.It kept happening.And I had to face the fact that it wouldn’t stop.”

Jake watched me wipe my tears away.I could sense that he wanted to wipe them for me, but he was respecting my boundaries.“But you had the strength to get yourself out of there, finally.”

Nodding, I said, “It was either get out or…,” and I shuddered to think it, “…something worse would happen sooner or later.Mark is a Drake, and sooner or later he’d forget his strength, and I’d get something worse than a beating and a whipping.Sooner or later, it was coming, I knew.When he got so drunk that he couldn’t think and he passed out, that was my chance.I’d been preparing for some time when he couldn’t stop me, and there it was.I had everything I could carry all packed up.I left some of the clothes he’d bought me.And I left my little piano.And I just got myself out of there.”

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