Page 12 of Dragon His Heels
Chapter 5
One of the perks to being reeve was employing a personal chef, so he didn’t have to cook if he didn’t want to. But tonight, he told Noah to go do his own thing. Gabe would handle making dinner. Anything to occupy his mind—and his hands.
His dragon kept trying to take control of those hands, to lead them over to Talia. To hug her, pull her flush against his body. To trail them down her back to her rounded ass, to squeeze, massage her there. His dragon wanted his fingers to tease at the crack of her ass, to slide lower, into her heat, intoher.
He growled.
“What?” she asked from where she stood at the counter, chopping vegetables to add to a salad. A salad he hadn’t wanted, but apparently part of being a parent was teaching your kid how to eat healthy. And even dragons needed roughage.
“Steak,” he said to Ruby, ignoring Talia’s question. The little girl stood on a chair next to him, watching as he sprinkled a concoction of spices over three thick-cut T-bones. “Way better than hot dogs. Trust me.”
He wrapped his arm around her waist and lifted her from the chair, depositing her on her feet on the tile floor, then grabbed the cookie sheet on which the steaks rested. “Come on, I’ll show you how a real dragon cooks meat.”
He heard Talia’s snort and it made him chuckle. Despite his damned annoying dragon, and despite the fact he never, ever in approximately a million years would have imagined himself in this position, he was actually having a good time. Talia, he learned, enjoyed cooking, too, and was happy to be his sous chef. She’d sliced and seasoned potatoes and he’d taken them outside and breathed fire on them, creating homemade potato chips, which Ruby happily chomped on while Talia peeled and diced sweet potatoes and dropped them into boiling water, then started on the salad. As everything else was pretty much ready to go, it was time to prepare the steaks.
“Dragons eat their meat seared,” he explained to his little protégé, as she obligingly trotted along next to him, appearing to hang on his every word.
It was daunting yet kind of cool to be responsible for the future of such a young, impressionable mind. When those kids had invited Ruby to play in the sand, he’d stared at each one in turn, trying to analyze them, to determine if they were good or bad influences on his daughter. Two days into this fatherhood gig and he was doing okay.
Wasn’t he?
He’d like to ask Talia, because she’d probably already read a dozen books on the subject, likely knew exactly what to do with a five-year-old girl. But he couldn’t. It was bad enough that she stood in the same room and he had to speak to her in minimal sentences. But to ask for advice, to pull her more deeply into this new experience; it couldn’t happen.
Even though that was exactly why he’d demanded she move into his house. But that was before. Before his dragon had somehow inadvertently connected with her dragon.
He didn’t want a mate. And that fated mate bullshit? Yeah, it was real, but it didn’t exist in this colony. Some fucked up curse that happened thirty years ago or so had ensured it.
Why? his dragon asked.
“Why what?” he responded. Ruby furrowed her brows.
Why is the colony cursed?
Damn good question. Wait, no, it wasn’t. He didn’t care.
Yes, you do.
“Shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Ruby said.
“Sorry, kid. Talking to my dragon. He’s kind of an asshole sometimes.”
The dragon snorted, which reminded him of Talia. Damn it.
“You aren’t supposed to use that word around kids,” Ruby announced.
He gritted his teeth. “Talia tell you that?”
She shook her head, pigtails swinging back and forth. “My nanny did.”
He glanced down at the beacon of innocence at his side. “You had a nanny?” Guess things weren’t all that bad in the Rojo colony.
Nodding, she said, “Her name was Kimberly. Whenever the adult dragons wanted to party, they took us to Kimberly and she kept all the kids until they returned.”
Party. Code, undoubtedly, for getting high. That colony was bad news. A couple years before he’d become reeve, Gabe took a trip down to New Orleans for Mardi Gras and had run into a group of Rojo dragons. He’d gotten into a fight with one of the guys, a punk who was probably his same age. He’d soundly beaten the guy, even without the assistance of his fellow dragons who had been on the trip with him. It hadn’t helped that Gabe had done it in front of the guy’s brethren either. In truth, Gabe and his buddies had been outnumbered, but that dragon’s blood drug was some fucked up shit, and the Rojos with the guy had been too stoned to be of any use.
“But then Kimberly started going out with the adults, and we had to take care of ourselves,” Ruby added.
