Page 7 of Dragon His Heels
Chapter 3
Saturday night and Gabe was home. With two females, yeah, but one was his kid. And the other was Talia Tatsuya. And sure, she was hot; okay, she was smokin’ with all that thick dark hair and those fiery green eyes, breasts that looked like they were the perfect handful each, those narrow hips.
Fuck, he was giving himself a hard-on. Which was weird, because he wasn’t attracted to his PR manager. Hell, half the time he didn’t even like her. She was always the voice of reason, a Goody-Two-Shoes, and he didn’t want to be good. He wanted to do whatever the hell he wanted, the rest of the colony be damned.
Or dowhoeverthe hell he wanted. Which, apparently, was against the rules, according to Talia. Who died and made her reeve, anyway? As a matter of fact, no one did.
They were parked on the brown suede couch in the entertainment room, watching the third animated movie of the day, Gabe on one side with Ruby in the middle and Talia seated next to her, her long legs stretched out, her bare feet crossed at the ankles and resting on the coffee table. His were doing the same. If he leaned his foot to the right, he’d brush hers. Weird that he kind of wanted to. Mostly just to harass her.
Ruby sat cross-legged, her elbows on her knees, leaning forward, watching the characters inTangleddash around on the screen. It was kind of cute how enthralled she was, especially when she burst out giggling like she’d done countless times already tonight.
“You want more pizza?” he asked the kid. There were three slices remaining in the box next to his left leg. Pepperoni because that’s what Ruby liked. Personally, he liked his piled with everything under the sun and then some. There was this place down in Louisiana that served a Sweep the Kitchen pizza. Eleven different toppings—so good. So much better than plain old pepperoni.
“No thanks,” the little girl said, the epitome of politeness. Talia probably taught her that already. No way she figured that out while living with the Rojo dragons.
He wanted to ask about her life, what she’d been through, maybe even what her mom was like, but Talia had warned him not to. “Give her time,” she said. “Kids process things differently than adults.” No idea how she knew that, but Talia hadn’t failed him yet.
He drained his beer and stared at the empty bottle. What the hell was he doing? Forget Ruby,heneeded to process. This was a lot to take in, even if he saw the silver lining of a guaranteed heir without actually having to take a mate.
He needed space. He needed to go out, to cut loose.
He wanted to fly.
“I’ll be back,” he said, placing his empty bottle on the coffee table and standing, sliding his feet into his flip-flops. Before Talia could open her mouth to criticize him or tell him he couldn’t go, he added, “I just need to spread my wings for a minute.”
As he strode toward the door, he heard Ruby say, “Is he going to turn into a dragon?”
“I think so,” Talia responded.
“Cool. Can I watch?”
He cringed. Flying was the one thing he did solo. Unless they were going into battle, which hadn’t actually happened in his lifetime, he preferred to keep this aspect of his life to himself.
Well, to be honest, he kept practically everything to himself. Except his dick, but that guy was clearly not connected to his heart, which was under lock and key.
Not surprising, Ruby was fascinated by the shift. It took only one parent to pass down the ability to turn into the majestic, scaly creatures, so his daughter was definitely a dragon, but she probably hadn’t had her first shift yet. It likely wouldn’t happen for a few more years, until adolescence. As if kids that age didn’t have enough going on with all those crazy hormones surging through their bodies, they also had to make sure they were in an appropriate place when the urge to change forms overcame them for the first time.
Gabe remembered being a young kid, watching the older dragons shift. He’d been endlessly fascinated, hiding in the shadows on the roof of a storage shed—how the hell he’d managed to get up there time and time again without falling and breaking his neck was a mystery—watching warrior training, which involved shifting into dragon form and basically beating the shit out of each other until somebody cried mercy.
The fighting wasn’t what enthralled him; it was the way they beat their wings furiously for a few minutes and then spread them wide, gliding along with the wind, looking more free than anything else he’d ever experienced. He couldn’t wait to feel that free.
Funny how now that he was the head of all those dragons, he had never felt more confined in his life.
“How about if I take you?” Talia said. “We’ll let Gabe, er, I mean, your dad, do his thing, and I’ll take you out back and shift for you. How’s that sound?”
Was Talia doing this because she knew how he felt? He’d never told her about his desire to shift and fly alone. But then again, he’d not told her a lot of things that she always managed to figure out. The woman was too damn intuitive sometimes.
Ruby clapped her hands and scrambled off the couch, so he headed through the foyer toward the kitchen, snagging a bottle of water and downing it on his way out the back door. Kicking off his flip-flops, he jumped from the porch to the grass and hit the ground running.
Three strides in, the magic took over. It shimmered down his back, tracing his spine, almost sexual as it tickled his skin. His face elongated, forming a snout covered with silver scales, while his eyes widened and narrowed, the irises turning into little more than silver slits. Horns sprouted from his head, curling toward his back, which was bubbling and twisting as his body grew, getting larger, longer, more serpentine. Wings emerged from his shoulder blades, growing and stretching until they were ten feet wide, fully extended.
He was still running as his wings flapped, lifting him from the ground, propelling him into the sky before he was even fully formed. He let out a breath, shooting fire at nothing at all, and headed for the clouds, bursting through them at top speed, water droplets clinging to his leathery skin until he soared higher and the wind whisked it all away.
This was his freedom. Up here, high above the clouds, doing nothing but flying in circles and arcs, he could leave his worries behind, if only for brief moments in time.Up here, he could dream uninterrupted. Imagine his life if things were…different. If his mother and father hadn’t abandoned him. If he’d grown up like a normal dragon, in a household with an actual parent—or even two. Where sitting down to dinner together was routine. A household where he could look at the patriarch and think,This is what I want to be when I grow up.
Those were all pipe dreams, of course. He was an adult now, so no one was going to summon him to dinner and there wasn’t anyone to emulate.
What the hell had the Elders been thinking, to choose him as reeve? Five years in and he still wasn’t confident in his ability to run a dragon colony. If not for Talia, he’d have crashed and burned a long time ago. Quite possibly literally, given his propensity to attempt to win some sort of trophy for hard partying.
