Page 109 of Drawn By Dragonblood
“What held you back?” Elijah broke the stillness.
While at the apartment, I’d promised Dakota that everything would be okay as long as we talked shit out. That we were honest with each other about our feelings. Elijah asked for mine, and him wanting to know more of me settling another piece of my soul into place.
He cared, exactly as Dakota had claimed, perhaps, even loved me as she did.
“Fear,” I answered honestly. “Of trusting but also losing you—or my wife. She’s…drawn to people.” Flashes of faces in her strange file sprang to life in my head, the most prominent being that blond douche and the latest who’d severely snagged her attention, Ashley. As usual, unrest snaked through my guts, but I no longer questioned why it hadn’t with Elijah.
We had been meant to meet him. Fate had brought us together, and I had no choice other than to submit to her will, which would bring us nothing but joy in the future I no longer doubted.
I closed my eyes and rubbed my face against the light dusting of hair on Elijah’s chest.
A low rumbled growl of contentment sounded beneath my ear.
“You’re the first person she’s felt that for who didn’t rouse…darkness in me, I suppose you could call it,” I continued. “Maddening jealousy, a possessive insecurity I don’t usually experience with her. Same with Ashley.”
“My secretary?” Elijah asked, his slow strokes on my skin and hair stilling.
“Yeah. Not sure why that pissed me off. Dakota only likes dick.”
She squeezed my fingers. “Only yours and Elijah’s.”
“They’re the only two you’ve had,” I reminded her.
“The only two I’ll ever want,” she tossed back.
I rubbed my thumb over the back of her hand before lifting our clasped palms to my mouth to brush my lips over her knuckles.
“There’s nothing wrong with finding someone beautiful or experiencing attraction,” Elijah stated quietly. “It’s who you’ve chosen to attach yourself to, who you remain loyal to, that matters in the end.”
“Who you love,” Dakota whispered.
I shifted to sit atop Elijah’s lap rather than melting into him, needing to see my wife’s face. “You have nothing to be ashamed of, baby. No more wallowing in guilt when you feel that draw, when that strange tingle in your head telling you’re somehow connected to these strangers. They don’t matter.”
“Connected?”
Dakota nodded at Elijah’s asking for clarity. “It’s more than simply a sense that I’ve seen them before—or even know them. It’s…deeper than that. Something on almost a primal level. I can’t really explain what it is.” She shrugged, her shoulders sagging.
A second later, her head whipped to the open dungeon door.
Jesus fucking Christ.
“Talking about gifts,” I muttered, recognizing the awareness stiffening her body and wary as fuck since everything had seemed to be going perfect for a change.
“What is it?” Elijah set me off his lap, his instincts rising to the surface, same as mine.
“I...” Dakota toward us, and I recognized the confusion on her face.
“Someone is here,” I stated what she questioned, considering the lair we hid inside that no one else knew about according to Elijah. “A strange one.”
She turned back toward the door. “Yes.”
Elijah hopped off the bed and grabbed his jeans off the floor. “No one can get past my security system.”
“Dakota wouldn’t lie,” I said, sliding off the bed with the intent to follow him, realizing as I did so that there was no residual pain, no lingering ache from the cane he’d wielded to bring me the greatest pleasure I’d ever known.
A few muttered curses flew past Elijah’s lips, and he started toward the door, only half-dressed and in bare feet. “Stay here.”
His growled command didn’t slow my instinctual need to remain on his heels, but he halted in the doorway and spun. Darkness swirled within his pupils, and I blinked as the image of my dragon flickered around his body.
