Chapter 31 We are immortals
THE DRAGON
It was instinctive. I hated strangers speaking about Nymphaea.
But I calmed the lava now broiling in my belly as I stared at her.
“Was she one of the women from the past?”
I took a step closer to her, and could hear her heartbeats grow louder. Fear.
“You think I would brand the image of a random woman on this body?”
After over a century of sticking to just this form, it had become as sacred as every other thing I possessed.
Her eyes, disconcertingly like mine, stared back, heart thudding in a way I doubted she even could hear it.
My gaze fell, looking right into the red muscle that sustained her as much as her wolf did. This heart that had summoned me thrice over the past three days.
I took a step back and fixed my face. If my experiment was going to work, it was important I got her to the point where she was no longer terrified of me.
“Come.” I placed my hand on her waist to guide her out. But she gasped and pulled away.
I turned, thinking back to our map of her body. She loved my touch in that area. I could see it now, molten red steam moving inside her body.
Desire. That had aroused her.
“I'm sorry.” Came the perpetual apology, eyes to the ground.
“Wol…” I bit the words back. “Doll.” I caught her chin with my fingers, and tilted her head back to stare up at me.
Her sharp inhale was loud to my hearing. Lust, raw and hot burned through the veins beneath her skin, coursing the network of nerves like a river.
Looking at her like this, I realized Finn may not have to do much.
I leaned in till her breath fanned my cheeks. “I prefer my subs to maintain eye contact.”
Another inhale. The new light in her eyes reminded me of what I saw that first day I had her in my bathtub.
This pure-eyed ballerina was more than she appeared on the surface. Her pulses flickered whenever I mentioned pain, an anticipatory surge.
Biting my lip hard, I ran my thumb across her bottom lip, feeling the strength of her desire in her body.
It was a pity we had to stick to the plan.
Her lips were plump, so soft, and my dick started to harden to the feeling of it.
I pushed the pad of my thumb till I felt the resistance of her teeth behind these scarlet lips, thinking back to how she had sucked the blood off my thumb.
I pulled back immediately.
Her skin was red on every visible inch, chest heaving as she stared right into my eyes.
“Come.” I turned around, maintaining the distance between us.
Even for a dragon, my plan was terribly selfish.
But I just had to know. And she had pledged her life to me anyway. The best I could do was make it worth her while.
I stepped into the private elevator that took us to the last floor. And as I moved down the hallway, I realized she walked like a dancer.
Her footsteps were barely audible, her breathing a soft whisper even to my heightened hearing.
I scanned the large steel door open and walked into my lair.
She froze at the doorway and I turned to find her eyes traveling around.
It was difficult not to soften at this sight, to stem the warm glow spreading round my chest at the awe in her eyes, an appreciation only a youth could have.
“Dragons are hoarders.” I spun quickly, moving further into the vault.
It was airless, silver, and cold. A vacuum really.
“We collect and keep everything. Artifacts, gold, memories…” I waved to the gondola shelves formed from raw gold, defining and partitioning aisles in the first quarter of the vault. “Lovers,” I glanced back in time to catch her blushing red at the word.
I looked ahead again with an impressed smile. Finn could learn a lot from her.
Her footsteps were careful, hands stuck to her sides. She did not touch any of the very attractive objects displayed on the shelves, because I had not given her permission to.
As much as I ached for Nympahaea’s insolence and arrogance, I was beginning to see the appeal of soft, obedient women like her. And why her personality was just Hale’s type.
“Everything here I have collected since I was a boy.”
I stopped.
She did too, turning those bright, silver eyes to me. “When was that?”
“My birth year is 1483.”
Like any other mortal, her eyes widened, glazed over from the difficulty of computing that information.
I headed for the back of the vault. My skin bristled, this part always made me uneasy.
Cold. So cold. But the temperature was best to preserve the things in this section.
Leaning down, I stared into the retina scanner till I heard the soft click.
Before that robbery, I had no business with modern security options. But with my soul on the verge of degenerating and simple things like instinct and bond weakening, these would have to do.
Jerking the door open, I pulled out the smaller leather-bound book the thief had failed to steal.
Wolf-girl’s eyes were intent on me when I turned to her. I waved her over to a reading nook by the wall.
She stopped by the table, waiting quietly.
My brows furrowed in interest now. How had I not noticed how obedient she was before?
I will be anything you want me to.
“Open it.” I slid the book across the surface of the oak reading desk towards her.
She glanced at me for double confirmation, and I gave a small nod.
Only then did she turn to the book to face her, and slowly, reverently, opened the first page.
“My wife.” I said as her eyes narrowed at the painted image of Nymphaea seated at the French court. “Nymphaea Lunette Ashborne.”
Although she was clearly listening, her eyes were pinned to the image, fascinated.
“We got married for the first time at sixteen.”
She jerked her head up. I scoffed.
“Our moral codes are different from you mortals'. And at that time, even mortals wedded and bedded as early as fourteen, some of these marriages between half siblings.”
I slid into the nook of the padded cushion lining the wall, closed in by the desk.
Our gaze met, and she moved to sit beside me, turning the book on the table. “So she died?”
“No.”
Her eyes narrowed in a judgmental stare and I wondered how much I could really tell her. She was mostly mortal, and young. Our morals, a world apart.
“I am not cheating on my wife, doll.” I stared into her eyes. Even though sitting with her here, talking like this, felt like cheating.
Nymphaea was pretty polyamorous like me, but where she did not mind other men in our bed, another woman would have her billowing flames at my arse.
“She’s gone. But she is not dead.” I hope. The knife dug deeper in my ribs.
Wolf-girl stared at me, her eyes confused.
“Towards the end of my first century, a war broke out among dragons.”
I laced my fingers on the table.
“It ended my family, and the others who survived waned and perished over the next few decades. Nymphaea never wanted me to be a part of the war, so I stayed out. And just before our empire fell, I left with just her and my mother's bones.”
Wolf-girl's eyes turned sad.
“We settled in old France, and we ruled as royals. But then she died.”
Her eyes shone now, glassy with tears.
“Do you understand?” I leaned closer, searching her eyes.
I could hear the sorrow, running through her veins, as loud as if I was sitting beside a stream.
“We are immortals,” I reached out, and caught a stray curl from her auburn hair, tucking it behind her ear. “We are not supposed to die, but Nymphaea did.”