Free Pia Saves the Day by Thea Harrison Page B

through her slender form. “Are you sure?”
    With a sudden flash of intuition, he realized what she was worried about. He touched her face. The softness of her skin was addicting. This time, when he reached for gentleness, it came to him readily. “I’m not going to leave,” he murmured. “I only want a few minutes.”
    Her fingers curled around his, and she pressed her face into the palm of his hand. She said quietly, “Okay. I’ll see you back at the house.”
    Some predatory instinct had him gripping the delicate angle of her chin, carefully to avoid bruising that soft skin. He said into her face, “I didn’t want to stop kissing you.”
    The tiny sound of her indrawn breath brushed over his heated skin. Her heartbeat pulsed against the tips of his fingers. She whispered, “I didn’t want to pull away.”
    I’m not who you think I am.
    I am not the man you so badly want me to be.
    He didn’t say it. Instead, he brushed her soft mouth with his lips, and never mind that he really was the other Dragos —this impulse to sensual intimacy was all new. It was the first time it had ever existed in his world, and trapped in a tangle of his own devising, the dragon had no idea how to tell her that.
    Letting go of his hand, she stepped back, pivoted on her heel and walked back to the house.
    He stared at her retreating form, his muscles tightening instinctively as she disappeared underneath the shadow of the trees. Once he was truly alone, he gave in to the savage, jealous creature inside, shapeshifted back into the dragon and prowled over every inch of the construction site.
    He didn’t care what he looked at. He wasn’t searching for any kind of evidence of wrongdoing. That suspicion had been thoroughly laid to rest. The dragon simply picked through the rock and various items for something to do while the real activity happened inside his massive, convoluted mind.
    He hadn’t left the gold and jewels back up the mountain for safekeeping. He had forgotten about it, and he’d only remembered when she had brought it up.
    Which, he would have said, was rather unlike him. He never forgot about treasure. Never. Except for this time, when all of his attention had been focused on the real treasure in front of him.
    There was only one creature he’d ever heard of who could heal with her blood, a creature that had long ago disappeared into myth and legend, and yet he knew that must be her true nature. He knew it like he knew how to make the fire respond to his commands.
    Leaving the construction site, he leaped into a short flight that took him over the barrier of trees and landed in the clearing on the other side. Once grounded, he cloaked his presence in case she watched for him and prowled around the massive house.
    Look at the scene, so civilized. So pretty.
    The lights she had left on for him twinkled in the darkness.
    His tail whipped back and forth as he bared his teeth at the house. He did not fit in that civilized, pretty life. He fit out here in the night, where the moon created a world filled with shadows, and other predators knew to slink away at the first sign of his presence.
    Dragos.
    Cuelebre.
    Those were his names, and they said what he was. No more, no less, yet everywhere in that house he had seen the evidence of a civilized man, the man she had mated with, the man who might never return to her.
    The man he hated and would kill if he could. The man he did not want to be.
    But he did want to take that man’s place in those soft, serene rooms upstairs. That private place, filled with cream furniture and jewel-toned colors, and all the sensual evidence of her nesting. The perfume she wore. The scatter of feminine clothes, and shoes, and jewelry.
    Most especially, he wanted to take that man’s wife for his own.
    So he would put up with the rest of the civilized life. He would figure out the complexities in that office of his and learn to make peace with the many other creatures who seemed to be part of the