We would rend him limb from limb if we ever saw him, his dragon said, tongue flicking in and out as if scenting the air for the faintest trace of Gordon Marcus. So it is just as well. We would not hurt our mate, but we would hurt those who have hurt her.
It’s an unsolvable dilemma, Theo said.
His dragon looked at him with his cat-yellow eyes with their slit pupils, unimpressed by him putting a name to what they were both thinking.
“I will do whatever I can to help you make peace with your memories,” Theo said.
“Could we go back to the house? Just for an hour or so.”
“Of course. But... I’m sorry, but a lot will be packed up by now, even what you and Tiffani are keeping—since you’ve already said you’re moving, the procedure is to ship it to you.” And he knew Gretchen was finishing up the last of that now. Martin had discreetly cleared them to use her name on all the paperwork so there wouldn’t be any awkward questions about Theo’s involvement with Jillian. “There won’t be much to look at.”
“I’ll make do. I have a good imagination.”
And with half the furniture shrouded in white sheets, Theo thought, she would have plenty of help in bringing her ghosts back to life. He decided to postpone their flying until tomorrow. Jillian must have known a little of what he was thinking, because she slid her foot against his underneath the table.
“Out with the old life,” she said, “and in with the new. That’s what I meant about pushing down on the gas. I want to say goodbye to the past so I can start building a future with you, if that’s what you want.”
“More than anything I’ve ever wanted before.”
Jillian leaned forward and kissed him. He hated to be juvenile, but he could see directly down her shirt. The exposed, creamy skin of her breasts only deepened his desire. It provoked him to kiss her more and more thoroughly, until suddenly she was on the same side of the table, her thighs half-draped over his lap.
Then a spray of cold mist broke across him. A drenching was alarming at the best of times, but even more so for a dragon. Theo blinked water out of his eyelashes in confusion.
“New mates,” Magda said, putting down the plant-sprayer and shaking her head. “Incorrigible. No respect for public decency.”
He supposed she had a point. Judging by the dark pink Jillian had flushed, he thought she thought so too.
“Your pardon, Magda,” Theo said. “We were carried away.”
“Go carry yourselves away somewhere else,” Magda said. “Why I got into this business I’m sure I don’t know. Shifters here, shifters there, shedding all over the floor, leaving claw-marks, defiling the booths. This is a family restaurant.”
“We really are sorry,” Jillian said.
“I guess it’s nice to see he has blood in his veins,” Magda said.
Theo blinked again, but not because of the water. “Are you congratulating me?”
“Get out of here,” Magda said. “Or I’ll congratulate my foot all the way up your ass, Theo St. Vincent.” But her mouth was curved in what might, on another person, have been a smile.
Jillian wasn’t the only one who needed to embrace her present. Theo thought he was only just now realizing that he had one at all. His life was woven through with people who cared about him, people who hadn’t been able to show that as long as his perfectly-maintained walls of ice were up. Unnatural for a dragon to hide himself from warmth. He would do his best not to make that same mistake again.
He took Magda’s hand in his and lowered his lips to it, giving her the traditional hand-kiss dragons bestowed upon a respected female relative.
She recognized the gesture, of course. There was nothing in shifter lore Magda didn’t know, no matter how obscure or insular the shifter type. She cleared her throat and, to his surprise, said in Old Draconic, “You have given me a jewel, and I thank you.”
“A gift to you is a gift to myself,” Theo said.
Magda snorted. “Listen to that hick accent of yours,” she said. “You’ll never get anywhere sounding like that.”
*
“Will you teach me that language?” Jillian said.
It was the first time she had spoken without being spoken to since they had gotten back to the car, and Theo was overwhelmingly glad that she was talking freely again. And looking at him now, too, whereas before her gaze had been out the window as the mansions ticked by, gradually growing grander and grander as they approached her childhood home.
“What Magda spoke in? Old Draconic?”
She nodded. “Is there New Draconic?”