He did now, he realized. He wanted to spend forever with the woman in his arms, and if that had included children, he couldn’t have been happier about it.
It was very unsettling indeed.
Darla wiped her tears away fiercely and shook her wrist. “I guess these things are miscalibrated or something then. Dragon magic,” she said in disgust.
“You wanted children?” Breck dared to ask.
Darla sighed. “Not really,” she admitted, to his relief. “I just… thought it might help if I had something of yours… something to carry on with me…”
Breck swept her into his arms and held her tight as she wept, and, though he never would have admitted it, shed a few tears of his own into her hair.
Chapter 29
“It’s not fair,” Darla finally said, when her messy sobs had subsided. “It’s not fair to find you and have to lose you.”
Fair had never bothered her before, she realized. She had always had everything she wanted, been a part of an elite class — moneyed, a shifter… and not just any kind of shifter, but the end of not one, but two prestigious dragon shifter lines. And now that she was at the other end of the fair stick, it suddenly seemed to matter.
“Life is never fair,” Breck agreed, stroking back her hair. “But at least we got this. Hey, you could write a best-selling memoir about it when you’re old and no one cares. Three Nights at Shifting Sands with the Greatest Lover on Earth.”
Darla squirmed to look at him skeptically. “I thought you were the greatest lover in the country. And wasn’t it the island yesterday?”
“I get better with time,” Breck said flippantly. “I’m probably better now than when you got here. I might even be the Greatest Lover in the Solar System by tomorrow night.” He grinned at her, and wiped away the tears left on her cheeks. “But that probably wouldn’t look as good on a book cover. They might think you were bragging.”
Darla had to giggle, she couldn’t help herself. “Sure, they’d think I was the one bragging,” she teased him. “How do you do that?” she asked him, sitting up.
“It’s a combination of skilled technique and great equip…” Breck started, but Darla poked him in the side.
“Make me laugh, I meant,” she scolded him, smiling despite her best efforts.
He sat up with her, and cradled her face in his strong hands, smiling back at her. “I can imagine nothing in the world that I want to do more.”
“Nothing?” Darla teased him.
He chuckled, kissed her, and amended, “Almost nothing.”
If Darla was very carefully, she could think only about now, about the feel of his hands on her face, the whisper of his sheets over her legs, the smell of him, the glow of his smile, the warmth of his kiss. She could be here with him in this moment, and be perfectly content.
Her stomach growled, and she blushed.
“Let me go get us a snack from the kitchen,” Breck offered.
“If you keep feeding me, I’m going to have seven chins like Magnolia,” Darla protested.
“We can all only aspire to be Magnolia,” Breck said, giving her a kiss and sliding from the bed. She caught him before he could stand, with a second, deeper kiss that dragged him back down on her. When she finally released him, he grinned at her. “I will not be long,” he promised.
Then he was pulling on a bathrobe and vanishing out the door.
Darla snuggled back down into his sheets for a moment, inhaling the musky smell of sex and sweat. Then she rose and explored the room restlessly. He had a private bathroom, and Darla smirked at her ruffled, naked reflection a moment before she splashed water on her face and tried to smooth back her hair. She prowled around the bathroom, stroking the lush towels and rattling his lone toothbrush in the holder.
A little chilled in the cooling night air, she decided to find a t-shirt of Breck’s to put on, and returned to the disheveled bedroom. A wide, low dresser stood along the far wall, and Darla walked to it and pulled open the top drawer.
The sight that met her eyes froze her on the spot.
Chapter 30
Breck was dismayed to find that the common room was not deserted. Worse, most of the staff was there, and they were toasting Tex and Laura enthusiastically.
“I’m going to be a dad!” the bear shifter bartender exclaimed, throwing his arms uncharacteristically around Breck. “Come drink with us!”