Rikard approved his skills for loading the dishwasher and for chopping basic vegetables, and allowed him in the kitchen during his periods of cooking. They talked at length about literature and history, and, as Trudy had promised, they played ruthless games of chance and skill in the evening. Some evenings Trudy joined them, some evenings she was an amused audience with her knitting.
They accepted him into their inner circle of confidence without a flicker of hesitation, speaking frankly to him of matters both trivial and personal.
To his own surprise, Danyen found himself reciprocating. He told them about his life in Los Angeles, and his early difficulties with his human form. He even told them, thoughtfully, about his anchors, and how he had lost them in a tragic car accident.
Trudy patted his hand when he broke off in confusion. His kind did not often speak of their anchors at all, preferring as a rule to act as if their powers were a matter of personal prowess.
The two humans, contrary to most of the humans who were exposed to his natural form, completely failed to treat him like a supernatural creature, or a thing to fear.
It was baffling and touching.
Through it all, Danyen felt like a creature lost in a desert, trying to slake a bone-deep thirst at the drip from a faulty faucet. Every lap of energy they offered him was delicious and revitalizing – and utterly unequal to the underlying dehydration.
It was like living alone in the apartment in Los Angeles had been, absorbing energy in tiny d
rips from behind the paper-thin walls. That energy had come from sex, mostly, but there had been a few artists in the complex would could achieve in a trance the kind of connection that released the well of power from deep within the earth.
If the weather had not kept him from fulfilling his debt, he would have moved on swiftly to find a better source.
At least, that’s what Danyen told himself.
Rikard caught himself staring again.
Danyen was reaching up to oil the upper hinge on the screen door, and even wearing a lightweight plaid shirt, he was clearly the stuff of a girl’s wet dream. Or an old man’s, apparently.
Rikard made himself look at the molding around the door instead of the molded lines of the dragon’s big arms and the ass that strained against the pants Trudy had picked. Had she deliberately selected them a little tight? He had teased her about doing that with his own clothing before.
“That should do it, then,” Danyen said, giving the door an experimental swing. Velvet, who had chosen that moment to decide she was on the wrong side of it, yowled in protest and scooted outside. She swiftly discovered it was still raining and meowed to come back in immediately.
“You know, you don’t have to make yourself useful,” Rikard told him after swallowing back his unseemly interest. “You can just be our guest.”
“I want to,” Danyen insisted intensely. He was standing uncomfortably close; Rikard could feel the heat off of him in waves. It made him wonder if the dragon breathed fire in his natural form.
Then, to his shock, Danyen embraced him. It was not a chaste embrace, it was a press of his hard body against Rikard in entirety, complete with a brush of his hands up across his shoulders and down across his ass.
“I am so grateful for your help,” he said, very quietly and very near to Rikard’s ear. “Please let me repay your generosity as I can.”
The arousal Danyen caused was not the deliberate tingly magic that he used some evenings to stimulate the activities he used to recharge, but it was no less intense.
Rikard was frozen, not sure if Danyen was making an offer, or simply expressing his gratitude, and was grateful for Danyen’s retreat when Rikard didn’t embrace him in return.
As hard as his body was, his whole body, Trudy could tell that Rikard was not really in bed with her.
When he finally lay beside her, spent, she felt him stare at the darkness without sleeping.
Did he already know? The guilt she’d been nursing finally overwhelmed her. “Rikard,” she started, just as he started to speak her name.
“You go first,” Rikard insisted.
“Danyen kissed me today.”
His hand, which had been slack in hers, clenched briefly.
“He meant it as a chaste kiss,” Trudy was quick to explain. “Courtly, I think. Right on the cheek, but… I turned at the wrong moment.” The right moment, her guilt insisted. She’d known what could happen. “I... didn’t kiss him back.”
She’d been too shocked to try, too alarmed and overwhelmed by the smell and close heat of him, and by her spike of desire for him.
“But you wanted to.” Rikard’s voice in the darkness cut her to the bone.