The little slices of time she’d managed to spend with him had been… a lot. More intense than any time she spent with any romantic partner before, certainly. The problem was that she didn’t know what to make of that. Wasn’t it way, way too fast for that sort of thing? And what kind of sensible woman let a man just declare that he was her mate?
One who’s never been touched like that before, she thought, cheeks warming.
She tried not to feel too bad about how deeply that morning meant to her. It felt like he’d fed a part of her she didn’t realize was starving. It was pleasure, but it was more than that, too. It was like he’d seen inside her lonely soul and said, No, that space is for me now. You don’t have to feel that way anymore.
Paloma leaned against the door, her heart beating an uneven rhythm in her chest. Foolish. No one moves that fast, Polly.
She was well within her rights to take her pleasure when and where she could. There was no need to feel any sort of awkwardness or guilt or like it was much bigger than it was. For all she knew, he got off on spoiling every person he slept with. She was practical enough to realize that just because a man said something in the heat of the moment, it didn’t mean he meant it. It wasn’t like he’d licked the good sense out of her.
Not permanently, at least.
Quietly closing the refrigerator door, Paloma slipped her phone out of her pocket to check her notifications. An alert pinged, but it was nothing urgent. The cluster was on a direct route through the Sierras. With any luck, it wouldn’t join with another cluster until it was well into the unpopulated stretches of the Nevada desert. She kept her eye on it, though. Until it moved away from any major population centers, she’d keep it flagged.
After a glance at the time, Paloma slid her phone into her back pocket. She peeked over her shoulder again.
Artem lay sprawled in his nest, his head buried in one of her well worn t-shirts. He’d requested it after waking up groggy and anxious the previous day. He stumbled into her lab to grumble about her leaving “their” nest, and could only be appeased with an offering of several things saturated in her scent. Since she couldn’t very well lay in a pillow nest all day, every day for an indeterminate amount of time, Paloma gave up the clothing without a fuss.
Besides the clothing, the nest had changed in other ways. The afternoon of the second day, he’d made several calls to his family, who had apparently already sent out a squad of rogue hunters — something that sounded terribly ominous to her — and were deeply relieved to hear he was well. Wanting to give him privacy, she didn’t stick around to hear the rest of his phone call. In hindsight, she probably should have.
Not four hours later, a brave and probably very well-paid delivery person pulled into her driveway. To her bemusement and mild horror, he delivered one sealed package after another until, finally, he got to the massive, “dragon-grade” mattress. Even vacuum sealed and compressed into a box, it was huge. Once it was unsealed, it took up her entire living room.
The many packages were much the same, except they contained more blankets and cushions than she could count. Watching Artem unpackage them and then lovingly place them around the mattress, as if every inch mattered, made her stomach do uncomfortable little twists. It sure felt like he was making a home for himself in her life, but she couldn’t help but feel it was ridiculous to even entertain the thought.
So far, she’d managed to fight the temptation to crawl back into his arms at night, too, but only just. Although she was fairly certain he wouldn’t mind, Paloma felt weird about invading his space when he was passed out cold. For all that big talk about being her mate, he hadn’t actually made any moves in that direction since. Beyond kissing her into dreamy silence and trying to get her to feel his admittedly extremely soft blankets, he didn’t seem terribly interested in taking things further.
She did her best to ruthlessly squash the hurt that thought inspired. So what if he didn’t actually mean any of it? She would be fine. She always was.
Hastily scribbling out a note about where she’d gone, Paloma pinned it to the old fashioned refrigerator door with a gaudy crab magnet from Fisherman’s Wharf before creeping out of the kitchen to don her jacket and boots.
Besides the fact that Artem had come into her kitchen like a wrecking ball, it would be nice to get out of the house. She needed to think. She needed space to assess what in the gods' names she was doing. She needed to stop looking at Artem and remembering what his kiss felt like, what his tongue could do, how he made her feel like she was beautiful and special and worth so much more than what her brain could do and—
Paloma stepped out into the cold and slowly, slowly closed the door behind her. Artem had become more sensitive to noise lately, and she didn’t want to wake him up. Or rather, she didn’t want to have to explain why she was sneaking out.
Taking in a deep breath of the frigid, pine-scented air, Paloma briskly crossed the gravel driveway and climbed into her truck. A light dusting of snow covered the ground and the boughs of the pines around her property. A storm system was moving in, so she needed to get ahead of it if she wanted to restock her kitchen with the necessities as well as the treats she saved for the upcoming holidays. Burden’s Moon was fast approaching. She hadn’t had cause to celebrate since her father’s passing, but if Artem stayed…
Paloma shook her head, dislodging the thought. She found herself staring at the house and chewing her lip. She sat there idling for several moments, strangely reluctant to leave, her stomach bunched up in knots.
Would he wake up and wonder where she’d gone? Would he care? What if he needed something? What if something happened to him?
She swallowed hard. Paloma knew he was a grown man who could clearly take care of himself, but old habits died hard. Besides, she might want space, but she wasn’t sure she actually wanted him to go. The four days she spent with Artem had been the most she’d felt alive in… maybe ever.
Even sleeping ninety percent of the time, he took up space in her home. He brought color and smiles and humor when he dragged her away from her work to ask her about her life, to make sure she’d eaten, to show her just how superior his new pillows were to her ratty old ones. When he cracked an eye open to peer at her from the mound of softness in the nest, it was always followed by a sleepy grin and a soft, “Sweet treat, I miss you even in my dreams.”
Which was why she needed some space. It wasn’t normal to be so enamored with someone she didn’t know and who could so easily sweep her off her feet.
Paloma didn’t think that Artem would mean anything by it, of course, but men like him just didn’t go for women like her: practical, lonely, and inexperienced. When they touched, she’d briefly felt bold and empowered, but that rosy glow faded fast. He’d eat up her heart and spit it out without ever realizing he’d done it — and it wouldn’t be his fault. It would be hers for letting herself get too attached to someone who couldn’t stay.
For godssakes, he’s an Aždaja! What in the world could he want with you? Listening to him speak to Taevas fucking Aždaja, Isand of the Draakonriik, was a cold splash of reality.
Besides her land, she had nothing to offer him that he wouldn’t already have. He was a member of the most powerful dragon clan in the UTA, while she was a lowly arrant scientist with no family, few friends, and a house he hated. She didn’t resent her place in the world. She understood and adapted to it, to its limitations and advantages. Being an arrant meant she was unburdened by crushing instinct or a power beyond her control. It meant she was free to use her mind in creative ways, to advance her field without distraction or limit.
It also meant that she and Artem were terribly mismatched.
When he finally got over the fog of his exhaustion, he would probably regret what they’d done — or at least realize he didn’t mean it when he said he wanted her to be his mate.
Swallowing around the hard lump in her throat, Paloma shifted the truck into reverse and backed down her driveway until she hit the road.
She would go grocery shopping. She would get something to eat at The Shack. She would stop by the library to talk to her friends. She would get Artem out of her system with a cold, hard slap of her small-town reality.
Even if it was the last thing on Burden’s Earth she wanted to do.