The storm ragedfor three days. They didn’t notice.
Paloma drifted in and out of a dream state, too blissed out and content to do more than the bare minimum of work. Of course she kept her eye on her readings, but there wasn’t much to be done. With the blizzard, she couldn’t very well go fix her equipment or tune anything up. She was wonderfully housebound with her dragon, who turned out to be one of the chattiest people she’d ever met.
She loved it.
Artem had a beautiful voice. She found it soothing to listen to him go on about his life in the ’Riik, a place she’d never dreamed of going but now desperately wished to see, as she worked on her tablet or went out to check on the chickens in their specially insulated hutch. He was her shadow. Despite the lingering effects of his fatigue, he couldn’t be pried from her side.
Not that she wanted to. The time they spent together was the warmest, most content she’d ever felt. They shared every meal and watched feeds together. As the snow built up in huge drifts around the windows, they played board games — he was terrible — and Paloma finally came to appreciate the joys found in a lovingly crafted nest. Her bedroom became a glorified closet, for all the time she spent in it.
She still wasn’t quite on board with Artem’s plan to completely overhaul the house, though.
“Treat, we can’t sleep in the living room forever,” he explained, claws carding through her hair. They were bundled under several blankets and lounging against a mound of pillows after a filling lunch of stew and homemade bread. It turned out that Artem was quite the cook, which was a delightful discovery, considering she really only enjoyed the steady formula of baking.
“My dad built this house,” she argued. “I don’t want to knock it down just because you think we need more space.”
“We do need more space.” To prove his point, he stretched his wings out as far as they would go. The clawed tips touched the far walls with a smug little scratching sound. “See? What happens when we have offspring? There will be more wings, and little ones who don’t understand that flying in the house isn’t advisable.”
Paloma flushed to the roots of her hair. “Who says we’re having kids?”
Artem tugged on a lock of her hair. “Did I imagine that pamphlet I saw in the lab?”
She shook her head and willed her blush to go away. It wasn’t like there was anything to be ashamed of. Yeah, she’d looked into having a baby on her own. There was nothing embarrassing about that. It wasn’t the concept of him knowing she had researched sperm donors that made her flush to the roots of her hair. It was the memory of him finding the pamphlet, setting it on fire, and then bending her over her desk to screw her senseless that did it.
He was a modern man and didn’t have a problem with her contemplating single parenthood, but Artem was still a dragon. She was beginning to understand that sometimes a dragon’s instinct overruled logic. More often than not, that instinct involved making absolutely, entirely sure who she belonged to. She didn’t have to be a genius to understand that the suggestion of her having another man’s offspring sent her poor dragon’s territorial instinct into a tailspin.
Not that she was complaining. If it got him to have sex with her on her desk again, she’d be happy to order more pamphlets.
“Well, that was before,” she replied, sniffing, as she swiped to the next page of the San Francisco Light article she was reading. “I don’t plan on rushing into having kids right now.”
Artem dropped his head down and angled his neck so she was forced to catch his eye. His brows rose. It really wasn’t fair that he was so pretty even when he gave her a look. “Is this sudden change of heart because you still aren’t sure about me? Or is it because the thought of a brood of dragon offspring makes you nervous?”
“Neither.” Actually, the thought of a bunch of tiny, winged menaces filling her home with raucous laughter and movement made her chest tighten with acute longing. Artem’s children would be rambunctious and lively in ways she never had the chance to be. She didn’t have to think too long to come to the conclusion that being the mother to those children would be the greatest joy of her life.
Still, she wasn’t in a rush.
Setting her tablet in her lap, briefly frowned at the lack of signal — the storm really had done a number on the things, including the signal relays placed around the mountains — before she turned to press a lingering kiss to Artem’s cheek.
“It’s not that I’m worried or that I don’t want to have your babies,” she assured him. “It’s that I don’t feel alone anymore. I want to know what it’s like to be with you and just you for a while before we decide to do that. We have time to just enjoy each other, don’t we? When it happens, I’ll be happy, but right now…”
Artem’s grin was huge and breathtaking. “I like that idea.” He nudged her temple with the tip of his nose. The tail coiled around her waist gave her a possessive little squeeze when he said, “I like having you to myself, sweet treat.”
She didn’t fight her own grin. Would hearing him say how much he adored her ever get old? No, probably not. Paloma didn’t think the butterflies in her stomach would ever really go away, either. Not when Artem was there to look at her like that.
“We still need to renovate the dwelling, though.”
Paloma’s smile fell. The butterflies flew away and were replaced by tiny knots of guilt. “Artem, my dad built this house. I can’t just gut it.”
Drawing her close, he gently argued, “Treat, your father didn’t care for this dwelling. He might have built it, but he didn’t care for it. The appliances are decades out of date. There are cracks in the walls. Your windows aren’t properly sealed and I don’t believe the insulation is sufficient for this altitude.” He hooked a claw under her chin to tilt her head up. “Mate of mine, did you ever see your father work on this dwelling unless it was absolutely necessary? Or did he treat it like he treated you — as long as it was standing, it no longer needed his care?”
She flinched. Her sinuses began to sting with unshed tears as she considered the blunt but reasonable question. “I…” She glanced around and tried, for the first time, to see her home through his eyes.
He was right. Her father never really cared about making things nice. He would repair things, sure, but he never bothered to make things comfortable, or to improve their home. As long the roof kept the rain off of his lab, he didn’t care if it leaked elsewhere. As much as she loved the place, she struggled to keep up with all its mounting problems that resulted from years of patchwork repairs and slapdash construction.
And if she were truly being honest, Paloma didn’t think her father would give even a passing thought to the home if he were still alive. The lab was all that mattered. Artem could build a Hearst Castle-style behemoth and her father probably wouldn’t have noticed.
She clung to the home because it was all she’d ever known. It was a familiar companion in her loneliest days. That didn’t mean it had to stay that way, though.
Paloma blinked back tears as Artem crooned a soft note in her ear. The sound was both apology and comfort. “Okay, I see what you’re saying,” she whispered hoarsely.