“Dammit, I demand that you release me. I am not Aisling! I do not like arrogance!” “What’s Baltic doing with Sullivan?” I heard Brom ask as Baltic leaped up the stairs, apparently not feeling my weight slung over his shoulder at all. I spent a moment admiring that fact before I slid my hands down his back and only just refrained from pinching his butt.
“You don’t wanna know. I mean, you will in about ten years, but for now, it’s just going to mess with your head. You gotta trust me on this. Hey, who do I have to crotch-snuffle to get lunch around here? I’m starving, and my coat goes to Abaddon in a handbasket if I don’t get five proper meals a day. You got any fresh horsemeat, Pavel?”
Chapter Fourteen
“I want to give you something,” Baltic said as he closed the door to his bedroom.
“I just bet you do. I want to give you something, too — a piece of my mind. What on earth do you think you’re doing, carrying me off like you’re some sort of a primitive caveman? What will Brom think?” “My son will understand that I wish to spend time alone with you, where I may worship every inch of your soft, delicious body, and where you will pleasure me endlessly until I am a shattered wreck of a dragon.” I thought about that for a moment. Brom was fine with Pavel there. Jim would be watched, and Gareth, that bastard bigamist, was no longer a factor in my life. Was there any impediment to me flinging myself on Baltic and giving in to all those desires that had built up over centuries?
No, there was not! “All right,” I squealed as I suited action to thought and flung myself on him.
He wasn’t expecting that, because the weight of my body suddenly hitting him sent him staggering backwards a few steps. “Chérie, you must wait. I have something for you.” “Oh, yes, you certainly do,” I said, nuzzling his neck as I slid my hand down his chest, and further below to stroke the length of him through his pants. He groaned, his eyes closed for a moment as I felt him growing in thickness and length.
Suddenly, he pried me off him. “Ysolde, you must wait.” “You are kidding me!” I said, glaring at him with irate intent as he turned his back on me and strode over to a tall bureau. “You were begging me to do this yesterday, and now you don’t want me?” “I never beg,” he scoffed, searching through a drawer of the bureau. “I am a wyvern, and your mate. I do not need to beg.” “You want to bet?” I growled, my arms crossed and my eyes narrowed as I watched him. I knew he wasn’t indifferent to me — a simple glance at his fly negated that idea. “You were all over me yesterday. Why are you spurning me now?” “Wyverns don’t spurn, either,” he said, his voice somewhat muffled as he squatted, his head in a deep drawer at the bottom of the bureau.
“Well, you’re sure doing something, and it is not celebrating the fact that Gareth is a lying bigamist, as you should be doing. Instead, you’re poking your head in some sort of a desk. What is it you’re doing there, Baltic? Going to write a few letters? Pay some bills? Cut up pretty pictures and make a collage? What’s that?” He stood before me, a small wooden box in his hand. Engraved on it, in gold, were two stylized medieval-ish dragons, their necks crossed. He put the box into my hands. “It is a gift for you.” I turned it over, examining it, my fingers sliding over the smooth, highly polished wood. “What is it?” “Open it.”
I traced the long lines of one of the dragons on the top, and looked up at Baltic. “If it contains a wedding ring, you can just take it back. I’ve had enough of marriage, thank you.” He made an impatient gesture. “Marriage is for mortals. You are my mate. That is for all time.” “Till death do us part,” I said softly, then smiled. “And beyond.” “Open it,” he repeated.
I glanced at the big bed behind me. The room was decorated in shades of cream and a cool blue — attractive, but completely not his style. “Why don’t I open it later, after I’ve given you all that pleasure you think you’re due?” “I know I am due it,” he said with maddening arrogance, then nudged my hands. “Open your present.” “I like to anticipate gifts. Once you open them, the anticipation is gone.” “Open it!” he said, a little line of frown starting to form between his brows.
“Let’s have oral sex!” I said brightly, moving backwards toward the bed, patting it with a seductive glance toward him. “You like that! I remember that you do! You take off all your clothes and lie down here, and I’ll give you a tongue bath that you won’t ever forget.” “For the love of the saints, woman, open the damned box!” “And you say you never spurn! You just spurned my offer of a blow job, something I thought no living man could do.” He started toward me, a look in his eye that said he’d reached the end of his pretty nonexistent patience.
“Fine!” I said quickly, crawling onto the middle of the bed while I clutched the box. “But I just want you to remember that you’re the one who didn’t want oral sex. Stop giving me that look! I’m opening it. See? The lid is… ahhh.” It wasn’t really a word I spoke; it was more an exhalation of emotion. The box held a small object, somewhere between an oval and a circle, made of metal, but now dulled with age and time.
Recognition prickled along my skin as I gazed at it, waves of electricity seeming to ripple down my arms and legs. I knew this object. I knew it well, and yet it was both as familiar to me as the beat of my own heart, and foreign, something I had never seen before.
“Love token.” I spoke the words without even being aware of it. “It’s my love token. You made it for me. But how…?” “It was at Dauva, in my lair. You placed it there, along with all the valuables in the castle, before Constantine attacked. Kostya raided most of the lair, but he left that.” So faint I could barely make it out, a roughly drawn tree was engraved into the silver token, with three upper leafy branches, and two lower ones bearing hearts.
I smiled, a faint memory returning to me. “It’s made of silver so it would not distract you when I wore it.” He watched me closely. “You remember it, then?” “No. Yes. Both.” I reached out to touch the token, wanting to feel it, to weigh its age in my hand, but the second my finger touched the metal surface, the world began to spin.
I cried out, feeling as if I would fall, but strong arms caught me, warm and familiar, his touch stirring the embers of desire that were always within me. The room darkened, the colors shifting from light to dark, large amber pools lit by tall standing candelabras, the light of the candles flickering and shimmering along the shadows of the room.
Figures shimmered, too, the figure of a man and a woman.
“A love token?” the woman said, smiling at the man. “For me?” “I made it for you when I sailed from Riga to France.” “It’s a tree,” she said, and her voice resonated within me, my lips parting to speak the next words with her. “A tree with hearts?” “A tree because I knew it would please you. Three branches for you, me, and the sept,” Baltic then and now said, one voice slightly echoing the other.
I was pulled toward the figure of my other self as if I were made of nothing but light and shadow, hesitating a moment as I glanced back at Baltic. He nodded and I let myself merge with the memory of my former self. Baltic’s face changed as he, too, allowed himself to sink into his former being.