He rolled her over and quickly pulled off his own shirt and jeans before sliding hers off too. Now, their positions reversed, he reveled in the feel of skin on skin, while carefully holding the mass of his body up so he wouldn’t crush her smaller form.
She writhed underneath him as he teased her with lips and hands until she bit his shoulder and said, “I want to feel you, Alexei. All of you. Now.” And grasped him with greedy fingers, in case he had any doubt of her meaning, guiding him to her center.
Then there was only heat and pleasure, low moans that turned to cries of ecstasy, and a rush of joy so heady he thought that everything that had come before was merely a faint shadow of the reality of this moment.
*
Alexei woke in the morning feeling more cheerful than he had in a long time, and it took him a minute to remember why. He stretched out in the too-small bed, peering over the edge to check on Lulu and her babies. Bethany was gone, but there was a stack of pillows where she had ended up, and a piece of paper with a note on it that said, “Still the champion.” So apparently she was okay about what had happened between them the night before.
That was good, since they had to spend a lot of time together. On the other hand, he hoped she wasn’t thinking it meant something it didn’t. He was still leaving as soon as they’d found and vanquished the kraken. He wasn’t the settling down type, and he wasn’t going to risk letting someone else important to him down the way he had his brothers. Not that Bethany was all that important. Nope. They’d practically just met. Just because he could actually breathe when she was around, that didn’t mean she was important. Just really, really amazing.
“Outside,” Lulu whined, bringing him back to reality. He let her out, then moved her and the babies into the box (lined with old towels, as promised) that Bethany must have put in the living room at some point after she left his bed. Then he wandered over to the house, his need for coffee overwhelming his desire to put off seeing Bethany.
The dazzling smile that greeted him almost made him forget his resolve, his wanderlust, and everything else that wasn’t her.
“Morning,” she said, handing him a mug. “How are Lulu and the puppies doing?”
“Great,” he said, gulping the coffee too fast and burning his tongue. “I put them all in the box you brought over.”
“Great,” Bethany repeated. “Can you get my dad up on your own? I want to peek in on the babies, then run a few errands and then get to the bar early so I can catch up with some paperwork.”
“Uh, sure,” Alexei said. “Um, are we okay? I mean, you’re not upset with me, are you?” He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but this calm, normal, cheerful attitude wasn’t it. Not that he was disappointed. He was happy not to have to deal with a fuss or clear up a misunderstanding. But Bethany was acting like nothing had happened at all. He hadn’t actually dreamt the whole thing, had he?
“Why would I be?” she asked, grabbing some folders off the table and sticking them in a tote bag, not even looking at him. “We were both emotional after the puppies were born and got a little carried away. It was fun, but it’s not like it changed anything, right?”
“Right,” Alexei said as she walked out the door. He wasn’t sure which one of them was lying. Or if they both were.
Chapter 14
Hayreddin hated to admit it, but that damned Len had been right.
Being a pirate in this new world was just no fun.
So much had changed during the time Red had been away, and his kind of piracy just didn’t work anymore. Len had been right about the lack of ships to attack. Wealthy men still sailed the seas in expensive boats, but during the month of April, they were all someplace warmer, like the Caribbean, and no one sent their fortunes by ship anymore. Except drug dealers, apparently, and Red saw nothing worth stealing in piles of white powder.
To be sure, they occasionally attacked a yacht or a tanker just for fun, but Len was surprisingly squeamish about all the killing, and the supposedly tough men they’d hired to be their pirate crew were a disappointment, one and all. Half of them, panicked after one glimpse of the kraken, took off as soon as they came back to port, swearing this wasn’t what they’d signed on for. The rest had to be paid extra to keep them from blabbing to everyone they knew.
Without booty to amass, the larger ship Len had procured was mostly just wasted space, and not nearly as maneuverable as one of Red’s old sloops. There were no cannons mounted on it, and just as Len had said, today’s weapons were smaller and more portable. In the end, he had grudgingly allowed Len to return it, and get rid of most of the extra men, retaining the three most bloodthirsty to work on Len’s battered fishing boat.
Hayreddin told himself it was a better disguise anyway, since no one would suspect a mundane fishing boat of piracy, but really, it was all so disappointing. He longed for the day when the kraken found his long-lost treasure and he could return to the Otherworld. This was all taking much longer than he had expected it to, and sooner or later word would get back to the queen, and she would summon him home.
Even though dragons were given a bit more leeway than other Paranormals due to their extreme power and longevity, not even they could disobey a direct command from high queen of the Otherworld. The trick was to stay on this side of the portal until he had accomplished his task. If she forbade him from returning after that, he did not much care. He hated this new world, with its technology and its lack of swashbucking adventuring. He would be happy never to come back here again.
So he had been having Len send the kraken out more and more often, searching for where his ship had gone down on its final voyage. The beast had found a few other wrecks, even some with riches and gold aboard, although nothing to compare with what he’d lost. They had a nice little stash of booty for Len to drool over, but it was not what Hayreddin had come here seeking.
And then there was the added complication of the attention the kraken’s presence was drawing. In the old days, anyone sensible would have run in the opposite direction. Now, they sent out scientists.
“I have an idea,” he told Len over a breakfast of rum and sandwiches.
“Oh, god,” Len said, putting his head in his hands. “Not another one.”
Red missed the days when people who irritated him could simply be made to walk the plank. This stupid little vessel did not even have a plank. But no, he still needed the Human, both to control the kraken without violating the technicalities of the queen’s rules and to help Red navigate this confusing and uncomfortable modern world. But later, oh yes, later, there would be a reckoning.
“We need to scare people away from the area we are searching,” Hayreddin explained in what he believed was a calm and even tone. One of the hired men turned white and helped himself to more rum in a hurry.