Page 38 of Kidnapped By The Messy Dragon

I groan and take the stairs after my mate.

I make it up to my floor. Her caramel is drifting from under my door, embarrassment still cooling off it. I walk past my own room and start opening the empty ones instead.

We had good talks today, and I learned plenty. But you learn a woman by how she moves. Her eyes lit up in that craft store, and no interview would ever have gotten that out of her.

The room at the east end has morning light and a view of the tree line. It’s the one.

I shake my head at myself and add a note to my list: tell Malachi to go ahead and approve Lena’s expansion budget. No way is my woman not getting whatever she wants in this town.

I go in and set the bags down. I look the room over, collecting measurements in my head and sorting what stays from what goes. The spare furniture can move to storage, and the closet wall wants shelves. I’ll shop for supplies online while she sleeps.

I step out and close the door behind me. My nose itches, but it’s not as bad as this morning. I rub it and head for my own room.

Zuri’s in my bed with her shoes off, curled up with her arms wrapped around her knees.

I smile at that. I kick mine off and crawl in with her. I put my hand on her knee and scoot closer.

“What’s with everyone pushing for me to bang you?” she asks.

I laugh. “It’s not that. The mate bond is sacred. It’s very special in our community.”

She groans into her arms. “I know nothing about it.”

“Why’d you move to Millbrook instead of Shadow Wolf Creek?” I ask her. “You anti-supernatural?”

She glares up at me. I throw both hands up in surrender.

“I already knew the answer,” I say. “It’s in your scent.”

“If you must know,” she says, “it’s because it’s hard to get into this damn town. The only jobs available are waitress or cleaner, and that’s not my line of work.”

“Okay, okay.” I keep my hands where she can see them.

“And Stillwater, before I knew what I know now...” She sighs. “A job there is great on a resume.”

“But now my life is all up in a frenzy,” she says.

I put my hand back on her lap. “No, it isn’t, baby. I’m not trying to push myself on you. But I’m asking you to give me a chance.”

She looks up at me with soft eyes. “Would you still like me... if there wasn’t a mate bond in place?”

“Yes,” I say.

She glares at me, and the disbelief comes up in her scent again, sour as vinegar.

“When I first met you,” I start.

“In the alley,” she says.

I shake my head. “When you bumped into me in the lobby at Stillwater. I couldn’t smell you at all. My dragon was acting strange, and I didn’t know why. I know who you are to me by scent, Zuri. And nothing was there when you passed me.”

“I was there to find out if Delilah had any dealings with the company,” I tell her. “But the minute you walked by me, nothing mattered but you. I followed you. From your job, to the bar. I just watched. And then you took a bathroom break and confirmed everything I’d been suspecting.”

It’s the whole truth, and I hand it over knowing how it sounds. A dragon followed her through a town that hates his kind, and I’m asking her to hear it as devotion. My heart is going hard enough that she can probably feel it through the bed.

She opens her mouth. Nothing comes out.

I wait. I’ve sat across from alphas and witches without flinching, and none of it wrung me out like the quiet of this one woman deciding what to do with me.