Page 100 of Dragon’s Ending

He leaned forward, one knee up on the mattress, and kissed me, running his hand up my side in a way that made me shiver. “You’re insatiable,” I informed him.

“That doesn’t sound like a complaint.”

No. No, it really wasn’t. But neither of us was up for more than kissing and touching right now, and Dominic finally rolled off me. “Where’d it go?” he asked.

We eventually found Teddy’s envelope under Dominic’s left shoulder, looking decidedly crumpled.

He pulled out a sheet of paper, bedecked with gold-star stickers and wobbly drawings of balloons—or drawings of wobbly balloons. It was hard to be sure.

And in the middle, carefully written out in coloured letters:

YOU ARE INVITED TO MY BIRTDAY PARTY

there will be cake

and tressur hunt

and games. NO ADDULTS.

Teddy

“What’s a birtday party?” Dominic wondered, and I elbowed him.

“I’m more worried about the treasure hunt,” I said dubiously. “Is that such a good idea with dragons?”

Dominic grinned at me. “Can’t imagine anything better, personally,” he said. “The kids will end up fighting over the treasure long enough for us to steal all the cake.”

His phone buzzed on the bedside table, and for a moment, wariness flickered across his face as he read the message. Then, almost visibly, he caught himself.

He held out the phone to show me the text from Rhodri. Study, 10 o’clock.

“Okay,” I said, pushing myself up to sit against the pillows. “Which gives us, what, an hour?”

“Thought I was the insatiable one,” he said, dropping a swift kiss on my lips before beginning to hunt for clean clothes. “So much for a peaceful morning.”

As if Dominic and a peaceful morning could co-exist more than five minutes before he got bored and managed somehow to find himself in the middle of chaos.

We showered together, with difficulty, before pestering Glenys for a late breakfast, and then Dominic went to see Rhodri while I headed up to the records room. And all the time, I couldn’t stop smiling.

* * *

I had ninety minutes of peace. Ninety minutes in which I got myself organised after all the recent diversions, and found myself torn between fascination with what I was reading and disappointment that Dominic wasn’t yet here. With him always came disruption, but he was also very good at choosing not to interrupt me when he knew I wanted to work. And his presence here, the life he brought to wherever he was, counterbalanced all these old records of people long gone.

The door pushed open, and then I had a dragon draped around me from behind. Dominic was nuzzling my neck, hands running over my chest, squeezing briefly at my pecs. My dick’s instant response to his touch was utterly predictable.

“Find anything fascinating?” he asked me.

“Actually, yes. The fourth son of the first Arthur married twice. Not that that’s the interesting thing, but he doesn’t appear to have waited for his first wife to be decent enough to pop off before marrying the second, which means, effectively, the heirs on that line—”

He laughed, low and fond against my ear. “You know I was only asking to be polite.”

I tilted my head back and looked at him. He was happy. Glowing with it, almost.

“How’d it go with Rhodri?” I asked

He moved to sit on the table in front of me. “Good,” he said, as I shifted irreplaceable old records away from his dangerously cavalier sprawl. “I mean, good and not good, because I now know way more about the Hargreaves family than I ever wanted to. But…” he shrugged a little, and it failed completely to hide how much this meant to him. “He said he’s bringing me up to speed so I can be present at discussions.”

Not take part in them, I noticed, and Dominic was so sharp, he would have picked up on that immediately. Still, from what I’d gathered, it was far more than Rhodri had ever offered before.