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  “I see.” His apprehension remained, but he was willing to hear her out.

  “So, may we talk about my ideas?”

  Max nodded toward the sofa. He poured two glasses of brandy from his private stash and joined her. The dragoness edged closer than necessary until their thighs touched and the sweet scent of cinnamon and clove reached him, laced with an underlying, pleasurable aroma.

  “Now that you’re guaranteed to win the presidency, have you considered the importance of a first lady?” Mahuika asked. She smoothed her hand over his shoulder in a soothing rhythm. “These Americans practically expect it.”

  “I wouldn’t be the first unmarried president,” Max replied in an even tone.

  “Is this country not obsessed with the promise of maintaining family values? When the big secret comes into the open, your citizens will search for similarities between you and them. They will try to humanize you. See you as more than a beast who breathes fire.” The words rolled from her tongue as she pressed to his side, completing the invasion of his personal space. “They will want to see you as a man.”

  “What do you imply I should do, Mahuika?”

  “I can make your existence more palatable by becoming your wife and giving you a child. We will show them dragonkind is not so different.”

  Max’s spine stiffened. Her arrival had doused his entire mood with cold water, but the promise of another baby inspired a yearning he hadn’t felt in years.

  No, he had felt it more recently. He’d felt it when Astrid threw her skinny arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. When she’d screamed with joy and squeezed him so tight, he’d thought of his Brigid and his thoughts were consumed by her for the rest of the day.

  “You gave me the impression you didn’t want a family when I once courted you.”

  Mahuika playfully walked her fingers down his chest until she reached his abdomen. Max’s t-shirt rose with the next effortless stroke, exposing washboard definition. Old memories of having her beneath him awakened his cock with a throbbing pulse. He visualized her above him, rocking to the sensual rhythm of their lovemaking.

  He’d lost count of the nights he’d had her beside him, bare and glistening in the light of a bubbling lava pit. She’d been the perfect lay, the woman who taught him to enjoy making love as a human.

  “When I gave you Brigid, I was not yet ready to settle with a single male for the rest of my life. But I am ready this time. Don’t you miss our cub? Can you claim a single day has passed without her in your thoughts? Give me the chance to bless you with another, and we will raise the little one together.”

  He missed Brigid so insanely it hurt, but Mahuika had never shown an ounce of interest in his daughter during her life. She’d been an incubator. Nothing more.

  “You loathed the idea of revealing ourselves to the mortals. Be truthful with me this time. What inspired this change of heart? Why come to me now when you’ve had centuries to return?”

  “I did hate it,” she admitted. “But I’ve come to accept your ideas as truth. Is that so bad? You’ve always been a very, very persuasive dragon.”

  Max gently, but firmly, dislodged her from his side. “You’ve given me ideas to consider, but at a later time. I have a meeting.”

  “Mmm. All right,” she replied, surprising him. “Try not to ponder it for too long.” She stood on tiptoe and brushed her lips against his cheek. Her mouth lingered by his ear when she reached it, breath warm against his skin. “I have fond memories of our last matings and the long months until your seed took root.”

  “Mahuika…” He breathed her in, and finally the familiar scent made sense. Mahuika had chosen to meet him at the peak of her heat cycle, making her scent absolutely irresistible. It was the ideal time to impregnate her. The only time to guarantee she’d be gravid with his child within months.

  Her lips closed around his ear lobe and her index finger traced between his shirt and the thin leather belt around his waist. “We could begin now, Maximilian. What were the chances of my fertility cycle arriving now when you need it most?”

  One in a million. No, a billion. Those were impossible odds, the kind dragons attributed to fate and the Ancestors giving their blessings.

  Raw lust consumed Max’s thoughts and spread hotly through his loins in a white-hot pulse of arousal, pushing out all rational thought. His hardening cock pressed for freedom from his jeans, accompanied by the overwhelming desire to bend Mahuika over the desk to sate his need. He hadn’t taken a lover since before Brigid’s death, over fifteen years ago.

  When Maximilian gazed down at the receptive female dragon in front of him, it wasn’t tawny skin and dark hair he craved. His aroused mind crafted a vision of Scandinavian beauty: fair, freckled, and tall.

  Ēostre. She would be over at any moment, fresh-faced and ready to celebrate their success. According to the emails he’d read and the blog posts online, the Virginia voters had loved every moment of his speech. She was who he wanted to see.

  “No,” he gritted out before parting their bodies again. “As I said before, we will speak of this another time. I have somewhere to be within the hour.”

  “Somewhere to be? I came to you at the height of my breeding season, and you have somewhere else to be?”

  “I do,” Max said replied before seizing her by the upper arm and striding to the door. He opened it wide. “Always nice catching up with you, Mahuika. Thanks for stopping by.”

  With fury in her brown eyes, she stalked past him and into the hallway. Her heels made muted thumps against the carpeted floor.

  “Future visits with her are to be declined, Vincent. I doubt she’ll make a scene if you’re firm, but you’re also not to place yourself in unnecessary danger to remove her. Thank you.”

  Some dragonesses didn’t change, and he was a fool if he thought Mahuika had it in her to be anything more than a conniving harpy.

  ***

  Mahuika rubbed her thumb over the enchanted jewel given to her by Loki and braced herself as a torrent of magic washed over her body. She was whisked promptly from one location to the next, arriving to the point of its creation.

  The laid-back sorcerer lounged on a sofa with an open book while one of his servant girls delivered a foot massage. Another fed him from a bowl of plump grapes. A third, to her left, held a platter of seared beef cubes speared with toothpicks, creating an unoriginal, wholly predictable scene of male pampering. She rolled her eyes at the sight and stalked up to them.

  “Did he accept?” Loki asked.

  Mahuika snarled her response. The three servants, timid squirrel shapeshifters, squeaked and fled the room, tumbling fruit and bite-sized nuggets of savory meat in every direction. Loki sighed and waved away the mess with a hand gesture.

  “Hm. That surprises me greatly. I expected the great Belenos of Gaul to eagerly accept your offer to bear him another child. He would have been under your thumb for certain then,” Loki mused.

  “But he isn’t. Now what are we to do? Your entire plan hinged on Maximilian becoming the protective, doting father.”

  “And unwilling to risk an uncertain future for his cub.” After a disgusted snort, Loki leaned back in his seat, and with one hand, patted his lap for Mahuika to join him. She slid into place without question. “I am not without an alternate plan, Mahuika. Did you believe me to be so simple I would not foresee this outcome as a possibility?”

  Mahuika didn’t answer. Loki’s reputation preceded him, but centuries had passed since his last great plot. Without an ounce of hesitation, she lied through her teeth, “Of course not. You are Loki, the great god of schemes and trickery.”

  “There’s a good girl.” Loki’s nose skimmed her throat. As he breathed in the potion perfuming her skin, his palm glided over her breast and squeezed. “Perhaps you should shower before I take what your dear friend took for granted.”

  Mahuika tilted her head back and gazed into his green eyes. A sly smile curved her lips. “Maybe that’s what I want,” she purred, h
er voice seductive and low.

  “Or perhaps your pride has been wounded by Maximilian’s denial,” Loki surmised. A growl rumbled on the tail end of his words as he traced a fingertip down her form-fitting outfit. The dragon-shifter’s claws appeared in an instant, slicing through the material without damaging the flesh beneath.

  “It’s because of that sniveling silver bitch. If she didn’t have him wrapped around her talons, I could have had him today.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. We will never know. What I do know is that they have become closer since her awakening.” He paused and tilted his head, inspiration brightening his green eyes until they flowed like emerald fire. “Talk to the crone. I’ve heard quite the juicy rumor regarding a certain collection she’s amassed over the centuries. One treasure in particular should interest you deeply.”

  “What sort of treasure?”

  Loki clicked his tongue at her. “Tsk. What fun is there if I tell you everything right away?”

  “How would you know what Agnes has in her hovel she calls a home?”

  “Your jealousy is showing, my dear. The witch owns half of the antique galleries in the country and has come across all manner of things, many of which I have bartered for.”

  “So you’ve laid eyes on this one object?”

  “I watched her acquire it.” A slow smile gradually transformed his face into the picture of mischief, resembling the Cheshire Cat. “And it rankles her to no end, knowing I witnessed one of her greatest crimes. Tell her Loki has called in her aid, and together, we will punish Belenos for his transgressions against us.”

  “But Loki, he hasn’t done anything against her. The hag wants to come out in the open, remember? What will make her help us when she wants what he does?”

  “Because,” he answered while circling his thumb over one dusky nipple, “if our brethren were to discover what she possesses, she would suffer a fate worse than any mortal death. They would hunt her to the ends of the earth.”

  “You make it sound as if she has a dragon sleeping in her cellar.”

  “Not quite, but close enough.”

  ***

  “What do I wear?” Ēostre wondered out loud.

  Since returning from her hibernation, she’d received frequent lessons from her new daughter about modern-day fashion. Chloe loved to dress her, and the only thing she loved more than dressing Ēostre with her choices of wardrobe was introducing the dragoness to favorite stores and watching her acquire a style of her own.

  Ēostre had developed a true love for leggings and oversized shirts when the mood didn’t call for a sophisticated wardrobe.

  “Is it too warm for leggings? No, it’s never too warm for leggings,” she determined. She imagined the outfit she desired and pictured the dresser drawer in her mind’s eye. The folded pile of quicksilver material appeared in a flash and landed upon her open palms.

  After showering away the day’s stress, she wiggled into the leggings and wore them with a mid-thigh-length white tunic. She even traded the day’s earlier choice of fancy pumps for flat, roman-style sandals. With her hair worn loose around her shoulders, Ēostre admired her reflection with a smile.

  “I look magnificent,” she spoke to the air. Perfect for the cameras and paparazzi who would no doubt photograph them together. Before the dragoness could take a step toward the door with her purse, her tablet rang with an irritating notification to alert her to an incoming Facetime request. She checked it.

  “Hello, Astrid my love, what may I do for you?” she asked the girl.

  “I want to talk about boys,” Astrid said bluntly, wearing a stern expression on her youthful face.

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah,” she replied. “They freaking stink.”

  This should be a good one, Ēostre mused. She listened intently to the start of Astrid’s next points, and it didn’t take long before she was chuckling through the video call.

  “So he isn’t your friend anymore because he ate the turtles?” Ēostre asked to clarify.

  “He’s an ass, and I don’t really want to visit anymore, but Mom and Dad said I have to.”

  “What other mean things does he do?”

  Astrid sighed. “He pushed me over on the beach with his dragon form and rubbed wet sand all over my hair,” she complained. “And then he wouldn’t apologize when Aunt Marcy told him he had to do it. Aside from that, he never wants to visit here. He never comes away from his stupid island. I don’t want to go see him tomorrow and they can’t make me! He’s a stupid baby, and playing with him isn’t fun anymore when Mom visits Aunt Marcy and Uncle Teo.”

  With a grandmother’s patience, Ēostre listened as Astrid listed the younger dragon half-breed’s crimes against her. Javier had only turned seven recently, and was prone to childish behavior Astrid no longer found acceptable at her older age, even if he had an older child’s mental acuity. “I see. I see. Do you want to know what I think, little one?”

  “Yes!”

  “The next time he is mean to you on the beach, I think you should punch him in his nose, sit on him, and rub his face in the sand. And then do you know what you should do?”

  “What?” Astrid asked, hanging on to her every word.

  “Call Mahasti and tell her to take you home, but not before you tell Javier everything you have said to me. You tell him he has hurt you, and that you refuse to come play with him again until he learns better manners. That when he feels able to apologize, he must come play with you at your home. This way you do not have to argue with your mother and father because you have talked to him about how he has wronged you.”

  “But he’s only seven,” Astrid said. Her brow knit again. “I can’t punch a seven year old.”

  “But he is half-dragon, and thus stronger than any other seven year old. Chloe and Marcy have raised the both of you as humans, but what they do not realize is that they must also raise you as dragons. We do not deal in corporal punishment and spankings, but we do warn our little ones with nips when they cause harm. He doesn’t realize his own strength and must learn the hard way to be gentle.”

  “Okay,” Astrid said without a complaint. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “Can I ask you something else?”

  “Of course. You may ask me whatever you want.”

  “Um, this isn’t for me. It’s for a friend,” Astrid began. “But you give the best advice and it’s always better than what Daddy or Mom says to do.”

  Laughing all the while, Ēostre settled on the cozy loveseat in front of the suite’s flat screen television. “What does your friend need to know?”

  “If someone likes a person, but that person doesn’t know it, how should someone tell them?”

  The question caught Ēostre off guard. Had Astrid already developed a crush on Javier? Technically, she had reached the physical age in which most powerful dragon parents considered finding mates for their children, and Saul hadn’t looked any older when Fafnir made arrangements with Maximilian. He and Brigid been intended since her birth.

  No, of course not. The boy is too young, Ēostre determined. At seventeen, Astrid resembled most twelve-year-old girls, but Javier barely passed for five despite inheriting his father’s massive height. Maybe she’s met someone at one of those homeschool support groups Chloe takes her to.

  “By being as honest as possible, sweetling. If you like someone, you must always tell them unless some greater reason exists for why you shouldn’t.”

  “Like if they’re already married or mated?”

  “Exactly,” she said. “Because it is never right to usurp another dragon’s mate. Unless that mate is horrible and their cruelty has been witnessed by three people. Then in accordance with our laws, anyone may intervene to challenge. If they are soul bonded, one may never challenge at all.”

  Astrid became quiet for a moment, then she said, “Dragon laws are weird.” Her small nose scrunched.

  “Do you find such a law confusing?”

  �
��Well, yes. Daddy doesn’t hit my mom or anything but the other day, while we were watching a movie, she told me some husbands hit their wives because they’re big babies who don’t know any better. And she said the wives stay with them because no one sees what’s happening and they’re afraid to get help.”

  “That is true,” Ēostre said sadly. “And it has been true since the dawn of time when humans first began to couple with one another. But when it happens among dragons, it’s between mates who have not yet pledged their soul bond. No male or female would dare to harm the dragon they have vowed to love for eternity. It would be like wounding oneself. It takes immense amounts of love to create a dragon’s soul brand, Astrid. Very much. It cannot be done by force and must be accepted by a willing heart.”

  “Oh.”

  “So you see, such instances are very rare for us. We dragon females may often be smaller than males, but our breath weapons are more powerful, our claws are sharper, and we are quicker.”

  “And smarter,” Astrid said.

  “And far smarter,” Ēostre agreed, laughing at her grandchild. “And once we have found a male unworthy, we never stay.”

  “Why doesn’t Uncle Max have a mate?”

  Ēostre hesitated to answer. She thought of the man in the next room, kind, generous, and everything any dragoness could want. It wasn’t for his lack of trying. Over the years, she’d watched countless females cast him aside for simple, often egotistical reasons. His horns weren’t long enough. His feathers were too drab, and they wanted to birth a cub with feathers like shining embers. They hated his red hair or loathed his freckles, which had practically vanished as he aged. Even his hair had darkened to a subtle cinnamon shade she adored.

  Her friend Belenos had matured like the finest wine.

  “Because, my love, many of our fellow dragonesses are unworthy of him.”

  “Aren’t you worthy?”

  “I… I suppose I am,” Ēostre answered honestly.

  A heavy fist thumped against Ēostre’s hotel room door. She twisted around to face it and swore under her breath. “I’d better go, Astrid. I promised to join Maximilian for dinner.”