“How did you learn that?”
She smiled at him, reaching up to pass her hand feather-light over his jaw. He smiled, and she was enchanted to discover in the good clear light that he had a single dimple right under the left corner of his mouth. She hadn't noticed before.
“I learned it by collapsing a few times. Come on. I bet they have vending machines here. I'll buy you a candy bar.”
“Oh, no need.”
Puzzled, she watched as Morgan reached into the back seat and pulled out what looked like a honest-to-god picnic basket.
“Are you serious?”
“You might not have been traveling very much, but I've driven across the United States many, many times. Truck stops and gas stations never have decent food.”
“So you just…pack yourself an old-fashioned picnic whenever you go?”
“No, usually I just go hungry until I reach a place with decent food, or I carry protein bars.”
“So...”
“I'm not going to let you go hungry or live off of protein bars.”
He said it with the flat authority of a general in charge of leading his men through the war, and because she didn't want to break into tears over the obvious care in his voice, she laughed instead and followed him to the picnic table in the sun.
It really was a bit too cold to eat outside, but she had her coat on and long socks, and even in just a light jacket, Morgan didn't seem to feel the chill at all. She watched as he put out a surprisingly artful spread of crackers, cheese, and thin-sliced pieces of spicy sausage, complete with tiny jars of jam and mustard.
“So are you going to pull out a bottle of wine next?” she asked.
“Should I have brought wine?”
Harper stared for a moment in astonishment before she caught the little whisper of amusement at the corner of his mouth, and then she laughed out loud. Morgan grinned – so handsome when he did that – and brought out two bottles of orange juice instead.
“Like I said, I wanted to make sure you were well-fed,” he said, and she was struck by the oddly diffident tone in his voice. He didn't seem to think this was special at all. It was just something he did.
Harper took the cracker he handed her, topped with cheese, sausage, and just the perfect dab of mustard. She nibbled it thoughtfully, giving herself time to think.
“This is a true mate thing, isn't it?” she asked, and she knew that her guess had been right at the half-pleased, half-cornered look on Morgan's face.
“It is,” he said reluctantly, and she handed him a cracker topped with sausage as a reward.
“You should probably stop trying to sneak this stuff past me,” Harper said. “Tell me more about this. Maybe we can talk this out? This is new territory for me.”
“It's new territory for me, too,” Morgan admitted.
“Never had a true mate before?”
He stared at her in confusion.
“Of course not. I mean. I've had – I've had sex before.”
“Well, I didn't really think you were a virgin that night. I mean, did you think I was? Is that going to be a problem?”
Morgan shook his head.
“True mates…it doesn't have that much to do with sex.”
“But not nothing to do with sex,” Harper said, unable to avoid teasing.
In return she got a look that she could only describe as smoldering. He looked at her as if she was something good to eat, as if he wanted nothing more than to put the nice crackers aside and have her on the picnic table.
“It has a few things to do with sex,” Morgan said finally, and then he grinned, a smoky hot thing that made her want to reach over and to kiss him and to let him kiss her in return.
“But,” Harper said, making a heroic effort to get to the bottom of things, “not everything?”
“No. A dragon's true mate is the person they're supposed to be with. Just…the right person.”
“Is it fate or destiny? Is it…a chemical thing, there's one person that just smells right to you?”
Morgan gave her a crooked grin.
“You certainly do smell and feel and taste very good and very right to me. But the truth is no one knows. We've been making guesses like this since the very beginning, and we, shifters, dragons, whoever, are no closer to the truth than we ever have been. We are shifters, we have true mates. We all know that, and for most of us, that's all we need to know.”
“And you,” Harper echoed. “What is it you need to know?”
Morgan hesitated, and Harper raised an eyebrow.
“You thought of something just then.”
“You see very clearly.”
“It's something that you're going to have to get used to,” Harper said sweetly. “So 'fess up. What just went through your head?”
“I want to know more about your wrist.”
Whatever she had been expecting, It wasn't that. Before she knew what she was doing, Harper pulled her hand off the table, bringing the offending wrist to her lap as if she could hide it.
“It's a wrist,” she said, a little defensively. “it connects my hand to my arm. It bends, and it flexes.”
“And it hurts sometimes. Enough that you need to wear a brace for it. I'd like to hear more about that, please.”
She gave him a wry glance.
“You're stubborn.”
“It's something that you're going to have to get used to,” Morgan said gravely, a twinkle in his eye.
Despite how good-looking he was when he smiled at her, when he warmed like that, there was an old part of Harper that still wanted to tell him it was none of his business. She was long past the point in her life where she would snap at someone for what she considered prying, but she wasn't above redirecting the conversation or deflecting questions with humor.
Something about the patient way Morgan watched her, however, told her that that wouldn't do. Still, Harper might have tried, but then
