“If you want to sleep, that's fine,” she murmured, and she leaned down to kiss him right between the shoulder blades. “It's all fine.”
He listened to her, letting his skin tingle under her touch, letting his mind fade to the soft roar of his blood in his ears. He barely noticed when her touch grew firmer and when it started to focus on his shoulder and his right side. Her fingers were firm against the muscles there, nothing as harsh as what a physical therapist might do, but firm enough that they dragged back against the flesh.
If she had not warmed him, it might have hurt, but instead there was only a warmth spreading out from her touch, something that sank deep in his body to touch him in a place that he wasn't sure he had ever been touched before.
“What are you doing?” he asked, and his voice came out wondering and a little buzzed with pleasure. “Your hand, is it...”
“My hands are fine. Big motions like this help me unwind from the little motions I've been doing all day. Does it hurt? Do you dislike it?”
“No, and no.”
“Good. I'm just…I just want to make you feel good.”
“Why?” The question came out of his mouth before he could stop it. Her hands paused on his back for just a moment, and then she went on touching him. He hoped she never stopped.
“Because…because you're my true mate?”
He laughed a little at her hesitant tone.
“You didn't even know what a true mate was a week ago.”
“Because you need it, and I wanted to give it to you.”
Morgan abruptly realized that he shouldn't have teased her. The truth scourged him, fell just short of being a humiliation, but he found that with Harper close and her touch as soft and kind as sunlight, he could bear it.
Finally, he rolled to one side, and when she yelped at being displaced from his back, he caught her in his arms and bore her to the bed.
“How do you feel?” she asked, and in response, he kissed her.
Chapter Thirteen
∞∞∞
On the road the next day, Morgan was quiet, and Harper wondered if she had overstepped the night before. She could remember all too easily how tense he had been right before she touched him and how very wary he had been about her gentle probing. She could tell that he wasn't ready to tell her about everything yet, not really, and that was fine.
There was a drizzly spring rain covering everything in a fine mist, and as she stretched her fingers from the fine sewing she was doing, Harper looked up to see the foggy fields and forests go by.
“It looks like magic,” she said, and Morgan glanced at her.
“It can be. We dragons have stories about mists and how they can be the soft places that bind two realms together. They say that we came out of the mists in the long and long ago, lost from our homeland and seeking a new one.”
“You have stories of your own?”
“Of course we do. Very fine ones too.”
“And do you have stories about magic or have you shed it all for the science of your new world?”
Morgan hummed thoughtfully, tapping his long fingers on the steering wheel. To her quiet satisfaction, she thought that he looked a little easier today, his form settling in the seat without the tension that she remembered from the day before.
I like looking at him when he's relaxed, she thought, and warmth filled her.
“There might be some science to explain it someday, but none exists yet. I suppose the sunstones could be some truly advanced piece of technology, but it does not feel like it.”
“Sunstones?”
A kind of tension fell over Morgan, and he stared hard at the road in front of him. She saw his jaw tense and then relax again as he took a deep breath.
“Is this not something I should know about?” she asked.
“There's nothing you should be afraid to ask me,” Morgan said, shaking his head. “And no, the sunstones are…well. Most of the dragon clans are just people with dragon's blood running through their veins. It gives them a very long life, a certain immunity to fire, a few other tricks here and there. It is when someone with dragon blood is given a sunstone that they can actually become a dragon, when the dragon that lives in them is given a form, given the fire it has always wanted.
Harper shivered a little.
“And…you have a sunstone? What is it like?”
“Well, to look at, a sparkling golden gem perhaps a little smaller than your fist. It glows with its own light, it's beautiful, but when you hold it, when you bring it inside you, you feel such heat.”
“It's inside you? Like...you swallowed it?”
“Er, a bit more as if it sunk into my chest. I have no idea what an X-ray would see, but fortunately, I've never had to have one, so…”
“That's fascinating. Can you pull it out if you need to?”
One moment, Morgan was at ease, answering her questions even if it was clear that he had never answered ones like them before. The next, he had stiffened, tapping the brakes and glaring at the road.
“Morgan?” she asked, softly.
“Yes,” he said, and there was something, not sharp, but broken in his voice. “I can take it out. I can have it taken out of me.”
She saw that he had actually gone pale over whatever it was she had said, and she swallowed hard.
“Hey,” Harper said, her voice soft. “Can we stop for a bit? I think there's an exit for a state park in just a mile.”
Her request brought some color back to his face. He looked relieved at her words, nodding, even managing a smile.
“Of course we can,” he said.
Harper wondered if she should like how much he wanted to please her. She had never had anyone so very attuned to
