A Boy and His Dragon (19 page)

Bertie cleared his throat but continued on with an eager light in his eyes. “Anyway, he’d been to the Asturias region in Spain, and he had a tapestry I
had
to see. You should see it, too, Arthur. It has a xana and a dragon.”

“A tapestry,” Arthur repeated, nodding for the sake of agreeing. He didn’t ask what a xana was, or even how it was spelled, and Bertie developed a line between his eyes that Arthur couldn’t look at without feeling terrible. He pushed back and stood up, almost losing his balance as he stepped onto the fireplace stones.

“Well then I shouldn’t have worried.”

He wiped his hands on his jeans and hurried away, going for the kitchen mostly because eating gave him an excuse to leave. “I should eat something.”

The kitchen doors swung open behind him as Bertie followed.

“Arthur, I didn’t expect I’d be so long coming back, but he insisted on buying me breakfast this morning and….” R. Cooper

126

“I don’t need to hear this,” Arthur snapped and opened the fridge too late to hide his expression. He ducked behind it anyway.

“I mean…” He sucked in a shaky breath and hoped Bertie wasn’t smelling any of the jealousy that he was definitely feeling now. The anger about worrying all night was still there, but right now all he was thinking was that Bertie had sat down to breakfast with someone else, some old friend dragon with tapestries, and Arthur couldn’t compete with that no matter how many books he cleaned.

“You… you don’t need to explain it to me.” But when he turned, shutting the fridge door too hard behind him, Bertie was staring at him with his mouth open and his tongue sliding, moist and pink, along his bottom lip.

“Shit,” Arthur said out loud and really, really wished he could blame it on being sick or malnourished again. Shiny black pupils swallowed up everything but thin rings of pale brown as Bertie regarded him, and then his posture changed, shifting into something smart and compelling and so powerful that Arthur’s knees went weak.

“Arthur, pet.” Bertie was almost purring as he spoke, and Arthur tried his best not to shiver, but hearing himself called “pet” again burned him up inside in ways the fire never could. He should hate it. He didn’t at all. Thinking about it, even now, made him half-hard. “Arthur.” Despite the pleasure coming through loud and clear in his tone, Bertie was speaking slowly, carefully. “Arthur, are you jealous?”

It knocked the anger right out of him. Arthur might have been a potential thief, he knew that, but he wasn’t any good at lying.

There was no way he could answer that question.

Maybe he didn’t need to, he thought faintly with an edge of hysteria, one more inhale and swipe of Bertie’s tongue and he was done for anyway.

Arthur’s stomach felt cold with nerves. He moved back instinctively, only processing
why
the moment his back bumped into the center island and Bertie stepped directly in front of him. He was still talking, blowing soft words at Arthur as if he had to be careful not to stoke any embers back into a raging fire. Arthur opened his A Boy and His Dragon

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mouth to defend himself without knowing what he would say, but then what Bertie was murmuring sank in.

“He’s truly just an old friend, pet, and not my type even if I were his—which is female, I’ll have you know.”

“You don’t need to explain.” Arthur pushed up, looking up once quickly while he had the strength and then down to preserve what he could of his pride. His heart was racing, and his skin was still so hot that it felt tight. His entire body felt tight. Shaky.

Restless.

He could hear the grin in Bertie’s voice.

“But I want to.” He was either inching closer or Arthur was. “I want to.” Bertie’s breathing was heavy, deep, and fast, like he couldn’t get enough air, or enough air with the scent of Arthur in it.

The sound was drowning out Arthur’s heart, his own breath. It was like Bertie was lapping up the oxygen around him, consuming it.

Arthur thought of fire again but couldn’t move to run for cover.

“Arthur,” he was called back, as if his thoughts were all over his face. Arthur raised his eyes and thought that he must be dreaming again because now Bertie looked like he was dizzy and feverish too.

“Even if that hadn’t been the case, Arthur, I wouldn’t have touched him.”

Arthur pushed back against the island, but only to stay on his feet. When that didn’t work he raised a hand and put it on Bertie’s shoulder without thinking. Bertie’s dress shirt was thin. Arthur unfurled his hand and felt the heat of skin just out of reach and thought of flesh that looked like ink and the scales that meant more magic than he could ever comprehend.

Maybe
this
was magic. He’d have no way of knowing, though he didn’t think Bertie would ever stoop to this kind of spell. He wouldn’t have to. He might be a dragon, but Arthur was here of his own free will. Arthur, who wasn’t powerful and who wasn’t magic and who definitely wasn’t another dragon who was both of those things.

He frowned at the thought, because what Bertie had said didn’t make any sense.

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“Why not?” He blinked and raised his chin to aim his frown at Bertie, only to stop at the complete surprise in Bertie’s expression.

His eyes were wide and unfocused a second before they focused again, narrowing on Arthur as if he’d never laid eyes on him before.

Bertie stared at him, looking the most serious that Arthur had ever seen him, and then quirked a small smile.

“Because….” He was still breathing heavily as he seemed to grow so hot that he burned to the touch. Arthur nearly flinched when he raised his hand, gasping instead when Bertie seemed to change his mind about whatever he had been going to do and only let his palm graze Arthur’s jaw. “Because I wouldn’t hurt you for worlds.” He sighed it, some epiphany lighting his eyes before he flashed another deliberate grin and took several steps back.

He coughed and moved toward the fridge, too, not looking back to see Arthur’s lost shudder.

“Don’t look so frightened, Arthur. You’d think I was going to devour you.” It didn’t have his usual flair, but Arthur scowled anyway out of habit because Bertie knew statements like that were alarming to humans and said them to be funny.

“I’m not scared.” His chin was still up, but Bertie pulled out cream for tea he must be planning on making himself and didn’t turn back to him. It was better that he didn’t. Arthur was shaking weakly, cold without Bertie so close to him.

Whether or not he could smell it, Bertie didn’t call him on the lie as he got out some tea.

“Perhaps I am, Arthur.” Which didn’t make sense either, because Bertie had nothing to fear from Arthur. Arthur was pretty sure Bertie only had to say his name and he would come running no matter how furious or jealous he might be. He certainly wasn’t any sort of physical threat. Bertie couldn’t think that.

But he moved when Arthur did, glancing over with too much warmth in his eyes for someone who was just making tea.

“I wasn’t expecting it to be like this. I feel quite disgustingly weak. Grovelly—you will have to check to see if that word is A Boy and His Dragon

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correct, Arthur. I want… things… but I can’t move without thinking,
would Arthur approve,
would he smile
?”

“I don’t understand.” Arthur had never had trouble controlling his mouth before. Of course, he had the vague memories of Professor Gibson’s patient expression as Arthur had asked yet another question in a long series of questions, but those questions were nothing to the things he kept blurting out in this house.

Bertie snorted and Arthur caught a whiff of smoke.

“I know.” In the time it took Bertie to fill the kettle with water and put it on the stove, Arthur’s heart hadn’t slowed. Bertie seemed better though, almost calm as he peeped over his shoulder at Arthur.

“Are you still angry with me?”

Arthur flattened his mouth and resisted remarking that Bertie must be recovering from his late night to offer him that fake meek look. He just sighed.

“No.” He wasn’t angry anymore. He was a lot of things at the moment—frustrated, horny, confused, hurt—but not angry.

“I’m glad.” Bertie beamed at him for another second that became two, then three, before he tossed his head and glanced away.

“Now.” He moved as if he didn’t know his way around his own kitchen, pausing before finally finding the right drawer to get a towel to dry his hands. “I’m going to shower and change.” He paused again when he was finished. “You’ll be here when I come back?”

Arthur nodded before he could speak because he kind of thought now that he’d do anything Bertie asked him to. He even kind of thought, or hoped, that there was something that Bertie wanted to ask him to do. But when Bertie only continued to wait, Arthur nodded again.

“Yes.” He was aware that his tone was still defiant and angry, as if Bertie was the foolish one for asking, but Bertie didn’t seem offended. He only snorted again before shooting Arthur one last look as he slid out the doors.

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THERE were scones and a china coffee set waiting for him on the table in the living room when he came into work the next few mornings. Arthur assumed Bertie had seen the note about instant coffee, the same way he assumed that the coffee was some sort of peace offering from a guilty dragon.

“I do forget things at times, you see,” he explained to Arthur the day he’d come home late, after he showered and came back downstairs. Arthur hadn’t fully recovered from that strange, tense moment in the kitchen, but he felt comfortable enough to raise an eyebrow at the statement, because after finding two novels’ worth of notes scattered among Bertie’s library, if there was one thing he knew, it was that Bertie “forgot things at times.” He
had
left a note. Arthur finally reminded him of that to stop the awkward explanations, though when he added that it had been too soaked to read, Bertie looked at him with such wide-eyed guilt and horror that Arthur sighed and realized he’d already forgiven him. It was no use being angry, not with Bertie already torturing himself.

Next to the scones was a note, because Bertie left him notes for everything now. Arthur couldn’t decide if it was endearing or annoying that Bertie took the time to write him a note wishing him a good morning and letting him know he was in the study. He was going with endearing, but only because the scones were good, not because Bertie had addressed the note to “My darling Arthur” or had been thinking of him. That’s what he told himself, because even if A Boy and His Dragon

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Bertie wasn’t trying to put distance between them anymore, there was still something different about him now, and Arthur didn’t want to upset anything else by obsessing over Bertie any more than he already did.

In any event, if he said anything about it, Bertie would only bat long eyelashes at him and say, “I will gladly give you coffee if you stay with me a little longer, Arthur,” as though it was nothing. It was a lot like when Arthur finished up for the day and Bertie would catch him putting his laptop and some books in his backpack. Then it was “Oh, are you going now, Arthur? But it’s so cold and dark out. Wouldn’t you rather curl up on the couch with me before the fire?” As if he could read Arthur’s mind and knew that each night Arthur was finding it harder and harder to leave.

Arthur looked back in the direction of the study, where he thought he could detect movement, and took an orange scone with his coffee before he set to work getting his laptop out and placing some books on the table. Bertie had requested them, and Arthur had needed to put a hold on them at the library, but they finally came in the day before.

He added a packet of herbs to that and then a new cell phone charger, because of course Bertie had lost his somewhere upstairs, or so he thought, but Arthur hadn’t offered to go up there to look.

Arthur shrugged off his jacket as he finished his coffee and ate another scone with a quick glance around for any audience. Then he gave in and went to the kitchen to get a damp towel for the job he’d given himself today.

For the moment, he was done with books. There were more to be found upstairs, but he wasn’t sure how to ask permission to go searching for them, and in the meantime, before he could figure out how to best put them away, he had to deal with the rest of the clutter from the bookshelves: all those dust-covered odds and ends.

He decided to simply wipe them down first and see what was valuable and deserved a proper cleaning, or a polish in the case of anything silver, and then see what actually belonged on display and what didn’t. Knowing Bertie, there would be awards and statues or a solid gold umbrella stand all jumbled together.

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He didn’t think Bertie’s former housekeeper quit because of the nudity. He’d bet she quit because of the mess in here. It would take someone very determined to keep these shelves spotless and in order. Even Bertie couldn’t, and he loved his books. It would take someone who didn’t forget things like dusting because something else had occurred to them.