Mate Of A Dragon Villain (Skeleton Key) (14 page)

W
hen they finished
their fourth round of loving in less than a day, Amanda pulled him into her bathing room. A small area with a tub and pipes that brought the water to them.

Hargreave was impressed. The tower his mate lived in was large, but her space was small. Still, the luxuries inside were notable, and worthy of his lover.

The shower was exquisite. It felt as though he was bathing under a hot rain, and it got only hotter when his mate kissed him and gently used her teeth on his wet skin, her expression naughty, and eager.

Showing her playful side now. He liked that.

Afterwards, Amanda left him again, leaving for a shop she called a Starbucks. She returned with delicious drinks that Hargreave had never had before in his life. He could hardly believe
this
was coffee. It was sickeningly sweet, and he loved it.

He loved it, and hated it at the same time.

“Hargreave? What’s the matter?” Amanda put her drink down. “You okay?”

They were sitting on her couch, the place where Hargreave had slept his first night here. Her body was snuggled securely against his own. She fit him so perfectly, and the morose feeling inside him worsened.

He put his drink down on the small table in front of him. “I have to go back.”

“What?” Amanda sat up quickly, staying close. “You…do you have to? We could stay here. It’s nice here.”

“I cannot leave my people, Amanda,” Hargreave explained gently. “And I cannot ask you to come with me either.”

She blinked at him, as though taking his words in slowly. “Okay. Can I ask why?”

Hargreave scoffed, waving around to the space around him. “You live in a peaceful world, luxuries all around you. Your home, while small, is full of food, warmth, water, clothing. You want for nothing here.” Hargreave wet his lips, that aching sensation in his chest fully throbbing now. “I am a selfish man, but I would not ask you to part with this world for mine. You have more here than I could ever offer you.”

“That’s not true! You could offer me lots! But it doesn’t matter because you don’t have to leave!” Amanda took him by the hand and gripped it tightly. “You just said this place has a lot of great things. I want to share that with you. We can both live here and not have to worry about fighting, dragon wars, or Eldric ever again.”

She was reaching. He could tell since she had mentioned Eldric’s name. In her eyes, Eldric could do no wrong, so it was the only explanation that made any sort of sense.

Hargreave was tempted. So tempted.

He looked at her. Amanda pulled back. Something in her expression changed, hardened, and she rose from the couch, turning her back to him. “You already made up your mind.”

“I cannot leave my people in the dark, Amanda. They need their prince.” He stood, moved to her, placed his hands on her shoulders. “I cannot let them down.”

Amanda lifted her hand to her mouth. Hargreave felt the harsh fluttering of her heart as she took in this news. She turned to the counter. Hargreave looked in the same direction.

The skeleton key was still there. It seemed to be looking at them. Amanda made a harsh, growling noise. “I should shatter it.”

Hargreave didn’t think she would succeed if she tried. Magical items were not so easily destroyed.

Amanda was silent. She said nothing to him, and Hargreave could think of nothing to say back to her that would be comforting in the least. He could think of nothing to comfort himself in this moment, knowing he would have to leave her behind.

Hargreave went to where the key sat. He took it in his hand. The glass skull seemed to be smiling up at him.

“Which door did you use to come to my world?” The locks he’d seen on the front door were not large enough to fit a key such as this.

Amanda clenched her fists, her back becoming stiff. “I’m going with you.”

Hargreave shook his head.

“I won’t tell you which door I used unless you take me with you.”

“I will find it eventually. I have yet to explore your dwelling fully yet.”

Amanda bit her lips together. Her face colored at his words. Something between anger and frustration.

Perhaps it was better if she despised him. If she hated him, thought he was cruel for abandoning her, she would not miss him. She would not suffer any sort of loss.

With the luxuries around her, she would not mourn him for long.

“You would get in the way.”

Amanda’s eyes blinked wide. His words seemed to shake her from her anger. “What?”

Hargreave clenched his jaw. If it gave him a darker, uncaring demeanor, then all the better. “My world is not your world. You are not a woman fit for a world of battle or want. You are a princess in this world. That is something I have no interest in.”

“Are you kidding me? You’re a prince!”

“A title only. I have learned to live without. I would have no patience for you when you ultimately demand to be spoiled with the riches a world such as this would have afforded you. I need to keep my men fed, warm, and alive. Not gift you with strange items such as…this.” He reached out and tapped the black screen of the television. There were some similarities between his world and Amanda’s. The electricity, for one, though here it seemed more plentiful, but in his world, there were never black rectangles of glass that had people and music in them.

Amanda’s face turned a bright shade of red one more time.

Hargreave suspected she would strike him, cast him from her home in a rage, calling out every despicable name she could associate with him. He didn’t treasure the thought of it, but he knew he would deserve it. He waited for it. He even hoped for it in a twisted sense. If she was angry and screeched him out, he would have no reason to stay.

Amanda took in a deep breath through her nose, presumably to have enough power in her lungs to start shaming him, but then she did something Hargreave didn’t expect.

She stepped forward, grabbed him by the hand, and pulled him back to the couch. “You’re not going to Lassie me or some shit, so cut it out. Sit down.”

Hargreave sat, but he also frowned. “I don’t understand. What is a Lassie?”

Amanda smiled, though her eyes still held the annoyance from before. “It’s an old dog show, just trust me, you were trying to do it to me, but I’m too smart for that. You’re not getting rid of me and you’re not going back alone.” She took him by the chin with a forceful grip when Hargreave attempted to look away from her. “No, you’re going to look at me, especially when you try to dump me. I’m your mate. You’ve been saying nothing else since I fell into your world, and I know it’s not bullshit because I feel it.”

“It’s dangerous.”

“I can handle it,” Amanda insisted, and Hargreave had to admit, the strength and determination in her eyes was a sight to behold. It was lovely. “I’m not planning on going out into death fights of whatever. I know my limits, but you’re out of your fucking mind if you think I’m letting you walk out of my life after everything that just happened.”

Now Hargreave was starting to get annoyed. “I would not be walking easily. You’re a lunatic if you think I would leave your side with ease.”

“Then don’t do it,” Amanda said harshly. Her expression softened. “I’ve been writing romance for the longest time now, ever since I was a teenager, and if I wasn’t writing it, I was sneaking my grandma’s books and reading them under the covers with flashlights every night. I have
never
been in love before. Not once. I’ve liked people, I’ve thought I was in love before, but then you came along, and you…I don’t know what it is, but just the way you treat me, the way you keep insisting we belong together, but not in a creepy, stalking kind of way. I don’t know, but I’m not going to let you walk away feeling sorry for yourself, and I won’t let myself stay here wondering what could’ve happened if I’d gone with you. Fine. I get it. You need to go back, but you’re sure as hell not leaving me behind.”

“Don’t you have family? People here who would miss you? Wonder where you went?”

That seemed to make her pause. Amanda blinked, as if she honestly hadn’t thought of it before. “I…I know they’d be happy for me if they knew I was going to be with someone who cared about me as much as you do.”

Amanda looked into his eyes in that moment, and Hargreave was honestly stuck in them. Those grey-blue depths that were so much like a storm in the making, he couldn’t look away from them. They were beautiful, the loveliest eyes he’d ever seen.

That they were filled with honesty and conviction only increased his adoration for them.

“You will stay?”

Amanda nodded, both her hands now squeezing his. “Yes.”

A choking sensation overcame Hargreave in that moment. He had never felt such a sweet, aching pain in his chest or throat before. “I promise I will care for you. I will keep you safe.” He released the skeleton key so he could grip her hands back. “Eldric will never have you in his clutches again.”

A slight frown furrowed Amanda’s slender brows. She reached out for her books, which were still on her little table. She examined the covers, read the backs, then flipped through the pages. She stopped in some places, her eyes seeming to skim the words before she continued with the other books.

Hargreave didn’t understand, and he picked up on the tension inside her. “What is it?”

Amanda shook her head. “I don’t know how it was that I started seeing your world, or visualizing it, dreaming about it, whatever it was that was happening, but I was still seeing it. I saw enough details to get most of it right when I was writing it.”

Hargreave reached for one of the books Amanda returned to the table. “What are you thinking?”

She bit her lips together, shaking her head. “You’re not going to like this, but maybe Eldric isn’t the evil guy you think he is. No, really, hear me out,” she said quickly when Hargreave shook his head.

He got to his feet. The anger inside him needed to be dispersed, but there was nothing he could do but pace the small area of her sitting room. “He had me locked in his dungeons for years.”

“I know.”

“He could have freed me when his father died; he left me to rot!”

“I know.”

“He killed my parents and destroyed my home.”

“I know,” Amanda said again, her voice soft, as though begging him to understand. “But, and just try to follow with me for a few minutes, what if that wasn’t all him?”

Hargreave sucked in a deep breath. He looked down at his mate, hands on his hips, and tried to keep his temper, reminding himself that none of this was her fault or her doing.

“Very well,” he said through clenched teeth. “Why, may I ask, do you believe Eldric to be innocent when I know him to not be?”

Amanda shifted in her seat, clearly uncomfortable. “Well, you did say that when he came to see you, he was with his father. His father was the king then. No one can really say no to a king, and when his father died—I’m not saying this excuses anything, but an explanation for why he didn’t release you was because he forgot about you when he was mourning.”

Hargreave snorted. He didn’t know which was more insulting. The idea that his rival had left him to be tortured and raped in that miserable hole on purpose, or had forgotten him in it, like a child who misplaced a toy.

“It’s not even just all that,” Amanda said quickly. “When I was planning out the books, or thought I was planning them out, I was going to write you to be redeemable. I don’t know how redeemable, but I was going to do it because every time I wrote you in my books, I always thought there had to be more to it. You weren’t just some evil caricature.”

Hargreave winced. “It pains me to think you ever believed such a thing.”

“I know, and I’m sorry, but really I thought the story was pulling me in another direction. It was really you that was pulling me in another direction. Again, I don’t know how this was working, but clearly, I was getting some sort of visions of you and the world you live in. Something was drawing me to write about all this, and every time I thought about ending the series, I wanted to do it with a twist. You know, a secret villain who had been under Eldric’s nose all the time.”

Hargreave now thought he knew where his mate was going with this. “You believe someone else to be pulling Eldric’s strings?” He looked down at the books again.

Hargreave’s woman had the gift of sight, though it only seemed to apply to Hargreave’s world, and not her own.

Amanda nodded. “I would put pretty much everything on Udolf. You know him, right?”

Hargreave hated the sound of the man’s very name. “The old bastard who was constantly at Edward’s ear. Yes. I know of him. I have seen him a time or two while spying on Eldric’s camps.”

“Right, well, he’s the guy I would have written in to do it. I can see him twisting things around, getting Edward to attack your home, and keeping Eldric blind to everything that had been going on when Edward died. He’s like Wormtongue from
Lord of the Rings
or something, the creepy adviser whispering poison into his king’s ear.”

Hargreave did as he promised his woman. He listened, and then he made an attempt to absorb everything Amanda told him. He looked down at the skeleton key still in his hand. He sighed. “I do not know how much this would absolve Eldric of the crimes he has committed against me, but I will look into it.”

Amanda grinned, getting to her feet. “If I’m right, the fighting can stop. All the revenge battles, you don’t have to do them anymore.”

Hargreave smiled wryly at her. “I adore your naivety, but I do not think it will be that simple. Wars like ours do not end overnight, or without a river of blood.”

“No.” Amanda took him by the hands. The determination in her eyes was apparent. Hargreave could not look away. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but Eldric isn’t a bad guy. I never wrote him as the villain for a reason.”

“No, you wrote me as the villain.”

Color bloomed across her cheeks at his words. She briefly looked away from him. “Only because I wasn’t looking beneath the surface.” Their eyes met again, and Hargreave didn’t think a day would ever exist when he was not captivated by her. “If I’d taken the time to pay more attention, to realize that not everything I was dreaming up was in my head, I would’ve known you weren’t the bad guy either. I’m an idiot for not realizing it before.”