Light Dragons 01 - Love in the Time of Dragons

glaring at him with irate intent as he turned his back on me and strode over to a tall bureau. “You were begging me to do this yesterday, and now you don’t want me?”
    “I never beg,” he scoffed, searching through a drawer of the bureau. “I am a wyvern, and your mate. I do not need to beg.”
    “You want to bet?” I growled, my arms crossed and my eyes narrowed as I watched him. I knew he wasn’t indifferent to me—a simple glance at his fly negated that idea. “You were all over me yesterday. Why are you spurning me now?”
    “Wyverns don’t spurn, either,” he said, his voice somewhat muffled as he squatted, his head in a deep drawer at the bottom of the bureau.
    “Well, you’re sure doing something, and it is not celebrating the fact that Gareth is a lying bigamist, as you should be doing. Instead, you’re poking your head in some sort of a desk. What is it you’re doing there, Baltic? Going to write a few letters? Pay some bills? Cut up pretty pictures and make a collage? What’s that?”
    He stood before me, a small wooden box in his hand. Engraved on it, in gold, were two stylized medieval-ish dragons, their necks crossed. He put the box into my hands. “It is a gift for you.”
    I turned it over, examining it, my fingers sliding over the smooth, highly polished wood. “What is it?”
    “Open it.”
    I traced the long lines of one of the dragons on the top, and looked up at Baltic. “If it contains a wedding ring, you can just take it back. I’ve had enough of marriage, thank you.”
    He made an impatient gesture. “Marriage is for mortals. You are my mate. That is for all time.”
    “Till death do us part,” I said softly, then smiled. “And beyond.”
    “Open it,” he repeated.
    I glanced at the big bed behind me. The room was decorated in shades of cream and a cool blue—attractive, but completely not his style. “Why don’t I open it later, after I’ve given you all that pleasure you think you’re due?”
    “I know I am due it,” he said with maddening arrogance, then nudged my hands. “Open your present.”
    “I like to anticipate gifts. Once you open them, the anticipation is gone.”
    “Open it!” he said, a little line of frown starting to form between his brows.
    “Let’s have oral sex!” I said brightly, moving backwards toward the bed, patting it with a seductive glance toward him. “You like that! I remember that you do! You take off all your clothes and lie down here, and I’ll give you a tongue bath that you won’t ever forget.”
    “For the love of the saints, woman, open the damned box!”
    “And you say you never spurn! You just spurned my offer of a blow job, something I thought no living man could do.”
    He started toward me, a look in his eye that said he’d reached the end of his pretty nonexistent patience.
    “Fine!” I said quickly, crawling onto the middle of the bed while I clutched the box. “But I just want you to remember that you’re the one who didn’t want oral sex. Stop giving me that look! I’m opening it. See? The lid is . . . ahhh.”
    It wasn’t really a word I spoke; it was more an exhalation of emotion. The box held a small object, somewhere between an oval and a circle, made of metal, but now dulled with age and time.
    Recognition prickled along my skin as I gazed at it, waves of electricity seeming to ripple down my arms and legs. I knew this object. I knew it well, and yet it was both as familiar to me as the beat of my own heart, and foreign, something I had never seen before.
    “Love token.” I spoke the words without even being aware of it. “It’s my love token. You made it for me. But how . . . ?”
    “It was at Dauva, in my lair. You placed it there, along with all the valuables in the castle, before Constantine attacked. Kostya raided most of the lair, but he left that.”
    So faint I could barely make it out, a roughly drawn tree was engraved into the silver token, with three upper leafy branches, and two lower ones bearing hearts.
    I smiled, a faint memory returning to me. “It’s made of silver so it would not distract you when I wore it.”
    He watched me closely. “You remember it, then?”
    “No. Yes. Both.” I reached out to touch the token, wanting to feel it, to weigh its age in my hand, but the second my finger touched the metal surface, the world began to spin.
    I cried out, feeling as if I would fall, but strong arms caught me, warm and familiar, his touch stirring the embers of