Page 14 of Knotted by the Mountain Man Dragon

“Finish eating.”

“Why?”

“Because in about ten minutes I’m going to carry you upstairs and I need you to have enough energy for what I’m planning.”

I eat faster.

And across the island, Cage Brannon, a ninety-three-year-old fire dragon, grumpy mountain man mechanic, and my apparent fated mate, watches me with molten eyes and the faintest crack in his granite expression.

It might be a smile.

It’s devastating.

Chapter Four

Cage

She chose my flannel.

She has a suitcase full of her own clothes and she’s sitting at my island in my shirt with bare legs and damp hair and her scent tangled with mine, and my dragon hasn’t moved in twenty minutes. He’s curled around something internally, the way dragons curl around the most precious thing in their hoard. Wrapped tight. Utterly still.

Ours.

She’s eating food I cooked for her.

I watch her do it and something ancient and satisfied rumbles through my chest. My dragon has very simple priorities right now. Mate is fed. Mate is warm. Mate is in our house wearing our shirt.

The shirt is going to be a problem.

It hangs off one shoulder. The collar is too wide, so it slips sideways and exposes her collarbone, the curve of her neck, bare skin that my eyes keep finding no matter how many times I look away. Her legs are bare beneath the hem. She’s sitting at my island on a stool I’ve sat at alone ten thousand times and she looks like she belongs there so completely that my dragon can’t understand why the other stool is empty. Why I’m standing on the wrong side of the counter instead of pressed against her.

I tell her about the three weeks. The scent. The dreams. The certainty.

Her eyes go wide when I describe waking up to the smell of her. Wider when I tell her my dragon said mine and I didn’t argue. And when I finish, she’s looking at me across the island with an expression I’ve never seen directed at me before.

Recognition.

Then she tells me she felt me on the highway and what it felt like in my garage.

My hands are gripping the edge of the island so hard the wood creaks. I have waited decades to hear someone say that.

I want to vault this counter and put my mouth on her. I want to carry her upstairs and show her exactly what a dragon does when his mate tells him she felt him before she saw him. I want to bury my face in her neck and breathe her in until her scent is the only thing in my lungs.

Instead I tell her to finish eating.

Because I need her fed. I need her strong. And I need about ten minutes to get my dragon under control before I touch her again, because the next time I touch her I am not going to stop at my mouth and hands.

She eats faster.

Good girl.

I clean the kitchen while she finishes. Cast iron back on its hook. Counter wiped down. Anything to keep my hands busy, because if they’re not holding a dish towel they’re going to be on her.

My house looks different tonight.

I’ve lived here for forty years. Built it with my own hands. Every beam, every joint, every plank of this floor. I know this place the way I know my own body. And I’ve never once looked at it and thought something was missing.

Now I’m standing at my own sink noticing that the bathroom mirror upstairs is too high for her. That the bed I built is harder than she’s probably used to. That I don’t own cream or sugar. That every surface in this house was designed for one person and that person is six-five and has never needed to make room for anyone.