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Ivy didn’t have the strength to protest or even worry that she was putting him out. Exhaustion slumped her shoulders, and she let him stow her belongings in all kinds of secret compartments on his motorcycle. He pried the liquor bottle out of her chilled fingers and tucked it away, too, before sliding his leather jacket off. She couldn’t help admiring how his biceps flexed, stretching his rolled T-shirt sleeves as he wrapped it around her shoulders.
“I can’t take your coat,” she protested, starting to shrug it off, but he held it firmly around her until she slipped her arms into the sleeves. They came down below her fingertips, enveloping her in his body heat.
“I insist. You’re cold, and I’m a dragon. We can adjust our internal heat, no problem.” His yellow eyes seemed to glow momentarily in the winter gloom, reminding her that, despite his chivalrous manners, he was far from human. It was easy to forget when monsters had integrated so fully into human society since the Breach opened five years ago. Tairon barely even spoke with an accent.
His scent wafted up from his jacket, warm leather and toasted caraway seeds and a hint of bitter chocolate, along with awareness that she’d never been close enough to him to smell him before. There had always been a counter between them, ensuring a polite distance. It was a good thing, too, because he smelled delicious, like all the things she liked best. The sudden urge to lick him was so strong that she doubted she could have controlled herself, even at work.
He reached down toward her hips, palm up and fingers slightly curled, and instinctively, she arched her body toward him, totally shameless. He huffed a laugh into the frosty air, gripped the bottom edges of the jacket, and zipped her up. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Oh god,” she moaned, completely mortified. “I thought you were going to—you know what? Never mind what I thought. Let’s blame the tequila.” It hadn’t been long enough for the alcohol to hit her bloodstream, and she knew it. He had to know it, too.
He hummed from somewhere in his chest, proffering the extra helmet again.
“So convenient.” Maybe the tequila had taken effect, after all. That could explain the little jealous worm at the bottom of her stomach.
“What is?”
She turned the helmet over in her hands. “That you have this handy. You must take human girls out on rides all the time.”
His eyes narrowed, and the scales on his biceps raised slightly, stretching the edges of his T-shirt sleeves, making him look even more dragonish than usual. “It’s brand new. I got it after you said you’d never been on a motorcycle before. I offered you a ride, remember?”
A vague memory flickered in the back of her mind, a laughing conversation at the bakery one beautiful, sunny morning. Their teasing banter had been studded with a few nuggets of personal truth, like chocolate chips in a cookie, unexpectedly rich and rewarding. He’d never visited Silver Falls State Park. She said it was gorgeous in the fall when the leaves started to turn. He offered to take her on the back of his bike to see it. She revealed that she’d never ridden a motorcycle before.
When she rang him up, they’d lingered an extra second to make eye contact, acknowledging the exchange. “That was over a year ago!”
“I’ve been waiting for you to accept the invite.”
“Oh.” He’d been carrying around the helmet this whole time? Even if he was just saying that, it made her feel good. She bit her lip, a smile stretching her cheeks as she slid the helmet on and took the seat behind him. She left some space for the curve of his tail, but he twitched it to the left, wrapping its flat heft around the small of her back to pull her comfortingly close. It felt like the hug she desperately needed and made her eyes water.
“Where to, Beautiful?” he tossed back over his shoulder.
She gave him the cabin coordinates, and the bike roared to life underneath them, launching forward as a few tiny snowflakes dusted the dark folds of the jacket’s leather sleeves.
It’d be a white Christmas.
How perfect this weekend could have been, she reflected as they zoomed through town. Too bad it had all gone to shit. Then she remembered that it never could have been a happy holiday. James had booked the cabin because it had two bedrooms. He’d known when they planned the getaway that it wouldn’t be kisses under the mistletoe. When he’d stowed his grandmother’s ring in his sock drawer, he planned to give it to Chelsea, not her.
What a giddy fool she’d been. He’d let her prattle about the hot tub, buy edible massage oil and a new board game to bring. Let her build a whole fantasy that their relationship was getting “back on track.” But it hadn’t really been on track, not for a long time. There was no track to get back on. No resuscitating something already in rigor mortis, as he’d put it.
The bike hit the curving highway that wound through the foothills, and the cold wind sluiced over her, creeping down the gap between her helmet and the collar of the jacket. It made her skin tighten into goosebumps, sharp points of awareness as she saw the last six months for what they were—an inevitable end, even if it had been stretched out by James’s cold planning.
Rather than feeling sad, she was strangely comforted by the realization. She didn’t have to cry all Christmas or try to come up with ways to win James back. She could stuff her face with carbs and hang out in the hot tub and enjoy this long-overdue motorcycle ride without a speck of guilt. Her only regret was that she hadn’t accepted Tairon’s invitation earlier. Even in the frigid weather, it was exhilarating. She was glad she’d said yes to his offer.
It was a little ironic that, while James had been patiently waiting for her to realize their relationship was over, Tairon had been patiently waiting for her to wear his spare helmet. Carrying it around with him everywhere, hoping.
Had he really been hanging onto it for almost eighteen months? As if in answer, his back radiated extra heat, and she gave in, pressing the side of the helmet against his spine and her palms against his torso until she could feel the texture of his scales through the thin fabric of his shirt. Was it her imagination, or did his tail squeeze her a tiny bit closer?
3
WhenIvyandTaironreached the cabin, a tiny A-frame tucked among the pines, a few inches of snow blanketed its pointed roof and flocked the tree branches. Tairon dismounted to help carry the bags to the porch and waited, arms laden, for her to enter the rental code in the electronic lock.
“Let me give you my number, and I’ll make sure you have a lift back to town,” he said, once it clicked open. He followed her inside, setting the bags down on the wide, planked floor by the fireplace. She got out her phone, and he rattled off his digits. “You’ll be okay here alone?”
She gave a jerky nod as she input his contact information, then shrugged off the leather jacket and handed it back to him, instantly missing its sweet-smelling cocoon of warmth. She shivered despite her thick sweater. “You’ll be okay to ride back in this weather?”
He glanced out the large front window at the charcoal-gray sky and the thickening swirl of fat flakes. “Yeah. Roads are still clear.”
“Stay anyway,” she said impulsively, blushing as red as his scales. When he didn’t immediately respond, she fumbled for an explanation. “I don’t mean…it has two bedrooms...in case it snows more…oh, you probably have Christmas plans already, never mind. Forget I said anything.”
