“What are you talking about?” His eyes narrowed, but the tension in his body dialed down a notch.
“I dreamed about my mother.” Her gaze went unfocused and she said, “And I think it actually was her. When she left I tried to follow her.”
“You are never to do that again,” he said between his teeth. “Do you understand?”
“Dragos,” she said, speaking with care because he was still so upset. “You’ve got to stop giving me orders.”
No matter how gently she said it, it was still like a spark to dry tinder.
“Fuck you,” he snapped. He thrust his face down to hers, eyes flaring to lava and features hardening. “You’re mine. And you. Can’t. Leave.”
“Whoa, there. I don’t know what to say to you. You’re like some stalker guy on steroids.” She threw back her hands and rolled her eyes. “You are aware, aren’t you, that you can’t have slaves any longer. You know, abolition. Big war. Happened a hundred and forty, forty-five years ago.”
“Human history, human terms,” he snarled. “They mean nothing to me.”
She had already known she shouldn’t attribute human motives or emotions to him. Here was the reminder. The dragon was very close to the surface. The big body crouching over her was taut with menace. Every legend she had ever heard of a dragon’s possessive, territorial nature came to mind.
Damn, it was enough to make her swallow hard but not, she realized, in fear. Muscle by muscle she relaxed. “Okay then, big guy,” she said, soft and easy. “You tell me what you mean.”
“I don’t know.” That fierce, proud face was puzzled. “All I know is you’re mine to keep and protect. You can’t fade away, and you can’t die. I won’t let you.”
She thought it was not the time to point out that she was going to die at some point. She had too much human in her.
“So, I’m yours for how long?” she asked, curious now that she decided to explore this path. “Until you get tired of me, or you get bored again?”
“I don’t know,” he said again. “I haven’t figured this out yet.”
A sudden rush of affection surprised her. He wasn’t faking his perplexity. He wasn’t putting on an act. “That makes two of us,” she said. She thought of the Elven wayfarer bread, the hairbrush and the soap, and his thoughtfulness surprised her all over again. She reached up to run a finger down his throat. “So, for the sake of argument, if I’m yours as you said, to keep and protect, that seems to me like you would want me to—be all right. To thrive?”
“Of course,” he said. He looked down at her hand as she drew circles on his chest, and the menace he exuded turned darker, smokier.
“Dragos,” she murmured, “I don’t thrive when someone barks orders at me all the time.”
She peeked at him to see how he reacted to her logic. He was frowning. “It’s how I talk to people,” he said.
“It’s how you talk to your employees and servants, you mean?” she replied.
His frown deepened. She bit her lips to keep back a smile. How could she be so damn charmed by such a primitive thug? She had to establish a different footing with him or be mowed under by the sheer force of his personality.
“See, here’s the thing.” She kept her voice gentle while she started to rub his chest in soothing circles. “Someone barking orders at me makes me feel trapped and stifled. I understand you’ve gotten into a habit, but maybe,” she suggested, “you could try not ordering me around sometimes. You know, just until you get bored and let me go.”
He had grown heavy-lidded as she stroked him, but at that his narrowed gaze snapped up to her face. She smiled at him, nonthreatening and relaxed. “What if I don’t get bored?” he said. “What if I don’t let you go?”
She was jolted by a sense of longing that swept over her. She lost her smile and looked away. “We don’t even know what we’re talking about, anyway,” she said.
He loosened his grip on her hair, shifted his weight onto one elbow and took her luminescent hand. He tilted her arm and looked at it. “You’re remarkable. No, don’t!” he said, as she remembered and began to dampen the glow. “Let me see you as you really are, for a while at least. Look at how fast you’re healing.”
She looked. The ugly black bruises that had mottled her skin had almost faded. “I feel good,” she confessed. “Different, somehow. Better. More. Hey, am I the Bionic Woman?”
He smiled. “It sometimes happens with halflings when they come to an Other land,” he told her. “The heightened magic can help them access abilities and traits that might otherwise have remained latent.”