Hour of the Dragon - Heather Killough-Walden Page 0,4
physics exam, and you love physics. I’m not letting you leave the school until you level with me. What’s going on?”
She told me her mother was pregnant. She explained that while her mother felt blessed to have that piece of her father still with her after his death, the news was also a devastating blow. The sad truth was that in 1966 a woman wasn’t allowed to keep her job if she conceived. By October her mother was going on six months, and it was impossible for her to hide the pregnancy any longer. She’d been fired.
Annaleia had gone to work to support the family in her mother’s stead.
I had fortunes to my name. I could have given her the world, and some nights I still lie awake and wonder why the fuck I didn’t. I tell myself what I told myself back then – that if I had offered, she would have just refused. What’s more, because she was smart she would wonder where the money came from. She would maybe even stop trusting me. Then she would push me away. I couldn’t let that happen. Not for anything.
But whatever my stupid reasons, I let her burn her free time with other people, customers in a diner, co-workers, strangers, when I wanted her all to myself.
My remedy for this dilemma was to acquire a job in the same diner where she worked. That part was easy. Dragons are attractive no matter the form they take, and the diner’s owner recognized a pull when he saw one. More people came to eat, and yeah I used my magic to make sure every customer capable of doing so would leave massive tips for Leia. It usually turned out they were going to anyway. She was beautiful too. She was also sweet. So, what asshole wouldn’t tip her?
With the extra help, it went a little easier on her, and we were able to spend more time together. Back then Philly was dangerous in that area of town at night. I kept her safe, especially when she wasn’t aware I was doing so. We wrapped up work nights with homework sessions over tea or coffee and pastries. Always pastries. She loved them as much as I did, hell I think she loved them more. Though you’d never know it to look at her. It was probably that mind of hers running full tilt twenty-four-seven that kept the weight off.
Sometimes she stayed over in the apartment I had convinced her my always-away-on-business uncle owned. She would fall asleep in my arms on the couch.
She felt so good against me, warm and soft. Yielding. She trusted me. I can’t tell you what that means to a monster like me. In her dreams, she would twitch or laugh softly, and I found myself rapt. There was nothing more interesting. Nothing more pure.
Those nights, I stayed up until morning just to listen to her. I can’t tell you the depth of the imagination on that girl. While she slept, she came up with shit that was way ahead of her time, inventions, movie plots, musical numbers… it was like her dreams were an outlet for a mind that wouldn’t stop churning, stop producing. In a world where she was forced to work so hard at something as mindless as waitressing, knowing how brilliant she actually was underneath was more tragic than ever. But I knew she felt she had no choice, and I knew better than to mess with the system she’d set up.
I said nothing. Instead I cherished the time I had to hold her against me and watch her face and listen to her breathe. I memorized her in those moments. And then we slept, nothing more. No matter how much I might have wanted it, and I fucking wanted it, there wasn’t anything more. Hell, some nights I was diamond-hard for hours, to the point of very real torture, before I would allow the powerful magic running through my veins to bring my body back under control. I almost enjoyed the punishment. It was part of being with her, and I wanted to experience every part of being with her.
I was falling in love. Me. A dragon, an ancient dragon – an ancient black dragon. The most ruthless and admittedly the loneliest of our kind. Falling in love. I realized as much when I realized that I respected her enough to never push the subject of sex between us.