The Dragon’s E-Mail Order Menage

He wanted things to keep moving forward. Even if things got messy (and he knew that it was practically inevitable that they would in a relationship such as the one the three of them were talking about embarking on), it was new and different and that was what he wanted. He knew that so completely that he didn’t even look at Levi for confirmation before he took action. He just sprinted out the door after her, taking a brief moment to marvel at her lightning fast speed.

Hudson was fast, exceptionally fast, and it was very rare indeed that he encountered anyone whom he couldn’t catch almost before he started to move. Maggie, though. Maggie was almost to the t gate of the massive front courtyard before he finally grasped her taut upper arm. She whirled around to face him, her chest heaving and her eyes wide and shiny. He couldn’t tell if she was afraid or if she was angry and about to punch him in the face, and as it turned out he didn’t really care.

He had caught her before she was gone forever, and that was enough. He knew that he could convince her to stay the minute he touched her hot, soft skin. There wasn’t any rational reason for him knowing this but he knew it all the same. She would stay. He had no doubt in his mind that she would stay and as he watched her face with an intensity he had never felt about anything in his life before, he could see her coming to that same realization.

“I, I don’t know what to say. This isn’t what I was expecting.”

The words were similar to the kind she had spoken inside of the house, but all of the conviction was gone. She didn’t sound angry anymore. She still sounded a little bit confused, of course she did. That was only normal. But there was no anger and she wasn’t pulling away from his touch. To his surprise, she was already beginning to walk with him deeper inside of the courtyard, closer to the house she had just fled.

“I know,” he said with a thick voice with a slight tremor to it that he sincerely hoped wasn’t too noticeable to her, “I’m a complete asshole for not telling you before you got here.”

“Why didn’t you? Why would you let me find out like this?”

“I don’t know. You mean aside from me being a complete asshole?”

“Yes,” she said dryly, Hudson feeling unbelievably encouraged by the humor that was coming back to both her voice and her face, “aside from that, obviously.”

“Because you surprised me.”

“I surprised you?”

“I know, ironic, right? But yes, you surprised me. It didn’t take many exchanges for me to realize that I really liked you. I really wanted you to show up, so I could meet you, and I was worried that if I told you the deal, the whole deal, you wouldn’t have come. You wouldn’t have, would you?”

“No,” Maggie said thoughtfully, mulling his question over as if she hadn’t really thought about it until the exact moment of his asking, “I guess I probably wouldn’t have. Although I guess you’ll never know. If you had asked me a year ago if I would be here at all, I would have told you there wasn’t a chance in hell.”

“But you did come and now that you’re here I can see that maybe I was wrong. Maybe I should have grown some balls and told you the whole truth. It sure as sh*t would have been fairer. Only now that you’re here, I don’t know. Do I have the right to ask you to stay? To give me a chance at least? I mean, I know I don’t, I don’t have a leg to stand on, but I was right. I like you, at least I think I could really get to like you, and I don’t want you to go. Will you give it a shot? Like a trial run. If you aren’t happy you can leave. Hell, I’ll even help you pack.”

He watched her face, barely able to breathe, telling himself he wouldn’t breathe until he got the assurance that she was going to stay. She looked up at him, her astonishing eyes flinty and calculating at first, then softening, a smile playing across them that told him he had won this particular battle.

“All right,” she said coyly, “I’ll stay. But you should probably know it’s at least as much so I can try out that amazing looking pool I saw in the back, as it is to get to know you two weirdos better. Think you can live with that?”

“I’m pretty sure I’ll find a way to manage somehow.”

“All right. Then we have ourselves a deal.”

She gently pried her arm loose of his still too-tight grip on it and walked nonchalantly toward the house, as if the conversation they just had was the most mundane one to ever take place between two shifters. He smiled and felt his dragon stir in approval. This was going to be fun. This was going to be so much better than he had thought it was going to be.