You wouldn’t have pegged someone so old-school courteous for being so curious until you remembered that Theo had grown up in the kind of one-stoplight dragon village that meant everyone had known everyone else’s business all the time. Not knowing everyone’s personal lives was the one thing that seemed to make him feel homesick.
This marked the first tim
e in years that Martin was happy to talk. Theo wanted to know everything? Martin wanted to tell everything.
Well, he thought, considering the feeling of Tiffani’s legs wrapped around his waist, the thrill of holding her up, almost everything, anyway.
Some things were still his. Some things were still theirs.
But this—this he wanted to share.
“I met my mate.”
Gretchen actually clapped her hands together, bouncing up onto the balls of her feet. “No kidding?”
“Congratulations,” Colby said, though he looked a little like someone had sucker-punched him. Just surprised?
Theo bowed slightly and said something in Old Draconic and then translated it as, “We are honored to share in your happiness.”
“Who is it, though?” Gretchen said.
It was the first time he would say her name to anyone else since he had met her, kissed her, made love to her. He already savored the taste of it on his tongue.
“Tiffani Marcus.”
Commotion ensued. Theo, in a very undignified, undragonlike move, sprung forward to shake Martin’s hand so enthusiastically Martin thought it might come off. Gretchen hugged him while Colby went for a high five. They were all talking at once.
Had he told her he was a shifter? Had he told her about mates? How did he feel? How did she feel?
Theo landed immediately on the fact that Tiffani now possibly knew that he was a shifter, and at once began planning some kind of “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was a dragon” gift that, knowing him, would be staggeringly thoughtful and gain Tiffani’s forgiveness immediately. Gretchen, who had befriended Tiffani back when they’d first met, threatened to meet up with her and gossip about Martin for an hour. Colby just kept saying over and over again that Martin was lucky. Really lucky.
Martin finally held up his hands to try to quiet them down.
“No, I didn’t tell her I was a shifter. There wasn’t that much time.”
“Yeah, we all know where your priorities were, boss.”
He glared at Colby. “And I didn’t tell her we were... meant to be together.”
“Yeah, guys, humans don’t always get what ‘mate’ means,” Gretchen said. “You have to contextualize.”
“But once you contextualize, they understand,” Theo said reassuringly. “Jillian understood.”
“Tiffani will understand,” Martin said. “She seems just as ready to plunge into the deep end as I am.”
If, that was, he ignored the tiny frown that she’d had when he had mentioned that they might see each other again as soon as this afternoon. And he was ignoring that. He hadn’t even been sure he’d seen it—it was there for less than a second.
Gretchen said, “She’s had a bad time, you know. Her ex was bad news in a lot of ways. You’re nothing like him in any way, shape, or form, and I’m sure she knows that, but I can see how she wouldn’t want to jump into something right away. We don’t all get a buzzer in our heads saying we have the green light for years and years of happiness, you know, we have to take your word for it.”
“Sometimes I forget you’re human,” Colby said to her, almost as an aside.
“Thanks,” Gretchen said with surprising bitterness. “That’s really helpful. I’m just saying don’t be surprised if she can’t move forward quite as quickly as you can.”
“I know she needs time. I can give that to her. We’ll go slow.”
“That’s a little bit at odds with the afternoon delight, isn’t it?” Colby said.
“That’s not proper,” Theo said, glaring at him. “Martin is our leader and Tiffani is our friend, and—”