He could have done all of those things, but didn't have a chance because Jess lunged forward and kissed him.
Kissing her before had been warm and wonderful and delightful, but now it was amazing. He hadn't realized this was so different—kissing someone you loved, kissing your mate, different from any woman he'd ever kissed before. He lost himself in it entirely, and only came back to himself when Jess jerked back with a soft hiss of breath. The covers had fallen down to expose the soft swell of her breasts, and for a moment he was almost too distracted to speak.
"Reive, are you all right?" she asked, drawing him back to the moment, and out of his soft wonder at the marvels of her body.
"Jess, what's wrong? Did I hurt you?"
"No, I was afraid I was going to hurt you. Does this ... hurt, at all?" She hesitantly ran a hand down his stone arm. He only knew she was doing it because he could see her hand there; he couldn't feel it at all.
"Not when you're touching me." It hadn't been just his imagination before. He'd like to think he was getting better, but he could see clearly that he wasn't; the stone had spread noticeably from where it had been before he passed out. No, the soothing relief from the pain was all Jess.
"It really helps?" Jess said. She cautiously brushed her fingers over the place where his stone arm met his flesh shoulder and neck. He could feel that, and it did hurt a little, but mostly it just tingled. "Is it because I'm a ... because I'm a gargoyle, do you think?"
"I think it's because you're my mate," Reive said. "Mates are stronger together."
"Are you in pain now?" Her voice was a whisper, as her lips brushed lightly across the junction between flesh and stone.
"No," he whispered back. "Not at all."
With her head bowed to kiss his shoulder, the back of her neck was exposed, a pale stripe with her dark hair parting around it. Hesitantly he kissed it, and felt her shiver against him.
Mate, he thought, gentle and wondering. Mate. Mate.
He kissed across her neck, brushed his lips against the soft shell of her ear, and kissed the side of her face before she turned her head so her lips could meet his again, kissing and nibbling.
It was amazing. He had been with women before, though relatively rarely—there weren't many opportunities while isolated in the mountains—but this was on a whole other level. Even her slightest touch raced down his nerve endings, filling him with a pleasant heat.
It had been this way from the beginning, he now realized—the fascination he'd felt with her, the way he had thrilled at the slightest brush of her hand. It was just that the true reason for it had been buried underneath the urgency of his mission and the general awfulness of how he felt.
But right now, he wasn't hurting; in fact, he had never felt this fantastic. He rolled her over and she went willingly, her lips spread in a wide smile. He straddled her, supporting himself on his one good arm while he kissed that smile, and trailed kisses down her chin and across her amazing breasts.
It was incredibly frustrating to only have one arm for this; there was so much he wanted to do. But Jess was an eagerly willing participant, treating the stone parts of his body no differently from the rest. Her warm hands trailed across his skin, leaving pleasure and relief where before there had been only pain. It was with deep regret that he rolled off her.
"I, uh ... really need to eat and use the bathroom," he admitted.
Jess laughed and sat up. Her hair was wonderfully tousled, framing the pale, lovely oval of her face. "Yes, let's do that. I could really use some cleaning up, too. There are some clean clothes for us on the chair there."
Reive swung his legs off the bed, looking around at the heavy stone walls turned honey-gold in the morning sun. "Are we at Gio's? Did we get the book?"
"We did get the book." She pointed, and he saw it on the end of a couch against the wall. "We're at Mace's house in, um, in Newfoundland. Long story. Very long story. Our luggage is still at Gio's villa in Italy."
"How long was I asleep?" Reive asked, shocked. He had assumed it was only a little while, and yet somehow he'd gotten all the way to Canada. It was possible for dragons to fall into a deep, comalike sleep while they healed; his uncle Heikon and his grandfather had both spent years like that.
"Not that long," Jess hastened to reassure him. "The fight in Italy was last night. We came here through a ... oh, I feel completely crazy saying this, but ... a portal, of sorts, that Mace was able to use to transport us here. He says it's a gargoyle thing. Does that sound too weird?"
"No weirder than anything else that's happened to me lately." Reive glanced at the golden gleam of sunshine outside the tall windows. From the bed he couldn't see much except a cloud-flecked sky. "Are we prisoners?"
"No." It was Jess's turn to be shocked now. "Mace is helping us. We're guests."
But he's still a gargoyle.
So was she, he reminded himself. But she had grown up knowing nothing about her people, and the old hostilities she was heir to. Mace might have been decent to them so far, but he would have grown up with the gargoyle-dragon feud the same way Reive had.
"Oh, there's food on the table," Jess added. "It's left from last night. Mace was going to bring us something when we're awake."
The contents of the tray on the table had been somewhat demolished, but there were still pastries, and he grabbed a couple. "Do you need the bathroom?"
"No, go for it."
The bathroom was modest and pleasant, with a claw-foot tub next to a built-in shower stall. A small window let in the morning sun, faintly green-tinted from the climbing plants that curled over its small rippled glass panes and provided additional privacy.
Reive curled his bare toes in the thick rug on the floor. He couldn't help noticing that the sink was on a marble plinth shaped like a gargoyle, squatting and holding up the bowl of the sink with its arms. He was just going to have to assume that it was a carving and not an actual gargoyle, because the alternative was too unnerving to consider.
He stuffed a whole pastry in his mouth and did his business, then stripped out of his jeans. Someone had taken off the rest of his clothes last night, but left the jeans on—a concession to his modesty that he appreciated to an extent, but would have appreciated more if they hadn't been so utterly filthy. Even aside from blood and rock dust from the fight, he'd been wearing them for three days straight.
"You said something about clean clothes?" he called through the door.
"Yes, they're out here," Jess called back. "Can I come in? Are you dressed?"
"Do you mind if I'm not?"
She said something faintly that sounded like "oh my," and opened the door. She had wrapped a quilt around herself and was trailing it like a queen's cloak. "Here, these are Mace's clothes and he's bigger than you, but it's better than nothing. He brought some women's clothes for me. I want to take a shower before putting them on. I'm kind of a mess."
"You look beautiful to me." He touched his fingertips to her chin and then, awkwardly one-handed, took the bundle of clothing that she held out. One corner of the quilt slipped down as she did so, revealing a soft bare shoulder. "Were you planning on showering alone?"