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sale, made him feel terrible. “I’ve looked after myself for a long time.”
    “Not bloody well enough.” It was the most British Bertie had ever seemed. He sounded like an old colonel. “Now eat .” Arthur ate another grape before putting the remains of the bunch down. There were tiny oranges too. He laid two aside to take home later and then discovered almonds under the fruit. He should have asked whether Bertie was a vegetarian dragon or why he got so much fruit, but he didn’t. He crunched almonds and then ate a few more grapes. He wouldn’t say he felt better when he was done, but A Boy and His Dragon
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    his stomach didn’t feel nearly as tight, and the heat of the room didn’t seem so overwhelming.
    Bertie watched him, though whenever Arthur glanced back at him, the dragon would slide his attention back to his cold fireplace.
    After a couple of missed glances, he coughed and put his arm up along the back of the couch.
    “It pains me to say it, but maybe you ought to go home for the day, Arthur.”
    Bits of almond stuck in Arthur’s throat. He swallowed them all, not without pain.
    “You’re sending me away? I can work harder.” He came around the table to stand in front of the couch only to freeze when he received Bertie’s full attention. He immediately turned to all the books, all his piles, his plans. He hadn’t done nearly enough.
    “Arthur.” Bertie’s lips were parted, just a little. “You can always stay.”
    “Then why…?” Arthur changed his mind after he asked. First he was told to stay and eat, now Bertie wanted to send him home.
    He didn’t want to go. Bertie hadn’t even seen a fraction of what he was capable of yet.
    His own desperation to impress wasn’t nearly as confusing as his sudden need to stay. His paycheck hadn’t even been his first thought.
    “Do you want me to go?” He didn’t like how quiet his voice got or the puzzled look Bertie shot him, as if he honestly didn’t know how to answer Arthur’s question.
    “Of course not,” he rumbled, sounding more like himself as a lizard than as a man. “I simply thought… perhaps… you were overwrought.”
    “Overwrought?” Arthur repeated the Victorian-sounding word in disbelief.
    “Exhausted?” Bertie changed it quickly. “Weak with hunger?”
    “Oh.” Arthur’s breath rushed out of him. Bertie had been worried. His earlier thought returned and hit him hard. “You were R. Cooper
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    worried about me?” He stopped himself from asking more. “Oh,” he said instead. “I just… I just need a break. I don’t need to go home.”
    “That’s a relief.” Bertie drummed his fingers along the back of the couch and Arthur caught a whiff of acrid smoke. “You have no idea how irritating it is going against your instincts, even for a little while.”
    “I have an idea,” Arthur defended himself without thinking, remembering the fantasies he’d had about Bertie talking to him in that fire-and-smoke voice while he pressed Arthur facedown to the couch cushions and fucked him the way Arthur would beg him to.
    Then he blinked, because that last comment hadn’t made any sense.
    “Wait, what?”
    Bertie turned away, his nose up in the air as if Arthur wasn’t worth an explanation or he thought Arthur wouldn’t understand one.
    The warmth in Arthur’s stomach vanished.
    “We really are speaking a different language. Beings ,” he muttered under his breath. He wanted to flop down onto the couch, but he couldn’t with Bertie there and wouldn’t have anyway because that couch was made from a velvet so fine that just touching it once had made him sigh.
    Bertie turned back to stare at him and raised one eyebrow, which meant he’d heard that remark. Arthur hurried forward only to stop once he was a foot from the couch. Bertie’s gaze stayed on him, and though his pose was relaxed, like some kind of emperor, a few grapes still in his lap as he lounged, the very air around him seemed hot and still.
    Whenever