She whirled, her face unreadable. “Sorry—I don’t date people I work with.”
“No?” he drawled, swaggering toward her. He sent her a slow grin, his gaze settling on her full lips. “You draw the line at kissing your coworkers in the stairwell? Tongue wrestling’s perfectly okay, but coffee’s completely out of the question?”
The nurse went absolutely still, all the color draining from her cheeks. Her green eyes darted toward the break room door before landing back on him. As they had the night before, her irises glowed silver under the fluorescent lights.
“We never kissed,” she said. “We’re friends, nothing more.”
The silver faded and Tobias observed her curiously. He narrowed his eyes and gave her a knowing smile. “Whatever you’re trying to do didn’t work last night, and it sure as hell isn’t going to work now.”
She staggered back, scanning him from head to toe. Her hand pressed into her stomach. “What do you want?”
“Nothing.”
“What are you?”
“I’m the man you kissed.” He moved in closer to her. “I’d like that to happen again, which is why I asked you out for coffee.”
“And if I don’t?” Her face tightened. “What will you do to me?”
Tobias stopped. Now that really pissed him off. Here he was being forthcoming with her, practically admitting to her that he wasn’t human. And what did she do? Assume he was threatening her.
“Nothing.” He cast a disappointed look down his nose at her. “I thought we shared something last night, and I thought you might want to drink a caffeinated beverage with me and discuss it. I thought it might be refreshing for you to talk to someone who was… like you. Well, at least more like you than the other employees of this hospital. But your secret is safe with me. I’m not into extorting things from my coworkers.”
She stared at him for a long moment.
“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have hearts to mend.” Tobias moved around her and slipped out the door, walking quickly toward the elevator.
“Wait,” she called, following him into the corridor. Sabrina’s shoulders sagged with her exhale. “Coffee would be great. But not here at the hospital. Someplace we can talk candidly.”
Interesting, Tobias thought. Luckily, he was an expert at flying under the radar and knew just the place.
“Maverick’s Café,” he said. “It might seem crowded, but the patrons are really good at not seeing or hearing a thing.”
“I’m just starting my shift,” she said. “Tomorrow morning?”
Tobias smiled. “See you then.”
There were few things Sabrina hated about being half vampire, but the constant need to protect her secret was definitely one of them. The coven had rules with serious consequences. Telling a human was out of the question under penalty of death for the human. The law was more lenient with regard to other supernaturals. If Tobias wasn’t human, she could reveal what she was so long as he did not present a threat to their kind. Which begged the question, what exactly was she dealing with when it came to Tobias?
Before yesterday night, she would have sworn he was human. After all, not many supernatural creatures made a habit of being as restrained as the good doctor. Tobias was passionate about his work at the hospital without an ounce of ego to muddy the waters. It was rare to find a supernatural being who cared so much or strove for perfection the way he did.
Still, he couldn’t be human. She’d never tasted human energy like his. When she’d fed on him, she’d felt high and weirdly energetic for hours afterward. Coupled with her inability to influence his mind, the evidence leaned toward Tobias being supernatural. Only, what type was anyone’s guess. He was too smart to be a werewolf, and she would have smelled a witch.
She pulled open the door to Maverick’s Café and spotted him waiting for her near the back. He gestured for her to join him at the tiny café table. Two to-go cups rested in front of him, and she caught herself hoping one of them was for her. Something was going down at the counter that had nothing to do with coffee. Three men had gathered near the cash register and were having a heated conversation in another language while another large man with a triangular symbol tattooed on his neck watched from the shadows. She’d rather not interrupt the conversation to order a latte.
“Is one of those for me?” She slung her messenger bag across the back of the chair and took off her hat and parka.
“I got you a cappuccino. Believe it or not, they’re good here.” He gestured toward the counter and the men Sabrina had noticed earlier. “I would have waited for you to order, but you do not want to interrupt that.”
“Looks intense.”
“Trust me, it is. I got ours in just before things got heated.”
She sank into the chair across from him and grabbed the cappuccino. Warm, foamy heaven slid down her throat. It was exactly the drink she would have ordered for herself. Delicious.
“It’s good. Thank you.”
Tobias’s expression turned clinical. He was studying her, like a cell under a microscope. “There goes one theory.”
She leaned her elbows on the table, the cup nestled in her hands between them. “You have a theory about me?”
“I thought you might be a succubus, but if my research is correct, in that case you would not eat or drink human food.”
“I’m not a succubus.”
“A witch then?”
“No.”
He took a long drink. Damn, his eyes were something out of a dream, a very good dream. Sapphire blue, they twinkled beneath his dark blond hair, perfectly matching the brightness of his ring. Holy hell, that was some sapphire ring. The blue gem on his right hand looked lit from within and was as big as her thumbnail. It enthralled her. That thing must be worth a mint.
“I never noticed your ring before,” she said. “Is that a wedding band? Are you married?”
Tobias looked like he might blow his coffee out his nose. “No. I am not… married. The ring is a family heirloom. It’s against hospital policy for me to wear it at work.”
That was a strange way of putting it, she thought. “It’s beautiful.” And so are you, she finished in her head. Tobias was square jawed and full lipped. She wasn’t used to seeing him without his lab coat on. The muscles of his shoulders stretched his black sweater. She’d always thought of him as academic, reticent, sometimes phlegmatic, but now his curiosity was evident. She was a puzzle he needed to solve. Good. She intended to remain puzzling.
“What are you?” he asked.
“Shouldn’t I ask you the same thing?”
“What makes you think I’m not human?”
She lowered her voice. “I know. You didn’t taste human. Not at all.” Her fingers brushed her bottom lip.
“You fed off my energy.” His eyes narrowed.
She nodded. There was no point in denying it. “Are you a werewolf?”
“Please,” he scoffed like he was offended. “No, I am not.”
Good, she thought. What a relief. Werewolves were her coven’s mortal enemies and not allowed within their territory. She wouldn’t want to deal with the repercussions if he’d admitted to being one. “Warlock?”
“No.”
“Fairy?”
He shook his head. “You?”
“No.”
Sabrina swirled her coffee. “Game is up, Doctor. Tell me.”
“The road goes both ways, Ms. Bishop.”
She thought about it. It was clear he wasn’t human, so she wasn’t breaking any rules telling him the truth. She nodded. “At the same time then.”
“On the count of three: one, two, th—”
“Vampire.”
“Dragon.”
Sabrina stared at him. Had she heard him correctly? Did he say dragon?
“Did you say vampire? But you didn’t drink my blood and you walked in here in broad daylight.”
“I’m half human. I can feed on energy instead of blood, and the only thing that will happen if you
leave me in the sun is a bad sunburn.”
“By the Mountain…”
“What does that mean?”
Tobias cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. “It’s an expression. Dragons are born from a mountain. In your vernacular, you might say ‘oh my God.’”
“Goddess,” she corrected.
“It means you’re extraordinary.”
She lifted a shoulder. “The only one of my kind in existence.”
Unless she was totally misreading his body language, the look he gave her bordered on awe.
“So, uh, you’re a dragon? Like you can shift into one? I thought dragon shifters were a myth.”
He chuckled softly at that. “Not a myth, although our numbers are few. I look like a man on the outside, but I am a dragon on the inside.”
“And you change shape… like a shifter?”
Tobias shrugged. “Yes.”
Sabrina sipped her coffee to hide her frown. This was bad. He might not be a werewolf, but if her father knew there were dragon shifters in Chicago, he’d want them out. He’d see them as a threat.
“Are there more like you?” she asked him.
“Here, living in Chicago? No. We are mostly solitary creatures.”
She let out a held breath. One dragon was hardly a problem for her coven. In fact, she didn’t see the need to even mention his existence to her father.
“What about you?” he asked. “You said you can feed on either energy or blood. Can you exist solely on one or the other?”
“I have. On either or both. I can go months on human food alone, but it would be like a human going without iron. Eventually I run out of my stores and can hardly move. I know. I tried when I was a teenager. I wanted to be a normal human. It didn’t work.”
“I can relate to that. I’ve lived as a human for a very long time.” He leaned his chin against his fist.
“You’re good at it. We’ve worked with each other for years and I never suspected you were anything but.”
He leaned forward, his gaze lingering on her mouth.
“You want to see them, don’t you?” she said, suddenly feeling like a kid at show-and-tell.
“Yes.” The word came out in a heady drawl. His face was close, so close. His breath brushed her cheek, a gentle caress that warmed more than her face.
She smiled slowly. Should she indulge his curiosity? What was it about his boyish smile that made her want to? Maybe it was because he was focused on her like she was the only woman on the planet. Hell, the only thing on the planet. No one—human, vampire, or anything else—had ever looked at her in quite the same way. It made her feel significant.
“Okay,” she said softly, allowing her fangs to drop behind her hand. But she didn’t get a chance to show him anything. At that moment, a shot rang out. In superspeed, she turned her head. Spotted the tattooed man with a gun, the bullet moving toward Tobias.
He’d moved. His body was in front of her, shielding her.
Eyes widening, she reached out and grabbed his elbow just as the bullet pierced his flesh.
Chapter Five
Tobias hadn’t exactly decided to do it. Something happened when the gun went off. His inner dragon reacted from a deep instinctual place. Sabrina must be saved. Before he fully realized what was happening, he’d placed his body between the bullet and her.
She’d grabbed his arm and everything had turned to mist, black swirls of energy, the smell of honey and night air, the disorienting weightlessness of falling. When they formed again, they were in the alley behind Maverick’s. Tobias had never traveled in such a way before, and he pitched forward and heaved. A sharp pain tore through his shoulder. Blood dripped down his side.
“Crap, you’ve been hit!” Sabrina said.
“It’s nothing. I’ll heal.”
“Only if you get the goddamned bullet out.” Sabrina tore the sleeve of his sweater and the button-down underneath and pressed her hand into the bloody wound. “If you heal with that thing inside you, you are going to be in a world of hurt. Vampires in my coven have delayed their healing by years because their bones grew around the bullet and fused together.”
Tobias’s forehead furrowed. “Do members of your coven get shot often?”
“If you must know, yes. We are the supernatural presence in this city. It has consequences.” She moved behind him to inspect the wound at the back of his shoulder. “Come on. My apartment is nearby. I’ll extract the bullet while the wound is still open.”
Her voice sounded funny. When he turned to see why, her fangs were extended, razor sharp, long and curved over her bottom lip. Beautiful. Fierce. His heart quickened.
“Sorry,” she said, raising her hand in front of her lips as if she had a case of bad breath. “It’s a reflex. I won’t eat you, I promise.”
He wasn’t sure he wanted her to keep that promise. He wrapped a hand around her wrist and pulled her hand away. “Beautiful,” he said, and he meant it.
She blinked rapidly and looked away. A police siren closed in. “We should get out of here.”
“Lead the way.”
“Oh, you can’t walk through Chicago like that.” She looked pointedly at his bloody side.
“No—” he began when she reached for his arm again.
She ignored him, took his bicep in a formidable grip, and dematerialized.
Tobias came apart at the tug of her power and hurtled through space only to come back together in a homey apartment overlooking the city. It hadn’t taken long, but when they re-formed, Sabrina was panting and the smell of ozone permeated the air.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“My condominium. Marina Towers.”
Tobias was familiar with the corncob-shaped twin towers called Marina City that overlooked the river. The buildings had been completed in 1962 under the concept that a person could live, work, and play within the same complex. He remembered the year it opened, how modern it had seemed at the time. Aside from the wedge-shaped units with beautiful views of the city, the place included the House of Blues, a bowling alley, and a grocery. But it was the history of murders and suicides in the towers that came to mind now, knowing what she was.
“Are you the only vampire who lives here?” he asked, suddenly very aware that he was bleeding on the floor.
She gave a breathy laugh. “Just me. Too much sun for the others. But if you’re thinking about the suicides, I can’t say that vampire business has never taken place here or that it’s never become violent. I just… I try to stay out of coven politics, you know?”
He did know. In fact, he knew exactly what it was like to be born into a family whose business was not his own. A drop of blood fell from his shoulder onto the wood floor.
She cursed. In a rush of speed fast enough for him to lose her in the blur, she raced to the kitchen. He watched her pull a towel from one of the drawers and return to press it against his wound. So, a vampire’s relative swiftness wasn’t folklore. She’d moved faster than any dragon.
“Hold this here. I need to get the medical kit.”
He did as she asked, although his shoulder rewarded him with a stab of pain. He grabbed a napkin from the table and bent down to clean up his spilled blood from the hardwood.
“By the way, you weigh a ton,” she called from the bathroom. “Do you have bricks in a hollow leg or something?”
He laughed, which made him wince in pain. Tossing the bloody napkin in the garbage, he was careful to keep pressure on the wound with his opposite hand. “No bricks. But I do carry a dragon’s worth of bones, scales, and organs inside me. Even with magic, I’m about a hundred pounds heavier than a human of my size.”
She returned with the medical kit, eyes wide. “Right, you’re a dragon. Also, I’m weaker during the day, which makes everything seem heavier.” She dug a fist into the small of her back. “I think I pulled something.”
“I’m sorry. I would have called an Uber if you’d given me a chance.”
“I’m sure that w
ould have gone over well. Two people covered in blood, staggering toward an innocent human with a side gig in a Toyota Corolla. We’d have been lucky not to get shot at again.”
“True. It’s unfortunate we were shot at at all. I knew those humans looked like trouble but I’ve never had a problem at Maverick’s before.”
“Just the wrong place at the wrong time. The guy completely missed the human he was aiming at. I hope the Chicago PD nailed him.” She opened the kit and picked up a pair of rubber gloves. “Can you catch human infections?”
“No.”
“Good. Then I won’t bother with aseptic technique. Sit down.” She pointed at a chair at the kitchen table. “Sit sideways so I can reach the wound. Oh, and I’m going to need you to take your shirt off.”
He removed the towel and stripped the bloody sweater and button-down from his body, folding it neatly so that the bloody part was inside the dry part. He placed it on the table.
“Still Tobias,” she murmured, positioning herself behind him. He felt her press the towel against his wound again and watched her choose a pair of forceps from the kit she’d retrieved.
“What do you mean by that? ‘Still Tobias’?”
“You are the most meticulous man I’ve ever known. I’ve never met anyone more thorough or precise.”
“Thank you.” His shoulder throbbed and he suppressed a growl.
“This is going to hurt a little. The bullet is against the bone. Try to think of something else. Tell me what it means to be a dragon. Aside from shifting, what else can you do?”
Lightning bolts of pain shot through his shoulder and chest as she dug deeper. He winced. “Invisibility, speed, strength. We can fly, both in this form and our beastly one.” His jaw tightened as she jabbed the forceps in and twisted.
“Where do you come from? I’ve never met a dragon before.”
“Dragons come from a place called Paragon. We’re not native to this world. I was… left here after a problem in my native land.”
Windy City Dragon Page 4