by A. C. Ryals
Family. She’d been told her being sent was a favor to a family member. He was likely a target and he’d found her out. Not that it was her fault. She wasn’t properly prepared for the job. Still, she didn’t know for certain he was the target.
“I am from Texas, but my family came from around here. I decided to do a little research. I’m working here temporarily. I don’t know what else to say. Why would your family spy on you? Can’t they just call like normal people?” Jess said.
“We had a falling out. I’m not inclined to answer their calls and they’re not inclined to respect my wish to be left alone.”
Her phone vibrated with a text and then with another.
“I’m sorry, do you mind if I check my phone? Someone seems desperate to talk to me,” Jess said.
“Go ahead,” Wrath said. He picked up his coffee and took a sip as she got out her phone.
Her breath caught in her throat as she read the messages from Clarence.
Get out of there.
I don’t know what’s going on, but Drake says this is a setup of some kind. You reading this? Get in your car and head to the airport. I'm getting tickets for you now. Someone will get your stuff at the apartment.
Respond goddammit!
Before she could respond, Wrath had taken the phone from her hand. He moved so fast it was a blur. He read the texts and smiled.
“Drake,” he said, handing the phone back. “Yeah, that’s my family. You’re not in any danger. Which Drake sent you?”
It was a job. No one’s fate was on the line but her own. She saw no reason to lie. The jig was up. Apart from grabbing her phone, Wrath hadn’t done anything to make her think he’d hurt her.
“Kurtis Drake,” she said.
Wrath smiled and it was like the whole world got a couple of lumens brighter. Jess felt instantly at ease. He was some kind of wizard—she was sure of it.
“My little brother?” Wrath said. “I wouldn’t have expected him to send you. But maybe it wasn’t really him. He might have been pressured by someone else in the family. How is he?”
“I’ve never met him,” Jess said. “I don’t even have his number. He’s a recluse.”
Wrath nodded thoughtfully. “Why did he send you?”
Jess shrugged. “I was literally just sent here to work at the bistro for a while. I was given no other instructions. I took the job because of the bonus.”
“He probably didn’t know. Truth is, he’s my half-brother and I’ve never met him. I’m sure he’s heard stories about me, all true but maybe lacking context. As soon as he figured out it was me you were here for, he called it off. What I wonder is who exactly wanted you here and why.”
Jess had no answer for him. He seemed to be figuring it all out on his own.
Wrath took another sip of his coffee and tapped his long fingers on the table. His hands were impossibly large.
“I have an idea,” he said, “if you don’t mind scaring your boss a little bit.”
“I’m listening.”
“Tell your boss you don’t want to come home yet because you’ve met someone. Then we’ll see how it plays out. Whatever your bonus is, I’ll double it.”
Jess smiled. “Even if it was ten million dollars?”
He laughed and shook his head. “Even that, but I doubt my youngest brother has that much liquidity. I’d need to see proof.”
“It was less than that. I don’t know about this, though. It feels wrong.”
“So was sending you to another state without knowing what kind of situation you were walking into.”
“True.”
“This could have been the dangerous situation he imagines it to be. Send the text and see what response you get. See if you get instructions on how to proceed. Then we’ll know why they sent you.”
“How could they know we’d meet or even speak to each other?”
Wrath looked down at his coffee and sighed. “You look like my dead wife. To this day I see her wherever I go, but I’ve never seen anyone look as much like her as you do. Dark hair, pouty lips. Even the smile lines beside your eyes. You’re a little taller than she was, but they chose you because you look like her.”
She felt like he was holding something back, but what he’d told her was enough. If he was telling the truth, and she was inclined to believe him, then she was sent here as part of a cruel joke. That didn’t sit well. She wanted to know for sure why she was sent. Maybe playing along would giver her the answers she needed.
“Let’s do this, then,” she said, setting her purse on the table. She got up and walked around to Wrath. Without asking she sat across his lap and opened the camera app on her phone. “Smile.”
His shock subsided quickly and he put his arms around her waist, pressing his cheek to hers. Damned if that little bit of skin contact didn’t feel like a slice of heaven. His neatly trimmed beard tickled her cheek and she wondered what else it might tickle as she took the selfie. Warmth pooled between her legs.
She thought she felt something long and firm against her outer thigh before she got up. At least she wasn’t the only one affected.
She was already sending a message to Clarence as she sat back down on her side of the table.
Jess: Not leaving yet. I met someone. :)
She sent the message with the image attached.
Little dots appeared on the screen as Clarence wrote his reply.
Clarence: WTF? That guy looks a lot like Drake. He said it’s a family thing. That’s probably the guy you’re supposed to avoid. I sent him the picture to confirm, not that he’s been responding.
She showed the exchange to Wrath. He grinned, revealing adorable dimples. “That’s a good picture of you,” he said. “I wonder what has my brother so busy he can’t be bothered to rescue you from me. I could be doing anything to you right now. I could be forcing you to watch golf on television or giving you a history lesson on ancient Akkad. Truly vile things.”
She barely heard anything after he said I could be doing anything to you right now, but the word “Akkad” caught her attention. She decided she could cover her brief loss of concentration with that.
“What can you tell me about Akkad?” she asked.
He shook his head. “More than you want to know.”
Jess spotted Mark coming over to her table. She’d exceeded the allotted time for her break. It was Mark’s turn.
Wrath noticed the same thing.
“You don’t have to work here anymore. The job’s done,” Wrath said.
“I know, but I don’t want to leave them shorthanded. That’s just rude,” Jess said, getting to her feet.
“Can I see you after your shift? I’d like to know how my brother responds.”
“Sure, I’m off at two.”
She was already looking forward to seeing him again and he wasn’t even gone yet. Maybe Drake backed out because he realized it was cruel to send someone who looked like Wrath’s dead wife to torment him. She hoped that was the case. If not, then she didn’t think she could work for him anymore.
If he was truly that petty, she didn’t want to work for him anymore. She supposed she’d find out when he responded.
Chapter 5
Wrath carried on with his morning. He sent a quick text back home to get Brad to watch Jess at the bistro to make sure she didn’t try to slip away, and his adopted little sister, Lily, to find as much information on Jess as possible. Then he got into his truck and headed over to the grocery store.
He was surprised at the silence from his dragon side. No alerting to Jess being a threat, and no chanting mine in the back of his mind like it did with virtually every woman he met. Sure, it was broken, but at least it had been consistent up until that point.
Stupid silent dragon.
If only his dick had been as unopinionated. He knew Jess felt his raging boner when she was on his lap. Granted, he could scent her arousal, so he wasn’t the only one affected. It’s just that it was humiliating for one of the oldest sentien
t beings on the planet to not be able to contain the response of his dick to the feel of a slim female body pressed against his.
His groin tightened again. It was an odd reaction, much like what he’d heard it was like to find one’s true mate. From what he’d heard, a dragon would be in a hyper aroused state until he bedded his mate for the first time. Then it eased up.
He needed to stop thinking about her body, so he distracted himself with more important things. He went over what he knew about Jess and why she was there.
He’d confirmed that she was sent by his family or, more specifically, Etel. That meant Etel found him. That thought burned away all warm thoughts of Jess. Wrath had never really liked Etel. At their first meeting, Etel bluntly told Wrath that his mother would never come back for him because he was too dangerous.
That set Wrath off. At only six, he had little self-control. He tried to burn Etel with dragonfire while Etel stood there looking bored. Then Kur had come in and ripped off Wrath’s wings to stop the tantrum. They grew back, of course, but that was Wrath’s first meeting with his family. Alal was the one who picked up Wrath from the floor and took care of him. Funny, the younger dragons all thought Alal was the bad one.
Thinking of the pain Kur put him through physically and mentally made Wrath's knuckles turn white as he gripped the steering wheel.
How Etel found him was the real question. Wrath, like Alal, had wards tattooed on his body to prevent their half mage brother from using spells to track them. Etel could use a spell to track anyone he’d been in close contact with, which did not necessarily include all his brothers. It did include Wrath and Alal, however. Hence the wards.
The wards also prevented tracking through any magical bonds that may exist within the family.
That left conventional means of tracking.
As far as Wrath could tell, there was no reason to suspect the imminent resumption of hostilities. If he knew Etel, and he did, Jess was there to both spy and coerce Wrath into something. She may or may not know what was going on and she may or may not be aware that she had magic. She didn’t seem to know what was going on and Wrath was usually rather good at detecting a lie. At least, his now silent dragon instincts were.
That brought everything back to Etel. How did he know about Jess? What was it that drew Etel’s attention to her? Had Etel met her? Most importantly: What the hell did he hope to gain by sending her?
Wrath got his supplies and then headed back home. An idea was forming in his mind. He’d keep Jess around until he knew exactly what was going on. He couldn’t rely on his dragon to give him a feel for the situation, so he’d rely on his human side.
All he had to do was get Jess to come home with him. He might have to use telepathy, but he thought she might be willing to go with him. He’d play it by ear.
Playing the nice guy was easy enough. There was a good chance he could charm her. In truth, he already had a soft spot for Jess. That didn’t mean he’d let her get away before he had the answers he needed.
Hurting her wasn’t an option. Unlike his brothers, Wrath knew what it was to love a human woman, his mother. While his younger brother Marcus had some contact with his mother, he was only three when she died giving birth to Antonius. Wrath was the only one who actually remembered what it was like to be held in his mother’s arms.
Sure, when he was young, he’d had his bad moments.
When he was twelve, during the reign of Shar-Kali-Shari in Akkad, he stumbled across girls bathing in the Tigris. Before they could see him, he hid amongst the reeds. He watched in fascination as they bathed their feminine bodies. Then he took a breath, wanting to catch their scent. Instead of clean human females, he scented filthy male bodies.
He scanned the area and less than a hundred yards away, there were Gutian raiders sneaking along the river. He saw his folly then. The young human females were in danger and he’d been spying on them like a creep.
Though he was young, he never went anywhere without his battle axe. Yes, he was a dragon, but even in those days it was safer not to reveal his true nature. His father and brothers trained him relentlessly for just such an occasion. He would redeem himself and protect the girls.
He burst out of the reeds and shouted at the girls to run, sparking screams and squeals and splashing. If the raiders hadn’t known about the girls before, they knew now, and their interest was piqued.
Wrath ran straight for the men, axe in hand. He was tall for his age, as tall as the men, but he had baby smooth skin and not a shred of facial hair. It was twenty-three battle hardened men against one boy.
They laughed.
But Wrath was no boy, not like the ones they’d seen before. He summoned his magic. He was young so he didn’t have much, but it would have to work. Breathing fire would draw too much attention, but as a firedrake he could control heat. At the time, he could only use magic on two people at once. So, that’s what he did. He boiled the blood of two men at a time as he performed the dance he practiced daily, swinging his blade, moving his feet, ducking, blocking, slicing, killing.
The blood of his enemies washed away the sin of watching the girls. He finally took to heart the words of Alal, “We have to protect the humans when we can, Ezzu. The strong among them will crush the weak. There are people who need you as their champion.”
The memory of his mother and of the feeling he got from protecting the girls kept him from being as cruel to women as his father. Women were physically weaker and human men had been taking advantage of that from the beginning. Wrath couldn’t be like them. He wouldn’t.
At the same time, however, Wrath was devoted to his people. The war was long over, but distrust remained. Wrath needed to know what Etel was planning. He wouldn’t hurt Jess, but he had no problem with using her.
~
Though she hadn’t been working at the bistro very long, Jess was becoming well acquainted with some of the regulars: a senior from Patrick Henry High School who would come in for lunch and order a double shot of espresso and a small sandwich, the assistant manager at the grocery store who ordered sweet drinks on bad days and black coffee on good days, and the surly middle-aged man named Kevin who complained about the coffee but always ordered two to go.
Most of them were fine, even Kevin.
Only one customer really bothered her. Dubbed Leering Larry by the other members of the bistro’s staff, he seemed incapable of looking at a woman unless he was staring at her chest. Even the elderly were not immune to his leering gaze. The worst she’d seen him do was stare at a pair of breasts, sniff the air, and then lick his lips. It was like he was an animal preparing to dine on human flesh.
Jess was distracted, thinking about the sizable bulge that pressed against her as she sat on Wrath’s lap. It felt big, very big. But maybe that was because it was covered in layers of fabric. It couldn’t actually be that big, could it?
She didn’t notice Leering Larry until he was at the counter, already leering.
“What can I get for you today?” Jess asked.
Larry sniffed the air and then scrunched up his face. For the first time ever, he looked Jess in the eyes. “You’re with...you been...uh...I’m fine, thanks,” he stammered.
Then he hustled out of the bistro and into the parking lot where he got into his old Ford F-150.
Weird.
Not that she minded that he left. Whatever smell he picked up that made him leave was for the better. She put it out of her mind and kept working.
It was when the big burly construction workers came in that she realized something was up. They were normally nice, maybe a little flirtatious. This time, though, they were beyond polite.
“If you wouldn’t mind, ma’am, we’d like the usual order,” the tall blond she thought might be Morris said.
“No problem,” Jess said.
The brunette beside him said, “I know we come in here and kid around sometimes, but we meant no disrespect. Wrath is a good guy…”
“The best,” Morris interjec
ted.
“Right, the best guy. And we wouldn’t ever behave inappropriately with a woman he’s…”
“Friendly with,” Morris offered.
“Right,” the brunette said.
Neither of the big men were making eye contact with her. They both had their heads down. It was...submissive.
“It’s no problem, guys. I like talking to you,” Jess said.
“Oh God,” the brunette said. “Don’t tell him that. I mean, I wouldn’t want him to have the impression that... Just, as a favor, maybe don’t mention us at all. We’re not important.”
“Okay. I think you guys are overreacting. I had coffee with him and sat on his lap for a selfie. When I see him later…” Jess began.
“It’s none of our business,” Morris said. “You have a good day now.”
Then they were heading out the door. He’d left a twenty on the counter for their order.
“Your money!” Jess called to them.
“Keep it,” Morris said.
Jess couldn’t understand their reaction. Was Wrath their boss? No, the fear level there was well beyond the fear of losing a job. Was he some kind of crime boss hiding away in Ashland, Virginia? Seemed unlikely. Then again, he had problems with his “family”, and he had a lot of money. Nah.
There were a lot of reasons they might fear him. She could see how he could appear threatening, and he reeked of power. He also had money, apparently. He had offered to pay her off. Maybe the money and powerful presence were enough reason for them to be afraid. Why he’d bother with a couple of random construction workers, she didn’t know. She suspected he wouldn’t.
The bigger question was how they knew she’d been around Wrath. They would have been working while she had coffee with him. How fast did gossip travel in this town? If she went by Leering Larry’s reaction, it was her scent. Maybe she smelled like his cologne and had gone noseblind to it.
She put the twenty-dollar bill in the tip jar and helped the next customer. All the while, she wondered about Mr. Drake’s fascinating brother.