by Anna Lowe
She got as far as two steps off the porch before screeching to an abrupt stop.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered, backing up slowly.
It wasn’t Kai. It wasn’t even human, and it sure as hell wasn’t a hang glider.
It was a dragon. A real-life dragon, lying crumpled on the ground.
Tessa gulped down the scream in her throat, unsure if she was more fascinated or frightened. She’d been half hoping the shifter thing was an elaborate hoax. Hoping that when Ella had shifted to fox form in front of her eyes, there’d been some kind of trick involved. But holy smokes. The creature that lay before her was as big as a truck, and its chest rose and fell with each heavy breath. Its ridged tail flicked quietly, sending pebbles tumbling over the beach, and its claws clutched at the ground.
It’s in pain, she realized.
She stood frozen in place, wondering what to do. Wondering what it would do.
The dragon moaned. One massive wing dragged across the ground, bent at a strange angle, while the other was folded neatly across the beast’s side.
Tessa. The whisper reached her mind exactly as its eyes opened, focused on her. Eyes so blue, they rivaled the sky.
She stiffened, and her breath caught.
“Kai?”
He blinked, and her heart jumped into her throat. It really was him. And whoa — he really was a dragon shifter.
Her heart thumped the way it had when she’d first met him at the estate gate — hard and heavy, along with an achy sensation under her ribs and a yearning she couldn’t explain.
One second, she was rooted to the ground. The next, she rushed up to him and fell to her knees. “Kai…”
His muzzle was almost as big as her torso, but her fear had vanished, replaced by the instinct to hold and help. How badly was he hurt? Was he dying?
“Keep still,” she murmured, touching one of his long, tapered ears. Marveling at how silky it felt despite the weather-hardened appearance. Crying at the pain she could sense.
She scanned his huge body, trying to make out the nature of his injuries, but her mind kept stalling out on the basics.
Wings. Kai has wings.
Great, sectioned wings that looked remarkably delicate despite their sheer expanse. A broad, armored chest that rose and fell with every heated exhale, and a ridged neck. All that and incredibly blue eyes that gazed at her in a mixture of wonder and relief.
“Kai,” she whispered, rubbing his ear.
She couldn’t make out any details, only that patches of his leathery skin were darker than others. Was that blood? And the wing — was it broken?
A low, rumbly sound echoed through the ground, and she jerked away. But the sound stopped, too, and that wave of yearning swept over her again as if leaving an inch between her body and Kai’s was too much. As if she belonged there with him.
When she reached out gingerly and started stroking his ears again, the rumble resumed and Kai sighed.
That rumble wasn’t a growl of warning. It was a dragon’s version of a purr. He liked being petted.
And damn, she liked it, too. Her body warmed, and if it hadn’t been for his injuries, she’d have been tempted to curl up beside him.
She kneeled, touching his ears, trying to process the jumble of emotions inside. Fear. Wonder. Worry. Love.
Whoa. Wait a minute. Love? She stared at her hand as it moved over his ears.
She was probably just mixed up. Still in shock over all that had transpired in the last twenty-four hours. That had to be it, right?
But the ache inside her grew and grew, and she found herself moving closer to the dragon.
Closer to Kai, her soul whispered deep inside.
She closed her eyes, still stroking his ears, telling herself she wasn’t crazy. Just a little mixed up. Running for help seemed like a sensible option, but she couldn’t drag herself away. She couldn’t think clearly at all, as if she was in a bubble, apart from the world. Apart from everything but Kai.
He pressed into her hand, begging for her to continue. A minute ticked by, and the warmth between them grew steadily, filling her with comfort and hope. Time ticked to a stop, and every breath stretched to infinity. Tessa kept her eyes shut tightly, because she’d never felt anything so magical in her life.
But then Kai groaned again, and her eyes snapped open.
“Oh,” she breathed as reality set back in.
He was human again. Human and sprawled on his side, with his bare back covered in gashes and blood.
“Kai,” she cried, touching his shoulders, wondering if she’d just imagined the dragon part.
“Tess…” he murmured.
“Oh, my God. Kai.” The words stuck in her throat and recycled themselves a half-dozen times as she tried to calm herself down.
His hair was matted and mussed, and a long, dark burn line extended down his back. Down, down, and down, right to—
“Oh, my,” she said, half whisper, half gasp.
He wasn’t just bare-chested. He was bare everything. And any inch of his tanned, toned body that wasn’t smudged with blood or soot was scratched, or worse.
She nearly asked, What happened? but decided she’d rather not know. Not when she had more important things to do. She dashed back to the porch to grab a towel, then returned to Kai’s side, ready to stem the flow of blood in the worst of his wounds.
“Get Silas,” Kai said in a voice as dry and cracked as his lips.
“I need to stop the bleeding first.”
“I’m okay,” he croaked.
“You sure don’t look it. Now hold still.”
She checked the biggest gash, but the blood was mostly dried. In fact, the wound was already closed. The scratches all around it were healing, as was the tear across his lower back.
“I’m fine,” he rasped, rolling to his side.
He certainly wasn’t fine, although he wasn’t the oozing mess she’d feared. She threw the towel over his hips — not that he seemed the least bit embarrassed by his nudity. More like she was.
Her necklace swung out from her neck when she knelt, catching the morning light. Kai reached up and touched the pendant.
“Same color as your eyes,” he whispered. “Beautiful.”
His eyes were glowing again — deep blue fringed with mesmerizing little yellow sparks — and his hand cupped her cheek. Tessa covered his hand with hers and held her breath. A whale could breach right out of the ocean behind them, and she wouldn’t be able to tear her gaze away from Kai. The outside world grew muted and far away, and all she could hear was the rush of blood in her veins.
“Tessa,” he whispered. But then his eyes slid shut, and his head tilted to the ground.
“Kai!” She squeezed his hand, then shook his shoulder. “Kai!”
Panic welled up in her, but she gulped it down. She’d be no help if she turned into a blubbering mess. What she had to do was remember whatever it was she’d learned in that first aid course, so long ago. Something about checking the scene and checking breathing, right?
She kneeled down and saw a blade of grass stir under Kai’s breath. He’d passed out, but he was alive. What next?
Calling for help. She had to find someone. She looked around. Which of the other men lived closest? Where were they? Reluctantly, she pulled away from Kai and sprinted up the path. And damn, she’d never been so happy to see Silas, musing over a mug of coffee in the open-sided meeting house as just then.
“Help! Kai is hurt. Please help.”
Within minutes, Silas and Boone were kneeling at Kai’s side.
“Kai,” Silas growled, shaking him roughly.
“Hey! He’s hurt.”
“Not that hurt.”
Tessa gaped. A second later, her vision went red, and a switch in her flipped. Before she even knew what she was doing, she’d grabbed Silas’s shoulder and shoved him back. He sat, ass in the grass, blinking up at her.
Everything went very, very quiet, and Boone muttered, “Oh, shit.”
“He’s hurt. Are you going to help him, or should I do it myself?”
Boone stepped back. Silas glowered.
“We heal quickly,” the dragon shifter said as his tanned face turned a deep shade of red.
“Do you? I wouldn’t know,” she said, refusing to back down. “All I know is that there’s a hell of a lot of blood on his body and a couple of very serious gashes.”
Silas jumped to his feet in one quick, effortless motion and stepped right into her space, staring her down. “There are many things you don’t know about the world of shifters, Miss Byrne.”
“I know that’s no way to treat an injured man,” she shot back, refusing to be cowed. Later, she’d let her knees knock and her teeth chatter at the power and anger she sensed sloughing off Silas. But not now.
They stood staring each other down until Hunter lumbered down the path, creating enough of a ruckus with his size that the impasse was broken.
“Carry him,” Silas muttered, stepping away from Tessa.
Hunter took Kai’s shoulders, and Boone grabbed his feet while Tessa fussed from alongside. She did her best to keep the towel looped over Kai, too, which made Boone grin.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. Shifters ain’t modest.”
Shifters might not be, but she sure as hell felt funny gawking at a naked man — even if the man in question was the one she’d been fantasizing about hours earlier.
“And the next time you’re injured, Boone?” she asked, arching an eyebrow at him.
He laughed. “Then I hope you’re here to take care of me, sweetheart.”
She nearly smiled, but then frowned, because the likelihood of there being a next time was slim. She’d be on her way soon, for one thing, and she really didn’t want to see any of these men hurt, for another. Not even Silas, as much as he rubbed her the wrong way.
Kai was a big man, but Hunter and Boone carried him easily. They followed a winding path up the steep slope of the estate. A stream skipped along the flagstone path, the edges overgrown with flowers and leafy bushes she couldn’t name. When they reached what had to be Kai’s house, Tessa stopped and gawked for a moment. The view was spectacular, and so was the house. Stone walls squared off by huge expanses of glass backed into the cliff, retreating into a dwelling that was part Frank Lloyd Wright, part dragon’s lair. Rather than windows, the entire front was made of sliding glass doors, and they were all pushed open, welcoming in the sky and the light.
“Watch out,” Boone muttered as they maneuvered Kai onto the couch.
Tessa followed them inside. The place was imposing from the outside, but it was cozy inside, with colorful rugs and framed images on the walls — one of a lush, mist-covered mountain, another of a yellow flower, growing beside a rock.
Silas stood frowning at the door for a while, then motioned the others out.
“You.” He pointed at Tessa. “Stay if you insist. But you’ll see that he’s all right.”
He spun and walked away.
Boone waggled his eyebrows before following Silas. “Go at it, Nurse Tessa. You’ve got your patient all to yourself.”
She caught her protest a minute before it left her lips. She’d insisted on helping, so here she was.
She ran a hand over Kai’s forehead. His breathing was steady, and his wounds were no worse than before. In fact, the longest gash was already scabbing over. But he was still a mess, and she wasn’t going to let him lie there in that state.
She set off, roaming the house for supplies. The living room was airy and sparsely furnished. The kitchen was a gleaming, modern expanse with white counters and white doors. The bedroom—
She gulped and forced her eyes away from the king-size bed with its tangled sheets. Too late, though — her dirty mind was already spinning with a dozen intimate images.
“Bathroom,” she murmured, ordering her legs onward.
The bathroom was huge, with a spacious, blue-tiled shower she would have loved to try out. Like the rest of Kai’s home, it was a little bare but orderly, with shaving utensils lying enough out of place to give the space a homey feel rather than something from a photo shoot.
She grabbed a towel from the bathroom and a bowl of warm, soapy water from the kitchen and proceeded to wipe Kai’s skin clean.
Silas was right. Kai seemed fine. Slumbering, not suffering, as she’d initially feared.
She rose and stepped back, watching him for a minute. He looked ten years younger now that he was at rest. All the worry he carried with him, all that…that — whatever it was he kept bottled up inside — was gone, at least temporarily. She reached out, brushing a finger along the sharp line of his eyebrow, tracing the upward curve.
Okay, Tessa, she caught herself. Quit drooling. Quit dreaming. Get on with it.
She forced herself to step back and look around the strange mix of bare-bones bachelor pad and fancy lifestyle magazine. The furniture was all hardwood with smooth, creamy tones. The floor-to-ceiling bookshelf was filled with beautiful books, and every window was hung with a glass ornament of some kind that caught and reflected the light. She walked over to one and touched it gingerly. The glass bauble seemed impossibly fragile, the blue color practically alive. The next window had a yellow ball like a tiny, tropical sun, and the next—
She stopped and held her breath. In the next window hung an emerald pendant exactly the color of her necklace.
Same color as your eyes, Kai had said. Beautiful.
She held her pendant up to the one hanging in the window and turned it this way and that, doubling the green splotch it cast against the white wall of the room. They were different shapes and sizes, but the color was exactly the same.
“Beautiful,” she whispered.
The beam of green light lit a framed photo of a young boy with a happy couple. The woman had Kai’s blue eyes, and the man had his upswept eyebrows. Kai with his parents. Tessa touched the frame gently then pulled away. There was something intensely private about the photo — private and sad. She turned away with a sigh.
The rest of the house — what there was of it, because it looked bigger from the outside than it really was — was also decorated with colorful baubles, and she couldn’t help wondering whether that was a reflection of Kai’s personal taste or whether all dragons liked shiny, beautiful things that infused their world with energy and light.
A spiral staircase wound upward, and she padded the stairs quietly, wondering where they led. Another room? A rooftop deck?
The latter, as it turned out, and she whistled at the view. The neighboring islands seemed bigger and closer from up there, and she swore she could make out a glimpse of Oahu between Molokai and Lanai. She stood at the edge, closed her eyes, and spread her arms wide. What would it be like to be able to fly? To turn and soar and glide over the mountains and the sea?
The breeze teased her hair as childhood dreams rushed out of the dark recesses of her memory and into the present, telling her how easy flying would be. All she had to do was curl her fingers slightly to bank left or right. To climb upward, all she’d have to do was tilt her chin up and head for the sky.
It felt so real. So vivid. So achievable. But then she opened her eyes and remembered. Those weren’t wings flapping — it was just the movement of her sarong in the wind. And the cool kiss of upper altitude air on her cheek was just the pinch of the sea breeze.
She sighed and backed away from the edge, suddenly sheepish. She’d better get down before anyone noticed her acting like a shifter wannabe.
Kai was breathing easily, and his wounds weren’t a fraction as bad as they’d been before. Tessa wanted to pull up a chair and watch. Could a dragon shifter heal before her very eyes? But she felt too much like a voyeur watching him sleep, so she stepped out to the main veranda and looked out again, standing at the edge to feel closer to the sky. Would she ever understand shifters? Did she want to?
A scu
ffing sound dragged her gaze around to the right, where Boone was coming up the stairs.
“Hi,” the wolf murmured, eyeing her strangely.
“Hi,” she whispered so as not to disturb Kai. But Boone hardly seemed to glance Kai’s way at all. He just stared at her.
“What?” she demanded a second later.
Boone shook his head quickly. “Not afraid of heights, huh?”
He pointed at her feet. Oh. There was kind of — well, a cliff there and no rail. She’d barely noticed, somehow.
“No, not afraid of heights,” she murmured, backing up slowly. She glanced at the upper level and realized there was no guardrail there either.
Boone’s eyes drifted to her neck, and she reached up to touch her pendant while he murmured a vague Hmm sound.
“What?” she asked. It was just a cheap pendant her grandmother had given her.
He snapped his eyes away. “Nothing. How’s our patient?”
She nodded. “Better. I think.” But then she pictured the extent of Kai’s wounds when she’d first found him and winced. “Has he really been hurt worse?”
Boone shrugged. “Yep. We all have.”
She frowned, wondering why, where, when. Wondering if she really wanted to know.
“Bet it still hurts, though.”
Boone’s brow furrowed, and he rubbed his abdomen absently — the spot of an old wound? “I’ll save you the gory details, shall I?”
She gulped and nodded.
“Let’s just say it hurts like hell. But we heal.” His voice was cavalier, but his eyes gave the truth away. “Anyway,” he went on quickly. “The airline called. They found your bag. Want me to take you to pick it up?”
She paced back over to check on Kai and stood there deciding for a moment, reaching up to touch one of three colored baubles as she did.
Boone snorted behind her. “Dragons. They sure do like their shiny things.”
She looked up at the row of three suncatchers. One red, one orange, one yellow. The color of fire.
I like shiny things, too. She smiled, turning to look at another set of two hanging farther away.
Boone chuckled. “Shiny things, precious things. And no sooner do they have one than they want another.”