Crouched, I scoot to the end of the counter, readying myself to leap from my hiding place and surprise the intruder. I jump to my feet, but it doesn’t go like it had in my head. The belt of the robe catches on a scrollwork drawer handle, throwing me off balance. Then I trip over the folds of cloth gathered around my feet.
I fall flat on my face. The super-soft cloth does very little to cushion my fall as various joints and pieces of flesh smack against the cold tile.
The gentle swoosh of French doors opening is followed immediately by a soft chuckle. Alarm and tension flee from my body, leaving only utter chagrin in their wake. The bruises the floor gave me are nothing compared to the bruises purpling up my pride.
“Kitty.” Sani strides quickly to where I lay sprawled on the icy kitchen floor. “What are you doing?”
I have never felt so embarrassed in my entire life. Not even when the prime minister’s daughter caught me digging through a drawer of panties I thought had belonged to her mother—nor when I’d stuttered through that ridiculous story, trying to explain the situation. Some super-spy I am.
“I was just about to unleash hell on an intruder,” I say, groaning and fumbling in the plush layers.
He places his arms under mine and pulls me up, examining me. “Yes, you’re fierce as a lion on the Serengeti.”
I blush and look at my feet. “Yeah, a cub before its eyes have even opened.” I probably look like a little girl wearing her mom’s bathrobe. All I need is some too-bright blush and uneven lipstick smeared across half my face. Sani, on the other hand, looks like a freaking fitness model in his red tank top and gray basketball shorts.
“Did you hurt anything?” he asks.
I shake my head. “Not really.”
He scoops up my abandoned midnight snack and a Snickers bar before guiding me to the loveseat with a hand against my lower back. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“My brain won’t shut off.” I sigh, surrendering to him.
He sits down cross-legged and pulls me into his lap, handing me my candy. “I know the feeling.” He wraps the robe securely around me, smirking at his deliberate actions, before opening his own candy bar.
We munch on our chocolaty, sugary goodies in silence, staring into space. Thousands of things we should be saying vibrate in the air between us. I reach into the package for the last peanut butter cup only to find that I’ve already eaten it. Sani’s wrapper is empty, too, so we just sit there, the distant noises of the city streets the only sound in the room. Neither of us looks at the other.
“Are we doing the right thing?” Sani finally says.
I want to just say “yes,” confidently with no reservations. I want to tell him I know exactly what I’m doing, and everything’s going to turn out peachy. But Sani’s the only person I refuse to lie to. I crumple the candy wrappers in my fist and squeeze tight. The sharp corners of the cardboard stab at my palms, bringing my thoughts into focus.
“My mom once told me if you’re asking yourself that question, you’re at least on the right track.”
He nods. “Your mom’s a wise woman.”
I look straight into his eyes then. They glint yellow sparks in the darkness. “She’s not always right, though,” I say.
With me sitting in his lap, our faces are level. All I have to do to kiss him is lean forward just a few inches. But I guess I’m still scared of frightening him, of pushing too far and making him push me away again. It’s harder than I thought to forget years of what felt like rejection, even now that I know what it really was.
A grin slides across my face and Sani’s eyebrow raises in response. “How are you feeling?” I ask.
“I told you. Good as new.”
I waggle my eyebrows as I take the candy wrapper from him and toss both of them onto the coffee table. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” A smile cracks his serious expression. “What are you up to?”
“I’m just thinking maybe we should make sure you’re completely better. You know, for the mission.”
His teeth flash bright in the darkness. “You want to go flying.”
I leap to my feet and tug on his arms. “A little moonlight stroll.”
He says, “That’s entirely against protocol,” but he follows me to the patio doors without any resistance.
The half moon is bright and clear, more than enough light for us to see everything in perfect detail.
Feeling giddy with Sani’s touch and maybe a slight sugar rush, I climb up onto the patio railing, standing on four inches of burnished bronze. I face him. “Ready?” I do a back flip into the night air and let the dragon rush over me.
When I don’t immediately go invisible, Sani glances nervously at the other balconies. “Someone might see you.”
I don’t care. Tomorrow I’m going to broadcast my true nature to the entire world. What does it matter if a few rich people get a sneak peek? Sani cares, though, and maybe he’s partially right. We don’t want the CIA showing up before we have a chance to follow through on our plan.
“You better get on quick, then,” I tease.
“Kitty,” he warns.
“Sani,” I mock his tone. “Come on, let’s see what two healthy hearts gets you.”
He scans the hotel building, but even serious Sani can’t stop the smile that inches onto his face. He’s been too long out of dragon form.
The green-gold of his eyes latches onto me and I couldn’t move if I wanted to. His pupils elongate as his dragon takes hold. A sleek, black shape crouches low on the patio. Fully grown African dragons aren’t very much bigger than their human forms, but they are ten times as powerful and quick. Sani stretches the full length of his lithe midnight body. His downy earflaps slap against the soft fur of his face when he shakes his head. I’m overwhelmed with a sense of rightness, and I can’t tell if it’s coming from Sani or me.
Moving with the grace of a panther and the raw strength of an alligator, he soars over the patio railing and lands effortlessly on my back. “Let’s go,” he whispers.
I jet straight north. Only minutes pass before we enter the Angeles National Forest and I swoop low, gliding through valleys and flirting with the gentle slopes of the San Gabriel Mountains. Raw joy floods my veins.
“Ten o’clock!” Sani shouts.
There’s a shallow river surrounded by a flat area of scrubby, rocky ground ahead and to my left. I change course and slow my speed. Sensing Sani’s anticipation, I fly directly over the gurgling water. Four feet press against my scales, then lift away from me. He splashes so loudly in the small river that I know he’s trying to get my attention. Human or dragon, Sani only makes this much noise when it’s on purpose.
I flip a quick U-turn and find him rolling in eighteen inches of water, kicking with his feet and thrashing with his tail. Childlike happiness flows from him and showers me along with the water droplets he sends spraying into the air. He flicks his tail and sends a fan of water at my face. I blink hard and laugh. Two can play this game. My tail whips around and slaps the jostling surface inches away from his smooth, satiny hide. He darts back, then jumps over the veritable tidal wave of river water.
“No fair,” he says, his eyes dancing with mirth. “Your tail’s so much bigger than mine.”
“No fair,” I echo. “Your dodge is so much faster than mine.”
His boisterous laugh fades into the darkness as he grows still, gazing at me. Warmth spreads from my center through my entire body, rushing along the spines on my back to the tips of the comb on my head and the sharp tip of my tail.
“You are so very beautiful,” he says.
As he prowls toward me, I feel weak and strong at the same time. My grip on the magnetic fields falters and I drop all four feet into the water, clawed feet gripping smooth, hard river rocks.
I am swamped by the emotion rolling off Sani, thick and heavy after years of suppression. It’s one—albeit an amazing and wonderful—thing for a person to say they care about you. It’s entirely another animal when
you can feel it; when you can know to your soul’s very core the depth and breadth of every sentiment. His catlike head stretches up to mine, nuzzling his soft, feathery cheek against my leathery one.
Sani has opened the floodgates, allowing me to sense everything. As much as it terrifies me, I repay the openness. Everything I’ve felt for him over the past three years comes rushing out of me.
We stand inside a storm of passion and affection and love. Incapable of moving, barely capable of breathing, I’m a frozen statue, the water rushing around my feet and sweeping all my doubts and fears downstream.
Sani changes first. The soft bristle of his human hair tickles my nose. He grins sheepishly at me. “I just want to hold you in my arms.”
Though the sudden loss of his emotions swirling around me leaves me feeling anemic, I can’t argue with that. I tuck the dragon away and fall into human form. The bottom of the hotel robe soaks with river water, and the current pulls it away from the lower half of my body. Smiling, Sani pulls my arms up and loops them around his neck.
He slides his left hand up my right arm, underneath the wide sleeve of the robe, to softly stroke my shoulder. Icy heat trails behind his touch, spreading across my neck and down into my belly. He reaches out with his right hand and cups my face, tracing the outline of my lips with his thumb. My lips are on fire. The butterflies in my stomach roil out of control, spinning like a tiny hurricane.
“Kitty,” Sani whispers. “I’m so sorry.” His voice breaks with regret that tears at my hearts.
“Sorry?” I say, confused. “What for?” Was he going to tell me we couldn’t be together once my mother was free again? Did he think it wasn’t worth it? Did he possibly think I would let him go, knowing what I know now? My fingers dig into his back, holding him close to me. No chance in hell.
“For waiting so long to let you know how I felt,” he says. “I am so sorry I pretended like I didn’t care about you.”
“I get it,” I mumble, my eyes focusing on his shirt collar, some of the worry leaving me. “It’s okay.”
“No. It’s not,” he says, lowering his head to catch my gaze. “But I’ll never hurt you like that again. I promise. From this day on, nothing will keep me from you.”
Oh Gods, I melt. Kitty Lung, the fierce, avenging dragon, annihilator of terrorist cells, America’s Most Wanted, is a ridiculous, molten puddle of mushy emotions. My hearts are bound to beat right out of my chest. I certainly can’t contain them.
“Not even the legendary Commander Lung?” I say, a smile playing at the corners of my lips.
“Neither of them,” Sani says, answering my smile. He takes a deep breath. “Not even both of them.”
I tighten my grip around his neck again and pull him closer, even as I set my lips on a crash course for his. The moment our lips touch—this defines completeness. His lips move slowly and gently against mine. Too slowly, too gently.
I slide my tongue across the seal of his lips, urging him on. I want more. I want everything. A small groan sounds in his throat and he relents. We melt into each other. And finally, finally we’re kissing like I’ve always imagined we would, like the world might end tomorrow.
And who knows? For us, it might. But right now, I really don’t care.
…
I wake to a gentle pressure on my left temple and smile when I realize it’s courtesy of Sani’s soft lips. He’s lying behind me in my bed, his left arm wrapped firmly around my waist. I’m curled up against his chest, as comfortable as a cat lazing in the sunshine. His warm scent washes over me and, for a second, I’m in heaven.
A knock at the door, then it swings open. “Kitty,” Dominic says. “I couldn’t find Sani, he’s not in his— Oh!”
“What the hell!” I blink angrily at him. “I did not say you could come in.”
“Good morning, Dominic,” Sani says. I hear the smile in his voice and it warms me to my core.
“Well, I’m so glad you two found time to screw around before our big day.”
Sani pulls slightly away from me. “We didn’t, uh, screw—”
“Whatever, I don’t need to know the details,” Dominic says. “I hope you’re both ready. Considering CNN has announced Director Bean is being held against his will, we might have a bigger fight than we bargained for.”
“He didn’t sound like he was being watched when I talked to him.” I scramble out of bed. I’m fully clothed, despite Dominic’s insinuations. I blink and stretch languidly, my body refusing to start up any faster. Sleep had come so easily with Sani’s arms around me and my sleep-starved brain is in no hurry to wake. Rather, it begs me to crawl back into bed with him and pull the covers over both our heads, ignoring the rest of the world.
Dominic shrugs. “They’re claiming he was taken prisoner by an unnamed criminal organization.”
“That’s actually better,” Sani says. He’s somehow already out of bed, looking like he’s slept for a week and staring at a random spot on the wall, his mind working.
“How do you figure?” Dominic is fiddling with his belt. I notice his hand keeps moving to adjust his gun holster, which isn’t there.
I smile, remembering a discussion Sani and I had last night. “He’s right. It means we’ll just be fighting against the Yakuza and not whatever allies Bean’s managed to scrounge up. If he’s there voluntarily, who knows what kind of spooks from his past he’d have helping him out.” Oddly, a great weight seems to lift from me. Facing down Director Bean’s dark past wasn’t exactly on my bucket list.
Without answering, Dominic walks out of the room, not bothering to close the door behind him. “Get ready, lovebirds. I’m going to make the phone call. We leave in ten.”
Chapter Eighteen
I swoop onto the street with dragon-form Sani riding on my back, both of us invisible to the men patrolling the roof and guarding the entrances. I take a deep breath, reveling in the last few seconds of invisibility. I am very comfortable sneaking into a place unseen and doing my job. This strategy of making sure as many people as possible see me doesn’t sit well with my years of training and familiar caution. This—the moment I break all the rules—is the moment that will make or break the dragons. The blood pumping through my veins turns to ice. It seemed like such a great idea from the safety of the high-rise hotel room in the comfort of plush carpet and fancy furniture. Now, hovering a few feet from a mob stronghold? Not so much.
“Do you sense that?” Sani asks.
I listen closely to the air around us. Idle chatter from the guards and the subtle sounds of a city waking up fill my ears. Nothing out of the ordinary. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Inside the building,” he insists. “You don’t feel anything?” Sani’s always trying to get me to become more observant, like a parent telling a child to look up a word in the dictionary rather than giving him the easy answer.
Opening up my senses a little more and stretching them out through the entire building, I hold my breath. At first, everything is painfully mundane—air conditioners, water flowing through pipes, steady footsteps. Then, the emotions drift up to me out of the other noises and smells. I feel a quiet, muddled mixture of uneasiness, resolution, and just a touch of fear. Oh. My. Gods. “There’s a dragon in there!”
Sani’s claws flex against my scales as he stiffens now that I’ve confirmed it. He doesn’t want me to know it, but this worries him. “I wonder if it’s anyone we know?”
I don’t blame him for worrying. Either the Yakuza are holding a dragon hostage, in addition to Jacob and Director Bean, or a dragon is helping them. I’m not even sure which I’d prefer, but I know one thing for sure: we will not win this fight if a dragon’s added himself to our opponent list.
Dominic rounds the corner, and I can’t help but grin. I know seeing him has never produced this reaction in me before, but his homeless getup and drunken stumble is kind of hilarious. This is our signal; it’s go time. There’s no turning back, even with our newest discovery.
“Hold on
,” I warn Sani.
At my greatest speed, we shoot to the top of the building, and I quietly circle around the door that leads from the roof to inside. In a flash of kismet, the door hangs partially open, like it’s waiting for us. The guards constantly focus their attention outward and downward, so they don’t spot human-form Sani when he leaps from my back. His backpack is half full and fastened tightly to his back with chest and waist straps. He somehow manages to skulk across the gravelly roof and slip into the shadowed opening without making even the smallest of sounds.
As soon as he’s out of sight behind the door, I take a deep breath. This is it. Batting down every day of training I’ve ever had, silencing every lecture my mother’s ever given me, I release my invisibility and let loose a roar that vibrates the windows of the Yakuza building and all the buildings around us. The guards on the roof spin to face the sound. Many of them stumble at the sight of my thirty-foot-long serpentine body circling and darting like a crazed moth around a light bulb. One screams and dives behind an air conditioning unit.
I give them enough time to get a good look, but not enough to train their weapons on me. I soar straight up into the sky and circle out of pistol range, keeping an eye on Dominic on the street below.
He’s been obnoxious enough to draw the attention of most of the street guards, excluding those who are still searching the sky looking for the source of my earth-shaking roar. I knew I gave him a job perfectly suited to his skills; he’s remarkably excellent at annoying people. I keep my eyes on him. Yeah, the drunk hobo act is a great diversion, but its true purpose is to give me a sign I can see from this high up in the sky.
It’s only a few seconds longer until he trips over his own feet and flails on the ground, the prearranged signal. The signal does double duty, drawing attention away from the building just as Sani reaches the bottom and opens the cargo door on that side of the building.
I dive, pushing the magnetic currents around me to fall even faster than gravity would allow. On the way down, I spot a perfectly primped woman with a cameraman setting up on the roof of the next building over. It looks like our media guests have arrived, just on time. One thing you can always count on the media for is being willing to receive an exclusive on the biggest story of the year.
Dragons Are People, Too Page 17