by T. S. Joyce
She inhaled deeply and stirred the ice around in a circle with her straw. “Yeah, well, lucky me. Submissive human, dominant dragon. Whatever power that decided to put two complete opposite personalities in one body is a douchebag.”
“You don’t like your dragon.”
“No. I would be human if it was my choice.” Then she could fall in love with a man like Kane, settle down, have babies, and not worry about them killing her. She could be normal. She could live un-hunted. She could be happy.
He huffed a disgusted sound and leaned back in the booth, crossed his arms over his chest. He smelled pissed, but for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why. She was allowed to feel how she wanted to feel about her dragon. Her animal, her body, her experiences, and screw his rude opinion. Kane the Riddler was human. He was the lucky one, and he didn’t even know it.
“My turn,” she gritted out, her cheeks heating with the anger that was flooding her veins. Time for him to get the uncomfortable questions. “Why did you join the war?”
“Money,” he said immediately. His arms tightened over his chest, though, making his muscles bulge. “I had a mom and three brothers to take care of. I got recruited on my twentieth birthday, ten years ago on Friday.”
“Did you believe in the war?”
“Do you believe in war?” he popped off.
“I’m scared of war. I don’t like fighting.”
Kane jerked his attention to a couple making out on stools at the counter. “I believed in money. I believed in the protection I was offered if I fought.”
“Protection?”
“Look, my mom was overwhelmed, had no help financially, and I could take care of her and my brothers. End of story.”
Or the beginning of a story she wanted to hear. “Where was your dad?”
Kane swallowed hard and leaned forward again, elbows on the table, shredding a napkin between his fingers as he stared at the confetti he was making. “Like you don’t know. My dad’s dead.”
“Oh, no. I’m so sorry.”
Kane jerked his attention to her, and those dark eyebrows of his were lowered again like he couldn’t figure her out. “Don’t be sorry, princess. He would’ve been the end of the world.”
Rowan could see the shock in her own face in the reflection of his sunglasses. Those were big words, and more than that, Kane had infused each syllable with heavy hatred.
“My father was evil—”
“Kane—”
“Listen. You should hear this. You should really absorb it before you carry out whatever task you’ve been sent here to do.” Great, more riddles. “My father was evil. He deserved what he got, and I’m not pissed at his end. I’m not like him, though. Not anymore. Now, I’m just trying to make it day to day.”
“I don’t like this.”
“Here you two lovebirds go,” the waitress said in a rush, shoving both their burger baskets in front of them. She pulled a bottle of ketchup from her apron pocket. “You need anything else right now?” she asked, her frown on the table of drunk twenty-somethings a couple booths down.
“Nah, we’re good. This all looks delicious, Marny,” Rowan said, reading her nametag. People usually smiled if she used their name, and Rowan liked making people smile.
And there it was. Marny looked surprised and grinned. “Okay, hon, flag me down if you need refills. This place is crazy tonight.”
Kane took a massive bite out of his burger, but Rowan wasn’t done with their conversation. She lowered her voice and leaned forward. “I don’t like the way you think I’m here to hurt you. I don’t hurt humans. I don’t hurt anyone. I don’t have it in me. Besides, I like you. You’re my friend—”
“We aren’t friends.”
“Stop saying that!” Pissed, she threw a french fry at his face that bounced off his forehead.
Kane froze, mid-bite. Maybe he would look terrifying if his glasses weren’t in the way, but mostly he looked shocked and silly right now.
Rowan snorted and pursed her lips.
“Don’t do that again,” Kane ground out.
Rowan lifted another fry threateningly. “Or what?”
“Or maybe I’ll burn you and devour your ashes.”
The threats of a wimpy human. She threw the fry, but Kane caught it so fast, his hand blurred. Whoa. Maybe he got his strength and speed from his time in the military.
She frowned. “Are you still active duty?”
“No. I was discharged,” he said around the french fry he’d just shoved into his mouth. “Honorably for injuries.”
“Your leg?”
Kane ignored her. How was he already halfway done with his burger in two bites? Rowan bit into hers and—oh, my God, that’s how. It was insanely delicious. Kane watched her snarf her dinner. She would’ve been self-conscious if his lips hadn’t twisted up into a slight smile as she’d dug into her fries. They were the crinkle cut ones that tasted like happiness.
“How old are your brothers?” she asked, wiping her mouth with a napkin.
“Half brothers. Different dad, thank God. They’re dad was a dirtbag, but they’re normal.”
Normal? Weird way to put it, but okay. “How old are your half-brothers?”
“Fifteen, seventeen, and Jackson is about to turn twenty.”
“That’s a big age difference from you.”
“Yeah, my mom wanted the second family. The first round wasn’t so easy on her.”
“What do you mean?”
Kane cleared his throat and arched his eyebrows high. “I wasn’t conceived willingly, if you catch my drift.”
“Oh, my gosh,” she whispered. “That’s awful.”
Kane gave her an empty smile and pulled a couple of leftover fries out of her basket. “Thanks.”
“I don’t mean that you were born, just awful on your mom.”
“It was, and she wanted a redo when she recovered from what my dad did. She found Rick, and they were married, had three boys. Rick was an asshole, left my mom and all his kids, didn’t even look back, didn’t pay her child support. I remember I couldn’t wait until the day I turned fifteen because then I could legally get a job and help my mom out. I worked at this pizza place on the night shift for a year before…”
“Before what?”
Kane cocked his head again, staring as if he didn’t understand her. Carefully, Rowan leaned forward and reached for his sunglasses. Kane caught her wrist fast, and in a grip so hard it ground her bones. He shook his head in a slow warning.
“Why won’t you let me see you?”
Kane’s lips ticked up in a feral twist, and his voice came out too low, too rough. “Because I’m comfortable in the shadows.”
Chills blasted up her forearms. Maybe it was the story of his father that had her instincts blaring, or maybe it was all the riddles, or perhaps, it was the dead monotone he’d used when he’d admitted to liking the dark. Dark Kane. The nickname made a tiny bit more sense now.
“Psst,” someone said behind her.
Rowan turned to find one of the slurring guys a couple tables away staring at her with a big dumb grin. His two friends were snickering from the other side of the booth. Rowan narrowed her eyes at him and then turned back around to Kane. Drunk idiots with nothing to say. Just wanted to interrupt her.
Kane’s jaw clenched once, but he took a long, final draw of his drink and then asked Marny for the check when she bustled by.
“Sure thing,” Marny said. “I’ll go grab it.”
“Thanks,” Kane murmured low, but then his gaze seemed to train directly over her shoulder again.
“Pssst. Hot girl. Do you like it in the front hole or the back hole?”
Seriously? These guys were ridiculous. Rowan stared at a tomato slice on her plate and clenched her purse in her lap. The food in her stomach transformed to cement, and her mouth turned dry as cotton.
“You okay?” Kane asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I just don’t like attention like that.”
“Pssst!” Something hit her in the back of the head, and an immediate rumble vibrated through her chest.
Rowan closed her eyes. Easy Dragon. They’re just some drunk pricks looking for attention.
“Hey,” Kane called out blandly. “Don’t do that again.”
“Ooooooh,” the guy said. “Angry boyfriend. She must only like it in the front hole.” More snickering sounded.
Marny returned with the check, but Kane asked her to hold up while Rowan dug the total plus tip out of her wallet.
“Thanks, Marny, you were really good at your job tonight,” Rowan said, trying and failing to meet her gaze. She could feel the guys behind her staring. Heat flashed up her neck. She was a freaking dragon shifter—one of the biggest monsters in the world. Those men were nothing, no threat to her, so why was a trill of terror zinging through her body right now?
Because attention gets us hunted.
The memory of fire flashed through her mind. Teeth and blue scales and a pitch black grizzly charging right toward her. Rowan winced and shook her head hard.
“Come on,” Kane gritted out, standing easily, like his leg didn’t hurt anymore. Maybe the dinner had done his body well.
He offered his hand, the first voluntary touch. Rowan looked up at his face to make sure he wouldn’t yank his hand away and make fun of her, but his mouth was set in a grim line and his body was humming with tension. This wasn’t a joke. Not to Kane, and not to her.
“Don’t leave,” the guy behind them whined. “We were just playing. Stay. We’ll behave, I promise.”
Rowan slid her fingertips up his offered palm until the insides of their thumbs touched. He gripped her hand gently. His skin felt like hers—hot as fire. An electric current sparked between their hands, but it didn’t hurt. It settled her dragon. Kane didn’t flinch away from her heat like she’d expected. Instead, pulled her up out of the booth like her weight was no bother at all. Gracefully, he brushed his hand against her hip and moved her to his other side, placing himself between her and the drunk assholes as they passed.
Rowan saw it coming. She saw the man’s foot slide out into the aisle right as Kane stepped down on his bad leg.
“No!” she said, reaching for Kane as he lost his balance. But he didn’t need her help. He caught himself on the back of the man’s seat and immediately pulled himself toward the jerk. Kane wrapped one hand wrapped around the punk’s neck, and he lifted the other in a closed fist into the air, ready to hit him.
When Kane bent his knee and rested his bad leg on the bench to pummel the guy, something metal and shiny gleamed from the hem of Kane’s jeans where his ankle should’ve been.
Kane was an amputee.
He was also now beating the ever-lovin’ shit out of the buttface who had tripped him. She was tempted to let him go, but she heard the distinct crack of a broken nose, and Kane wasn’t slowing down, even with the guy’s friends hitting and pulling at him. Shit.
“Kane!” She pulled his arm, but the damn thing was made of steel. He shrugged her off like her grip was made of paper. What the hell? She’d never had a problem overpowering anyone before. “Kane, stop!” She encircled his waist, ignoring the men glancing blows off her, trying to drag her off, yelling at the tops of their lungs. It was chaos, but she had to get Kane out of here. She had to save the drunken idiot from Kane’s wrath. She had to save Kane from himself.
“Kane, you’ll kill him!” Rowan gritted her teeth and jerked on his waist as hard as she could.
Kane stumbled backward, and Rowan shoved herself between him and the others. Kane’s sunglasses lay shattered on the table, his face twisted into a snarl as though he was some wild animal. His hair hung in front of his face, and his lip was bleeding profusely, made worse by his grimace when he jerked his gaze away from the men at the table. Away from her.
He muttered, “I’m sorry.”
For what? She wanted to pummel the shit out of them, too. Kane shook off her hold and strode from the diner with no limp at all.
“That guy is one of those shifters.” Asshole then pointed at her. “So is she. Look at her eyes.”
Crap. Rowan scanned the room quickly, panting under the stares of the others. Marny touched her shoulder, and Rowan jumped. “Best be on your way. The police will be here soon.”
“They should be arrested!” the guy yelled. Both of his eyes were swelling shut.
“You started it, Brenton!” Marny yelled. “You’ve been starting shit in my diner for two straight months now. About damn time you got your ass beat.” Marny gripped Rowan’s elbow and led her to the door. “Go on now before you have a mob after you.”
“Th-thanks, Marny.”
“Sure thing, hon.”
But when Rowan looked into her eyes, Marny wasn’t smiling anymore. She looked scared. Rowan’s dragon eyes did that to people. About now they would be glowing and churning gold like the sun, and her pupils would be elongated.
The walk back over to the motel parking lot seemed to take an hour. She could hear police sirens in the distance. They didn’t make her hurry. She had time—time which she needed to think. Kane had an artificial leg, and it was something he was obviously really uncomfortable with. Why else had he evaded the hell out of her questions about it earlier? But that wasn’t the only thing that had her concerned.
That man in there was right. Kane couldn’t be human. She’d felt his strength with her own hands. His power had rivaled hers, but he didn’t feel like a shifter. She had sensed nothing supernatural about him. He didn’t have a smell or waves of dominance like a bear would have. And he had to be a grizzly shifter—nothing else made sense. He’d shaken her off like she was air. Her. One of the biggest and strongest dragon shifters left on earth.
Dark Kane was hiding dark secrets.
Chapter Five
The door creaked open under Rowan’s urging. The room was dark except for the single light over the sink at the back that illuminated the bed in a soft glow.
The room looked empty.
“Kane?”
“Don’t come in here,” he said in a voice she didn’t recognize. He sounded like a demon.
Rowan looked back out over the parking lot to the diner where the cops were pulling up, lights flashing. Going inside with Kane didn’t feel terribly safe, but waiting out here was definitely a bad idea.
Rowan eased into the room and squinted her eyes, letting her night vision adjust. “Where are you?”
A growl sounded from the other side of the bed, the guttural noise much too realistic. A damn shifter! Didn’t that beat all? She’d spent the entire day with him and not even guessed he was anything other than human.
Rowan padded carefully around the bed and hesitated. Kane sat there, sans shirt, knees drawn up, elbows resting on them, hands dangling in front of his legs, muscles flexed, and his eyes glowing a strange green color. Eyes that he wouldn’t let her see directly. The second she sat down in front of him, he angled his face away from her. This sucked. He still wouldn’t let her see him.
“What are you?”
Kane adjusted the leg of his jeans to cover the hint of metal, but she swatted his hand out of the way. “I already saw it, and I don’t care.”
Kane huffed a disgusted sound. “Bullshit.” He flipped his hair over to his other cheek, hiding his eyes completely from her.
“I don’t! You having a bum leg doesn’t make any difference to me.”
“Yeah?” he asked too loud. “You aren’t secretly rejoicing? Your job just got ten times easier. And it’s not a bum leg, Rowan! It’s fucking gone. It hurts all the fucking time, and it’s not even there. It’s like I can still feel it…burning. My nerves are shot—fuck! Just kill me already so I don’t have to pour my whole fucking life story out for you, Bloodrunner. This sucks enough without you knowing how weak I am.”
“I’m not here to kill you, Kane, you bulbous dumbass.”
“Then why are you here?” he yelled.
“Because Harper’s pregnant!�
� Rowan clapped her hands over her mouth and wished she could swallow that secret back down. She’d just betrayed the Bloodrunners before she’d even joined them.
Kane slid her a quick, glowing glance. “She can’t shift?”
Well, Rowan was already going to hell, so she may as well do it thoroughly. With a deeply irritated sigh, she removed her hands and scooted closer until she was sitting right in between his legs. He leaned as far back into the side of the mattress as he could manage, but at least he allowed her this close. “I’m here to protect Harper’s crew until she can call on her dragon again. As soon as she has her baby, I’ll be heading back to the Gray Backs where I belong. Now let me see.”
“See what?”
“You know what.”
He worked that jaw muscle good, stalling as he shook his head like she was pissing him off. Whatever. If she was sleeping in a room with a man, she at least wanted to know what kind of man he was.
Slowly, she reached forward and cupped his cheeks. His dark whiskers rasped against her palm, and gooseflesh surged up her arms. Gently, she pulled his face to hers, but he’d closed his eyes.
“You know,” he murmured softly. “You know what I am, right? You know, and this has all been some fucked-up game you’ve been playing. Some mind grenade you are about to pull the pin on.”
“Riddles, riddles, but I told you I’m not a brainy girl, Kane. Open your eyes.”
Kane slid his palms up her arms and gripped her wrists as though he was about to pull them away. But he didn’t. They stayed just like that, linked, touching, connected as quiet seconds dragged on. His heartbeat sounded so fast, like a hummingbird’s wings.
“Please,” she whispered, stroking her thumb under his eye.
Kane opened his eyes, and the green color glowed fiercely, too bright to pass as human. It wasn’t the bright hue that terrified her, though. No, her terror was from the long, reptilian pupils that constricted as he focused on her.
“Oh, shit!” Rowan released him and crab crawled backward until her head hit the corner of the wall. She had to get out of here! Rowan scrambled up and bolted for the door, but Kane was there, his giant hand flat on the surface and pinning it closed.