Chapter 17
Chapter
Seventeen
“Are you going to stop sulking any time soon?”
It would be completely inappropriate and unprofessional to stick his tongue out, and yet Dragon had to fight against the urge. Although he was barely able to rein it in, he was able to keep his expression neutral, impassive, a mask for the terror raging beneath his skin.
Bringing Cassandra with them was a mistake.
A mistake of epic proportions.
Even Rose shouldn’t be there, this wasn't like last time when they’d needed her help to reel in her brother.
At least Rose had been raised to know how to defend herself.
She was capable with a weapon, gun or knife, she had good hand-to-hand combat skills, and she knew how to use her much smaller size to her advantage to still be able to take down an attacker much larger than she was.
But Cassandra …
“I know how to protect myself,” Cassandra said, her voice softer this time, more reassuring.
“You're forgetting who raised me. Six big brothers.
Six. Do you think any one of them would have allowed me anywhere near a boy if I didn't know self-defense?
And weapons training was on the itinerary.
I never really enjoyed it, but I know how to handle a gun, and I can hit what I shoot at.
Besides, I think once again six is my lucky number because I have six highly trained men with me who aren't going to let anything happen.”
The words should reassure him, but they didn't.
Sure, he and his team were highly trained former special forces operators. Sure, they worked out virtually every day, kept their bodies highly toned, and ran training drills. Add in their combined enhanced skills and they were definitely a force to be reckoned with.
But that didn't eliminate every scenario that could go wrong.
A sniper bullet could take out any one of them, and there would be nothing they could do to stop it. An explosion or a fire could wipe them out. Or a small army could still outnumber them.
Nothing was set in stone, and he had never been so aware of that fact as he was right now with Cassandra sitting beside him in the back of an SUV.
If something went wrong today, he would lose the most important thing in his life.
Perhaps the only important thing he’d ever had in his life.
The men with him were the first family he’d ever really had, the first people to ever truly care about him in any meaningful way. But Cassandra was the first person he’d really let into his heart, and the thought of losing her …
“Nothing bad is going to happen,” Cassandra soothed as her hands smoothed up and down his arm.
“You can't know that,” he reminded her.
“No, I can't. But that means you can't know that something bad will happen either. We don’t even know if this building is occupied. Chances are, it’s either empty or has long since been turned into something else.”
“Probably not turned into something else since they’re still using the address,” Blade inserted, causing Cassandra to shoot him an irritated frown.
“Are you helping me right now with that talk?” she demanded. “Can't you see how worried he is?”
“I can see that both Dragon and Steel are about to snap,” Blade replied.
“Watch it, Blade, one day soon you might be the one so obsessed with a woman that the thought of anything happening to her makes your chest so tight you can't breathe,” Steel said, expressing exactly how Dragon felt.
“Aww, that’s very romantic, Steel,” Rose teased, although her tone implied that she was pleased with Steel’s declaration.
“Not going to happen,” Blade said with a confidence that said his mind was made up.
If Dragon had been forced to accept one thing over the last several days, it was that nothing was ever as simple as you tried to make it.
For years, he had been adamant that nothing in him could ever love another person. He’d been born a monster, raised a monster, and made a monster. Letting anyone get close to him was asking for disaster.
But nothing could have stopped his feelings for Cassandra. Not his beliefs about who and what he was, not his determination to protect her from himself, not his mistakes in pushing her away rather than valuing her opinion.
Nothing.
From the moment he laid eyes on her, this had become a foregone conclusion.
Which was why it was so terrifying to have Cassandra there with him.
It wasn't a sexist thing, women could be and were warriors, it was about hating the idea of something so precious to him now being in danger. It didn’t matter that there was likely no sniper or army waiting for them, he was taking his little rabbit into a situation he couldn’t control, and that meant a lifetime of learning to control his fear was quickly unraveling.
“Too late to take it back now anyway,” Thunder announced as he pulled the large SUV to a stop outside what looked like an innocuous warehouse. “We’re here.”
“It’s not too late,” he contradicted, reaching over and unsnapping Cassandra’s seatbelt so he could haul her over and into his lap. “Say the word, and we’ll drive you and Rose somewhere safe and then come back here.”
“There’s nowhere safer in the world than with you,” Cassandra said.
The words were so simple, and he could scent that she meant them with the utmost sincerity, but she had no idea what they meant to him.
No one had ever trusted him the way she was right now.
His family had molded him, the military had trained him, Dr. Gardner had tried to manipulate him, his team relied on him, but Cassandra had offered him her body in trust last night, and now she offered him her life.
As badly as he wanted to ignore her wishes and send her back home, as badly as he wished he’d gone with his instincts and sedated her back at the mansion and dealt with her anger later, he also wanted to prove to her that her trust in him wasn't misplaced.
“You’re sure?” he asked as his hands framed her face, holding it still so he could search her eyes for the truth.
“Positive.” She offered him an encouraging smile and then leaned in to rest her forehead against his. “I trust you, I believe in you, I want so badly for you to trust me, too.”
“Oh, little rabbit, I do.” This wasn't about not trusting her, it was about not trusting himself. All his life he’d believed he would break anything precious, so he’d avoided caring about anyone or anything.
But caring for Cassandra was as natural as breathing.
Stopping himself was impossible.
“Then smell me, see I'm not lying. I'm part of this now, and I'm not sitting back and hiding and letting everyone else do the hard things. I may not be part of your team, but I care about you, and I want to help, even if it’s just by supporting you.”
Pressing his nose to her neck, he dragged in her scent, detecting nothing but a desire to feel part of a family, a team, to no longer sit on the outside but jump all in. Trailing his nose down her neck, he paused above the bite mark hidden beneath the high collar of the jacket she was wearing.
Her trust in him floored him, humbled him, and if he let it, it could also empower him.
Dr. Gardner was going down. The man had signed his own death warrant when his experiments worked, and he tried to keep them as caged animals. For everything he’d done to them, to Rose, and to Cassandra meant Dragon would stop at nothing to destroy him.
Capturing her chin between his thumb and forefinger, he held it tight enough to cause pain and then crushed his lips to hers.
When he kissed her, it felt like all the doubts about himself disappeared.
Just melted away into nothingness. If a woman like Cassandra could fall for him, then maybe he wasn't the monster he’d always feared.
“H-hmm.”
If Lion hadn't cleared his throat, Dragon probably would have remained lost in the kiss. When he pulled away, he saw that he and Cassandra weren't the only ones kissing. Steel had Rose in his arms, and they were also pulling away from each other, both breathing hard.
“We breaking up into teams?” Voodoo asked as they all climbed out of the vehicle.
“No,” Steel said quickly, his gaze on Rose.
“Too dangerous,” Dragon added, his fingers finding Cassandra’s. Normally, they would pair off to breach three different doors at the same time. But that weakened them today, it meant there would only be him and one of his teammates to protect Cassandra if things went bad.
With an ache in his chest and a sense of unease that he prayed didn't mean things were about to go bad, Dragon kept Cassandra close as they approached the innocuous-looking building.
January 9th
8:03 P.M.
She should be a whole lot more scared than she was.
Cassandra stuck close to Dragon as the eight of them crossed the dark parking lot toward the building sitting before them. The warehouse was somewhat remote, the property was large, and there were more buildings out the back that she was sure they would thoroughly examine before leaving.
In her hand, her weapon felt heavy, unfamiliar.
She hadn't been lying when she said she knew how to shoot, she did, and she hit what she aimed at even if she couldn’t make a kill shot every single time, but that didn't mean she was as comfortable with a gun as the men and woman standing around her were.
Still, she wasn't going to be any more of a weak link than she already was.
She had no idea what exactly it was they were looking for, beyond the exceedingly obvious like someone who worked there or a computer full of details, but that didn't matter.
At least she wasn't sitting back at home, safe and sound, while the people in her life put themselves in danger to gather intel that would save all of them.