Chapter 4 Dray
FOUR
DRAY
My chest hurt from my ragged breathing, but I had to get outside town. I made it three miles with a whiny dragon clawing at my skin.
Turn back. Why did you leave?
He’s human. I can’t mark him.
He’d probably punch me and call the police. My cousin was the police chief, so that wasn’t a big deal, but losing my mate was worse than the eight years of waiting.
Why not? He’s ours.
Humans don’t fall in love instantly.
I gripped the wheel so hard I expected my shifter strength to break it and we’d run off the road, but I forced myself to keep driving away from Pax.
His scent was on my clothes, in my hair, and had burned itself into my memory.
Doing what my dragon suggested was tempting because my head and heart were telling me to go back to Pax.
Humans are complicated. My dragon didn’t know how much, but we’d have to figure out how to do this.
I thought back to the hose incident when the wet sweater had clung to Pax’s chest. I’d wanted to rip it off and warm him with my body. But had I done it deliberately to get him to remove his clothes so I could sight the tattoo?
No, the hose had kinked, but perhaps I had somehow willed that to happen.
Because even though I scented Pax as my one and only, I needed to confirm it with the tattoo.
Sometimes the universe made a boo-boo, but after meeting Pax, if it had messed this up, I’d fall to my knees and beg it to fix the mistake.
My beast huffed and tendrils of smoke filled my nostrils, so I wound down the window. I had to shift and clear my head before I did exactly as my dragon wanted me to do.
I turned off the road onto a water-logged dirt track that led deep into the woods. My family had owned these three hundred acres for generations, and there was a clearing in the center where no human had ever been.
The other dragon families in and around town used this place too. We’d build fire pits, cut and stacked wood for burning, and carved landing areas between the trees. It was a place we could be ourselves without hiding.
I parked on the dirt parking area and followed the trail. Spring hadn’t arrived here yet because the tree canopy blocked most of the light, and the air contained the chill of winter. It was the perfect weather for flying.
The clearing opened up ahead. It was a wide expanse of scorched earth, and luckily, I was the only one here. My dragon needed to rage and burn without an audience.
I stripped off my clothes and got my briefs off just in time as scales rippled over my shoulders and claws pushed through my fingertips. He didn’t ask permission, but I couldn’t blame him. We were in our safe place.
Wings erupted from my back, and my spine lengthened. I fell on all fours as horns protruded from my head and a long tail extended and swished behind me. My senses of smell and sight sharpened, and I scented the dragons of past and present who’d been here before me.
But Pax’s scent clung to my beast’s scales as he unleashed flames and scorched the ground. He launched himself into the air and pumped his wings in an effort to rise while climbing above the tree line. Humans and also land-dwelling shifters were denied this freedom, and I felt sorry for them.
Mate, my dragon insisted and circled around, heading back to Pax’s house.
No, no. We can’t. I wrested control and had him bank away from the outskirts of town. Not like this.
I want to be close to him.
Me too. But a dragon circling over his house will have the town in an uproar. He doesn’t know about us.
My beast snarled but turned toward the clearing. He flew for an hour, burning through logs and searing patterns on the bare earth. We worked through his and my frustration until we were both more at ease.
Landing near the fire pit, he told me I needed a better plan than spraying our mate with a hose.
I didn’t do that on purpose.
My beast did the dragon version of rolling his eyes, saying my hand slipped because I was staring at Pax.
I took my skin but made no move to return to town. Instead, I lay naked on the wet grass and stared at the sky. Maybe my dragon was right in that I’d been focused on Pax’s throat and I’d lost control of the hose.
Before I could date and woo Pax, I had to make sure he had the same tattoo as me and in the same place. My dragon didn’t understand wooing, but we’d been waiting so long, a few more months wouldn’t matter. Our mate was here and not going anywhere.
The sun was much lower when we returned to town, and I spent the next few hours in my office doing the estimates and printing them out. Pax might prefer the digital version, but I was used to people in town wanting a hard copy.
I forced myself to sleep when I was done, though my dreams were full of Pax who was hiding in the turret at his house or swinging from the treetops. He was always just out of reach, and I woke, determined to make a good impression when we met again.
I swung by the café and ordered two different types of coffee because I didn’t know how Pax took his. Balancing the carrier and the folder, I strolled up the path to his house, pleased at how much better the yard was now that I’d mowed the grass.
He opened the door wearing jeans and a hoodie. He was barefoot, his hair was damp at the ends, and I inhaled the intoxicating scent of his floral shampoo.
“Dray.” He checked his phone. “Did we have an appointment?”
Oh damn. I’d come at an inconvenient time. I should have texted.
“Hi.” I held up the coffee. “I brought a peace offering after getting you wet.”
His eyes grew wide, and a spot of pink appeared on each cheek. Had I said something wrong? Shoot, did he think I’d wet him deliberately?
“You got me wet?” Now the flush covered his face. “Oh, when it rained?”
Yikes. This was awkward. “With the hose, remember?”
“The hose, right.” He opened the door wider and warned me the house was a mess, as he was unpacking. It looked pretty tidy to me, with boxes lined up against a wall and a laptop on the coffee table.
He took the flat white, and I sipped the americano.
“Let me see the damage.”
For a moment I thought something had happened to the house, but he held out his hand for the folder. I’d been thorough with the estimates and included photos with each item so he had all the necessary information.
He flipped through the document, his finger scrolling over the figures as it moved from the top of the page.
I hadn’t considered what to do if he rejected my proposal or said he’d hired someone else.
Working on the house would give me a legitimate reason to be here, allowing our friendship to develop.
Not much of a plan, my dragon muttered.
“This is very fair.” He closed the folder. “When can you start?”
I bit my bottom lip and stifled a gasp. He should have bargained or said he was considering another builder and he’d think about it.
“Next week.” I had a few days free and had been going to organize my paperwork, but that would wait. I’d juggle my other work with Pax’s.
“Great.”
That was a signal for me to leave, and I shot up, but as I did, my elbow caught his coffee.
Shit. I had a choice to use my super-speedy shifter reflexes and catch the cup mid-air, which was an impossible feat for a human.
Or allow it to spill. I chose the latter because I didn’t want to draw attention to my shifter side.
The coffee sloshed and splattered, not only over the floor but him and me too.
“Oh gods, I’m so sorry.”
My dragon would have smacked his head if he could. You did it again.
Pax jumped up as coffee dripped down his shirt. It’d been at least fifteen minutes since I bought it, so it wasn’t scalding. That was some consolation. My beast scoffed at that adjective, saying he did scalding, not Arthur and his coffee machine.
I grabbed the napkins Arthur had given me. “I’m sorry, Pax. It was an accident.”
He dabbed at his hoodie. “At least it’s warm, unlike the hose.”
“I swear I’m not this clumsy usually.” Shifters weren’t uncoordinated, and it was all Pax’s fault. He was making me giddy.
“Just around me?” His teasing tone had me glance up. I wanted to kiss that impish grin away and tell him how much I cared for him.
“Apparently.”
We were standing too close. An inch or two and my lips would be at the base of his throat. But there was a dark stain spreading over his sweatshirt, and I had to restrain myself from suggesting he change.
When I got home, I ripped off my shirt and eyed the flames on my shoulder. The skin was hotter than the rest of me. Being a dragon shifter, I was used to extreme changes in heat, but not like this. He had to have the same tattoo. Nothing else made sense.
That night I gave up on sleep at eleven-thirty. My dragon had been griping at me for two hours because we weren’t with our mate.
Are we going to see him?
No. The only thing that would satisfy me other than seeing Pax, was pie. I drove to the all-night diner that truckers used. It was a dump, but I needed to be anywhere that wasn't my bedroom where I'd spent the last three hours thinking about my mate’s laugh and his cheek dimples.
But when I walked in, Pax was sitting in a corner booth reading a book and with his own slice of pie.
“Couldn't sleep?” I asked.
The book slipped from his hands. “Not really.”
He asked me to join him, and I ordered whatever pie they had left.
Pax took a mouthful of his dessert, and I wished part of me was between his lips. He chewed slowly, and I had to remind myself to breathe when the cherries stained his lips.
We talked about nothing at first. But then Pax asked if I’d ever wanted to leave town, as I’d lived here most of my life.
“I had plans. I was offered a job at the design house after college.”
He didn’t push for a reason, and we finished eating. I asked why he’d given up his life and taken over June’s house. He mumbled about looking for something, and my dragon perked up.
Us. That’s what he’s searching for.
I was tempted to ask if he’d ever been to the Antarctic but stifled it.
We shared another moment of standing by our vehicles, talking about nothing in particular until we said good night.
It would have been so easy to lean in and brush my lips over his.
He parted his mouth, and I wanted to trace around it, hoping he’d bite or lick my finger. But that was my frenzied brain talking.
While Pax was in my head 24/7, he’d given me no indication he thought of me other than as a contractor he was forming a friendship with.
I hung back after Pax drove off. Nothing would happen to him on the short drive home, not in this town. But I wanted to make sure. Not in a stalker kind of way, but I was being protective. He was my mate.
His car was in the driveway, and there was a light in the room he was sleeping in. The tattoo was burning my shoulder as I wondered what would have happened if I’d kissed him tonight.