2. Dragon
Chapter Two
DRAGON
Iwas going to kill Horse.
It wasn’t his fault I’d been stuck in a hospital bed for a week on IV, but I didn’t care.
He should be the one slung across the couch of the private hospital room, his legs dangling over the end of the arm, snoring softly like a baby whose skin wasn’t crawling off his bones from the absolute futility of existence.
Instead, it was Tom, the Death-Hammer team’s best security guy, paperback novel over his barrel chest while he breathed the most irritating breath known to man.
A knock on the door had Tom on his feet, taking a defensive stance before he’d come completely awake. He relaxed slightly when he saw Dirk’s familiar outline and rubbed the thick stubble that had filled in during the week he’d spent on the hospital bed’s couch, ‘keeping me safe.’
Did I feel safe hooked up to all those tubes?
No. And how could Horse promise to hold me while I slept and then dump me in the hospital the second I was out?
And the lectures I had to put up with from every medical personnel, from the ultrasound guy to the night orderly, because I’d done a little biking pregnant.
It made me want to set the whole place on fire.
No, I wanted to set Horse on fire. I’d trusted him to keep me safe from this kind of trauma!
It was bad enough to be on bedrest in his apartment with his mechanic’s table in the kitchen and his oversized knockout poster in his dining room.
At least I’d been able to go to the bathroom without taking an IV cart with me.
I should be at home, but apparently, jumping Pansy from the cliff down onto the shipping container and then down to the ground hadn’t been good for my unborn baby’s health.
It was completely my fault that I was stuck in a hospital bed with an IV and only Tom and TV to keep me company, but that only made me feel worse about everything.
Why wasn’t it Horse instead of Dirk Dagger at the door? Probably because me telling him to hold me while I slept finally freaked him out enough to bring him to his senses.
“I thought you were in the Grand Canyon doing a video with Pinkie,” I said, trying to sound less angry at the world and failing miserably. I was not meant to be kept in a cage, even if it was for my own safety.
Dirk flashed his bad-boy smirk at me as he eased in and held up a fruit basket, only it was body wash and curl cream instead of bananas.
“The girls sent a gift, but Jezabel wouldn’t let anyone visit.
She thinks that they’ll be a bad influence on you, almost like she knows them.
You look ready to chew off your arm. You know what you need?
” he added, putting down the beauty basket and giving me a sharper grin.
“A fight.” He swung around and nailed Tom in the face.
“Hey!” I said, but when Tom swung back, it was at least somewhat interesting to see Dirk go down, taking Tom with him.
“Get your arm up before he grabs you in a chokehold,” I told Tom as they rolled around on the floor, avoiding the IV stand.
For the first time in days, some of the tension eased out of me.
They kept their violence to a minimum. This was a hospital, after all, and it wasn’t until they thumped into the bed that a nurse came in all fluttering and uncertain whether to admire so much muscle or yell at them for being hospital inappropriate.
The doorway ended up filled with five women looking in and half-heartedly protesting the violence while Dirk and Tom went at it for my entertainment.
And I was entertained. Tom turned purple, struggling for his breath, rolling Dirk and trying to get him in a lock while Dirk strangled him.
They were struggling on the floor, kicking in a circle until Tom’s boot took out the leg of the side table where Dirk had put the beauty basket and ended up covered in products with the basket on his head.
I laughed for the first time in forever while Tom’s face was covered in beige rattan, only leaving the curve of his mouth visible beneath the basket’s edge.
His mouth had some similarities to Horse’s.
A sudden memory of the elevator made my mouth water.
I wanted that mouth. Needed it more than I needed speed and RPM.
Tom raised his left hand, showing his bare finger that didn’t have a thick metal bolt as he took off the basket.
Did Horse still have that nut on his finger?
Of course not. He’d probably gotten distracted by business, or another woman, or whatever else he did in the off-season that didn’t involve pretending to be the father of my baby.
Maybe he was throwing star parties and building more towers in his compound.
I’d checked the socials and the websites.
No posts of any Horse sightings, like he’d completely disappeared in a hospital somewhere.
I shouldn’t obsess, but I thought we had an understanding.
You didn’t just say yes to someone’s marriage proposal and then dump them in a hospital for a week.
I should have called him. Or texted him.
But if he didn’t want me after all the stress I’d given him, I wasn’t making it harder for him.
A firm knock on the open door drew my attention to the man standing behind the nurses.
He was such a tall, dark-haired, gorgeous specimen of perfect masculinity, with dark glasses covering blue eyes that you could drown in.
Mine. I needed to pin Horse to the floor and make sure he suffered for leaving me alone for an entire week.
Wow. And that was a healthy reaction. I was clearly going insane from being stuck in a hospital bed for such a long time. I didn’t like him that much. It’s not like I was in love with him.
My heart pounded at that terrifying possibility. “What do you want?” I demanded, scowling at Horse like he wasn’t more beautiful than my favorite brand of tires, fresh from the manufacturer.
He raised his glasses and looked at me like I were the only woman in the world.
My stomach lurched. He looked so soft, sweet, intent, like he hadn’t forgotten about me for an entire week.
Wait. There. Ring finger on his left hand was the big, filthy piece of metal I’d shoved over his knuckle.
It looked so out of place on him, even if he wasn’t in a suit.
He’d looked so good in a suit. My mouth watered, and the world narrowed, leaving only us.
His voice was a low rumble that sent a chill up my spine. “I’ve been practicing. I know it’s not yours, but after a week, my homemade noodles and meatballs are mostly edible.” He raised a container, and then I smelled basil and tomatoes.
My mouth was already watering, but now I had a logical reason to gesture him closer.
He slipped through the nurses that looked at him like he was all kinds of heroic. “He cooked for her?” “I guess they’re really together.” “But he wasn’t here all week…”
I blocked out their whispers before I started pelting them with my ice cubes. Dirk stood up, blocking my view of Horse for a second. “What is on your hand? Is that legit?”
A wave of humiliation went through me. What had I been thinking when I asked Horse, the player, to marry me using an extra part in my pocket?
That piece of metal was going to give him a rash.
“Dirk, tell Horse to take off the nut,” I said, once more frowning at Horse, my fiancé, whose streak of whimsy ran far too deep.
Not that I didn’t like him still locked into my marriage proposal, but I wasn’t crazy enough not to realize how tacky it was.
Dirk glanced at me with a slight smile. “I never talk about other men’s nuts, particularly if it involves marriage. All marriages lead to nuts. I take it you propositioned him?” he asked with a squint at me.
“Proposed,” Horse said, carefully stepping around Tom and the scattered beauty goods. “She proposed, and I accepted. A man would be nuts to refuse my dragon’s offer.”
Dirk leaned against the edge of my bed and peered down at me where I lay half-reclined, as upright as I could be, which wasn’t very. “Nix said that if you try to do something like your stunt in the junkyard again, he’ll break both your legs.”
Tom gasped in outrage, coming over, clutching shea butter and argan oil hair serum. “Nix wouldn’t ever hurt his crew!”
Dirk squinted at Tom. “She’s putting a team member at risk.
Nix won’t put up with that. Jezabel’s upset.
She’s just sulking in the menagerie. You know that when Jezabel’s upset, the entire game is at risk.
” He refocused on me. “You’ve broken both legs before.
Nix’d break them nice and clean so they can heal more evenly this time around. ”
Horse grabbed Dirk’s shoulder and threw him towards the door, one smooth movement of perfect violence that made my whole body come awake and alive.
His voice was a low growl that sent goosebumps down my spine.
“No one is touching my fiancé. If that’s how Nix runs his team, I’ll…
” He scowled all dark and ominous, which I found incredibly adorable.
Horse wasn’t the unstable violence type.
He was the one who threw star parties, not the out-of-control force of primal violence that Nix could be.
Except right now, Horse looked like a tornado that would raze the earth and leave nothing behind.
Was I drooling yet? It was only a matter of time if he kept this up.
I snagged his large hand and pulled him closer to my bed.
He shouldn’t have gotten in range if he didn’t want me to touch him.
He felt so good. “Nix isn’t going to break my legs.
Jezabel would definitely beat him to it, only it would be shooting, not breaking them.
But no one’s going to touch my legs after I steal your bike and do something reckless. Because I won’t. That’s so last week.”
Horse gazed into my eyes, and my stomach got all tangled up and weird. “I’d like that.” His eyes said that he liked me, and the fact that he still had my steel on his finger drove the point home. So why did he abandon me for a week? Did he really work on his cooking skills while I was here?
I shot a glance at Dirk. “You can leave now.”
His lips twitched. “I don’t mind PDA. It’s cute.
Besides, I may as well tell both of you.
I found an explosion tucked into the rear fender of your favorite rig.
I was supposed to be driving it with my Princess, so we’re probably the targets, and it probably doesn’t have anything to do with team business, but… ”
I growled at him. “Someone tried to blow up Melly? Who would be that inhumane?”
Dirk shrugged. “Maybe one of the people you didn’t take care of. If you are going to bother taking down a small army, you should make sure they stay down.”
I ignored that last bit, although it was probably relevant. “Where was Melly when the device was installed? Also what kind of device? Was it on a timer? Did it have a trigger from the engine starting? Or was it operated remotely so someone had to pull the trigger from a distance?”
“You can talk business after she’s eaten.
Dinner is going to get cold,” Horse said, then pulled the tray arm on the hospital bed across my belly and raised the back so I was more upright.
He looked a little shy, glancing up at me through his dark lashes as he opened the container and started serving noodles and meatballs on two paper plates.
The meatballs were misshapen, but they smelled good.
Too much basil, not enough oregano, but he’d made them for me, and that coated everything in a layer of sweetness that made it more than good.
And the noodles were perfect, not soggy or cold.
I could happily eat hot noodles even if the sauce was subpar, but it wasn’t bad, just not up to my mother’s standards.
I ate while Dirk pulled out his phone, handed it over to Horse, and then snagged a meatball while Horse growled at him. We looked at the screen and various angles of the device.
I wasn’t worried about the near-explosion anymore. Maybe because I was eating saucy carbs in an entirely edible sauce, that Horse had made for me. Maybe because Horse’s warmth against my arm felt so good. Maybe because he was wearing my ring of cold steel like he hadn’t blown me off.
Dirk cleared his throat to get my attention. With a nod at Horse’s hand, he said, “What are the wedding plans?”
“We’re still discussing it,” Horse said with a dark glower at Dirk before he served me more noodles. “Do you or the wife have any regrets getting hitched at the drive-through Chapel of Love?”
Dirk grinned. “Of course not. And you were both there, so you know how incredibly romantic it is for Elvis to do the vows. I’m not sure the two of you are up to those levels of romance. Maybe you could get married jumping out of a helicopter.”
Horse growled at him again before he protectively covered my ears. I could still hear him when he said, “Don’t give her any ideas. This mama bird is staying in her nest until further notice.”
Until further notice? Was he talking about bed rest? Worse, was he talking about staying in the hospital?
I ripped his hand down and held my fork to his throat. “I am not staying here for nine months.”
Horse’s blue eyes glowed with intensity. “Of course not, my divine desolation. You only have six and a half months left, which you will not spend in the hospital. I got permission to take you home today. Unless you’d rather go with Dirk.” He held his breath while he waited for my answer.
The ice wrapped around my heart melted, and I exhaled and leaned my head against his shoulder.
I’d really been worried that the pasta was to soften me up for a blow like, ‘three more months, weeks, years, tied to an IV.
“Home. With you. Now.” And then I yanked the needles out of my veins and swung my legs over the side of the bed to stop suddenly.
I was wearing a hospital gown. My hair needed some of those beauty products.
“Maybe you guys should leave while I get dressed.”
Dirk grabbed Horse and Tom, and the room was empty in the next two seconds, but I still had the look on Horse’s face, the soft, hopeful sweetness that didn’t go with the hunk of steel around his knuckle.