by Chant, Zoe
Mullen leaned forward and whispered to her. Up close, she had a strange scent to her, like mold and rot and musty rooms.
“I know it was you, human,” Mullen said. Her lip curled around the word like she’d tasted something foul, like she was trying to spit it out. “I know you were with the abomination when it was dying. It’s only a matter of time before I find out exactly who your companion was. You’ve been touched by fire. You’ve been corrupted by it. And I will destroy you.”
Lindsay saw Boone move out of the corner of her eye, unable to stand that threat. Lindsay flung out her hand and stopped him from barreling into view. She saw Mullen’s attention turn, snake-like, to whatever was happening just out of her view.
And I will destroy you. Her eyes said she meant it.
Lindsay said, “Have fun trying,” and slammed the door.
Chapter Twelve
Lindsay’s hand was shaking as she turned the lock on the door and slammed the deadbolt home.
Boone couldn’t blame her. He would have been shaking too.
Actually, he realized, he already was—with anger. He felt like he could have breathed blistering fire at Mullen right then and there, no dragon transformation necessary at all.
He wanted to hug Lindsay, but she had more on her mind just then than being comforted. She put her eye back up to the peephole and watched. Finally she stepped back.
“She’s gone.”
“I’m past wondering if the dragons are really the good guys in this fight,” Boone said. “I want to be on whatever side she isn’t. Are you okay?”
“No,” Lindsay said. “She—I could smell her. She smelled like a cave, I think. Or a house that hadn’t been aired out in years.” She shuddered and clamped her arms around herself, digging her fingers in like she needed to hold herself together.
Boone couldn’t believe he’d let her open that door on her own. He should have been standing next to her, no matter what she’d said.
But that self-reproach faded at least a little as Lindsay looked at him and gave him a slanting smile, cute and weary all at once. “She still doesn’t know who you are. Did you catch that? That’s what she wanted to get out of me. She’s all pumped to kill me, but she can’t bring herself to do it until she ties up the loose end that is you, Tall, Dark, and Handsome.”
She was right. If Mullen had killed Eleanor—if she had been able to hurt Eleanor even when Eleanor was a dragon seething with power—then it would have been no effort at all for her to snap Lindsay in two right there in the doorway. That she hadn’t done it and had instead tried to trick Lindsay into giving up his name meant that she was playing a longer game, at least for the moment. She needed them both dead. A package deal. Lindsay was safe as long as Mullen thought there was a chance Lindsay would lead her to him.
If he hadn’t listened to her and stayed back behind the door, they might both be dead right now.
Okay. Always listen to Lindsay.
“You’re sharp,” Boone said. He hoped she could hear the admiration in his voice.
Lindsay fitted herself under his arm, leaning against him as he stroked his fingers through her hair. “Not sharp enough,” she said quietly. “Not enough to figure out how the hell we’re going to get out of this apartment. She’ll be watching this place like a hawk now that she knows I’m here, just because I’ll have to leave sometime. She’ll be waiting for me to lead her to you.”
Or even waiting for him to leave, if she’d seen his shadow behind the door right before Lindsay had slammed it shut. And he had the sinking feeling that she had.
“Let’s break it down.” He let himself slip back in time, back to when running through scattershot and untrustworthy intelligence and figuring out how to use that to keep himself and his friends alive had been part of the daily routine. He heard his voice get a little more clipped. “What was her game plan here? She kills Eleanor—we don’t know why. She sounded like she was some kind of zealot, like she thinks she’s ridding the world of something unnatural.”
“What’s unnatural is her killing an innocent woman,” Lindsay said.
“Agreed. But she does it—she kills Eleanor and she leaves her to die on the beach, but then she looks back and sees that Eleanor has company. Us. She doesn’t get close enough to identify us. Why?”
“The storm,” Lindsay said instantly. “It was making it hard to see anything. She couldn’t identify us from far away and she didn’t want to come any closer because...”
“The purple fire,” Boone said. “It has to be. There had to be some reason she was afraid of being around Eleanor while Eleanor was dying, and that’s the only reason I can think of. That fire was Eleanor. It melted the sand into glass, but it didn’t hurt us, and it changed me. Who knows what it would have done to Mullen? And maybe Eleanor couldn’t have summoned it until she was dying because it was her... life-energy.” He finished that awkwardly, feeling like he sounded way too much like a Star Trek episode.
But Lindsay didn’t seem to think it was too out-there. (There were dragons. What would even qualify as too out-there? Fairies?)
“Yeah. She was bleeding that stuff, too. If Mullen knew what it could do, no wonder she ran away from it. She said we were ‘corrupted’ because we’d been ‘touched by fire.’ That’s got to be it. So, okay, she couldn’t tell who we were, but she wants to kill us because we had the temerity to be around something ‘unclean.’” She did heavy air-quotes for that, and Boone laughed against the top of her head. “She went to Eleanor after Eleanor was dead, and she found my name and number and used it to track me down. Do phone books still exist? Because if they do, it’s that simple. I’ve got a landline, and there can’t be too many Lindsay Garzas around.”
He didn’t want to derail the whole conversation, but now he couldn’t stop thinking about whether or not phone books did still exist. Sure, landlines were rarer now, but—
This wasn’t a nostalgia side-trip he needed to go on right now. Whether there were phone books or not, it wouldn’t have been too hard for Mullen to track Lindsay down. Not with a couple of hours to put into it.
“She trashes the apartment looking for info on... me, probably,” Boone said, moving on. “Because she assumes we’re together.”
So much for moving on, because here he hit a wall where he couldn’t go forward any further without knowing for sure where he was going. Where they were going.
Boone looked at Lindsay. She was flushed again, her cheeks touched with rose, but she was looking back at him with those dark, sparkling eyes. He thought about her lugging her trash bag down the beach, spending her off-hours cleaning up for people who would never know or appreciate that she had been there. He thought about her bullet-pointed list. Her butcher paper and cake pan full of black paint. It would have taken him hours to think of that.
Her laugh. The gingerbread scent of her skin. The way she’d looked at his drawings. Her kindness. Her wit.
And, of course, what it had felt like to kiss her: like the ground was slipping away beneath him in a landslide, and he was falling without giving a damn. Well, he’d fallen. He’d definitely fallen. And after everything they’d been through together, even if it had all been compressed into an agonizing couple of days, he couldn’t imagine acting like she hadn’t become the most important person in his world.
“And we should be,” Boone said. “We should be together. Will you—”
He almost said, Marry me. He would have meant it. He would have done it. But the last thing he wanted was to scare her off by asking for too much too soon, and he felt like he was already asking for a lot. Just to be with her was everything.
The problem was that so much of regular adult life was so unromantic and jaded. It didn’t seem to get anywhere close to what he was actually feeling right now. Usually, Boone knew, you went on a handful of dates, and then somewhere along the line you established, via an awkward and fumbling conversation, that you were exclusive, and that was when “this woman I’m seeing” got upgraded t
o “my girlfriend.” You didn’t, past high school—if then, even—say things like, “Will you be my girlfriend? Will you date me?” But he wanted to ask her something like that, something that felt almost cheesily important.
But he didn’t have the words for it. Not without asking her to marry him. Which again, he almost did.
But then he settled for making her an offer rather than asking her a question.
Boone said, “I’m yours, for the record. If you want me. If you’ll have me. I mean, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for—”
Lindsay kissed him. He suddenly had his arms full of her, because she had almost climbed up him in her eagerness to meet his mouth with her own.
All he wanted was her. All he tasted and felt and saw was her. It was heaven.
“How’s your bed?” Boone murmured against her mouth.
“Intact,” Lindsay said. “Blissfully, blissfully intact. Let’s go there.”
Chapter Thirteen
In ninety-nine out of a hundred ways, this was, of course, a terrible idea.
They’d been in the middle of an important conversation dissecting the plans and motivations of someone intent on murdering them. Her apartment looked like a rock star’s hotel room. They had more problems than she could possibly count and no solutions, and they might be stuck here for the foreseeable future. And she had work tomorrow and no idea whatsoever how to deal with it.
Lindsay wasn’t thinking about any of that.
She would have been very suspicious of anyone who could think of any of that with Boone Keller kissing them breathless. Everything else could wait. It somehow felt like they’d already waited forever to have this moment.
He’s the one, the unfamiliar voice in her head whispered. This is it. You belong together.
She lifted her arms above her head and let Boone peel her shirt off. She remembered that he’d said this would have been his kryptonite, the one thing that would have definitively prevented him from any streak of responsibility. Now that she’d done that, she felt safer.
Safe and smug, really, and hotter than she had ever felt in her life. It was the way he looked at her, his eyes wide and stunned and almost worshipful. She felt like she could never get enough of it.
Boone passed his hands over her breasts, stroking where the lacy edge of her bra cups met her skin. The feeling of his finger slipping between the fabric and her skin, soothing an itch she hadn’t even realized she had, made Lindsay moan. Boone caught the sound in his mouth, letting Lindsay bite his lips. God, the taste of him—it was unbelievable.
They fell onto the bed. Without ever breaking the kiss, they managed to shed the rest of their clothes. And Lindsay, who didn’t remember ever having gotten naked with a man without feeling at least a trace of self-consciousness, felt nothing but glowing pleasure and fierce, overwhelming longing for him. His attraction to her was obvious and all the reassurance she needed—and she wasn’t even sure she needed that. There was something different about her now, like a fire had been kindled inside her. She felt braver. She wouldn’t back down—not even in front of old fears and not even in her own head.
And she knew she never, ever needed to be afraid of him. He would never hurt her, not even with a wrong look or a wrong word.
She savored the expression on his face as he got the last of her clothes off. When he unhooked her bra, he bent down at once to kiss her there, flicking his tongue gently against each nipple like he was tasting her. He kissed his way down the soft curve of her belly until his lips were even with the top line of her underwear, and then he slowly kissed her mound through the cloth, making her squirm.
“Tease,” she said breathlessly.
“Don’t tempt me,” Boone said, even though he was as flushed as she was and equally—obviously—turned on. He slid her underwear down her legs slowly. “If I could, I’d paint you like this.”
He lowered his head and kissed her again between her legs, so lightly she could barely feel it.
He raised his head and added, “I don’t mean on a canvas, Lindsay. I’d get some of those edible body paints.” He ran one fingertip lightly down her side, skimming over her breast and down the curve of her hip. “I’d draw a line on you here—and here—and here—until it was driving you crazy. And then I’d clean you up.” He followed the line he’d made, with his tongue this time, kissing and licking a stripe up her side. He kissed her breast, sucking gently at her nipple.
“Everything’s so messed up,” Lindsay said. She tangled her fingers in his hair, which was just long enough for her to get a little bit of a grip on it. “Everything but you.”
“And everything but you,” Boone said.
Everything but us.
He touched her between her legs, where even a feather-light graze made her feel like she was coming apart at the seams. He stroked her there, and she came with a suddenness and violence that surprised her. It was like this had been building inside of her for days—even for years—rather than just minutes.
Boone held her hips and licked into her as she shook. Lindsay cried out and bit the back of her hand to keep herself from making too much noise. He grinned up from between her legs with a wicked, self-satisfied grin on his face.
Oh, it was so on. She was going to have to make him lose at least that much control.
Lindsay reached down and grabbed him by the shoulders, pulling him up to meet her. It was weirdly easy to move him, even though he undoubtedly wanted to be moved—it was like that moment in the gym when you realized you’d gotten used to the weight you were using and barely felt it at all. Maybe that was just how things were with them. Easy. A rush of adrenaline.
She felt like she could do anything as long as he was in her bed.
Poised above her, Boone was an absolute delight to look at. The strong, corded muscles of his arms as he held himself up. The dark shine of his eyes. The sturdy magnificence of his chest. The promise of his hardness pressing against her.
And now, the little flicker of worry that crossed his face. “I don’t have a condom. Do you?”
Lindsay shook her head. “Even if I did, I wouldn’t trust anything I left in here. Mullen could have poked holes in all of them.” She stroked his hair. “But I’m on birth control, and if you tell me it’s okay, I’ll believe you. And I’m okay.”
“I’m okay,” Boone said. He lowered his head, pressing a soft, lingering kiss to her lips. “It’s... it’s been a long time for me.”
“Me too.” And an even longer time she’d had any sex really worth having. She kissed him back, tasting the sweet heat of his mouth. “Guess we’ll have to have sex a lot to make up for lost time, then.”
He laughed. “Guess so.”
He eased her into it with his fingers, more careful than Lindsay—who felt impatient—really thought he needed to be, and then when he finally pressed inside her, the sense of fullness staggered her. Oh, she really had forgotten what this was like.
No. It was never like this.
She felt complete. And her body was already responding to him, ratcheting up to a second climax. She held onto his shoulders and met his thrusts, rolling her hips up to him. She was distantly aware that one of them, at least, was talking, and maybe both of them were. Come on, baby, come on, sweetheart, you’re so beautiful, you’re so perfect.
She came just a few seconds before he did, but it was enough for her to have a little clarity on how his own climax hit him. She got to see him swept away by the same riptide current that had pulled her out to sea.
He was gone, and she was gone, and they were gone for each other.
*
Afterwards, they lay in bed together, feeling sticky and calm and impossibly right. Lindsay kept thinking of her spreadsheets and the moment when she clicked enter and the formula worked, and all that complex data got transformed into something new. She decided not to say this out loud. Boone was an exceptional guy, but every man probably had his limits on how romantic he could find Excel tables.
She was
just addicted to the alluring feeling of everything working out all right.
She wanted to believe that would happen for them. Dragons x Eleanor + Mullen + (Boone + Lindsay) = ?
She rolled over to put her arm across his chest. She liked how much he played with her hair, like he couldn’t get enough of winding it around his fingers.
Boone closed his eyes. “I can tell you’re about to say something really practical.”
“Sorry,” Lindsay said sheepishly. “I don’t want to ruin the afterglow. You know that. But—”
“But we don’t really have time for it right now,” he finished. “I know. But you don’t understand my artistic sensibilities, Miss Lindsay Garza.” He pulled her over until she was sprawled across him, her head resting against his collarbone. He ran his hand down her spine. “God, your back is so perfect. That’s always the best pose for a tasteful nude, for the record—not that I’ve done one since art school. A woman sitting there with her bare back turned towards you, so you can see just a hint of everything you really want to be looking at. Subtle. And then you focus on the parts you wouldn’t have noticed before.” His fingers unerringly found them. “Like your shoulder blades or the little dip in your spine here or the shadow your arm throws against your hip.”
“Boone. Not that I don’t swoon anytime you talk like this, but someone is literally trying to murder us.”
“I’m not going to let that happen,” he said. She could feel his body tense beneath hers.
It reminded her of what she’d been meaning to ask. “You said you were a soldier, right?”
“Right.” There was a sudden guarded look on his face, and bit by bit, she watched as he seemed to consciously push it away. He was making himself open up to her. “I did two tours in Iraq.”
She tried to meet him halfway. “It was rough?”
“It wasn’t easy. But I was lucky. Ninety percent of the time, the guys I was around were lucky too, so I think I had it better than almost anybody.”
