Andi cackled. “He’s just rich, he’s not magical,” she said, even though it was the lie of the century, then stood. “I’ll be right back, I’ve gotta pee.”
Jones and Shah’s bathroom was gender-neutral and a single room, so you almost always had to wait in the hall outside. Andi knocked and found it occupied, so she crossed her arms and started reading the massive announcement board posted right outside while she waited. Another woman joined her, a feral-looking blonde with makeup shellacked on like armor, standing far, far, too close.
Andi put a hand over her purse and shifted her weight, wondering if the other woman would get the hint. When she didn’t, Andi gave up on being polite and physically scooted sideways, just as the door opened and a man stepped out. Andi caught the door as the woman moved forward. Maybe she’d never been here before and didn’t know how it worked?
“Oh…sorry!” she announced, after glancing inside, ducking back into partial shadow.
“No, clearly, you need it more. I can wait,” Andi said, making a sweeping gesture with her arm. The woman slunk forward, that was the right verb for it, she totally slunked—or was it slanked? Andi thought—darting in, grabbing the door out from Andi’s hand and slamming it behind her.
A junkie. Probably. Andi looked back at Sammy and saw her waving the attentions of some Lurch-sized random guy away, using Andi’s half-full cup of coffee as a prop, and knew she needed to get back to the table. Sammy was too hot for her own good tonight. That smoking guy had better really quit. The bathroom door burst open, and the woman prowled out, giving Andi an extended glare.
Andi caught the door again as the woman moved oddly as if to breathe on her, and in the distance, the man Sammy was trying to shoo away sat down. Andi let the door go and stormed over to rescue her friend. “Can I help you?”
“I don’t know, can you?” the man said back at her, and she could smell the alcohol on him. Clearly, a drunken fuckwit.
“I was just about to round up the trash, darling,” Sammy said, cracking her knuckles and leaning forward. Andi knew Sammy had a tongue on her like no one’s business.
“You’re not supposed to play with your food, Sammy,” Andi said.
Then the weird woman from the bathroom line was there. “You…get the fuck out…now.” She accosted the man without fear, despite the fact that he was three times her size. “You heard me,” she said when he didn’t move.
Sammy looked to Andi, who looked back and shrugged, and then the bathroom-line girl reached forward and caught the guy on his shoulder, Star Trek Spock-style, and practically picked him up with a pinch. He started instantly whining as she maneuvered him out the door.
“Who the fuck was that?” Sammy asked.
“No clue,” Andi said, sitting down. It was odd, and now that she knew about Damian’s life, her ability to calibrate local weirdness was all skewed. Was it a garden variety kind of strange or something that might come back to bite her—possibly literally—later?
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” Sammy said, brushing the incident away. Andi knew she had thick skin. She worked at a body shop; she got hit on all the time, whereas Andi usually only got hit on at work by people coming off of anesthesia and creeps on the bus. “Where were we…oh wait, were we talking about my man?”
Andi leaned forward with renewed intent, refocusing on the now, and how good it felt to lovingly hassle the shit out of her roommate. “That depends. Does he also do home improvements?”
“Possibly,” Sammy said sagely while grinning like a fool. “I mean, he really is good at nailing things.”
Chapter 12
Damian hadn’t really considered what would come next after he hurt himself. First, that it would take him so long to heal—which made a strange amount of sense, he was a dragon, after all, and he had hurt himself on a dragon-sized scale—or how he would transport a piece of meat the size of a slab of beef to Mills to spell-with.
In the end, he gave up and called for Grimalkin to summon her. She came into the room shortly thereafter, looked at him—he hadn’t put his shirt back on, as he was still bleeding—and then looked at the cast-off flesh with scales still attached that sat to one side.
“Damian…what did you do?” she asked, putting a horrified hand over her mouth. Damian wadded up his T-shirt and held it against his still bleeding chest.
“What you asked of me. I think. Unless I did it wrong. Don’t tell me you need more.” He’d survived it once; he could do it again, but it would be harder next time.
“No, that’s like, vastly more than I need. I said something small. I don’t need to make her a set of crown jewels.”
Damian snorted. “Well, you also said it had to come from me. It did.”
“Clearly,” Mills said, eyeing him with concern. “Are you all right?”
“Nothing that won’t heal quickly.” Unlike his witch, Damian had no problem lying.
“My God,” she muttered, walking around the piece of flesh’s edges. “All right. I’ll ask Grim to transport it up over to my lab once I get prepared. I’m going to have to redraw my ritual circle to hold this.” She gave Damian a dark glance. “Do you have any idea what that would be worth to Hunters on the black market?”
“I’d prefer not to think on it…but yes.”
She knelt down and put a thoughtful hand on a bloodied scale. “That’s why this magic is dark, Damian. There’s not that much difference between what I’m about to do and what they try to do with their talismans all the time.”
“Except for the fact that I trust you,” Damian said.
She flashed him a smile. “Indeed.”
“Even if you have been holding out on me,” he added. The pain was lessening now, even if the blood was not.
Mills tilted her head, sending her hair cascading over one shoulder. “How so?”
“Andi explained to me that you’ve probably been getting nude photos from prior women on my behalf.”
He watched her flush redder than he’d ever seen. “Technically, you never asked, so I wasn’t lying.”
“Technically, I never knew,” he said, giving her a bemused look. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Mills pushed her hair back with her clean hand. “Damian,” she said matter-of-factly, “you know how the internet works, yes?”
“Yes,” he agreed.
“Well, then, you already know how to see naked women any time you want. You just didn’t need to see those ones in particular.”
Damian laughed. “I might have liked to’ve had the choice, Mills.”
She gave him a sheepish grin and shrugged. “None of them were right for you. I could tell.”
“And this one is?” he asked her, not because he doubted, but because he wanted to hear her say it again.
She gestured to the still warm chunk of dragon flesh beside them. “Clearly,” she said and whistled for Grim.
Damian stuck around for long enough to explain to Grim what’d happened and what was required of him, plus also allay his guardian’s fears about his health.
“That is a lot of blood, Damian,” Grimalkin said, prancing around in concern.
“I’m fine.” All he had to do was somehow make it without Andi until midnight tomorrow, and then everything would be better. He watched Grim disappear with the piece of him, Mills made her exit, and he went back inside to his bedroom. He grabbed his phone in case Andi had called, and made his way into his bathroom to clean up, finally pulling his shirt away from the gash his own teeth had carved in him, which set the whole thing to fresh bleeding, sending trickling trails of green blood down his chest.
“Dammit,” he muttered, trying to look at the edges of the wound, grabbing a clean towel to blot up the blood and apply pressure. He probably ought to have Austin look at it, but then he’d have to explain what the hell he’d been doing, which would give the defiantly single werewolf an opening to tell him what he thought again. Maybe if he took a photo with his phone and sent it, that way, Austin could ignore it if he we
re still half-sleeping, or he’d only yell back at him in via text. Damian groaned, picking his phone off the counter where he’d set it down, striping his thumb up the screen so it’d turn on and found that he’d missed at least a hundred texts. All from Andi.
His stomach filled with acid, and his current pain was completely forgotten until the first text opened up to show him another revealing photo, this time her hands slightly lower beneath her purple panty’s waistline.
He opened photo after photo of her, so many she might as well have made a video, and as he flipped through them one by one, he felt what blood he had left sink and make him hard. He could see the outline of her fingers as she pressed herself, her own wetness soak the center of her panties and then spread, the way she pushed her fingers deep inside herself, surely imagining they were him. He put the phone on the counter, blood forgotten, and opened his jeans quickly, his hand racing to stroke himself without conscious thought, imagining he was there. He saw her hips rise, and then her shimmy out of her underwear entirely, so that there was nothing hiding her from him and he could watch her fingers play her soft folds and rub her pretty little clit with her own juices and still reach to touch herself, deep inside. He felt his cock twitch and tense as he stroked faster, picturing himself with her, leaning forward, one hand on the counter now, letting each photo load in turn. The images in them were now further apart in time because he knew she was turned on. Her hips arched, and her fingers were buried in herself. He knew that she had come for him, just as she had promised, and he was going to lose himself for her. Even though she wasn’t there, it was for her—for fucking ever and always. The last photo she sent was of her hand held up, fingers glistening, and he barely had the presence of mind to let his cum shoot into his free hand, striping his still slightly green-stained palm with silvery white. He grunted, seeing himself through, jetting everything in him out and then, dazed from his orgasm but determined to be with Andi whenever he could, he managed to take a photo of his own spill and send it to her, as he caught his breath.
She didn’t respond, but he knew she would eventually, and that was enough. He rubbed himself clean with the towel, washed his hands, then went downstairs to see Austin in person.
* * *
“Thanks for the ride, even if we both know it’s only so you can get to Professor Ph.D.’s house faster,” Andi teased, curled up in Sammy’s passenger seat.
“Don’t even worry about it…you’re on the way,” Sammy said, not rising to the bait, but she did lean over to give Andi’s leg a motherly pat.
Andi grinned before getting serious. “You’ll text me when you’re home, right? Because otherwise, I won’t know you’ve been murdered until morning, and that’s way too long.”
“Of course, I’ll text you.”
“What’s his address? And his phone number?”
“He’s off Lark street,” Sammy said.
“Well, that’s not going to help the cops much. Do you have a photo of him?” Andi inquired as Sammy laughed.
“Oh my God, for reals?”
“Says the woman who made me give her a safeword for a single date!” Andi protested, getting out her phone. “Speaking of, what’s yours? Because fair is fair.” She swiped her phone on and saw a text from Damian.
About damn time. She had not sent him all those photos for her health.
Then what Damian had sent her filled the screen, and she felt herself flush. She dodged to hide it from Sammy’s prying eyes—but her roommate knew anyway, via best-friend-telepathy.
“What’d you get?” Sammy asked, peering over.
“Nothing!” Andi said, voice high, but she couldn’t bring herself to close the screen. It was Damian’s hand, clearly covered in cum, which was a good thing, but the palm beneath it was stained with green. He’d been out fighting and been hurt. As hot as the photo was, her stomach turned. If something happened to him while she was being stubborn to get answers from her uncle….
“That’s a something look,” Sammy refuted her.
“It’s an, ‘I can’t share this in polite company’ look.”
“When the fuck have I ever been polite?” Sammy protested in her lovely accent and laughed. “But fine, I don’t want to see your man’s dick. I just want him to use it on you on the coffee maker. I want one of those pod ones.”
Andi snorted. “Way, way, way too uncomfortable to fuck on top of,” she said as she typed. Hot as hell. But are you okay?
His response seemed to take forever. Never better. At work?
She bit her lips, trying to figure out if she should pry when it was her own fault she wasn’t at his side. Soon.
Have a good shift then, princess. Let me know when you get home tomorrow.
I will, she texted, Remember your promises to me.
Always.
* * *
Andi was almost calm by the time Sammy pulled into her hospital’s roundabout. Going to work had a way of clearing her head. It was eight hours that she could use to get away from almost anything. Even if her own patients weren’t busy, there was always something going on that she could throw herself into to forget everything happening outside the walls. All she had to do was make it inside the doors.
She was almost there when she thought she saw the reflection of someone walking up behind her in the security kiosk’s heavy glass. Omar was sitting inside like he always did, the man behind the metal curtain, watching videos on his phone. She turned…and saw no one. Hanging out with Damian was making her paranoid. Or…Andi grabbed her phone and texted quickly: You swear to God you didn’t send anyone to tail me? and was about to hit send when someone her own size tackled her, taking her down and into a wall of bushes.
She inhaled to scream, and a hand slammed on her mouth. “Say anything, and I’ll snap your neck,” someone hissed into her ear. A woman’s voice, and then the sound of heavy breathing, as if the person holding her down was trying to inhale her. “You don’t smell like anything special to me,” the woman muttered. Andi kept struggling, but the woman predicted every move she made and held each limb in a grip like iron.
Andi went limp because clearly, she was better off playing along with whatever was happening…even if she could hear the singsong voices of other nurses going in.
“Are you going to scream?” the woman asked her.
Andi shook her head, and the hand released fractionally.
“Tell me how you’re special,” the woman whispered.
Andi asked, “Did Damian fucking send you?” at the exact same time. At the mention of Damian’s name, the woman’s insane grip slacked, and Andi whipped her head around. It was the woman from Jones and Shah again. Fuck! She should have known.
“He did, didn’t he?” Andi said, stumbling upright. There were leaves in her hair and dirt under her nails, fucking hell. She dusted off her knees and pulled a stick out of her hair, and the woman was gone.
Andi stared at the text she’d almost sent him, him swearing he’d remember his promises: to keep himself safe and not lie to her. It didn’t matter that she was lying to him—at least by omission—right now. He’d said he wouldn’t send anyone after her. He’d promised.
“Andi?” she heard a familiar voice calling her name as she stumbled out of the bushes. Her favorite charge nurse, Sheila. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Andi lied, knocking more dirt off herself. “Just clumsy.”
* * *
“Let me get this straight, you injured yourself right before you knew we were going to have a fight tomorrow?”
Austin was just as upset as Damian guessed he’d be. As the werewolf walked around the room, gathering supplies, Damian tried to explain. “It was for a good cause—”
“No, you keep your sex games to yourself; I don’t want to hear it.”
“Fine,” Damian agreed, as Austin opened up a medical kit. “I assumed I would heal.”
“So, why aren’t you?” Austin asked, pulling on sterile gloves and picking up a cautery pen.
“Not sure. The proximity of the Heart, maybe.”
“I wouldn’t think it would weaken you.”
Damian had considered this, wondering if he transitioned back into his dragon if he’d be healed—if the Heart had a vested interest in harming his human shell, trying to shove the inevitable along. His dragon was certainly quieter now that the thing it wanted most was close at hand. Damian looked down to watch Austin work, quietly zapping little pieces of him so they wouldn’t bleed anymore. The room filled with the scent of ozone and cooking flesh, just like bacon, and Damian remembered what his bedroom had smelled like when they’d pulled Ryana through. “I spent my whole life avoiding it, so it’s hard to say.”
Austin made a noise, concentrating too hard to talk for once, and then Damian heard a rustle of fabric and saw a flash of brilliant red wings as Lyka flew up to the ceiling.
“Damian?” Ryana was pushing herself up, awkward with her injured wings splayed out behind her. Her eyes focused on him very slowly. “You’re injured!”
“You’re one to talk,” Damian said, giving her a slow smile, gently shoving Austin’s hand away. “What the hell happened to you?”
Emotions flittered across her face, just like Lyka’s wings. “Oh, brother, it was awful,” she said, gingerly making it to the edge of the bed, and then she spotted Austin and froze. Austin was staring at her, awestruck like someone had taken the suture kit he was about to use on Damian and had sewed him to the ground.
“He’s a…” Damian began and then realized the word friend wouldn’t have the same connotation for Ryana of the Realms that it did for him on earth, “general of mine. Anything you would say to me, you can say to him.”
The word “general” shook Austin free, and he flashed Damian a glance that let him know he’d never live that down.
“He’s the one responsible for keeping you alive,” Damian pressed on.
“You were an easier patient than him, trust me. I have no problem leaving, however,” Austin said, as he backed toward the door.
Dragon Fated: A Billionaire Dragon Shifter Romance (Prince of the Other Worlds) Page 21
