The Protector (Fire's Edge)

by Abigail Owen

  Lyndi shrugged. “Eventful. Why?”

  The silence that greeted her question had her glancing up from her mug to find both women studiously avoiding eye contact.

  Oh, shit. Do they know? “Why?” she asked again.

  Delaney blew on her own mug of coffee. “You missed breakfast.”

  “So?”

  “Maybe she took a nap,” Cami said to Delaney.

  “That might explain it,” Delaney mused. “Showers can’t take nearly that long.”

  Oh good grief. “Stop beating around the bush.”

  Delaney grimaced. “We’re sworn to no questions.”

  “No questions?”

  Cami nodded. “Apparently, according to Levi, though I missed it.”

  “I didn’t,” Delaney grumbled.

  “Levi said—” Lyndi cut herself off and closed her eyes. Of course they all knew, and he’d told them to back off.

  “But if you brought it up…” Cami said. “If you wanted to talk about it…”

  Lyndi sighed. She should tell them. Get advice. “Maybe. Later. Right now I’m…” She shook her head. “I’m still so mixed up in my head, I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

  Delaney reached over and squeezed her hand. “We’re here if you ever need to vent or talk something through.”

  “Thanks.” Lyndi gave them a wan smile.

  “Until then, we’ll pretend those bags under your eyes are from the emergency wakeup call.” Cami winked.

  Lyndi laughed, relief swirling through her even as she pressed a finger under her eyes. Yup. Bags. “Three a.m. did come way too early this morning.”

  Delaney sighed. “I thought we were supposed to have limitless energy as dragon shifters.”

  Lyndi chuckled. “Wouldn’t that be nice? Think of everything we could get done if we didn’t have to bother with sleep at all.”

  Think of all the fucking… Lyndi jerked her thoughts away from that one.

  “Men don’t get it,” Cami said.

  “Nope,” Lyndi and Delaney agreed in unison.

  “How do they have less stuff to do anyway?” Cami demanded. “Our mates are enforcers and I still get more done in a day. I don’t understand what he does with his time.”

  Lyndi grinned. “Drake’s just lazy.”

  Which had Cami choking on her coffee. “Lazy. Oh god. Wait until I tell him that.”

  “He’s heard it from me before.” Lyndi winked.

  Cami wrinkled her nose. “Actually, he’ll probably take it as a challenge and try to prove me wrong in the bedroom.”

  If her expressive dark eyes weren’t glittering with an eager light, Lyndi would’ve laughed.

  “Prove you wrong about what?” Drake asked as he appeared in the room.

  Finn walked in behind him, followed by Levi, and every cell in Lyndi’s body liquified as her mind was bombarded by memories of what they’d just been doing.

  With effort, she yanked her gaze to her brother. “That you’re as lazy as the day is long.”

  When had she turned into Marilyn Monroe, all breathy?

  Drake didn’t seem to notice. In fact, he didn’t even bother to grunt a response as he headed straight for his mate, straddling her from behind on the bench seat, pulling her back against his chest. He slid a hand up under the fall of her hair, no doubt brushing his thumb over the mating mark at the nape of Cami’s neck that matched his own.

  Lyndi had the same family mark on her neck, that of the Chandali family line. She would never know what it would be like to receive her mate’s mark.

  She slid a glance in Levi’s direction to find him leaning casually in the doorway, arms crossed, stretching out his Hawaiian shirt, with a small, knowing smirk aimed straight at her, his golden eyes glittering, even in the bright kitchen.

  Holy hells, that look.

  Tension rolled through her in the wake of awareness and he hadn’t even touched her, hadn’t come near her. Lyndi averted her gaze and cracked her neck, trying to ease the building pressure. Didn’t help at all.

  Finn, meanwhile, had moved to sit beside Delaney, dropping a possessive kiss on her lips that made her give a hum of satisfaction.

  I need to get out of here.

  Lyndi jumped to her feet so fast her chair tipped over, clattering on the floor way more than was necessary. Levi passed a hand over his mouth that did nothing to hide his delighted grin, which she ignored, moving her glare to the offending piece of furniture as she righted it.

  “I’m going to check on the boys,” she announced to no one in particular, horribly aware that they all stared at her with varying expressions of whatever.

  Levi came off the doorframe, amusement gone. “That’s not a good—”

  He choked off the words at her scowl. “I’ll be back before dark.”

  Not waiting for commentary, because she damn well didn’t need anyone’s permission to visit her own home, she sailed past Levi and out of the room.

  “Ready?” she called to her boys.

  Mike perked up from his spot. “I thought you were waiting for us?”

  Lyndi playfully batted his swinging leg off the arm of the couch. “I need to be back before dark.”

  “Women. Always changing the rules.” Mike shook his head as he unfolded his tall, lanky length from where he lounged. “Am I right?”

  “Only if you want to get hit,” Coahoma said, ever the sensible one, smoothing back a shock of white hair that tended to flop into his eyes.

  Attor, almost as tall as Levi these days, also lumbered up.

  “Oh, I have better ways of teaching lessons than physical violence.” Lyndi smiled sweetly and laughed when Mike made a show of gulping down fear and shaking in his vintage combat boots.

  Two seconds before all three boys’ gazes shifted to over her shoulder, the fine hairs on the back of her neck shot up with electric tension, the sensation feathering down her spine.

  “Got room for one more?” Levi asked from directly behind her, oh so casual and not fooling her a bit. Only now the overprotective babysitter thing was combined with the fucking her thing and twisting up inside her head.

  “Yeah, man,” Attor answered, as eager as he ever got.

  Lyndi hid a wince.

  Outside the bedroom, the man still seemed determined to treat her like a precious jade figurine. Beautiful to look at, but breakable. Better to just stuff her up on a shelf where she’d be safe.

  Lyndi would’ve said no, except Attor, as a gold dragon, practically worshipped the ground Levi stomped on. Her gentle, quiet boy was one of the youngest she’d found long ago, though he’d grown up and turned into a gibberish spouting puppy around Levi. No way would she deny Attor time with his hero.

  “We’ll take two cars,” she said, doing her best to hide her resignation. Then waited for her self-designated bodyguard to announce that he’d drive her.

  “I’ll follow you.” Not waiting for her to respond, he headed to the foyer, hitching his chin at Attor to join him.

  Lyndi blinked after his retreating back. That was…different. Maybe sex had mellowed him out? Sure, he was butting in and coming with her, but not insisting on driving was at least a step in the right direction.

  “You coming?” Mike paused at her side to ask, searching her face as though trying to determine if she was all right.

  “Yeah.” She waved him ahead, happy to let all of the men get well ahead of her until she was alone with her thoughts.

  As soon as she passed into the hotshot crew building on the surface, she turned the corner by the row of lockers painted with flames and each with the name of an enforcer. Levi stepped into view and she only had time to gasp as he snagged her by the hand and scooted her backward until he had her up against the lockers.

  “What do you—”

  He took one quick gl
ance over his shoulder, then shut her up with a kiss that chased her breath and her reason far away. Large hands at her hips gripped and lifted so that she had to curl one leg around him just to hold on.

  As quickly as it started, he ended it, pulling back, shoulders rigid as he stared at her. Slowly, he shook his head. “I needed that,” he whispered, low enough that the shifters outside wouldn’t catch the actual words. “You taste like…” He licked his lips. “Ambrosia.” Then he gave a slow, sexy smile of utter satisfaction, even as his hands kneaded into her skin.

  The remaining air in her lungs deserted her. Maybe because honesty would have had her agreeing if she’d had anything in her lungs left for words, and she wasn’t ready for whatever this was.

  But you want it, her dragon was pushing from the other side. You want him.

  Not that this could go anywhere.

  Levi had apparently taken her shocked silence as a positive sign, because he grinned suddenly, eyes twinkling at her with something close to tenderness.

  A spurt of answering fear drilled into her spine.

  “You’re leaving.” The words left her mouth on the sound of accusation.

  But instead of frowning or backing off, his eyes glowed hotter. “Not yet, I’m not.”

  Before she could react, he pulled her off the lockers and smacked her ass to get her moving. “Let’s go. You can yell at me later after you’ve thought about it.”

  Chapter Five

  Good thing he’d decided to drive separately. One taste wasn’t nearly enough.

  It took the entire thirty minutes driving the long way to Lyndi’s home, rather than flying directly there, to ease his hard-on into something not excruciating or tent-pole obvious. Concentrating on the twisting roads that led from the highway to the house helped a small amount. Lyndi’s massive home came into view around the last bend. Nothing ostentatious. In fact, it always appeared to be slightly run-down, but large, nonetheless. It had to be. She currently housed almost twenty boys, ranging in ages from young to fully grown, like Attor beside him.

  Each one the sad result of the dangerous life dragon shifters led—often thanks to their own natures and infighting, but also due to fighting other paranormal creatures.

  “The roof needs repairing,” he said.

  “The whole place needs repairing,” Attor stated simply.

  Levi frowned, casting his gaze over the structure with a more critical eye. Had they allowed Lyndi’s place to crumble while they’d sunk the money they received from the Alliance, distributed by the clans, into their mountain stronghold? Of course, that’s what the money was designated for. He doubted the Alliance would take kindly to it being used for other things. Especially not orphans.

  He turned off the truck but sat still, taking a beat.

  “Levi?” Attor said beside him, hand on the door handle.

  “This is an important place, isn’t it?” He turned to find Attor watching him closely and raised his eyebrows, making sure the younger man knew he was seriously asking the question.

  “I can’t speak for the others,” Attor said slowly. “But this place saved my life.”

  Levi nodded, the unalterable sincerity in the younger dragon’s voice impossible to misinterpret. Attor wasn’t given to exaggeration, either. But he didn’t need the boy to share his life story. He already knew it. He’d helped Lyndi bring many of these boys here.

  Fear directed decisions more than just about any other emotion, Levi had found over the years. So, sadly, young dragons who were left to fend for themselves had only one option. Turn rogue and try to go it alone. Usually that ended in death.

  Lyndi gave these kids hope and risked her life without pausing to consider the consequences to herself, only to the boys.

  His gaze followed her as she got out of her car. A shorter, more petite, and much prettier version of Drake, with her sandy complexion, smooth and tawny with a rose gold undertone, reflecting the Chandali ancestry—an ancient Asian lineage going back millennia. Her ass was encased in her preferred jeans and paired with a top that had a low V-neck in the back, which made him want to touch. She let herself into the house, Mike and Coahoma on her heels.

  His complicated lover with a heart as generous as any he’d encountered, bigger than an ocean, and just as turbulent. Just as treacherous for any man who dared to love her. Damned if he wasn’t going to learn to negotiate her currents. The ebbs and flows. Even the tidal waves.

  Even if he had to do it from the clans. Dragons lived a long time. Maybe they could make the distance work until he could return?

  “We would never let anything happen to her.”

  He turned to regard Attor again, finding the younger dragon dead serious and suddenly not the eager pup who followed him around, but a man in his own right. “I believe you.”

  Attor’s shoulders eased from the taut way he’d been holding himself. Why did it feel like he’d just won Attor’s trust when he’d thought all along he already had it?

  “Come on.” Levi got out. “What’s the worst that needs fixing?” he asked on the way to the door.

  “The kitchen sink. It won’t stop dripping. Apparently, it keeps the younger boys up half the night because they can’t shut down their enhanced hearing. Elijah has taken to sleeping in the trees a mile away.”

  Of all the boys, Elijah disliked being cooped up in the house most, though they’d hoped he’d grow out of it now that he was in his early teens. Levi nodded. “On it.”

  Lyndi was nowhere to be found when he walked inside. Consisting of four levels, the stucco house was built into the side of a mountain, the front door entering on what was technically the second floor. Immediately, he took his shoes off, a hard and fast rule in Lyndi’s home—something to do with dirty boys who tracked in mud if left to their own devices as well as a cultural act in her human lineage—and left them by the door.

  “The tools are in the laundry room,” Attor said, then disappeared in the direction of the rowdy voices coming from one floor up.

  Her boys were excited to see her home. Levi could tell based on the words bouncing down the wood stairs with their modern wire and pine railings. Those boys adored her. Levi didn’t blame them.

  “…and we’re going to clean this place top to bottom…” Her words reached him followed by a collective groan.

  “I’ll start on my room.” Marin, the youngest of the group, was still eager to please Lyndi. Not too long before he hit the age where he was too cool to do that anymore.

  But he rushed off, the sound of his feet fading deeper into the house.

  His dragon tried to push him up those stairs, actually taking control for a quick second, before Levi snatched it back through sheer will. “We have other things to work on,” he told his creature half.

  A shake of his head and a snort came back.

  Giving Lyndi even a tiny bit of space had gotten a hell of a lot harder in the hours since claiming her body, his dragon turning annoyingly possessive and not wanting to share her, even with the boys. Levi forced himself to go down to the first level where the laundry room was housed. A quick search turned up exactly one set of pliers, one hammer, a few nails, and a bucket.

  Unacceptable. He made a mental note to bring a fully loaded toolbox and show the boys how to use the things in it.

  Back up in the kitchen, he got to work.

  “Hey Lyndi, ask Elijah what he learned in school yesterday,” one of the boys’ voices floated down the stairs and into the kitchen. An older boy. William most likely. He was the tease of the group. The instigator. The underlying laughter practically painted a grin on the kid’s face.

  For the most part, dragon shifters taught their own young. But Lyndi had insisted she wasn’t qualified by temperament alone to teach anyone a darn thing. So she sent her younger boys off to the public human schools in the area.

  “It was about sex.�
� Elijah’s comment set the others off, laughter filling the house. No doubt the boy, the “quiet thinker” Levi had dubbed him, was bright red with embarrassment by now.

  “Oh?” This from Lyndi. Playing it cool.

  Lying on his back, his head stuck in the cabinet as he looked up at the piping for the sink, Levi paused.

  “Did you know there’s four kinds of sex?” Elijah’s voice, slightly faster, demanded. “Manual, like by yourself. Regular sex. Anal. And oral.” He paused. “Oral, Lyndi, oral.” Elijah’s voice cracked and then he made a gagging sound. The disgust came through loud and clear.

  Levi choked back a laugh.

  “Oral is grosser than anal?” Lyndi asked, a quiver to her own voice, though she otherwise seemed to be taking this seriously. “There’s poo involved with anal.”

  A collective groan of grossed-out boys toppled down two flights of stairs and Levi barked a laugh. Well, when she put it like that… But anal had other appeals. If she wasn’t initiated, he’d be happy to introduce her.

  And, just like that, he was back to hard as dragonsteel. Levi grunted and adjusted his crotch.

  “Someone puts their mouth on your penis.” Elijah again, uber-serious and apparently still hung up on the oral.

  “That’s what the teacher told you?” Lyndi asked slowly.

  William’s snigger was followed by silence that no doubt included glaring from the younger boy.

  “Wait, there’s more?” Elijah must’ve caught the hesitation in her voice.

  “Well, the reason you’re being taught this in school at your age is because, other than the…errr…manual version, humans can get STIs from all methods. Dragon shifters are safe because of our advanced healing as far as that goes…but we’ve talked about my expectations.”

  She paused and he could just picture the set stare she’d be sending not only Elijah, but all the boys in the room. The uncomfortable gap of silence told him he was right.

  Levi had always appreciated how Lyndi treated her boys like adults. Their initiation into abandonment and having to fend for themselves before she found them meant they’d grown up a hell of a lot faster than most. She didn’t treat them like babies to be coddled or cushioned, like most humans did these days. Though she did protect them with the ferocity of the dragon she was, determined to give them a better life than they’d been served up until now. She was straight with them, the way she was with everyone else.