The Protector (Fire's Edge)

by Abigail Owen

  Just one of the many reasons her boys loved her.

  “You younger dudes shouldn’t have to think about this yet. But…if you’re even thinking of getting physical with someone else…” she told them.

  Curiosity had Levi levering up to his elbows and he smacked his head on the lower hanging disposal. Rubbing at the spot, he still listened intently.

  “You come to me first. Uneducated and unprepared is what?”

  A pregnant pause and a few twitters, likely the older boys. They stopped, no doubt shushed by a look from her.

  “A good way to die,” Elijah mumbled, doubt rife in his voice.

  Levi recognized Lyndi’s catchphrase with the boys about everything.

  “What if you lose control and use your fire?”

  Silence filled the room. He could picture Lyndi, surrounded by boys of varying ages, nodding sagely. “When you’re old enough, we’ll have a longer talk about this. Including why sex is not just about you.”

  “Can’t wait,” Elijah grumbled. Then, in a helpful tone, “But you should definitely talk to Mike and the older boys now, though. This sounds important.”

  His older brothers groaned.

  “Awww, Lyndi-Loo-Hoo.” This from Mike. “We don’t need to talk about anything. We know what we’re doing.”

  Lyndi snorted. “I seriously doubt that. Most women haven’t figured their bodies out, and most men, in my experience, don’t know their ass from their elbow when it comes to making a woman feel good.”

  A low growl shot from Levi before he could yank it back. Loud enough that the conversation upstairs shut off abruptly.

  Damn.

  But she’d better not be talking about him. He’d felt her pleasure contracting around his cock, squeezing his own orgasm from him like a fucking constrictor, heard it in her voice and the moans he’d pulled from her with every touch, every inch he’d fed her.

  “We’re not even…” Mike again, sheepish now, caught out in his bravado. “You don’t have to worry, because we’re not.”

  How could she doubt that she’d raised responsible boys? Levi chuckled and got back to work on the sink.

  “Fine but we will talk about this later,” Lyndi said. “How’s school going otherwise?”

  The question had the boys off down other topics. Most of them damn funny to be a fly under the sink for. Especially Lyndi’s responses. For a woman who talked about how she’d never felt accepted by her people, treated as an oddity or a burden, she’d certainly found her niche here with the other outcasts, as she jokingly called them.

  Levi frowned over the word in his head, turning it over like a garden rock to examine the underside where the dirt and pests hid in the dark.

  Outcast.

  Without her joking lilt, the word turned ugly. Right up there with shunned or even rogue. It meant she’d felt isolated. Alone.

  Something Levi had never dealt with. As the son of one of the upper class, though not remotely close to royal lines, he’d been born with expectations. He’d grown into a damn good fighter, particularly skilled with fire, and had been given the honor of being named by his king as an enforcer.

  A man who was now dead… Long live the new ruler, even if Brand had called his ass back. His entire life Levi had been not only accepted, but praised, lifted up as a shining example of an honorable and skilled dragon shifter.

  Not Lyndi.

  The image of her living with the Red Clan in Mt. Everest, and the treatment she’d no doubt received there—ignored, set aside, devalued—set his bones on edge, his dragon pushing at him from inside.

  Female-born dragon shifters were rare. Maybe even more so than phoenixes these days given that the firebirds kept crawling out of the woodworks.

  “What do you think you’re doing under there?”

  Levi jerked up at the sound of Lyndi’s demand and smacked his head into the disposal. Good thing he had a hard head.

  He ducked and sat up out of the cabinet to find her standing at his feet, legs apart, arms crossed. “Fixing a leaky sink,” he said.

  “Who asked you to?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Does it not need fixing? Don’t be a grump, Lyndi.”

  Her cat-like eyes narrowed, and damn if she wasn’t adorable. “I’m not being a grump.”

  “You just don’t like other people helping because you want to prove you can do it yourself. Is that it?”

  Her lips twitched, just a quiver, but he caught it.

  In a swift move, he lifted both hands and tapped the backs of her knees so that they buckled and she fell forward, dropping to straddle him. He caught her by the waist so she wouldn’t get hurt, lowering her the last bit slowly.

  Hands on his chest, where she’d caught herself, the touch a firebrand through his shirt, she stared at him with wide eyes, lips parted, and he grinned, waiting for it.

  “Let me go,” she whispered, hardly a sound. “The boys.”

  He cocked his head. “That’s all you’re worried about?”

  “We shouldn’t—”

  He didn’t even let her get through the word, using his hands at her waist to press her down into the hard bulge of his erection, grinding up into her and throbbing harder at the shuddering gasp that escaped her.

  “I don’t like that word,” he growled.

  “There’s a lot of reasons why,” she insisted. She wasn’t wrong. But she also didn’t move away. That alone was a thousand percent progress in the right direction.

  “It’s important that you keep me honest.”

  Black eyebrows winged up. “Honest?”

  He nodded. “By making sure I know my ass from my elbow when it comes to making you co—”

  She surged forward and slapped both hands down on his mouth. “Don’t even think of finishing that sentence.”

  Levi chuckled then planted a tender kiss on her palm. Her springtime scent was starting to get to him. With one hand he pulled her hands away then drew one of her fingers into his mouth, sucking gently, captivated by the way her breathing synced to his rhythm, her breasts shifting with each inhalation, followed by a tiny rocking motion of her body that might just embarrass them both if she kept it up.

  With reluctance, he let her finger go. “Lyndi, if you keep looking at me like you want to lick me in return, I might just let you. Stretch those pretty lips around my thick cock like we did this morning and be damned to whoever walks in here.” He made sure to say it low enough that none of the boys might actually overhear. Just her.

  “Holy shit.” Lyndi smacked him in the chest by way of shoving herself off his body and backed up.

  Levi just grinned and leaned back, hands linked behind his head. “What? Too soon?” He only had a week. He didn’t have time to wait any longer.

  She just shook her head. “Too everything.”

  She spun and headed for the door. “After you finish the sink, the one in the third-floor bathroom needs a look,” she called over her shoulder.

  Then disappeared. Running as usual. Someday, he wanted to see her run to him, rather than away.

  Claim, his dragon rumbled, a questioning inflection at the end.

  For two centuries, between Levi shutting down his instincts and Lyndi shutting him out at every turn, the strength of that initial gut instinct had waned through the years.

  But it had never gone away fully. No wonder his dragon was confused as fuck.

  Chapter Six

  Lyndi hated being separated from her boys. Every time she drove or flew away, she worried that she was leaving them vulnerable. Attor was there, or someone else, always. But still…

  Despite “traditionalists” not being happy about them, technically her boys weren’t rogues. They lived with a large group of their kind—basically a colony by themselves. They should be safe, but the inherent biases demonstrated by the Alaz team a
nd the Alliance didn’t make Lyndi feel safe. Not by a long shot.

  It scared the hell out of her that someday, someone might come for them.

  What if she wasn’t here when it happened? She’d agreed to join her brother and the team, training to acquire all the skills of an enforcer, just so she could protect her boys better when this was all over. But if she was away doing her job, what if she failed the most important people in her life?

  “Hey.” Levi—driving them both home in the truck this time, leaving Attor, as well as Mike and Coahoma home with the boys for the night—swept a hand up under her hair to give her neck a light squeeze. “They’re going to be okay.”

  How did he know?

  Lyndi turned her head in the dimming light of oncoming evening, bathing them both in a soft golden glow, and caught his swift smile.

  “I have no idea what goes through that stubborn head most of the time,” he said, “but your boys will always come first. It doesn’t take a genius to guess your worries, Lyndi-Loo-Hoo.”

  “Don’t call me that,” she grumbled.

  He blinked, though he kept his eyes on the road. “Why not?”

  “That’s what my boys call me.”

  “And?”

  “You’re not one of my boys.” Why was she making a big deal out of this? If anything, the protest would give him a little too much insight into where her head was at.

  Levi was quiet for a moment. “I’ll just have to come up with my own name for you,” he finally said.

  He hadn’t taken his hand from her neck. Now he wound his fingers into her hair and across the base of her scalp, the action almost hypnotic, and she leaned into the touch.

  “Such as?” She shouldn’t be encouraging him. Should make him stop touching her.

  “Hot Stuff?” he suggested.

  She snorted. “Only if you want a hard slap.”

  “Lolli?”

  “What?” She wrinkled her nose.

  “As in lollipop, because I want to suck you like one.”

  “Um…gross.” She should not get wet at the thought, but she was just the same. He’d scent her need any second.

  “No to Lolli,” he murmured to himself. “What about Duchess? You do come from a royal line after all.”

  “And I’d rather not be reminded of that fact. It took me a full decade to convince Pytheios that I wasn’t worth using as political currency. That I’d make any mate’s life a living hell. It’s part of why he didn’t demand I return when I came here with Drake. But he could change his mind any time.”

  Levi frowned. And no wonder. She’d never, in two hundred years, shared that information. “He wanted to use you as a pawn?”

  She shrugged. “The Chandali name is apparently the only thing of use about me.”

  “Bullshit,” he snapped, his hand in her hair clenching suddenly, giving her a stinging tug, and she gasped.

  Immediately he let up. “Sorry,” he muttered, soothing her scalp by returning to the massage. “I hate it when you describe yourself that way. The boys would hate it, too.”

  “I know. I don’t do it around them.” It really upset the little buggers, she’d learned over the years. But Levi? He knew the lay of the land as well as she did, so why should he be bothered?

  “So no to Duchess.” Suddenly he grinned. “I know just the thing.”

  She shouldn’t be curious, and she definitely shouldn’t give him the satisfaction of asking. Lyndi clamped down on her lips to stop herself. Then sighed. Curiosity had always been one of her vices. “What?”

  “Uh-uh.” He shook his head as he pulled the truck into the spot reserved for this particular vehicle, around the back of the training facility. “You’ll have to wait to find out.”

  “Has anyone ever told you that you’re annoying?” she asked. But the usual bite was missing from the question, because, for once, she couldn’t make herself be annoyed.

  That realization simmered inside her, like a kettle put to boil just about to whistle. Getting annoyed with him hadn’t been hard to do before. Why? Just because they’d finally scratched an itch? Sex shouldn’t make this much difference.

  Which means it’s worse. Just like you knew it would be.

  “Only you.” His copper-colored eyes, always a point of fascination for her even when she couldn’t stand him, twinkled at her. He deliberately held back whatever nickname he’d come up with. Just to tease her, she had no doubt.

  “You realize I can come up with a nickname for you, too. Right?”

  A slow grin that had her stomach flipping over in her tummy, like a dog exposing its belly for a rub, took over his expression, eyes turning darker as his gaze dropped to her lips. “You can call me whatever you want to call me. Although a few things I hope you’ll call me top the list.”

  Just to escape the tension clotting the entire cab of the truck—either that or jump his bones—she popped the handle and hopped out. “Tempting,” she mused as he got out and walked beside her. “There are so many ways I could go.”

  He said nothing, obviously waiting for her first shot.

  Normally she would’ve started listing out slightly mean words like dickhead, or… She bit her lips as nothing came to her other than dickhead. Okay. So suddenly her mind was shutting down, because, for some inexplicable reason, she didn’t want to be mean to Levi. Lyndi scoured her imagination, but that wasn’t helping much.

  “I mean there’s the obvious, like…dickhead.” Dammit. She had not meant that to come out.

  “Be nice,” he admonished gently. Then chuckled. “Although, now that you’ve experienced that particular…errrr…part of my anatomy, I guess I could take it as a compliment.”

  Heat flared up her neck and into her cheeks, because now she was thinking of exactly how that word could become an endearment between them.

  She shook it off. “I could call you clown.” Of the members of the Huracáns he was the one with a solid sense of humor. Not goofy like Rivin and Keighan, though. More like he refused to let his being a hard-as-nails warrior change his personality, which seemed to lean toward naturally optimistic. And a big fat tease. At least clown was a nicer, less suggestive term.

  “What? Funny how? Like I’m a clown? Like I amuse you?” Levi immediately asked in his best Joe Pesci impersonation. He held open the door to the training room and waved her inside.

  Lyndi chuckled despite herself. “Or I could go with something embarrassing like monkey butt, or sparkles…or nugget.”

  “Nugget?”

  They passed behind the lockers, through the bunk room that never got used, only there as a prop for the humans who might happen by, and into the kitchenette. “You know, like a gold nugget.”

  He scrunched up his face in distaste. “You’re right. That’s way worse than dickhead.”

  She slapped her palm on the scanner, opening the sliding door into the mountain, and grinned. “Hey, you started this.” She let a sly expression slip over her features. “Or maybe I’ll treat you like one of the boys. Call you Rowtag.”

  “No thanks.” Immediate and definitive.

  Good. She didn’t want him being one of the boys, either, though she wasn’t willing to examine that need any closer. “Hmmm…I’ll have to think about it more.”

  “Think about what?” Rivin popped out of his door, the first at the top of the stairs, to ask as they entered the foyer. Like a freaking jack rabbit.

  “A nickname for Levi.”

  “I didn’t say nickname,” he protested immediately. “I said endear—”

  “What do you think of Nugget?” She hastened to cut him off. The last thing she needed right now was everyone knowing they were together.

  Sleeping together, she mentally corrected, then just as swiftly mentally adjusted that to fucking.

  Fucked, she altered it again. Once. That was it. He’d be
gone in a week and it would be over.

  But do I really want that to be it? a small voice whispered. When all I have is a few more days with him?

  Who knew if, once he was back in the bosom of the clans, he’d ever return? Hell, he could be killed in the fighting. Reports of battles and losses had been vague, but not good. Her dragon pushed her to grab on to the man with both hands and not let go.

  If she wasn’t standing in front of Levi, Rivin, and now Keighan who’d come from Rivin’s room where no doubt they’d been getting up to something kinky, as it suddenly smelled like sex in here, she would’ve dropped her head in her hands at the mental contortions she was putting herself through. What is wrong with me?

  “Nugget!” Rivin crowed. “Love it.”

  “Classic,” Keighan said. “Gold dragon, totally get it.”

  Levi lifted a single eyebrow. Though his expression remained pleasant, there was no doubt that was a warning.

  “Maybe not?” Keighan looked to Rivin who just shrugged.

  “I’m surprised Lyndi didn’t come up with something meaner,” he said.

  “She did start out with dickhead,” Levi mused, sliding her a glance filled with teasing trouble. “But we both agreed that wasn’t…”

  Oh gods, what was he going to say?

  “Appropriate.”

  She let go a silent breath and gave her head a miniscule shake that only Levi would catch. The way his grin widened just slightly, he definitely did.

  “Huh. Okay.” Rivin and Keighan both frowned, glancing between them. “Well, Deep showed up right before you got back. We’re headed to the kitchen where he’s meeting with Finn.”

  Lyndi and Levi both straightened. “Why didn’t you say so?” Levi asked, all business in a blink, grin gone and shoulders tense.