Wyatt looked pained. “My time with you isn’t a waste, Kennedy. To be honest, being with you is the only time I’ve enjoyed since I’ve come back.”
Her heart swelled. It gave her hope that they could move forward. Perhaps it wouldn’t be just then, but soon. She wanted nothing more than the chance to know him. It seemed, he felt something similar.
“Then help me stay,” she pleaded. “Do what you have to.” It occurred to Kennedy that she had no idea what she was asking for. Her trust in Wyatt ran deep, but she could have been asking him to burn her face off.
Her heart thumped, slamming hard inside her ribs. Wyatt’s hands slid up her arms. In his grasp, she felt safe. She felt like she was home. She let him lead her away from the lobby and from prying eyes. He found a door that led outside to a small courtyard. The smell of mountain air, laden with pine and ozone, comforted her.
“I can’t believe I’m going to do this,” Wyatt muttered. His eyes were on her throat.
Her pulse quickened. A primal urge filled her, making her pull him tighter to her body. She couldn’t get close enough. She hadn’t been able to the last time they’d come together like this. She couldn’t now. Nothing would be close enough until he was inside her.
Kennedy knew her head was a mess. Desire addled her mind and tightened parts of her body until they throbbed, a heavy demand she couldn’t ignore. Wyatt leaned into her, and she wove her arms around the back of his neck. The position was intimate and set her skin on fire.
More. More. More, her body demanded.
Wyatt gently cradled the side of her head. His lips pressed against her neck once more, familiar and thrilling. Her breath came short as she waited. She didn’t know what to expect. This certainly hadn’t been what she thought he would do. Then, his teeth sank into her flesh. At first, she cried out. Then the sound softened into a moan and she melted into his body as the pain became orgasmic.
Her knees buckled, and Wyatt had to grasp her to keep her from falling. His breath came fast and heavy. He kept his head bent, tucked into her shoulder. The wound on her neck pulsed with sensation as his breath washed over it. She moaned and dug her nails into his arms.
More than ever, she wanted to drag him up to her hotel room and push him back onto the bed. Her whole body begged for more. It screamed for him over and over.
Home. Home. Home.
“We shouldn’t have done that,” Wyatt whispered.
Kennedy had to find her voice before she could answer. It’d been lost in the waves of pleasure radiating through her body. “Oh no,” she rasped. “We should do that and a whole lot more.”
Wyatt tensed. Immediately, she knew she’d said the wrong thing.
He leaped back from her. She was left leaning against the brick wall of the building for support. Wyatt hesitated at the door, sparing one last lingering look at her. She could say nothing that would make him stay.
“I hope you come back after you’ve worked through whatever is bothering you,” she said instead. An invitation.
Wyatt looked like he was about to say something but thought better of it. He vanished, the door swinging behind him. The air still smelled of him, of them. The musk of her orgasm and the tang of blood filled her nostrils.
She didn’t bother hiding the bite on her neck when she went back inside.
Chapter Seven
Wyatt had spent too long in the bathroom. He’d leaned against the counter and tried to separate his past from his present. It wasn’t fair to Kennedy to compare her to his previous relationship. He needed to know if what he felt for her was real or if it was only the excitement of a revelation. She was slowly showing him what it should have felt like all along.
He realized he had been living the wrong life, doing everything for the wrong reasons, but while he’d been getting his thoughts together the lower shifter had returned. He didn’t know how long Kennedy had suffered the shifter’s presence before Wyatt returned.
Then, another had sniffed her out at the hotel. The lesser dragons were all hungering for mates, probably having run through the list of local options. He didn’t blame the local ladies for turning them down. The lesser shifters were not behaving themselves.
Wyatt ran his hand through his hair, knotting his fingers in it and tugging. His body still thrummed with what he’d done. The mark had rippled through him like waves in an ocean. It should have been nothing, just a bite to pretend that they were courting. The idea was to mark a woman so that no other shifter interrupted the courting.
What happened between him and Kennedy had been unlike anything he’d experienced before. It left him shaken. Over and over, he told himself he was not ready for a relationship. Not enough time had passed since his rejection. Wyatt couldn’t tell what was real. He could have been enamored with Kennedy, because she was all the things Nicole had not been.
If he threw himself into a new relationship and she was not his fated mate, Wyatt worried he would lie to himself again. How many years would go by before they grew to hate one another? He didn’t want to live in that kind of anger and resentment.
Ahead, he caught sight of Ashton and Makenna. They were skating on the open rink in the park. Ashton held Makenna’s hand while she struggled to stay upright. Wyatt paused, his chest constricting to the point of pain. He wanted what they had. Despite everything the two had been through, they managed to love each other unconditionally.
He feared he would never find it. Because of his parents, Wyatt worried that he would truly never know how to find a mate. He thought the wiring in his head was wrong, that he wouldn’t know love if it was standing right in front of him.
Kennedy, leaning against the wall after he’d torn open her skin, had asked him to come back. She hadn’t been angry with him. There had been no look of betrayal in her eyes. Instead, she’d wanted more. The woman had even run into the woods and picked his ass off the ground after Jasper shredded his wings.
He rolled his shoulders, wondering if his wings would be healed once he shifted again, or if he would be grounded until they managed to knit back together. He’d barely thought about it all day. When he should have been angry with Jasper, Kennedy had distracted him. For a short while, he’d thought of nothing but her.
The urge to turn around and go back was nearly overwhelming. The beast wanted her. It demanded her. But she was an unsuspecting human, and Wyatt would not unleash the creature upon her. He held it down and kept walking in the other direction.
He needed time.
***
Kennedy did her best to write a post about the restaurant she’d visited with Wyatt. All her pictures had turned out amazing. They should have inspired her to write a raving review. Instead, she flung her laptop away and flopped back onto the bed.
The clock on the nearby nightstand told her four hours had passed since Wyatt dropped her off. Four hours had passed since he’d marked her. She reached and touched her neck. The wound was still fresh and stung. She’d cleaned it once she got back to her hotel room but hadn’t covered it. It would keep the others away.
But it wouldn’t bring Wyatt closer. She didn’t know what would bring him back to her.
The phone on the nightstand rang. Kennedy eyed it warily. No one should be calling her. She didn’t have any friends who knew where she was. Her family were all caught up in their own lives. No one ever bothered checking in on her.
Still, she answered it and she was glad she did. The hotel employee on the other end informed her she had a phone call from a Mr. Drake. Her heart leapt. The employee connected the call for her.
There was a split second before the call connected where she worried it would be Jasper on the other end, angry that she’d put her bill on his tab, but the voice that answered set her heart at ease.
“Is it alright that I call you?” Wyatt asked.
She sprawled out on the bed, grinning. “You could have just visited me if you wanted to talk.”
His growl turned into a groan. “I thought it would be safer fo
r both of us if I called. I want to…keep space between us for now. I wanted to hear your voice again.”
Kennedy didn’t understand what that meant, but she would wait as he worked through whatever troubled him. She’d wait impatiently, but she’d wait all the same.
“What are you doing right now?”
“Aren’t you supposed to ask what I’m wearing right now?” she teased.
He choked. After a moment, he blew out a long breath. “Let’s avoid that. For now.”
Kennedy pouted. She’d been this forward with other men, but never had she wanted it so bad. Normally, she scratched an itch and moved on. Wyatt, on the other hand, made her dream of things she previously never thought possible.
He made her dream of being stationary. She thought of sharing a space with him, of cuddling on cold nights, and binge watching their favorite tv shows while the scenery outside remained unchanged. Never before had Kennedy wanted so badly to settle down.
She didn’t even know if that was what Wyatt would want. She was rushing into this without thinking. After a few slow breaths to settle herself, she apologized.
“I’ll be honest,” she confessed. “You do things to me that I don’t understand. Just being around you makes me happy and I don’t even know what your favorite meal is. That seems like an important thing to know about a man.”
He snorted. “Why would you need to know my favorite meal?”
She wrapped the phone cord around her finger. “So, I can make it for you. When you’re upset. When you want to celebrate. Tell me, what is your favorite meal?”
He was silent for a long moment. She heard the growl before she heard his voice. “What if I said you were my favorite meal?”
Her core melted. “I thought we were avoiding that subject.”
“It’s kind of hard. Especially when I’m thinking about the way you taste. It makes everything hard.” His voice grew husky. “You make my dick hard.”
Kennedy swallowed, mouth dry. She fumbled for something to say in return, only the image of his cock floating through her mind. She knew what it looked like, but not excited, not ready for her.
“Would you want another taste of me?” Kennedy tested. She feared he would run away.
Wyatt rose to the challenge. “I want to taste you every morning when I wake up. I want to taste you again every night before I go to bed. Your mouth, your skin, the space between your legs. I bet that tastes like heaven.”
Kennedy bit the inside of her cheek as a wave of sensation rolled inside her. She clenched her thighs together, savoring the feeling.
“Tell me how you’d touch me, Wyatt. Tell me every detail.”
She wanted him inside her. She wanted him on top of her, holding her, teasing her body into fits of pleasure. If he were with her, she would do the same for him. They would never have to leave the hotel room. They would dine on one another.
“Not yet,” he said instead.
She pouted, but he couldn’t see her. This wasn’t what she wanted, but she managed to temper her desire. “I understand.”
“It’s not…it’s not you,” he assured her. “I just came out of a long-term relationship. It didn’t end well and I’m, well, I’m wary of leaping into anything else. The next time I love someone, I want to do it the right way.”
That sure explained a lot. Wyatt’s heart wasn’t ready to let someone else in. Kennedy didn’t want a one night stand this time; she wanted more. That meant giving Wyatt the time he needed to heal from the last relationship. Kennedy certainly didn’t know how long that would take or what that would entail since it’d been ages since her own heartbreak.
She hadn’t let anyone in long enough to do any kind of real damage. Not until now.
“That’s alright,” she told him. “This is moving pretty fast. Huh?”
“Fast is okay as long as I know I’m doing it for the right reasons. When I fall in love with you, Kennedy, I want it to be because of you. Not because I’m in love with the idea of having someone in my life.”
She pressed her face into the nearby pillow. Her cheeks warmed at his words. Tears even gathered at the corners of her eyes. She wasn’t used to kind words like that. Her life had not left room for kindness, especially not love. No one she’d taken to her bed had been half as kind.
“I’ll be here waiting,” she told him while touching the mark on her neck.
Kennedy was a little disappointed the call didn’t end in phone sex, but after she heard the groans from the next room over, she was relieved it hadn’t. Everyone in the hotel would have been able to hear them.
Chapter Eight
Wyatt wanted nothing more than to hunt down Kennedy. He could still taste her in his mouth. It was intoxicating, addicting. He wanted more and more, but he stayed where he was. If he kept inserting himself into her life, then his head would never be straight enough to think. He needed to make sure this was the right decision.
That he was ready to move on.
Wyatt didn’t want to tie himself to another love-less relationship. It was what he tried to avoid his whole life, though his desperation to be loved had him fooling himself over and over again. His life with Nicole had been empty and he could see that now.
Every moment he spent with Kennedy sparked a new emotion inside him. Often times, he felt like he would drown at any moment. Every little thing she made him feel was new and dangerous, like a blade held to his throat. He thought he had his beast under control, but around her the leash felt fragile.
The lesser shifter that kept sniffing her out made him wild. His beast raged at him from the inside, an endless battle where the beast held nothing back. His skull ached when he thought about the man. A growl left his lips and he pushed himself to his feet.
There were no dragons in the sky when he stepped outside. The evergreen air greeted him like an old friend. It was far better than the smell of Ashton that lingered inside the over-used cabin. His truck keys jingled in his hand.
The drive into town took almost no time at all. Maybe it was because Wyatt was so distracted that he didn’t realize just how fast he was driving. Maybe it was the beast urging him forward because it knew Kennedy would be there. Either way, he slowed down once he entered the town proper, slowly searching up and down the streets for a familiar figure.
If Jasper wasn’t going to take care of the lesser dragons acting like fools, then Wyatt would be the one to set them straight. He didn’t remember all the faces of the lesser dragons, the one whose scales weren’t metallic like his and his cousins’, but he could sniff them out. They smelled like burnt trees.
The truck rolled to a stop at a light. Wyatt leaned out and scented the air. He caught a hint of what he wanted and flipped his signal light. Instead of turning the direction he intended, the beast turned him in another. He growled and did a quick turn-around. Someone honked their horn at him, but he was too busy arguing with himself.
His leash on the beast, stretched thinner and thinner every day, was about to snap. He could feel it. The beast pulsed beneath his skin. It took up space there and grew larger and larger every day. Never before had Wyatt ever felt so feral, feeling like the tide as the moon pushed it this way and that.
He gunned the truck through the intersection, sighting the dragon man not far up the street. Quickly, he parked and leapt out of the truck. The dragon man didn’t see him coming, not until he’d grasped the man’s collar and dragged him into the nearby alley. He flashed a bright smile at those who dared peek at them. When they saw it was a Drake man, their faces blanched, and they scurried away.
“What the hell, man?” the dragon shifter snapped. “I took your advice. I haven’t gone near your lady!”
Wyatt shook his head. While this might be about Kennedy, it was about more than just her. “You can’t harass women that way. You give us all a bad name when you act like a predator.”
“We are predators,” the dragon man growled, leaning into Wyatt’s space.
This time, Wyatt didn’t pul
l on his beast’s leash. He let it go and felt the beast flood his features. His eyes narrowed into lizard-like slits, teeth sharpened into daggers, and his nails lengthened to scrape the man’s chest. “A predator hunts prey, not mates. If you or any of the other dragon shifters on this mountain think a woman is prey, then you will find yourselves under the mountain. Do you hear me?”
Wyatt wasn’t talking about some cave where they could send naughty shifters to be punished. No, he would dig each and every grave himself if that was what it took to get the shifters in line.
The man he pressed against the wall swallowed and nodded.
“Jasper might be king here on this mountain, but I’m a knight of his court and I have every right to do as I see fit to protect my people.” Wyatt let go of the man’s shirt. “Do me a favor and pass the message on to the others.”
Already, Wyatt was walking away. The beast tugged at him. It was urgent, leading him toward a familiar scent. His stomach unclenched and his shoulders relaxed.
***
In the morning, her neck throbbed. It wasn’t an unpleasant pain. When she closed her eyes, it felt like Wyatt’s lips were on her skin again. She lost herself to the daydream. His words from the night before echoed in her ears and a small smile crept over her lips.
How long had it been since she smiled over something so simple? Kennedy smiled in all her selfies, making her life look glamorous and exciting, when she felt so little inside. She put on a good show to keep her followers happy. It’d been a long time since she’d been this happy.
She tried to think back to the last thing that had her smiling like this. It took her a while, flipping through memories, but she went all the way back to her first plane ticket. It was the first time she left home, a one-way ticket to Miami to explore all it had to offer. She’d been so excited for the new life she’d created for herself, one where she wouldn’t have to ponder her lack of roots.
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