by T. S. Joyce
“Please excuse us,” she murmured, her gaze on Nox’s muscular legs. “I’m gonna go dance with…my…Nox.”
“Nevada, sit down,” Dad commanded.
She’d never disobeyed anyone her whole life, but she wanted to dance. And Nox was right. She was really uncomfortable with her family. With the entire den, really. She hadn’t realized just how uncomfortable until tonight.
He led her through the tables, winding this way and that until he turned in front of the quartet and pulled her into a smooth waltz.
“Well, this is shocking,” she murmured.
“That I can dance? My dad made me learn. He said I needed as many women-gettin’ weapons in my arsenal as I could get ’cause I was probably doomed to be single forever without them.”
“Why would he say that?”
“Because I’m a lot like him.” Nox twirled her easily and brought her back to him, picking right up with the steps they left off on.
“Well, I took dance lessons, too.”
“Let me guess, for all those highfalutin fox dances where your parents tried to pair you up with eligible boys your age?”
“Well, it sounds gross when you put it that way.”
“Well it is gross. Look, that wine has bubbles in it.”
“It’s champagne,” Nevada said through a giggle. “Have you never tried it before?”
“Um no. If wine doesn’t come from a box, it’s too fancy for me.”
“But you said try everything once, and if you’re willing to eat snails, you should be willing to drink a sip or two of bubbly wine.”
“Fine. Don’t tell any of my friends I did this,” he muttered, taking two glasses from a passing server. “Just kidding, friends are for losers, I don’t have any of those. Bottoms up, Sexypotamus.”
Nevada had never giggled so much at a family dinner before. She sipped hers, but Nox drank his down and made a sour face.
“Speaking of friends,” she murmured, putting her arms over his shoulder as he slowed them into a simple side-to-side dance. “I like that you talked to yours about me.”
Nox set his empty glass on a passing tray. “What do you mean? I told you I don’t have any.”
“The dinner invitation. And this dress.”
He frowned, and when he slid his hands to her waist and squeezed gently, the butterflies in her stomach moved lower. “What invitation?”
Uh oh. Too late to back out now. She whispered, “The invitation for your formal welcome dinner? 1010 Briar Way. Wednesday at six o’clock?”
Nox’s face morphed from an uncertain smile to fury in an instant. A soft rumble rattled up his throat, and his eyes changed to a piercing blue so light they were almost white. Such heaviness came off his skin in waves, Nevada couldn’t inhale, and she couldn’t meet his eyes anymore. Slowly, she backed away a few feet and clenched her hands in front of her stomach.
“Never go to that address.”
The sudden seriousness of his tone woke her fox up just enough to want to run away. “Wh-who is it from?”
Nox’s one hand slipped back to her waist, and he cupped her neck with the other. Then he dragged a fingertip down her jawline, hooked a finger under her chin and lifted her gaze to his. He lowered his lips to hers and kissed her like they were the only ones in the room. His beard tickled her face, but he tasted so good, and his lips were so soft as they moved slowly against hers. He slipped his tongue into her mouth just once, and then he eased out of the kiss. She’d asked him a question, but for the life of her, she couldn’t think of it now. All she could do was hold onto his wrists and stare up into his soft blue eyes and try to stay upright, because that kiss had been so unexpected from a gruff man like him.
His blond brows lowered slightly though, and he looked troubled.
“What is it?”
“I’m gonna go. I should go. I shouldn’t have come here.” He looked over at her family’s table and then back to her with a troubled expression. Nox released her, eased away, and put painful distance between them. “Stay out of trouble, Nevada,” he murmured, but there was real warning in his words.
Before she could tell him to wait, beg him to stay, Nox Fuller spun on his heel, made his way out of the country club, and left Nevada staring after him, completely baffled to what had just happened.
That man had walls a hundred feet tall. He was all jokes, and when he got too serious and showed something real, he bailed.
Nox was a runner, but Nevada was a stayer, stuck for always in Foxburg.
And for the first time in a long time, she didn’t want boring. She didn’t want to stay in her comfort zone, didn’t want to be stagnant anymore.
She no longer wanted to coast through life, but wanted a challenge to push her to be better. And the most interesting challenge had just walked away.
She couldn’t follow him because he didn’t want her to, but she couldn’t face her family for another two hours of them picking at her.
She was stuck.
Couldn’t go, couldn’t stay.
Trapped.
Nevada stood there feeling like she was knee-deep in quicksand and sinking inch by inch into a flatlined, vanilla life that would swallow her whole.
And suddenly it felt like her chance to escape was walking out the door.
Chapter Seven
“What the fuuuuuck am I doing here?” Nox slapped his leg with the present wrapped in grocery store bags and the pages of a porno magazine he had bought at a gas station. He shouldn’t give this to her. Hell, he shouldn’t even be thinking about her, much less stalking her back to her apartment.
But Vyr knew where she lived. Right? He’d sent her that stupid dinner invite, so he had been looking into her, and she shouldn’t be unprotected from the Red Dragon’s game—whatever it was.
Plus, he’d hated leaving her earlier to the wolves, aka the foxes, aka her snobby family, in the country club. He’d sat in the parking lot like a chump, forcing himself to stay outside by sheer force of will. He wanted to dance with her more, kiss her more. Taste her lips, her neck, her wrist, ankles, inner thighs, pussy. She’d started a fire in him with the needy noise she’d made in her throat when he’d pressed his lips to hers. It was soft, a growl meets a helpless sigh, and he wanted her to do that a hundred times more. Nah, fuck that, he wanted her writhing on his cock, screaming his name.
He hooked a hand onto his hip and hung his head, stared at a crack in the concrete walkway before he gave his attention to the apartment window again. The light was on, and a shadow moved across the room inside. His heart rate kicked up at being this close to her. What the hell was wrong with him? He didn’t do bodyguard duty. He wasn’t a hero. He didn’t do protective. He hurt things. That was his gig—hurting. Why did he suddenly think she would benefit from him being anywhere near her? He was the reason Vyr had an eye on her in the first place.
Stupid magical man-witch-dragon. Wizard-dragon? Whatever, it didn’t matter. Vyr was magical, he breathed fire, he was huge and destructive, and he had his attention on Nevada. Nox wanted to rip his oversize lizard-throat out and be done with this. Human law enforcement would probably give him a medal for putting a dragon down. Too bad Damon wouldn’t be so charitable with his actions. He would turn Nox to ashes and then eat him. There wouldn’t be a cave deep enough to hide from the blue dragon if Nox hurt his son.
Nox tested himself and tried to walk back to his truck, but a growl rumbled up his throat and his legs locked. And there he stood, like a big, dumb statue, breath freezing in front of his face because it was colder than Vyr’s heart out here.
Pissed at how weak he was, he turned and chucked the present like a newspaper delivery boy. It flipped end over end toward her apartment until it flew an inch past Nevada’s face and hit the door.
“Aaaah!” Nevada had barely ducked out of the way in time.
“Well, why did you open the door? Watch where I’m throwing that,” he groused, crossing his arms over his chest. She kept making him feel something he di
dn’t recognize, and he was getting suspicious that this gritty, churning sensation in his chest was guilt. Gross.
Nevada stooped and picked up the gift. “Is this a Playboy magazine?” she asked softly, fingering the ripped edge.
“Well, they didn’t have any wrapping paper with dicks on it, so I had to improvise.”
“Or you could’ve bought normal wrapping paper?”
“Boring.”
Nevada scanned the street behind him. “How did you know where I live?”
“I stalked you. I put a tracker on your car that first night at the grocery store, and I’m not sorry so you might as well not act offended.”
Her frown was the cutest fucking thing he’d ever seen, and he wanted to bone her like eight times right now.
“Oh.” Nevada gave her attention to unwrapping the present.
Now he really wanted to flee because this was a stupid idea. “It’s not a big deal.” He cleared his throat. “I got them for ten bucks from the store down the street. It wasn’t even out of my way. And I give everyone presents.”
“Lie,” she called him out, jerking her attention from the pair of yellow and white tube socks that were like his. Her face was comically blank, and his gut twisted.
“See,” he muttered. “I told you it was nothing. Have a nice life, Connecticut.”
“Have you ever bought a girl a present before?” She asked it so softly the wind almost carried her words away before they reached him. “Nox!” she said louder. “Have you?”
“You sure are brave now. I thought you had social anxiety!”
“Well…I do, but that doesn’t seem to make a difference with you.”
“Well, why not?”
“Because you have issues, too! You can’t judge me so I feel like I can…I dunno…say whatever I want.”
“I am perfectly normal.”
“Lie.”
“I have zero issues.”
“’Nother lie.”
“And furthermore—”
“Lie,” she called, hugging the pair of tube socks to her chest. “I think you pop off a lot when you get uncomfortable. It’s so you can push people away.”
Whoo, she was making him mad. He wanted to make her stop calling him out. “And what do you do when you get uncomfortable? Hmm?”
“Hide,” she said, the word ringing clear as a bell across the small yard. “I hunch my shoulders and get really quiet, try not to be distracting, try not to draw attention. I try to be invisible. I try to be a mouse.”
He didn’t like that. This wasn’t what he’d meant to happen. Nevada looked hurt, her lips were turned down in a frown, and he’d been the cause of it. Fuck. “You aren’t a mouse.”
“I’m not a proper fox.”
“Bullshit. You are how you’re supposed to be. You’re just surrounded by people who don’t understand your language.”
Nevada flinched back, and her delicate, dark eyebrows arched up in shock. “Yeah. That’s exactly how it feels. How did you know?”
“Because no one understands my language either.” And just so she wouldn’t pity him, he reminded her, “Which doesn’t matter because I hate everyone and I’m happier alone.”
She wanted to call out the lie, he could tell. She stood there in that pretty black dress, the hem whipping around her ankles in the wind, her hair lifting off her shoulders, porno-wrapped present clutched to her tits, looking like she was right on the verge of uttering that word again. Lie. But she didn’t. Instead, she told him, “I eat too many marshmallows, I don’t like talking to people, I can’t even afford a puppy, or this dress,” she said, holding out the fabric of the skirt to the side with her free hand. “A complete stranger sent it to me and I wore it no questions asked because it was this one, or a dress that’s two sizes too small that I bought three years ago. And I’ve worn that dress to all the family dinners for three years and I’m tired of everyone making fun of it. I have to work from home so I don’t make people uncomfortable, and I eat all my meals standing up because tables are for families and I’m by myself a lot. And I talk to myself just to hear a voice. Also, I’m good at cooking.”
Nox arched his eyebrows, completely unsure of how to respond.
Nevada stomped her foot and huffed a breath like she was frustrated. With him? With herself? Girl brains were terrifying. “Do you want to sit at the table with me and eat leftovers?” she asked suddenly.
“No.”
Nevada winced and dropped her gaze as she whispered, “Truth.”
“Because I would rather eat your pussy.” He was pretty good at wooing girls.
Nevada’s eyes got really big. “You do?”
“Well, yeah.” He gestured to her perfect cleavage. “Boobs. Butt.” He flicked his fingers at her thighs. “You smell like you want me, and it gives me…” He hooked his hands on his hips. This was the point where he was supposed to be polite and normal. “You know…”
“No, I don’t know. You’ve been on a long ride of weird with your answer. Don’t stop now.”
Nox cleared his throat loudly. She was wearing a dress and had her hair curled so he should woo her into bed properly, the way Mom always said he should talk to girls. “You give me erections. Of my dick.” He gestured grandly at his lap. “My dick is erect.”
Nevada cracked a smile and let off a giggle. Sounded like a bell. He liked bells.
Now she was blushing, and her cheeks were so pretty that color. She liked when he said nice things, he could tell, so he said, “Your cheeks are the color of vaginas.”
“Oh, my gosh,” she murmured through her giggling, and now her cheeks were going darker, and he couldn’t stop smiling. He was so good at complimenting Nevada.
“You’re the worst at compliments,” she murmured.
He smiled bigger because he liked when people said rude shit to him. She was good at complimenting him back in his own language. “Thank you.”
“You changed out of your short shorts,” she said conversationally.
Nox took a few steps closer to her and looked down at his crotch. “Yeah, my balls shriveled because it was so cold. Admission: I wore those shorts to chase you off, but you didn’t run.”
“I thought they were funny.” She lifted the tube socks. “Umm…”
She looked shy as hell right now. God, he wanted to corrupt her.
“I really like this present,” she said.
“No!” he blurted out.
“No, what?” she asked, her dark brows knitting into another frown.
“No, I haven’t gotten anyone a gift before. Or not like this. I mean, I’ve given people fish. But mostly I hide them in their trailers.”
“Oh,” she said, bobbing her head like she understood. “Why do you hide fish in people’s trailers?”
“To start a prank war with people I hate less than others.”
“You mean people you like?”
“I don’t like anyone.”
“Okay, who have you given fish to?”
“Torren, like six times. He mostly just got mad so I quit giving him presents. And then we fought a lot. This is the first thing I wrapped up for a girl, though.”
Nevada’s answering smile looked pleased as punch as she fingered the edge of the Playboy cover. There was a butt-naked girl on there—too skinny for his tastes, though. He liked the way Nevada looked a lot more.
“Darren figured out who you are. And what you are.”
Nox snorted. “I care zero percent what that pickle-dick thinks he knows about me.”
“He told me in the car that you’re registered. He found you on that government site. He said the den would shun me if they found out I was hanging out with you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re from Damon’s Mountains, you march to the beat of your own drum, and they fear anything that’s different.”
When Nox took a few more steps forward, only three squares of cement sidewalk separated them. “You’re different.”
“Yes,” sh
e whispered. “I’m already on the outside of the den, where I’ll stay if I don’t find a match.”
“You mean if you don’t say yes to Darren’s bullshit business proposal. I heard the way he talks about you. Before you showed up, I was watching your people, trying to figure you out. Darren talked about you like he wanted to rent you.”
“He needs heirs.”
Rage was a quick boil in his blood, and she was a frightened little critter normally, so he clenched his fists and swallowed the snarl in his throat. “Nevada, if you say yes to that match, you’ll be unhappy forever.”
“I know.” Her bottom lip trembled, and her voice went thick and shaky, too breathy like she was gonna do something horrifying like cry. Oh, God. He should run. He would rather be shot by Torren again than watch the girl he had warm fuzzies deep in his nutsack for go weepy. It made him want to go Red Rage Bear Death on her whole den. “If you cry, know that I’ll want to kill Darren, revive him, and then kill him again. And then repeat that process like…eight times. Suck it back in your eyeballs!”
“It’s a tear,” she said. “It doesn’t suck back up.” A single drop of water fell to her cheek.
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. He closed the distance and patted his hands in the air around her face helplessly. Go back in! “What do I do?”
“Probably hug me, and I’ll feel better.”
In a rush, he crushed her to his chest and froze. “Now what?” he whispered.
“Now nothing,” she said in that sweet voice. “Just stay here like this while I tell you my thoughts. And maybe if I get all emotional again, just…pat my back.”
In quick succession, he patted her back in hopes of deterring the girl-emotions from rearing their terrifying heads.
“Too rough, and I feel like you’re burping a baby. Maybe rub my back. Gently.”
