Then twinkling, smoky-gray eyes like dark ashes. Or crushed graphite. He winked, and she took a step back.
“What?” She gasped.
“I don’t know,” he said. “You did it earlier.”
She did? She did. At lunch. She’d already forgotten. It was something she did all the time to keep things light with Taylor. She’d forgotten it could have this kind of effect, especially coming from a gorgeous, extremely tall man.
She swallowed. “Oh.”
Taylor rolled his eyes and headed for the front door. “C’mon, let’s go.”
“Right,” she said, following him out onto the porch. “The tour.”
Taylor reached for her hand and swung it between them as they headed down the front drive and then branched off to go around the side of the house to show off the back yard.
Despite the brush and wild scrubs all around them, there were also tall, beautiful trees and a nice-sized orchard in the back. Plus, a fairly good fence that was still in nice condition, outlining all ten acres of the property.
She felt Sever’s eyes on her as they walked, and a shiver went up her spine.
Focus.
“All right,” she said, letting go of Taylor’s hand so she would be able to point out certain aspects of the yard. She led them to the small garden just behind the house, and then they walked to the chicken coop that was a little farther out. And then the corral that could hold horses in the far west corner. There were none there now, but there could be in the future.
Taylor seemed to like the idea, but she didn’t dare bring animals in until she felt she could keep her and Taylor safe.
All the while, Sever listened intently, hearing her thoughts on what she wanted to do in the future, what trails there were that led around the property if he wanted to go for a walk. At the back, there was a long line of tall trees leading into a forest that went on to other land, and as long as he didn’t go past their property border, he could hang out there.
She sometimes liked to.
But no matter how much she tried to tell him about the land and saw him sweep his eyes over it intently, she kept feeling he was truly more interested in her.
Like his gaze kept finding her, like that thoughtful look he kept getting when he thought she wasn’t looking had something to do with her, and it was starting to make her a bit nervous.
After all, what did she know about this person, other than he got paid to come out and do things like this?
No, for all she knew, he got paid to do way different things, like going to fancy balls as a rich lady’s escort. Who knew?
She decided that later that night, she should spend some more time getting to know him, rather than helping him get to know the land.
Perhaps then she’d be more comfortable around the big man with the stark, flinty eyes.
An electric tune rang out, making her nearly jump out of her shoes, and Sever reached in his pocket to retrieve his phone. He looked at the ID and then gave her a reluctant frown. “I have to take this. Is that okay?”
“Sure,” she said, trying to settle her nerves. “Taylor, want to go on the swing?”
Taylor’s face lit up, and she felt calm go through her. That’s right. This was her focus. This was why she was doing this. “Yes,” he said.
“Okay then,” she said, putting her hand in Taylor’s again. She gave Sever a smile. “We’ll be on the porch if you need us. See you when we see you, I guess.”
“I’ll just walk out this way,” Sever said, gesturing toward the side.
“Okay,” she said.
But then there was a frozen moment when Sever glanced at her, reluctance in his eyes, almost like he didn’t want to leave.
Was she imagining it?
Sever started walking away, answering the phone, and she turned on her heel and walked with Taylor back to the swing on the front porch.
Cool breeze, nice evening. Just what she needed to get her head back on straight.
“Dante?” Sever asked irritably, picking up the phone. He was relieved for the chance to break away from Lori and stop staring at her like a cat at a juicy mouse but a little surprised by his friend’s intrusion.
“How is it going? How are you doing out there? Is it some sort of trap? Do you need us to come get you?”
Sever put a hand over his face. Dante had previously been a selfish, if effective, leader in their old life, but ever since finding a mate, his more protective aspects had come out, and it had extended to basically anyone in his circle.
“I’m fine. No trap. Why are you calling?”
“It’s just something about that letter,” Dante said. “I don’t feel she was telling you everything.”
“Yes, well, we should be the first ones to know that sometimes you can’t tell someone everything, but it doesn’t mean you’re trying to trick them.”
Dante had to pause at that, Sever knew, because as ancient dragon shifters in the modern world, they had to keep a lot of things hidden. It also made things complicated when it came to taking a mate.
Still, he didn’t think he would have to worry about it. He was attracted to Lori. Maybe something would even happen between them, but he was more and more sure it was just the feeling of admiration for what she was doing for Taylor and, of course, her exquisite physical beauty, kind eyes, and curvaceous, feminine figure.
He was pretty sure.
“So this Lori, what’s she like?” Dante asked. “Nice? Beautiful?”
Jealousy lashed through Sever, throwing him off balance mentally. “She’s fine. She’ll make a good friend.”
“Not more than friends? Not a mate—”
“Dante, you should know that’s complicated.”
“Look, just because Mercury tricked you, just because Amelia wasn’t necessarily your mate—”
“Shut up,” Sever barked angrily, silencing his friend. He knew everyone had been afraid to bring it up ever since they’d found out what had happened. They still weren’t sure on some of the details, but one thing was certain.
The woman Sever had thought he was courting, the one he’d thought had been stolen, the one he’d become a rival with a former friend over, had never existed.
Not like he thought.
If he looked hard into his past, maybe he could figure out where he got things so wrong, but he wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.
Right now, he just needed a peaceful place to rest. And no mate talk.
“I’m sorry,” Dante said. “I know it’s difficult.”
“No, you don’t,” Sever said. “You’ve got your mate. You’ve got your happy ending. Now stop worrying and leave me alone,” he snapped, hanging up the phone.
He stood there looking down at the blank screen as guilt waved through him.
He would call and apologize to Dante tomorrow. He knew it probably hadn’t been easy for his friend to bring up the subject and that he just wanted Sever to be happy.
Truthfully, Sever wanted to be happy, too.
But some things were still too sensitive, too painful to face in all their implications.
Being wrong about the woman you thought was your mate, having to unravel all the reasons you got it so wrong, was one of those things.
His heart was thudding mutely in his chest, making his ears ring as rage moved through him at what he’d been through. Everything from childhood on.
He didn’t want to think about any of it, and now Dante had brought it all back, damn him.
As he felt the past swirling around him, his ears perked at the sound of voices, the predator in him immediately snapping to attention and whirling around.
Ah, perfect. Something to focus him in the moment. A situation to give him something to do.
A truck must have pulled up while he was arguing with Dante, and now he saw men walking up the drive as Lori walked out to meet them.
She looked like a warrior as her hair blew out behind her in the evening wind, and she pointed accusingly at the men as she shouted at them
.
As they shouted back, walking faster, alarm went through Sever, and he picked up his pace, jogging carefully over the scrubby ground to reach her.
What had first seemed merely distracting was quickly becoming something that made the dragon inside him roar.
As the men reached Lori, one of them getting in her face threateningly as she tried to stand in front of Taylor to protect him, Sever felt his hands form fists, nails biting into the skin of his palms, and he saw the red of bloodlust before his eyes.
He stood there for a moment, trying to let it pass, because the last thing he needed was to go to jail for overreacting and hitting a human, and he slowly realized what this overwhelming feeling was.
Mate, the dragon in him thundered.
Shit, he thought as he released a deep breath and went to deal with the men who were threatening what was his.
Chapter 4
Lori felt more afraid watching Sever stomp toward them, shaking the ground, than she ever had talking to the weakling cowards who were threatening her now.
It was the same thing as usual. They wanted her land. They wanted her gone.
Half her focus had to be on Taylor, keeping him from getting around her to fling insults at the guys.
Despite what he thought, he was still just a boy, and he shouldn’t have to be dealing with things like this.
Then again, neither should Sever. It certainly hadn’t been why she claimed to hire him, and she’d never meant to put him in danger. She’d hoped just his presence would deter any problems and he wouldn’t get hurt.
Looking at him now, huge shoulders thrown back, hair whipping in the wind, jaw taut and grim, eyes narrowed ferociously, he almost looked like a different person than the one she’d met earlier that day.
Less like a friendly but eccentric giant, more like some kind of ancient warrior, despite his modern clothing.
John Cleaver stopped cursing her out and turned to look at Sever, his eyes widening even as he tried to adopt a posture of disgust with his tall, lanky body. Like his brother, Jud, who was there with him, he had thick, dirt-colored hair and freckles almost covering his face. The whole family probably could have been handsome if they weren’t such evil, inbred jerks, but they kept to their own and seemed to the think the sun rose and set only on the small community they’d made for themselves a few miles outside of town.
They’d decided she was too close, being on the outskirts of town herself, and also that she had no right to the land, being a single woman.
It was so absurd she could laugh if she didn’t feel like crying so often the past few weeks.
“What are you doing?” Sever’s voice boomed out as he approached them, taking long strides, glaring as though they were no more than pesky flies.
“We’re here on business, and it’s none of yours,” Jud snapped.
Sever folded his arms and stopped directly in front of them, asserting himself as a human wall blocking her off from them completely. “It’s my business. This is my wife.”
“Oh really?” John asked with a sneer, narrowing his eyes. “Well, I don’t care. If she’s yours, take her and the brat and get away from here.”
Sever raised a huge hand in a threatening motion, and John flinched back, putting up an arm to shield his face. Lori stifled a laugh at his terrified expression. He was used to bullying others. He deserved a little of it himself.
“Get out,” Sever shouted, making a threatening motion with his hand that had them scattering before he could hit them.
John nearly tripped over Jud as the two scrambled back down the drive to their truck, leaving large puffs of dust in their wake.
They got into the truck, and she could see Jud waving a fist at them.
“This isn’t over!” John shouted as he turned the truck and started driving away to their backwoods little camp.
“I hope not!” Sever shouted back, and she was surprised by how worked up the man seemed to be.
Her first impression of him had been someone who kept his calm no matter the situation. A gentle giant.
As he stared after the retreating car, his eyes burning like molten metal, his hands now clenched in tight fists, his entire body rigid, she decided she had to reappraise her first impression.
Sever of Date-A-Dragon was definitely more dangerous than she’d initially assumed.
Sever tried to call on the dragon inside him for calm now that the men who’d been threatening Lori had driven away.
The last thing he wanted was to scare his new mate.
No, she wasn’t his mate yet.
He needed a moment to get his head on straight, to remind himself why he’d come out here, and to stop the anger coursing through his veins, making everything foggy.
But even as the adrenaline cleared and he calmed, realizing they were now alone on the land, just him and Lori and Taylor, he felt oddly off kilter.
Because despite just having met this little family, something inside him said they were his.
Which brought up all sorts of difficulties he hadn’t planned on. Like how to tell them what he was and how to win Lori over when he’d promised to be professional and made her promise the same.
What a jackass he’d been.
Now, looking into her eyes, he realized he just wanted more than anything to protect her, whatever that entailed. And not just for a few days or weeks while she got on her feet.
But forever.
He couldn’t think about the past and how weird this was in reference to it. He just knew it was real. That he was feeling this and couldn’t avoid it any more than he could deny the dirt beneath his feet.
“Would you have hit him?” Taylor’s voice squeaked out as he stepped from behind Lori, who’d been restraining him. “Lori says I can’t.”
Sever nodded. “She’s right. But I can.”
“Why?” Taylor asked petulantly. “I’m a man, too. It’s my fault Lori’s here and in trouble, and—”
“Taylor,” Lori snapped. “Go inside. I have to talk to Sever.”
Taylor gave her an angry glare and then did as she said, storming away up the drive to the house. They heard the porch door slam, and Lori winced.
“Was I too hard on him?”
“No,” Sever said quietly. “But it’s only natural he would want to protect you. Even if it’s just as natural for you to protect him.”
“He thinks he’s a man already. He shouldn’t have to be. It’s part of why I wanted one around, to take that over so he didn’t feel he had to. But even with you here, he wants to get involved.”
“Maybe we should talk about what’s going on,” Sever said, trying to keep his mind on logistics so he didn’t fixate on how to mate her. How to get her in bed. How to win the right to protect her forever.
If the mating urge was truly this strong, he didn’t think he’d ever felt it before. But that led to questions he wasn’t ready to answer. And right now, all he wanted to think about was how to better help Lori.
“Let’s go to your truck,” Lori said. “Where Taylor won’t hear us.”
“Fine,” Sever said, pulling out his keys. He’d left his truck at the end of the drive, and when they reached it, he opened the passenger door first and helped her inside, gingerly lifting her.
“Thank you,” she said, a flush moving prettily over her high cheekbones.
“You’re welcome,” he said, walking around to get in on his side. “Now what’s going on?”
She sighed, twisting her hands in her lap, and he wished there was a way to soothe her. “It’s not such a big deal, but we’ve been getting harassed ever since we moved here.”
“What do they want?” he asked. “You?”
“Oh no,” she said, waving a hand with a little laugh. “Nothing like that. They want the land. They feel it’s theirs from a long time back, even though I have the title to it. Some clan dispute. They are detached from the town and live in a little settlement a few miles out on their own, with a few other related groups from t
he same family.”
Sever wrinkled his nose. Who tried to take land from a woman and a child, especially when they legally owned it? And he wasn’t so sure they weren’t after his mate for their own reasons. The one in front in particular had been getting a little too close.
Then again, maybe they wanted the land and his woman.
Like hell they would get either.
He might be collared currently, his powers and ability to shift suppressed, but there was still enough strength deep inside him that no one could threaten what was his.
And Lori was his now. Just looking at her, he knew.
Now he wanted to know everything there was to know about her. Her hopes, her dreams, where she’d lived before moving here to help Taylor. What she wanted from life. What she wanted in a mate so he could be that.
He shook his head and let out a hoarse laugh, surprised by the way his thoughts were racing in a direction he’d never anticipated.
Maybe he should talk to Dante after all, ask if this was the way the mating instinct affected him.
But he also wanted to keep it to himself, because given that he’d been wrong in the past, what if he was just going crazy? What if he was just desperately lonely and his dragon wiring was off?
Who knew?
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “You’re looking at me weird.”
He heard nervousness in her voice and realized there was no human way to explain how his entire world, and therefore his demeanor, had changed.
And holy shit, he was going to have to tell her what he was at some point, and she might think he was lying to her, and—
He put his head in his hands and leaned it forward on the steering wheel in frustration.
He heard her draw a sharp intake of breath.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “Are you mad that I didn’t tell you what was going on before you came here?”
He jerked his head up at the dismay in her voice. “What?”
“You seem upset, and I didn’t tell you exactly what was going on, and—”
Platinum (Date-A-Dragon Book 3) Page 3
