by Leela Ash
Still, she couldn’t help but feel as if she should assert herself when her boundaries were being pushed. Was it pushing a boundary for him to be here like this, in front of her door rather than calling her? She glanced down at the cell phone in her hand.
Well, she had a missed call, maybe he had given a call a try and then gotten impatient. Either way, he was here now and there wasn’t much she could do about it except hope things would work out for the best and he didn’t turn out to be a huge creep. She could usually tell a lot about a person before they even opened their mouths, and she had grown to trust her own intuition on the matter. Especially when it came to men.
But here was Max, as oblivious and as handsome as ever, and she still didn’t feel afraid. It was such a strange thing; not to be afraid of a man like this. He was so beautiful. And comforting, somehow.
“I tried, but since you didn’t answer, I thought I would stop by and see how you are doing. Did you enjoy our first date? Would you like to go on another one?”
Andrea considered this with a small surge of panic welling in her chest. She knew that if she answered “yes,” Max would whisk her away right then and there just as he had the first time they had been together, and she had agreed to go get a drink with him. He was still a very impulsive and intense man, and she had to make sure that everything at home was taken care of before she took off with him, no matter how deeply she wanted to.
“Sure. But come inside first, if you don’t mind. I have to put some things away.”
She had brought some things home from work. It had been the last day of the school year and she had a few boxes of files that were still in her car. She had carried a few important things home in her purse too and they were heavy.
“Sure,” Max said agreeably, his golden eyes shining in the gentle light of the sun streaming into the hallway of the apartment building. “Do you need any help?”
“Actually…”
The file boxes were very heavy, and she had been dreading lugging them all the way upstairs on her own.
“You do! Just tell me what needs done, I can help you.”
Andrea hesitated and unlocked her apartment door. She opened it and stepped inside, holding it open for Max.
He came in, his eyes scanning his surroundings intently, an awed look sweeping across his face. He was apparently fascinated by her living space, and it made her both a little uneasy and very flattered. Why had he taken such an interest in her? Could she really trust her intuition?
“I have a few things in my car that are really heavy. I need to bring them up before I go anywhere, there isn’t a lot of room.”
Max nodded. “I am a co-owner of a moving company. Let me do it for you.”
“Well, you don’t have to do the whole thing,” Andrea said, looking away quickly, her face turning bright red. The intensity of his gaze was piercing, and it sent an involuntary jolt of heat flooding through her body. He was so handsome, she could hardly believe it. “I can help too. It’s just that there are a lot of boxes. Are you sure you want to?”
“Absolutely,” Max said, stepping forward. His chiseled features were set with an overwhelming sincerity, and she stared, despite herself, at the unbelievable beauty of his face. Where did men like this even come from? Was this something she could trust or was it too good to be true?
“Okay…”
Andrea began to empty the books from her purse and then sat it aside on the couch after digging her keys out.
Max smiled broadly. “All you have to do is open the door for me, okay?”
Andrea tilted her head but didn’t answer. He seemed pretty cocky, but that would surely change once he finally had the boxes in tow. He would probably eat his words at that point.
“Okay,” she finally said, leading Max back out to the hallway and toward the parking garage, where she had parked her car not long beforehand.
He followed quietly, his gaze wandering throughout the hallway curiously. She tried not to watch him as he took in his surroundings; he seemed almost like a wild animal, or a child perhaps, who had never seen the place before. Or perhaps he was just trying to memorize it. Whatever he was doing, she was somehow endeared by it rather than put off.
When they made it to the parking garage, Andrea led him to her car and unlocked it. The beep that echoed through the vast space startled Max, and he let out a low growl and his eyes darted around the place. The growl was odd; it stood out somehow. But not in a way that scared her so much as in a way that made her want to be close to him. It was a bizarre reaction and Andrea looked away quickly, opening the door of the car and smiling weakly.
“Scaredy cat,” she murmured, tugging out one of the hefty boxes. “I have about three of these. With you, it should only take a couple trips. Then the box in the trunk has my lighter things in it. Stuff from my desk I didn’t want to leave in the classroom all summer.”
“Wait one moment,” Max said, taking the heavy box from Andrea easily. He didn’t seem burdened by the weight at all. “Do you mind these sitting on your trunk for a moment?”
“Not at all,” Andrea said quietly.
Max nodded and quickly pulled the boxes out from her back seat and stacked them, then lifted them into his arms without so much as a grimace.
“Get the other box out of your trunk please, you should be able to put it on top of these three.”
“Max, don’t hurt yourself,” Andrea said, mildly alarmed that the man was lugging around such tremendous weight. Why did men always feel like they had to show off for women they were interested in? A lot of good it would do them both to find Max in the hospital with a hernia or a pulled muscle in his back or something.
“I’m not going to hurt myself,” Max assured her, smiling at her in a way that brought back that bewildering sense of peace he tended to invoke within her. “Just please give me the other box. It’s going to be fine, you’ll see.”
“I don’t want you to overdo it,” Andrea said, using the gentle, cautioning tone she sometimes used on problem children in her school.
“I am not going to overdo it,” Max said firmly. “I’m a mover. I do this all the time.”
“Ugh,” Andrea muttered with a sigh, unlocking the trunk of her car, and pulling out the next box.
“Hey,” Max said, halting her with his body as she turned around to look at him. “Trust me.”
The words shot a surge of warmth through her core and Andrea’s heart fluttered. Trust him. That’s all she had been doing since she first laid eyes upon him, and now she found herself nearly unable to think in his presence. He was just so handsome. And there was a part of her that did trust him. Probably too much. Why was this happening?
“I can carry this,” she said firmly, shutting the trunk of her car with the box. “It’s not even heavy.”
“Let me,” he said, his golden eyes boring into Andrea’s blue ones. “I want to do this for you. Please.”
The warmth turned to a searing heat and Andrea quickly did as she was requested. Max’s face lit with a broad smile. He was ridiculously handsome. When was she going to get over that? Every time he looked at her she found herself dazzled by him in one way or another. It almost made her feel like she was a kid with a crush. Nothing this pure could be genuine. Could it?
“See? It’s not a big deal,” Max said, walking toward the exit of the parking garage. Drea gazed at him in awe as he carried the boxes as if they weighed no more than the single light box on top, and then she scrambled to lock her car and follow after him, opening the doors for him as he had promised she would have to do. It was the first time she had ever seen anybody follow through with such a macho task without actually seeking attention for it. He wasn’t doing it to impress her at all. He was doing it to be genuinely helpful.
“Thank you,” she said softly as she unlocked the door to her apartment and let him inside. “You can just set those down wherever you want to. They don’t have a specific place where they belong or anything.”
“Oka
y,” Max said with a broad grin. “That’s good to know. Thank you for letting me help you.”
Andrea hadn’t expected him to say anything like that and pulled away to look at him in surprise. “Oh. Um. You’re welcome.”
“So,” Max said, setting the boxes down neatly beside her couch and smiling up at her as he righted himself. “Do you want to go out on another date now?”
“Yes,” Andrea said before she could help herself. She couldn’t get enough of this man and she didn’t know why. There was just something so pure about him. Something that made her feel as if he was one of the most genuine men she had ever met, and he was someone she wanted to be near. Even when she had been working that day, in the back of her mind, she had been thinking about Max and the peculiar but wonderful way he made her feel. No matter how strange he was, there was something special about him.
“Great! Let’s go. I have something planned I think you will love very much.”
Andrea blinked as Max headed toward the door, his face a whirlwind of excitement. He paused by the doorway and grinned broadly. “All right. Come on. This way!”
Andrea nearly laughed, but she didn’t want Max to think he was unkind and followed with as straight a face as she could muster. He was so excited, it was very endearing. She had never been with a man who had such a childlike innocence about him. And yet, there was something incredibly sexy about him; something strong and commanding and unyielding. He was a very impressive specimen, that much was certain, and she was going to just have to put her reservations aside and see where they could go from here and where they were going to end up.
9.
Max walked through the big doors of the lobby where his fated mate lived and glanced around. He had intended on getting a cab, but he had realized suddenly that Andrea drove. It was something that few of the other dragon shifters had done; it had been difficult for them to maintain their identities in the country without any legal papers. It was far too complex, and the moving company had only become successful due to the hyperintelligence of one of the impressive dragon shifters on their team. Thanks to Gavin, they were able to make all the paperwork look as legitimate as possible with few chances of legal repercussions.
“Do you want to take a cab, or would you like to drive?” Max asked, shifting uncomfortably.
Would she view it as a sign of weakness that he didn’t drive? Humans seemed very fickle about their strange mating customs. Men seemed to need to be rather successful, handsome, and established before a woman was interested in him. He had watched enough movies to know that it might turn her off to know he didn’t have a fancy car that he could show off to her at a moment’s notice.
However, driving wasn’t for Max. It was difficult enough for them to forge the information necessary to obtain certifications of that nature, and besides, everybody in the universe knew how dangerous human modes of transportation could be. Although he was a great pilot, he didn’t like the idea of driving a car very much.
He had left the job of driving the moving van in the hands of Gavin, the dragon shifter who had been in charge of developing the paperwork. He had gotten his own license but had been the only one patient and brave enough to risk imprisonment to take the test and learn the skill to work behind the wheel of the moving truck.
“Would you like me to drive? I don’t mind either way.”
Max gazed at Drea thoughtfully. No, he wouldn’t make her drive. This was a date. He should stay in charge the whole time. That’s what the movies had taught him.
“All right then, I think we should take a cab. You have been working today?”
“I have,” Andrea said with a small smile. “The kids are thrilled, and it was an easy day for them, but as a teacher, there was a lot to deal with, so it felt like a very long day.”
“Then it will be nice for you to unwind. Don’t worry. I will take care of everything.”
Max smiled at Andrea, who looked as if the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders. She didn’t seem as if she wanted to drive very much at all, and he couldn’t blame her for that. It was a dangerous thing to do and he didn’t want her to do anything she didn’t want to. Especially if she had been working all day.
“Tell me more about your job,” Max said, smiling as he went to the curb to hail a cab.
“Oh, I love it most days,” Andrea said with a soft laugh. “The kids are a handful but it’s in a good way. They all have a hard time staying stuck there all day, but it’s something most of them have gotten used to.”
“Where I’m from, school is usually performed outdoors,” Max said absently, squinting down the road. Why weren’t there any cabs coming yet? “It helps the young to learn better without being cooped up in a stifling little room.”
He had spoken about his own planet without even thinking about it and glanced quickly at Andrea. She didn’t seem to think twice about it but nodded thoughtfully. The earth was a big place. She didn’t know where he was from. She was probably just wondering to herself about his origins.
“I bet my students would love that,” Andrea said, her voice somewhat faraway as she got lost in her own thoughts. “Weather permitting, of course. And then again, some of the girls are very particular. They don’t like anything that could be misconstrued as dirty. And especially nothing that has the potential for bugs to be near them. It would have to be a nice set up. Benches, maybe…”
Max smiled as he listened to Andrea speak, his mind wandering back to his home world. He had always loved school. Especially when the curriculum turned to training the physical dragon body for battle. He had always been among the most powerful of his class, closely followed by the other five men that were accompanying him on Earth. They were some of the most notable warriors that Fiora had among them, and he wasn’t sure what had been going through the minds of the elders when they had been banished. But there was no changing things now.
“Ah, here’s a cab,” Max said, glad to have a distraction from his thoughts. He always started missing his home world when he thought too much about it. But he was also angry in a way, knowing that the world he had been grown and raised in had betrayed him in such a ruthless way. Exile was one of the most painful things he had ever experienced. His people were far too civilized to put traitors to death, instead, banishing the dragon shifters that were thought to have committed treason away from their family and friends and lives and into uncertainty.
Max and the others had landed here, on Earth. They’d needed to change their names from their traditional dragon titles to ones that would allow them to blend in on this planet. The first time Max had ever been close to happy about being on Earth was when he had met Andrea. Otherwise, the banishment had cut him deeply.
“Okay,” Andrea said, smiling shyly as Max opened the door to the cab for her. She slid to the far-left side behind the driver and waited for Max to get in beside her. “Thank you.”
Max gave the driver the address, hoping Andrea wouldn’t recognize it by numbers alone, and then sat back to gaze at her once again. He smiled at her, his mind wandering back to her apartment. It was a nice place; the most pleasantly decorated that he had ever seen. And it smelled so good. Then again, he shouldn’t be surprised. It belonged to his fated mate. Should he tell her? They had already gone out on one date and were going to enjoy another. Maybe it was time…
No, it would still be too soon. Whenever a human male had a secret in the movies Max watched, he would keep it to himself until he couldn’t possibly keep it inside any longer. He had to sense that the female was ready to hear it…that or he needed to know that there was no other option.
Still, there was a bit of a rush on this. If he wasn’t able to confess to his mate and conceive a child, who knew what might happen to his home planet? The entropy was speeding up, and soon, there wouldn’t be much of a home to even go back to at this rate. Not only that but it would be impossible for them to come back with honors if they weren’t able to harness the power of the descendants and fulfil
their fates. The children of a Loni hybrid descendant and the Fiora dragon bloods were sacred, and their existence, no matter where in the universe, provided their planet with vital life energy. A magic to sustain them. A continuation of the shifter species. These babies were vitally important.
How was he going to be able to explain that to Andrea? And in a way that would help her to fully understand the scope of what they were dealing with? Without awakening her powers in an unhealthy and scary way that might put her in danger?
“Are you okay?”
Max was startled out of his thoughts by Andrea, who had just touched him gently on the knee. Her touch sent a hot thrill through his entire being and the dragon within him suddenly reared his head. It took everything he had not to stake his claim right then and there, alarming both the poor human and the cab driver as well.
But he managed to reign in the power of his all-consuming desires and turn to smile at her instead, refusing to meet her eyes. They were a beautiful color. Not just a human hue, but one that, should she ever step foot on the planet Fiora, would shine brightly like the heat of a thousand suns. The magic would bring the life within them right out for all to see. Then everybody would know just how special she was, and not just Max.
“Yes. I am fine,” Max said, attempting to smile and push thoughts of his home world away. It was easy to find reason to smile. Just looking into Andrea’s beautiful face gave his spirits a boost. “I think you are going to like this more than the last one.”
Andrea’s eyes lit up and Max could tell she was pleased with the news. He was excited to show her what he had in store. He had taken something from every movie he could think of in an effort to create the ultimate date. Once he knew that Drea was interested in him and they were going to stay with each other, then he would be able to explain to her about the hands of fate and why it was so important for them to be together.
They would have their first chance at redemption, and Drea and their future children would play a powerful role in becoming saviors of his planet. It would bring honor back to his name and he and the others would be able to return back home.
