by Riley Storm
Anne shrugged. “He can be trusted. You’ll be safe with him, if nothing else.”
Gayle nodded slowly. “I can handle the rest, I guess.”
Rann held his tongue, but he could see the thoughts practically written on Gayle’s face. She couldn’t believe she was doing this.
Then again, neither can I.
Because Anne was right. Rann would keep her safe, and right now, unlike with every woman before, that was his only concern.
It just wasn’t like him.
Am I really doing this?
Chapter Seven
Gayle
Am I actually doing this?
They walked out of the bar with Rann leading the way and holding the door for her. She smiled in thanks, making sure to keep space between them as they fell in step, walking silently down the sidewalk. She shouldn’t get too close.
Why not? It’s not like I have a reason not to anymore. The only one I did have is now off getting drunk and sleeping with my best friend! Ex-best friend dammit!
“You okay?” Rann asked, perhaps picking up on the thoughts going through her head.
“As I can be,” she said, glancing up—way up—at him, past his thick arms and broad shoulders to the sharply chiseled jaw and cheekbones, and beyond them, the eyes that had stared at her across the bar. “Can I ask you something?”
“Uh, sure?” he said, shifting uncomfortably. “I guess. What’s up?”
What the heck did he think she was going to ask him that made him so suddenly uneasy? Gayle took an extra second, wondering if perhaps she should re-think her choice to go for a walk with him. The bartender, Anne, had said that he was okay though, and Gayle’s gut agreed with her, on that much at least.
What did Anne mean by a flight risk, I wonder?
Shaking her head, Gayle refocused herself on the then and there. Rann was watching her as they walked, waiting for her question.
“Why were you staring at me across the bar?” she asked, forcing the question out before she had more time to think about whether or not she truly wanted the answer.
He didn’t reply. The only acknowledgment that he’d even heard her question was his slow turn of the head to stare straight forward. Gayle waited an appropriate amount of time for him to respond before she nudged him with her elbow, trying to precipitate some sort of response. Even a refusal to answer would be better than silence!
“Because,” Rann said slowly, in a quiet, serene tone. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
Gayle’s mouth dropped open. That was not what she’d been expecting him to say. She started to speak, but Rann wasn’t done.
“I couldn’t stop staring, even if I’d wanted to, which I assure you I did not,” he added at the end, putting emphasis on his statement.
Gayle laughed, trying to stay light and easy, even while she tried to process what he was saying. How could someone who looked like him think of her as the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen? That was just silly.
“You probably say that to all the hot chicks,” she said. “Flattery will get you anything and all.”
Rann snorted dismissively, swinging his head—and thus the shaggy hair that she found suited him perfectly—around to face her, his jade eyes all but glowing in the dark with their intensity.
“No,” he said confidently. “Others are beautiful, yes, but they pale beside you. And that is the truth.”
Gayle shivered at the ringing tone. Rann was making a statement, one he believed unflinchingly, and she could detect no flattery or deceit in his voice. Sometimes, it was just impossible to fake something, and right then, right there, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was telling her the truth.
“Th-thank you,” she said, stammering slightly at the unexpected serious turn of their conversation. “That does at least help make a rough night a little better at least.”
Rann growled from somewhere deep in his chest, an almost feral noise that, if it had come from anyone but him, would have made her step away in fear. Instead, she slid a little closer to him, almost instinctively seeking his shelter.
“Whoever your ex is,” he continued in a deep rumble that spread out around them, the sound of his voice threatening to vanquish anything nearby that might hurt her. “They’re an absolute idiot.”
“Ha,” she said dryly. “Got that right. But regardless of how dumb he might be, I still lost him and my best friend. In one night. That hurts.”
“I know,” Rann said so gently she blinked, the sudden growling protector replaced with someone else in the blink of an eye.
“And they can’t even see that what they’re doing hurts me so much. That might be the worst of it all, Rann,” she said, hearing the pain in her own voice. “They’re oblivious to the effect it has on me.”
“No, they aren’t,” Rann said. “They aren’t oblivious. They don’t care. Because they’re inconsiderate assholes, and you deserve a whole lot better.”
She paused her walking and smiled up at him. “I know, but…it still hurts Rann. I still just want to cry.”
Rann came to a halt as well. She saw him chew on his bottom lip for a moment, and then he stepped forward abruptly. The next thing she knew, her head was pressed against his chest, and his massive biceps were squeezing her tight.
Gayle caught herself about to sigh in contentment at the feeling of being wrapped up by him but stopped herself. She was out on the street with someone she’d met twenty-minutes earlier, and she was hugging him. Not just hugging him, but resting her head on his chest, feeling the thudding beat of his heart and the resting power of his thick pectoral muscles as they shifted ever so slightly.
This was madness. She should be at home crying.
Why? another part of her demanded to know, rising up to combat the sadness with her other emotion: anger. Why can’t I enjoy myself if a hot-ass stranger wants to hug me and let me feel his body? I’m single, he’s damn sexy, and there is no longer anything holding me back. Pete left me. I can do whatever I want.
Gayle was a free woman. If she wanted to let this hunk take her home and twist her body up into a human pretzel while he did things to her, she could. The only person that could stop her was herself.
She stiffened in his arms, abruptly wondering if he was thinking the same thing.
What if he’s just trying to be nice to me? What if he doesn’t want anything more, and I’m over here picturing us getting naked for no reason?
Gayle felt silly at the prospect. She needed to know. Needed to find out what his thoughts were on everything going on. What was going on? They were just hugging. Sure, it was dragging on now, past a simple friendly hug, but still, that didn’t mean he was trying to take her home…did it?
There was only one way to find out. She shifted in his arms until she could look up at him. He glanced down, their eyes meeting, and Gayle waited. It was there, the opening. She was giving it to him.
Rann tensed. She felt it more than saw it, as he recognized what she was doing. A shiver ran through his muscles. The external reaction followed as his pupils dilated and his nostrils flared suddenly. Gayle swallowed, waiting to see what he would do.
Is it my imagination, or is his head drifting closer?
For a long moment, she felt the pull, the magnetic attraction closing the gap between them, as both of them slowly fell into one another. This is it. This is going to happen.
At the last moment though, their faces separated by mere inches, Rann pulled away. Her eyes flew open just in time to catch the look of regret on his face before he straightened up and she couldn’t look him in the face anymore.
“I’m sorry,” he said tightly.
“For what?”
“As much I want to kiss you right now, it wouldn’t be right of me.”
Gayle blinked. He wanted to kiss her.
But he’s not going to!
“I don’t understand,” she said, pulling out of his hug more than a little reluctantly.
“I would like to get yo
ur number though, if that’s okay,” he said, rushing on. “I’d like to see you again. I just, I know you just got out of a relationship, Gayle, and I’m not asking you to jump into another one. I would just…like to see you again. I can’t really explain it more than that.”
“It’s okay,” she said with a soft smile, pulling her phone out of her purse, and they exchanged numbers.
That done, the night seemed to close in around her. A finality to their interaction had ended any possibility of ‘more’ occurring just then. The empty night air seemed to close in around her, and all at once, Gayle felt the urge to be at home.
“Would you be okay if I walked you home?” he asked. “I promise I won’t try anything. I would just feel safer that way.”
Gayle thought about it, but the night grew more oppressive. She shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t be with him. Not so soon after what had just happened to her.
Biting her lip, she shook her head. “No, not tonight, Rann, but thank you. I’ll be okay to get myself home.”
He didn’t need to know where she lived. Gayle barely knew him. She didn’t even know the bartender whose word she’d taken as the truth. It was time for her to go.
“I’ll, uh, talk to you later,” she said, taking another step away, her flight instinct kicking in. “Goodnight, Rann.”
“Goodnight,” he said, leaning away from her as she moved past him and down the sidewalk toward home.
Gayle hurried away, holding her purse tightly, giving her head a shake at everything that had happened to her in the past few hours.
What a weird night.
She snorted, wondering just how boring the next day would look compared to it.
At least it can’t get any worse, right?
Chapter Eight
Rann
Rolling his shoulders didn’t help ease the tension building within them.
Neither did the dull rumble of dozens of people all talking at once in the same area. All it did was remind him of those who were awaiting the outcome of what would happen next.
“You ready?” Kladd asked quietly from at his side.
“This is stupid, you know that, right?” he replied, tilting his head to either side, letting his neck pop and crack. “Outdated and primitive.”
“Hey, nobody made you enter it,” Trent pointed out from where he stood at the entrance, the arched doorway formed smoothly from the stone.
They were deep under Mount Atrox, in one of the side-shafts that ran off the main cave complex that the Atrox clan used for their community area. The practice area was well known to all dragon shifters. They regularly came there to spar with others, to keep their skills up to par and work off beers from the night before.
Not this morning.
Today, everything was different. Rann was waiting in one changing room, Trent and Kladd with him. Wearing nothing but a pair of heavy-duty fireproof shorts, he readied himself, trying to think of nothing but the end goal.
“Sure they did,” he replied to his friend and teammate. “We’ve gone too long without a leader, without anyone to impose rule on us as a whole, and some folks are starting to get out of hand. You saw what Prax and his little group did the other day, didn’t you? That’s not who we are.”
Kladd bared his teeth in anger at the mention of one of the Atrox clan’s ‘less desirables’. He was clan, and as such, they were forced to tolerate him, but the man was a total asshole, and just the day before, he and his group of sycophants had used their powers to intimidate a human business owner into giving him what he wanted.
That was against the code.
If clan Atrox had a leader, that person would have stepped into the void and put a stop to Prax and his antics. But they didn’t. They hadn’t had one for over a year now, and the stress was starting to tear the clan apart.
The tournament had been initiated by a majority vote, at long last.
“I know what they’re like,” Kladd growled. “And I’ll put a stop to it.”
Rann grinned. “I think you mean I’ll put a stop to it.”
Both of them had entered the tournament. It was a competition of strength and guile, to determine who would become the next leader of the clan. Most of the other dragon clans had moved away from the practice they deemed ‘barbaric’ to a simple voting system, but Atrox hung on to the old ways.
So, they would fight.
Rann didn’t necessarily want to become the leader, but he loved his clan. He could not stand by and let it fall even further from grace. He simply did not have it in him to watch and do nothing. If it took him being the leader to save it, then he would shoulder that burden without complaint.
“It’s time,” Trent said from the doorway. “They’re ready.”
“Kick some ass,” Kladd said as he pushed past his friend.
Rann grunted. He didn’t want to kick anyone’s ass. Well, maybe Prax’s, but that was it. Since he didn’t have the pleasure of facing Prax today, he wasn’t exactly looking forward to the fight. This was no spar. This was a true fight, until surrender. Dragons had died in the tournament before, though Rann had no intention of killing any of his kin. That, to him, was not a sign of a good leader.
If I’m going to lead this group, I need to be able to do so without them being scared of me. I need them to respect me.
He entered the sparring chamber, an oblong, open-ceiling room lined with smooth, padded mats on nearly every surface, and regarded his opponent.
Fel was half a decade younger than him. A little brash around the edges, but overall a good head on his shoulders. The storm dragon would want to come out swinging, Rann decided.
He’ll want to end things quickly, hoping to overpower me.
A rustle went through the crowd that had gathered above. Usually, there was rock above the sparring room, but for the tournament, a pair of earth dragons had reshaped it, pulling it back into an arena-like setting where other dragons could stand above and watch the fights.
Rann hated it. This wasn’t for show, wasn’t for entertainment. At least, it shouldn’t be. But to some, it was.
He ignored those sitting above him, including Prax and his ilk, and strode across the floor to Fel, extending his hand.
“Good fight,” he rumbled.
Fel frowned but took the hand and shook it. “Good fight,” he said in return.
They retreated to their own corners. There were no referees, no judges. They would fight until one of them could fight no longer. It was based on the honor system. After all, to be a good leader, it was thought that one should be honorable as well as strong.
Rann tilted his head and took a step forward, indicating to his opponent he was ready to go. Fel returned the look, and they both prepared to fight. Rann strode forward, ready to meet in the center. To his surprise, Fel came at him warily, an intensity in his eyes.
That wasn’t the opening Rann had expected from the younger shifter. Clearly, the man was expecting trickery and deceit, not an honest, standup fight.
Well, I wonder if he would consider an honest, standup attack to be trickery then?
Rann shrugged mentally and closed the gap cautiously. Then, he attacked. Not with a testing jab or a blast of fire. He just kept walking right at Fel, swinging hard and with blinding speed.
The all-out attack caught the younger shifter by surprise, and Rann quickly pushed him back across the room. Above him, the crowd muttered in surprise, a decent amount of it sounding unhappy.
Prax probably bet against him. Rann snorted at that thought as he realized the truth behind it. There was more than just Prax’s recent actions to contribute to the bad blood between them, but none of that mattered just then.
Fel slipped under one of Rann’s blows and fired off a bolt of lightning which seared Rann’s side, flinging him back across the room. Rann bounced once and flipped himself to his feet before ducking the next blast.
A spinning, whirling disc of fire leapt out from Rann’s forearm as he brought his left arm across, the shield i
ntensifying to the point it all but tore apart the next lightning bolt before it reached him. Then, Rann dropped his right arm and flame congealed in his grip, sprouting out in a blade three feet long of pure fire.
It was a primitive technique, in that dragons of old had used the weapons, but it was just as effective in the modern age as well.
Rann howled a battle cry and charged forward, once more catching Fel off guard. The younger shifter kept expecting some sort of trickery and deceit. He ducked and dodged the swift flicks of the fiery blade.
Then lightning coiled in his hands and sprang like a snake, looping around Rann’s fire blade. Fel snarled and yanked. Rann had one option only. He let the fire dissipate, lest the pull from his opponent send him hurtling across the floor into the nearest wall.
The sudden absence of resistance startled Fel. That was a tricky move. Most dragons would have held on, loathe to let their weapons disappear in the midst of a fight. But Rann had learned that move from a wily old storm dragon many years earlier, and he used it to full effect now.
Fel stumbled backward, recovering just in time to get a faceful of Rann’s fire-shield. Rann had flung the disc at his opponent and then come in after it, shielding his approach behind the flaming circle.
Rann dropped into a slide and ended the fight by grabbing Fel’s ankle to gain leverage and driving his upper leg clear through the other shifter’s fibula, forcing it backward. Bone snapped, and the other shifter howled in agony.
Rann wasn’t done. He spun while crouched and took out Fel’s other leg, dropping the man on his ass where Rann scrambled around and locked an arm under his chin before Fel could recover.
“Yield,” he growled, hoping the younger shifter would realize the fight was over and he couldn’t possibly win.
“Fuck,” Fel shouted, but his open palm smacked against the ground three times.
Immediately, Rann let go. Fel slumped into a prone position, a minor whimper of pain escaping his lips. The pair made eye contact as Rann moved to his side, but the older shifter acted like he hadn’t heard a thing.
“Grip here,” he said, pointing to just below Fel’s knee. “Grab and hold tight.”
