Cash (Dragon Hearbeats Book 3)

by Ava Benton

  Discomfort hung between us. I didn’t know what to say. What did a person say to their test subject? That was the beautiful thing about working on rats. They didn’t expect conversation. And they never made the back of my neck feel prickly and sweaty when they looked at me.

  “I guess we should get started.” I turned to a tray which somebody had thoughtfully placed beside the laptop. There were alcohol wipes, syringes, tubes. I waved him over before pulling on a pair of latex gloves.

  “I guess so.” He sat on a stool beside the work table and presented one impossibly thick arm. I was almost afraid to touch it, which struck me as a ridiculous response. There was no helping it. He was strength, power, masculinity all wrapped up in one handsome package.

  And underneath that, he was something else. An animal. I had to keep that in mind, too. I couldn’t afford to let myself get too comfortable.

  “This will sting,” I warned after cleaning his skin.

  6

  Cash

  She was not what I expected. I watched her hands as she worked. She was afraid to touch me. I considered teasing her a little, asking what was so scary about a big guy like me. Did she know who or what I really was?

  Only one way to find out.

  “What do you know about me? Did Mary tell you why I need this?”

  She shook her head. Her hair was the color of wheat, hanging in a braid over one shoulder. I looked at the top of it while she focused on finding a vein in my arm.

  “I got the impression that this is very much a need-to-know sort of thing, and I don’t need to know. At least, not according to those who assigned me to you.”

  “Why did they assign you?” I winced when the needle pierced my skin.

  Her blue eyes met mine for the merest second, then went back to what she was doing.

  “Honestly? I have no idea.” She shrugged. “I guess they figure I can be trusted. And I’m probably the only person in my group who had any success with work. A bunch of slackers, really.”

  “What’s your work?”

  “My team is working to develop a new vaccine. It’s sort of confidential.” She glanced at me in between removing one full tube and replacing it with another. “Like what we’re doing here.”

  I grinned. “Well, that’s two points in your favor. You’re a discreet, hard worker. It’s not rocket science. You’re the best person for the job.”

  And I wanted to shake the hand of the man who suggested her to Mary. I’d shake his hand, buy him a drink, maybe put his kids through school, if he had any. Because she was gorgeous.

  My dragon thought so, too. He was aware of every move she made. The smell of her skin, the way her pulse jumped in the side of her neck. The touch of her hands. The warmth coming from her, calling out, wrapping itself around me.

  This is way too important for us to screw it up, I reminded him when a whiff of her light, musky perfume made my cock thicken. I reminded the dragon about the rest of our clan. His family as well as mine. If we scared this girl away, we were screwed. Mary’s buddy Harrison, wouldn’t want to work with us anymore.

  And Mary would have my ass. So would the rest of the family when I got home.

  “What about you? What do you do?”

  She was up to three tubes and inserted another. Blood filled it like magic, thick and deep red.

  “Security,” I replied smoothly. It wasn’t strictly a lie. We just happened to guard a secret cache instead of a bank or a store.

  “That makes sense,” she murmured.

  Suddenly, her head ducked a lot lower, but I caught a glimpse of the deep red color that painted her cheeks.

  This was too good to let go. “Why does it make sense?” I asked, playing innocent.

  The scent of her perfume got stronger, which told me her skin was growing warmer. Was it embarrassment or something else? Arousal?

  “It’s not important.” She covered the insertion point with a piece of gauze before withdrawing the needle. “There you go. Hold this.”

  Our fingers brushed when I placed mine over the gauze pad. She turned away before I could read her expression. Was she as curious about me as I was about her?

  “You know about me?” I asked.

  Might as well get it out of the way. She probably had questions and if she was busy asking them—silently, to herself—she wouldn’t pay enough attention to solving my iron problem.

  “Yes. I know about you.” Matter-of-fact.

  “And it doesn’t bother you? Who I am, I mean?”

  She shrugged, her back turned to me as her fingers flew over a keyboard. “Why would it bother me?”

  “It bothers some people.” At least, that was what I understood of the human/shifter relationship. I had no hands-on experience.

  She placed the tubes of blood in what looked like a freezer before turning to me. “You’re not the first I’ve ever known. Not that I know him personally, mind you.”

  “Who?”

  “His name is Jace. He lives in Florida. Part of the Everglade clan.” She rattled off this information like it was nothing, but gave the name heavy significance.

  Like I was supposed to know who she meant. Was I? If the family was a famous one and I didn’t know about them, what would it say about me? That I was out-of-touch. That I couldn’t be part of the mainstream.

  I wasn’t, of course, but she couldn’t know that. If they lived in Florida—and kept out of human affairs, which shifters did as a general rule—there was little reason why I’d hear about them in West Virginia.

  “Oh, really?” Just casual enough, I thought. “Who is he to you?”

  “He’s married to my cousin. Step-cousin, really. It’s complicated. I’ve always thought about her as my cousin.” She blushed again. It seemed to take nothing to get her to blush. “I’m babbling. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” I couldn’t help but smile. There was something about her, under that hard, scientific shell, that touched me. She was the sort of girl who could evaluate a blood disorder but probably forgot to water her plants and habitually lost her car keys.

  “Shifters don’t scare me, in other words. I don’t rush to judgment based on stereotypes or anecdotal evidence.”

  She was every inch the scientist. If she wore glasses, that would’ve been the perfect moment to push them further up the bridge of her nose.

  “You approach things with a scientific mind,” I summarized.

  “Exactly. Which is why we’re here, and as good a segue as I can imagine. I have to perform an analysis on what I just drew, to see what I’m working with. I may need you for a few tests today. We’ll see how long it takes to get my results.” She laughed nervously. “This is my first time as a one-woman show.”

  “I’m completely at your disposal,” I assured her as I went to my room.

  She needed to work alone. Something told me my presence would only slow her down.

  I needed a little alone time, too, though I’d had nothing but that until her arrival.

  She shook me up without even trying to. I hadn’t had much long-term contact with women, Jasmine and Alina notwithstanding. They didn’t count, anyway, seeing as how they belonged to my cousins. Aside from those two, the most contact I’d had with the fairer sex had taken place in a store. Not exactly the opportunity to get to know a woman.

  Even so, I’d watched. Ogled. Fantasized a little. Nothing obvious. I didn’t follow around with my tongue hanging from my mouth. And when a woman did happen to notice me noticing her, she’d smile. Sometimes she’d offer me her number. That was a nice diversion.

  This was more than a pleasant diversion, however. Carissa wasn’t jack-off material for when I was alone in the shower, and not just because I’d be spending time with her. Mostly because while my dragon never reacted to any of the women I flirted with, fantasized about while I was alone, even watched on TV, he was deeply interested in the girl currently analyzing our blood.

  He was highly interested and grumbling about her.

 
I tried to ignore him by flipping on the television and looking for the most mindless entertainment I could find, but he was louder than any trashy daytime talk show.

  He was also very insistent that she didn’t have the scent of a mate on her.

  I’m aware of that, I thought, almost angry at his insistence.

  He was an ancient beast, operating on pure instinct. Subtlety was lost on him. It mattered nothing that she was a thinking, breathing human with a life of her own. What he wanted, he wanted. And he wanted her.

  The real problem was that I wanted her, too. And he knew it.

  7

  Cash

  A light tapping sounded at my door while I was in the middle of push-ups.

  I groaned softly, resting on my knees before standing. She was the reason I was working out like a demon. Anything to get my mind off her, to prevent me from going back out there just to be in her presence again.

  She was like an exotic blossom. I wanted to watch her, just for the pleasure of being in her company. I had been without a woman for far too long.

  “Yes?” I called out, breathless.

  “My analysis is complete. Are you able to come out for a few tests?”

  I got up, went to the door. Opened it.

  Her eyes went bigger than usual when she saw the sweat running down my face, then over my bare shoulders and chest. She let her gaze linger there for a moment before snapping her attention back to my face.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you,” she breathed.

  My dragon and I could both hear the effect we had on her. See the way her pulse quickened in her throat. The way her skin flushed.

  Yes, I was aware of all of it. I’d be a fool to miss it, or blind. Likely she had as little contact with men as I did with women.

  “You’re not disturbing me.”

  Not in the way she meant, at any rate. How much harder would she blush if she knew what she did to me inside? The things my dragon wanted me to do to her? She didn’t even know I was a dragon. I would bet anything, even the contents of the deepest cavern in the mountain I called home, that she was unaware of the existence of creatures such as myself. I would’ve offered up the treasure. I was that certain.

  “Oh. Good.” She tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ears. “As I said, I’m ready to run a few tests.”

  “Do you mind if I take a shower first?” I asked, looking down at myself. “Unless it doesn’t matter if I’m sweaty.”

  She bit her lip—hard—and backed away with her gaze trained on the floor. “Please. I think it would be best if you were… clean… while running tests. To eliminate all outside factors. Biologically. You know.”

  “Yes. I think I know.”

  I knew all too well.

  8

  Carissa

  Well, that was fun.

  Making a stuttering, blushing, tongue-tied fool of myself was fun. At least I had an untold number of days to keep going through the same discomfort.

  There’s a lovely thought.

  For one thing, I could breathe freely when I was in the car. Even when he was in his room, I could feel Cash nearby. It was unnerving. Beyond. There was no relaxing—not that I particularly needed to relax while I was doing my work.

  He kept me on my toes, at any rate.

  I had never been as acutely aware of any other person as I was when he was around. Which was all the time, while I was in the lab. Even with a wall and a door between us, I knew he was there. Watching TV. Working out. Getting sweaty.

  “What is your problem?” I muttered under my breath as I left the compound, driving through the gate with its sparkling spools of barbed wire. I was a scientist. He was a specimen. My test subject. So what if he had the most perfect set of abs I’d ever seen outside of Photoshop?

  He had to know what he did to me. I groaned and only half-wished I was dead. How many times had I blushed like an idiot? How many times had I stuttered and fumbled around? More times than I wanted to remember. How could I ever hope to maintain credibility with him? He knew I had the hots for him.

  He was probably used to it, too. How could he not be? One look into those impossibly green eyes, at that blinding, self-assured smile, and panties would melt. Victoria’s Secret could likely attribute a portion of their profits to him. He probably had to elbow his way through his admirers just to walk down the street.

  Of course, if that were true, he wouldn’t think badly of me for acting like a doofus. Not if it were an everyday occurrence. I tried to tell myself that, in an attempt to self-soothe. Like a baby sucking its thumb. It was all I had to give me the courage to go back the next day and look him in the eye.

  A glance at the clock told me it was already four-thirty, and I needed to hustle if I was going to make it to Tommy’s school in time to avoid paying extra for a late pickup. I had only made that mistake once, back in the beginning, when I wasn’t yet used to building my schedule around the needs of a child and left the lab later than I should have.

  It wasn’t the extra money that was a problem, of course. It was the tired, hollow-eyed look on Tommy’s face when I arrived. Like a little old man in a five-year-old body. Resigned. He knew it was coming. I would let him down. He expected it. I had wrapped him up in a tight hug and promised to never, ever be late again.

  Over time—not that night, but in the weeks afterward—I’d gotten more and more of the sad, disappointing story of his life. Where had Chrissie lost her way? I remembered her pregnancy, how scared and thrilled and full of hope she was. That was before Zack left, naturally. When she was pregnant, they had big plans. She hoped they’d get married. They didn’t. He stuck around long enough to meet the baby two days after the birth, then left town without a word.

  Even after that, she held on. My sister was a hard-headed girl. She was determined to be happy and threw herself into it the way she threw herself into everything. Including being a mother. When I called to ask how things were going—and admittedly, I hadn’t called nearly enough—she had always injected a smile into her voice and assured me everything was great. Super. Fantastic. Tommy was healthy and happy and smart as a whip.

  How was I supposed to know about the methamphetamine if she never told me about it? How she started taking pills to keep herself awake for her second job. How the pills weren’t enough after a while. How so much of her life began to revolve around finding more. How so little of her life revolved around Tommy anymore.

  She had started to neglect him. To miss school pickups. To forget to take him to school in the first place. He would go to bed hungry. He would go to school in dirty clothes or clothes that were too tight because he’d grown out of them. He always told me these stories in a matter-of-fact tone, the same tone he’d used when he told me about his friend getting an iPhone. Just the facts, nothing more. I wondered if he would ever forget those days—he was young enough that he might. He might be able to have a happy life, well-adjusted. And that was up to me. I couldn’t let him down the way my sister had.

  But she had good intentions, too. At first. She hadn’t planned on falling apart. Nobody ever did. Life happened. What if life happened to me?

  Thinking about it was pointless right now, since I was only blocks away from the school and wanted to be in a good mood for him. He’d want to hear about Aunt Cari’s First Day of Work, and he deserved to see and hear me at my best. I hadn’t given details. He didn’t know who I was working with. But he was proud of me. I wondered what any of us did to deserve the love of animals or small children. The purest souls.

  I was smiling, thinking about that, as I jogged up the front stairs to the school. The administrators knew me, and I waved my fingers in greeting as I walked the familiar hall leading to the library, where the kids whose parents and guardians worked late waited and did their homework.

  “Wait a second, Carissa! He’s not here. Why are you?”

  The secretary’s voice stopped me in my tracks and turned my blood to ice.

  I turned slowly, oh, so slowly
. A million scenarios flew through my brain at warp speed, one more terrible than the other. Zack had come back for him. He was sick and had to go to the hospital. Or injured. Or there was an emergency, and the kids had to be evacuated.

  Or a stranger had…

  “Where is he?” I whispered, glaring at her.

  She frowned, pointing to the door. “He’s gone. For the day. I thought you…”

  “What?” I rushed at her and had her by the shoulders before I knew my feet were moving. “What are you saying? He’s gone? Somebody came and got him? They signed him out?” My desperation grew with every word, just like the volume of my voice. By the time I finished, I was screaming.

  “Let’s see who it was.” The old woman was shaking as she rushed to the office.

  I pushed past her and spun the clipboard to face me, eyes searching frantically for his name.

  Thomas Lomax. Signed out at 3:00 by a scribble. A fucking scribble.

  “Did you see them?” I shouted, shoving the clipboard at her chest. Useless damn thing. “Man or woman? Old? Young? Who was it?”

  “We can check the security footage,” she babbled. “I’m sure we have them on camera, whoever they are.” She turned to ask somebody a question, but I didn’t know who she asked or what she asked because I was falling into a deep, dark hole I would never climb my way out of.

  Every breath I took, I fell deeper. I would never stop falling.

  When my cell buzzed with a text message, snug in the pocket of my jacket, I barely noticed.

  “Maybe that’s the person who picked him up for you,” the secretary suggested, like she was clinging to any last shred of hope. Just like I was.