Jensen turned toward the house, an old farmhouse that had been expanded too many times over the years. The barns behind it were mostly for show now. While the family business had begun here, it had grown to the point of needing bigger, more commercial barns. Those barns were on their grandparents’ property.
Baylee waited for Jensen to leave before she shifted back. While being naked was half of shifter culture, she never felt right doing it around her older brother. Perhaps that had been born from Baylee’s habit of keeping secrets. She didn’t like feeling vulnerable.
Unless the hands making her vulnerable were Gale Montoya’s.
She shook herself. That wasn’t a thought she could ever have again.
Turning toward the house, Baylee was surprised to find that there were still lights on. She guessed Jensen could have turned them on, but as she waited, she heard voices. Before anyone could open the door, Baylee tugged on her shirt and skirt. She carried her boots in her hands and readied herself for whoever waited inside.
“Give her a minute, Mom. She flew home, so she needs to get dressed before coming inside.” Jensen said the last sentence louder to let Baylee know there were strangers visiting.
She sighed and fought back the desire to turn tail and run. Her dragon wriggled uncomfortably. It told her she could take back to the skies and leave this all behind, but Baylee knew the truth. If she ran now, her family would never let her live it down. She would always live within the confines of familial expectations, no matter how she tried to rebel.
No boundaries would ever save her.
She pushed the door open and offered what had to be, at best, a queasy smile. An unfamiliar man sat at the kitchen table. Upon seeing Baylee, the man’s face lit up. He stood, his chair scraping against the floor. He paused and cringed.
Baylee did her best not to roll her eyes but found herself halfway through the act of doing so when Jensen pinched her arm. She flinched and wrinkled her nose at him. Jensen pointedly looked in the man’s direction.
Why doesn’t he have a duty? She wondered venomously. Why isn’t everyone breathing down the back of his neck, asking when he’s going to get married and make babies?
The man introduced himself, but Baylee immediately forgot his name. She was stuck on Jensen’s ability to decide his own fate. He could do what this young man was doing and take a tour of other dragon families to decide which young woman he would make into a Barnes. If he was lucky, the young woman might even make things easier by agreeing.
“Your mother was just telling me all about you,” the young dragon man said.
Baylee looked to her mother. Had this man’s voice even finished cracking yet? He couldn’t have been older than Baylee. She feared that he might have been younger than her, even.
“She says you haven’t filled out any college applications yet.”
Baylee narrowed her eyes. She was about four years too late for college and didn’t see a point in going when everything she learned to do would be taken from her. “I haven’t decided what I want to do for the rest of my life.”
“Baylee,” her mother said, that hint of angry momma dragon rumbling in her voice.
The young man glanced between Baylee and her mother.
“So, what are you doing here so late, Chad?” Baylee pushed past him, grabbed a can of sparkling water off the counter, and cracked it open before turning to face him.
He ducked his chin, almost pouting. “It’s Charlie.”
She hadn’t meant to get his name wrong, but she also didn’t care. Looking to her mother, Baylee tried to silently ask what this guy was doing here. Baylee had five years left. She fully intended to use those years however she liked. She’d squandered the past three years, letting anxiety consume them. No one else would steal what she had left.
She would not give them to someone who wasn’t the love of her life.
3
Gale Montoya wanted payback.
The Barnes family had struck again. All night, his thoughts had been consumed by the dragon woman. He could still smell her on his skin. Her scent was so strong that it made his head spin. When he closed his eyes and prayed for sleep to give him the smallest respite, the ghost of her touch whispered against his skin.
Gale gave up on trying to sleep just as the sun crept over the horizon. With the clouds bleeding shades of gold and fuchsia against a slate sky, Gale flew towards town. His beast tried more than once to divert him, as if it could smell the Barnes woman on the wind currents. He restrained himself and landed just outside of town, where he could dress and finish his journey on foot.
A day like this required caffeine, and Gale wasn’t about to stand around his own kitchen where Cash could ask all sorts of questions. While Gale walked into the center of town, he tried to plan his revenge.
He knew what he would do! He would turn the tables on her. When he next saw the Barnes temptress, he would lead her somewhere private. He would make her beg for him until his name was all she could say. He would get her on her knees.
Yes, on her knees like a good girl. Just for him. He knew she wouldn’t hesitate to serve him because he would repay the favor…
What was he thinking? The plan was to leave her wanting! Gale wasn’t supposed to indulge her. If he gave her exactly what she wanted, then that meant she won. This game had only just begun, but Gale was determined to win at all costs.
He shoved the café door open. A wave of warm, coffee-scented air greeted him and invigorated his senses. Barely a moment later, his nostrils burned from the overwhelming scent. For people like him, these places were a nightmare after a while.
But, as he placed his order, another scent teased his senses. Sweet and tart, the smell of red currants gripped him all over again. He groaned and looked over his shoulder to survey the café.
At first, he didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. A woman in a suit furiously tapped away at her laptop keyboard while the Bluetooth device in her ear hummed with voices Gale could barely hear. A man with a newspaper laid out over his table scowled at his coffee then at the menu board behind the bar as if he had no idea what he’d ordered.
In the furthest corner, someone leaned back in their seat with their arms crossed over their chest. They had a hat pulled down over their face. What the hat didn’t cover, a pair of oversized sunglasses hid. Gale thought nothing of someone trying to nap in the corner.
But the smell of red currants would not leave him. It wasn’t coming from the businesswoman or the confused man. It came from the kid slouched in the corner. Except, that wasn’t a kid. The longer Gale stared, the more he could make out the definition of womanly curves beneath her sweater.
His blood froze. He’d run into the Barnes woman once more. If she’d noticed him, she didn’t show it. He considered getting his coffee and hiding in the opposite corner to see what she was going to do. Then the barista called out his name.
The Barnes woman didn’t move. Hell, he didn’t even know her name. A bit of shame soured the back of his throat as he recalled all the things he’d imagined doing with a woman whose name he didn’t even know. His mother had raised a more respectable man than that.
But the Barnes women turned Montoya men into fools.
There was a reason he had been warned to stay away from them.
Gale claimed his drink and gave in to his beast, which turned him toward the Barnes woman hiding in the corner. As he approached, her shoulders tensed.
“Go away,” she grumbled. “I’m hiding.”
Gale hesitated before saying, “You know whoever you’re hiding from can track your scent. Right?”
She whipped off her sunglasses to serve him a dirty glare. “Why do you think I’m hiding in a coffee shop? Most of the time, I can’t smell anything in here.”
Gale hooked his foot in the leg of the nearby chair, yanked it out, and moved to drop into it. “Most of the time?”
“Well…” Her brow furrowed. She tilted her head. “I can smell you above everything else.
That’s not usually how this works.”
Gale realized the same had happened to him. Though the sharp tang of coffee still burned his nose, it wasn’t as strong as it usually was. Instead, the sweetness of the Barnes woman’s scent softened it.
He tried not to think about why that might be.
Baylee had been surprised when she watched Gale walk through the café doors. So stunned, in fact, that her heart had nearly stopped. When he didn’t notice her at first, she’d thought she was in the clear. Not that she wanted him to walk away.
Her beast had whined and scraped to get at him. But Baylee hadn’t wanted to give herself away. The Montoya man was cute and knew how to touch a woman, but if she was caught with him in public, then her mother would tie her to the nearest non-Montoya dragon man before Baylee could say hell no.
Despite her disguise, Gale noticed her. Now, he sat across from her—with the chair pulled a good foot away from the table, of course.
“So, what are you hiding from? If you wanted to hide from me, you could have picked any Barnes farm and succeeded.”
Baylee swallowed a sigh of frustration. She sat up, leaning against the table like Gale’s presence had a magnetic pull. “My mother invited a guy from out of town to stay at our place for the weekend.”
Gale lifted one brow. It slowly sank as the implications behind her words dawned on him. Surprisingly, a scowl tugged at the corners of his mouth. She didn’t expect a Montoya man to feel bad for her.
Baylee shrugged. “It is what it is, I guess. I don’t have much time left, anyway.”
He leaned forward as if her words were a rope that yanked him toward her. When he spoke, his words were rushed and almost frantic. “What do you mean? You’re not dying. Are you?”
Baylee had to bite her lip to keep from laughing at him. Of course, a male dragon wouldn’t understand. They were pushed into arranged marriages, too, but the expectations placed on them were different. The man got to keep his name and his place in the clan. He got to watch his wife carry their children for him.
It wasn’t even that she hated the idea of starting a family. Children were adorable. She loved her cousins’ kids. Baylee wanted to be the one to hold the threads of her own fate. No matter what she did, it felt as though they were plucked from her fingertips and woven into someone else’s tale.
“I’m not dying,” she amended. She opened her mouth to explain, but her voice betrayed her and vanished. She quickly snapped it shut again and diverted her gaze.
Gale’s chair squeaked across the floor as he inched closer. Baylee’s attention flicked between Gale and the door to the café behind him. If someone from either of their families walked in right now, they would both be screwed. If Jensen or her mother saw her talking to Gale, they would ship Baylee off in a heartbeat.
Wasn’t that exactly what she was trying to prevent? If so, then why was she leaning into this man’s presence? Why did she savor the smell of smoke and man on the air?
She looked to his hand, curled around the base of his drink on the table. It had locked around her throat the night before. She could almost feel the imprint of it in her flesh still. The things that she would risk to have him hold her again were ridiculous.
“I’m Gale, by the way.” He kept his voice low.
She understood. It felt like even the walls could be listening in on them. The wrongness of this meeting made her heart race. Who knew the thrill of exhilaration she sought could be reached by just hearing a Montoya’s first name?
She chewed her lower lip. It would be too easy to give Teagan or Ember’s name. Then, if it got around that Baylee was fraternizing with the enemy, there would be some sort of deniability. But Baylee didn’t hate her cousins. She didn’t want the consequences of her idiocy falling on their heads.
Because she already knew she wanted to do this again.
“Baylee,” she whispered.
Gale’s lips twisted to the side. He glanced over his shoulder. When he turned back to her, there was an unexpected grin on his lips. “Do you want to …maybe get out of here?”
She hadn’t been expecting an invitation. The words sparked through her like electricity. They yanked her from her seat and tugged her toward the door. She paused only to grab her drink and Gale. He laughed as she tugged him out of his seat, but he didn’t fight her.
What was this?
They weren’t supposed to be friends. Clearly, Gale wanted to pull a prank on her. Baylee knew she deserved it after what she’d done the night before, but she wasn’t going to let him get an advantage on her today. She would keep a keen eye on him…and his butt.
Outside, she paused. Here, in the open, touching Gale seemed illicit. She almost pulled away from him before an idea hit her.
“I know a place we can go. Do you trust me?” She looked to him, knowing that he wouldn’t say yes to a question like that.
Instead, his brows peaked as they folded together. Baylee laughed and dragged him along. The place she had in mind wasn’t far away. There, they wouldn’t have to worry about prying eyes. No one would stop them as she foiled Gale’s plans for payback.
But they had to get there first.
Callum Barnes stared down at his phone with an inscrutable look on his face. He stood by his parked truck, which was so far away from the curb that it could have stopped traffic. Baylee stopped dead in her tracks and panicked. Gale crashed into her back, began to complain, then followed her gaze to where Callum stood.
He hadn’t noticed them yet. Baylee considered shoving Gale away and yelling at him. If she did that, then she could save face. It might even teach Gale a lesson for trying to screw with her. Yet, she didn’t want to get Gale in trouble. Word would get around, and his family might ask questions.
Before Baylee could make a decision, Gale wound his arm around her middle and dove into a nearby alley. He pressed her against the wall and covered her from view with his body. She looked up at him, his head hanging over hers. Her heart flipped at the sight of his excited smirk.
“I don’t want to get my ass beat by the Barnes enforcer,” Gale whispered. He added a wink.
Baylee clung to his shirt as Callum’s scent grew stronger. She pulled Gale into her front, tilted her head back, and kissed him on the lips. At first, Gale didn’t move. Then a growl filled his throat. His lips crushed hers, echoing the hunger now gnawing at her insides.
To her surprise, his tongue pushed past her lips. She tilted her head back and opened for him. She didn’t know how much time had passed, but by the time they broke apart Callum had gotten back into his truck and left. Clinging to Gale, Baylee wasn’t ready for the moment to end.
But Gale backed away, and Baylee had to let go of his shirt. He leaned out of the alley and peered up and down the street before giving her a signal that everything was good. When she didn’t move, he extended a hand to her.
“Well? I thought you had someplace you wanted to show me.”
Baylee donned a mask of confidence and pushed off the wall. She prayed he couldn’t tell just how badly she trembled when she took his hand. Gale had left her shaken, even more than he had the night before.
Breaking the rules had always excited her, but this was something different. She took the lead and steered him out of town to a trail that broke away from the street. Once they were surrounded by trees and their autumn foliage, her shoulders eased away from her ears. She exhaled and tried to ignore the bubbling questions inside her.
Right now, she should enjoy her freedom. She didn’t know when it would be taken away from her. One wrong misstep, and the rug would be yanked out from under her feet.
“I’m starting to think you’re leading me away from any witnesses, so you can murder me,” Gale said behind her.
Baylee laughed. “Of course, you would assume that. Your family always assumes the worst of us when we’re only trying to protect ourselves.”
“Protect yourselves from what? When’s the last time a Montoya hurt anyone?”
Sto
pping, Baylee whirled around. “Oh, I don’t know. How about that new Mystery Spot all the tourists are visiting? Everyone knows that didn’t happen by itself. I heard that one of your uncles married a fae woman, and she got bloodthirsty after an ugly divorce.”
Gale crossed his arms over his chest. “Who gave you that idea?”
Baylee sobered. “My cousin, Theo.”
Theo hadn’t been the same since he’d intervened in that fight. He’d been patrolling at the time, trying to keep the town safe because threats came in all shapes and sizes. The Barnes wanted to monitor the boundaries of their territory. Theo didn’t talk much about what happened there, but the Mystery Spot and Theo’s scars were explanation enough.
Gale scratched the back of his head. “I didn’t know one of yours got caught in that.”
Baylee shrugged and turned back around. The path beneath their feet steadily began to incline.
“I guess our families can’t help but hurt one another,” she said under her breath.
Gale’s knuckles brushed the back of her hand. He didn’t say anything, but when she glanced his way, she noticed the gears spinning in his eyes. The man wanted to say something but couldn’t figure out what.
They came from two very different worlds despite living only a handful of miles apart. For a pair of families who hated one another, they’d managed to occupy the same town for generations. Too many terse words had been exchanged. A lot of them had come to blows, becoming fights that could have wrecked cities.
Baylee had always wondered why the Barnes family never left. Dragons valued what was theirs. To the Barnes, the farms they had cultivated across the county became their hoard. Each and every one of them was attached to the land. Though she’d wished the Montoyas could have been the ones to up and leave, Baylee knew that the Montoyas had the same kind of attachment to the land.
The Montoya Mines had closed down quite some time ago, but those tunnels still belonged to them. And so, neither family would budge. They held their ground and refused to let the grudge die.
Conquered Destiny (Great Plains Dragon Feud Book 1) Page 2
