Crouching Tigress Horny Dragon (Fire Mates #3)

by Lexxie Couper

  She thought of the obscene amount of money she herself had in bank accounts throughout the world.

  “Oh,” she said before her father could disconnect the call, her heart racing, “can you also bring the keys to my Barrington apartment, please? The investment property I bought last year? I’m going to give it to a woman I met tonight.”

  She didn’t wait for Julian to respond.

  She needed to get to the police station. She needed to make sure the woman and her child were safe.

  And then, after she got some answers from her father, she needed to track down the Australian.

  He may have given her the most incredible orgasm of her life, but he was still a dragon and she was an Extraho Venator.

  That was the only relationship, the only connection between them that mattered.

  A relationship that would end when her crossbow bolt pierced his scaly hide and she cut his heart from his chest.

  Chapter 5

  The sting of human urine, disinfectant, and vomit filled Ryan’s breath.

  He struggled to open his eyes, his head and shoulder a throbbing world of dull pain.

  Whoa. What had hit him?

  Bright light attacked him, white and glaring and directed straight at his face.

  The smell of sick and dying people swamped over him. Electronic beeps and wheezing artificial breaths scraped at his ears.

  Where was he?

  Squinting against the light, he repositioned himself on the…the…bed? He was on a bed? How had he come to be on a bed?

  Eyes protesting against the glare, he looked around himself.

  He was in a hospital room.

  His breath caught in his throat.

  Shit, he was in a hospital room. Ah fuck, no. No, no, no. This wasn’t good.

  Dragon shifters and human hospitals did not a good combination make.

  Looking down, he saw only a hospital gown covered him. No clothes or undergarments to be found. A white bandage wrapped his right shoulder with firm pressure. He was also connected to one of the beeping, wheezing machines positioned beside the bed via an IV and some other tube.

  It took his brain a second to realize the other tube was feeding oxygen into him through his nose.

  Ryan ground his teeth, wrapped his fingers around the IV tube and yanked it out of his arm.

  A distant shard of minimal pain later and the needle no longer pierced his skin.

  Good. Who the fuck knew what the doctors had been pumping into him?

  Tossing the IV tube aside, he pulled the oxygen feed from his nose, up over his head and let it fall to the floor.

  Damn it, how long had he been here?

  Closing his eyes for a moment, he focused on his body.

  A burning hunger broiled and churned in the pit of his gut and groin. The mating fire. He was still in the mating fire. He’d met Deanne in the bar at least four or five hours ago. They’d consummated their relationship a little while after that.

  Ha, good one, Ryan. What relationship? The one where she denied what she is and then somehow knocked you unconscious?

  Growling, he planted his palms on the thin mattress and swung his legs over the edge.

  The floor was like icy bites of pressure on his bare feet.

  His head swam, a sudden tidal wave of black fog washing over him.

  Around him, the beeping machines continued. He heard someone cough. Someone said something but he had no idea what.

  Fuzzy. It was fuzzy. Muffled.

  The black fog rolled through his vision. His stomach did a loop-the-loop.

  Whoa.

  Dragging in a deep, slow breath, he closed his eyes and counted to five, willing his rapid heartbeat to steady.

  What the hell had Deanne hit him with?

  “Buddy?” a voice said from nearby. “I don’t think you should have—”

  Ryan opened his eyes and stood.

  “Hey, hey, hey!” Startled shock filled the voice. “Buddy, you need to sit—”

  Swinging his stare to the elderly man gaping at him from the bed next to his, he frowned. “How long have I been here?”

  The old guy gaped some more, head wobbling in what might or might not be a shake.

  Ryan scowled. What was the old guy’s problem? Hadn’t he ever seen someone get out of bed before?

  “What’s wrong with your eyes?” the man croaked, shrinking back into his bed.

  Ryan froze. Eyes? What was wrong with his—

  The room. Its colors. Its light. You’re seeing like you would if you were in dragon form, not human. Your eyes…

  He swung around, searching for a mirror.

  None. What he did spy was the polished steel pole attached to the headboard of the elderly man’s bed.

  With a low growl he definitely recognized as not human, he damn near launched himself across the bed he’d just vacated, grabbed at the pole, and stared at his warped reflection in it.

  “Wh-what are you doing?” his fellow patient gasped.

  Shit.

  Ryan’s heart slammed up into his throat.

  Shit. His eyes weren’t their normal color. Or even human.

  They were his dragon’s eyes. No, not quite. They were some fucked-up mash of the two.

  Shit.

  He needed to get out of here.

  He needed to find Deanne. He needed to talk to Tyson. He needed—

  “Sir,” a new voice—this one female and aghast—stabbed at him from behind. “You need to return to your bed now.”

  Ryan squeezed his eyes shut, gripping the pole like a lifeline. Was it whatever they’d pumped into him? What Deanne had done to him? Or something else? Was he overdue joining with his Fire Mate? He knew the twelve-hour period of the mating fire was one big, hot mess of sexual hunger and out-of-control libido. He knew it was one of the few times the dragon was more powerful than the human in control.

  Did he just need to find Deanne and sink into her exquisite heat to stop whatever was going on?

  Christ, he really should have listened to his brother when Tyson was talking about the mating fire. Was this what Tyson and Sera went through? Or had it been different for them because Sera was human?

  Or was this different because Deanne was fighting it?

  “Sir? You need to get back into—” A firm hand touched his shoulder.

  He spun before the woman—the nurse, maybe? Or a visitor to the old guy?—could say bed.

  Fearing what was going to happen, but needing to see all the same, he fixed her with a level stare. “I have to go.”

  He hadn’t meant the words to come out as a snarl. He was unraveling. Losing control of his dragon.

  This so wasn’t good.

  The nurse squeaked, sheer terror flooding her face. “Oh my God, what…what’s wrong with your eyes?”

  He pushed past her. There was no other option.

  Gown flapping around his thighs and bare butt, he hurried from the room, ignoring the nurse shouting behind him.

  The slap of his bare feet on the linoleum floor punched through his head, an echo of his heartbeat punching in his ears.

  People shrank away from him, their shocked stares and horrified cries telling him he definitely didn’t look his best.

  A rain of fire prickled his skin. His blood turned molten. His bones the same. The air he sucked in seared his lungs immediately, the moisture particles in each inhalation boiled by his body by the time they filled his trachea.

  Fuck.

  He was on the verge of shifting.

  “Stop!” a male behind him yelled. Ryan recognized the sound of authority in the command. Cop. Or security. Either way, he couldn’t do as instructed.

  Increasing his speed, he dodged and weaved patients and medical staff alike, seeking an exit.

  “Stop!” the order came again, louder this time.

  The air around Ryan began to waver. His head roared. His skin burned.

  Slamming against a door on his right, Ryan sprinted down a long corridor. He ye
lled at people to get out of his way.

  They did. Usually screaming.

  The cop/security guard followed, shouting stop over and over.

  He’s going to risk shooting you soon, Conley, if you don’t do something.

  The thought, sardonic and amused, scratched at Ryan’s fraying control, a second before the inevitable happened.

  “Stop,” the demand boomed after him, louder than before and tainted with disbelief, “or I’ll shoot.”

  Clichéd, that sardonic side of Ryan tsked.

  The crack of a gun firing shut the sardonic side up. A heartbeat before a bullet scraped against Ryan’s left deltoid.

  Crap. The guard/cop really had shot at him? What the fuck? Where the hell was the Taser?

  The dragon he was screeched, incensed. Enraged.

  Ryan ignored it, just as he ignored the gun-toting cop/guard running after him. Blood seeped from the fresh wound in his arm, but he ignored that as well. It meant nothing. It would heal before anyone would see it, including himself.

  What he needed to see was a way out. A door. An exit sign.

  “Stop!” the guard shouted.

  Does he really think I’m going to? Ryan wondered, skidding sideways into a sharp left before scrambling back into a sprint down a new corridor.

  An alarm began to blast around him.

  This was so not—

  A second shot cracked the air, puncturing the wall on Ryan’s right. Directly above the head of an elderly woman in a wheelchair.

  The woman screamed.

  “Whoa!” Ryan burst out, dread an icy river through his veins. The idiot was going to kill someone, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be Ryan.

  Hitting the brakes, he stumbled to a halt, raising his hands to his head as he did so. “Don’t shoot,” he yelled over his shoulder, scanning the area around him.

  People cowered behind whatever they could, their faces white with fear.

  Fear of the mad man fleeing from a cop/guard, or fear of the monster possibly now standing in their midst, he didn’t know.

  His control over the shift was tenuous at best, but he was still human. At least, his form was human. What did he look like?

  “Don’t move!” The command was bellowed from behind him. “Turn around.”

  Which one is it? Ryan wondered with exasperated impatience as he searched his surroundings. There had to be an Exit sign somewhere. Surely. Even a door leading out to a—

  Ahhh.

  A relieved breath puffed from Ryan.

  There.

  “Turn around,” the order came again. “Slowly.”

  Stare fixed on his escape route, Ryan let his lips curl into a smile. “Dude,” he tossed over his shoulder. “I’m afraid slowly isn’t an option for me anymore.”

  Without waiting for a response—and really, there was no response that would change his next course of action—Ryan sprinted for the floor-to-ceiling picture window farther down the corridor, threw himself bandaged-shoulder first at the single pane and launched himself—in a shower of splintering glass—out of the hospital into the darkness beyond.

  He shifted just as gravity took greedy hold of his human body.

  Turned into his dragon form with such speed his body screamed in agony.

  The chilly night air licked over his scales and he propelled himself higher into the clouds. The fact it was still night was a cold comfort to him. Not just because it meant there was less of a chance of him being spotted flying away from the hospital. It meant he hadn’t been there long. It meant Deanne couldn’t be far away.

  It meant he would be able to find her, track her, easily.

  Once he found somewhere safe to land.

  Beating his wings with more force than he ever had before, he flew higher. The clouds would offer some coverage.

  His senses detected faint shouts way below him. If he were to risk a look backward, he suspected he’d see his gung-ho cop/guard gaping up at the sky from the broken window.

  He didn’t risk a look backward.

  Instead, he thumped his wings faster, streamlining his body as much as he could to increase his speed.

  For reasons he didn’t think entirely sound, he returned to the park near the bar where Deanne had first approached him. The chances of his clothes still being there were slim, but slim was better than buck-naked-and-hunted.

  With the craziness of actually mating with Deanne, her freaking out about it, her trying to run away from him, her denying what she was, and then her sucker-punching him after he’d let her plummet through the sky for a while, he’d forgotten there was an Extraho Venator out there somewhere with Ryan and/or Deanne in his malevolent sights.

  The cold night wrapped around his human form the second he shifted back. Curled into a semi-crouch, he scanned the surrounding area.

  No movement. No hint of life beyond a family of squirrels in a nearby tree, startled, no doubt, by the sudden appearance and disappearance of an apex predator so close to them.

  He lowered his gaze to the dark ground, resuming his search for his previously discarded clothes. Hell, even his jeans would suffice. Something to allow him to get back to his hotel room without being arrested. As incredibly well hung as he was, he didn’t think the size of his dick would save him from being cuffed and dragged away for walking the Chicago streets naked.

  “C’mon, jeans,” he murmured in his best I’m-wanting-to-win-a-million-on-roulette voice.

  It took him way longer than he would have liked, but eventually he found his clothes. At some point while he’d been flying all over the place with Deanne dangling beneath him, some kind of animal had taken a dump on his shirt. Maybe one of the squirrels in the tree?

  Casting aside his shirt (damn, he’d really liked that shirt, as well), he let out a wry chuckle. Rendered shirtless by a small furry critter. Huh. Tyson would never let him live it down if he knew.

  A few moments later, wearing his jeans, sock (only one. Who knew where the other was?), boots, and jacket (suspiciously smelling very musky. More squirrel attention, perhaps?), he exited the park.

  By the time he reached his hotel—located a few blocks from the bar he’d first met Deanne—the tugging pull of the mating fire was beginning to build to an almost painful heat within him again.

  His body, his soul, everything he was, craved Deanne. Not just in a sexual way, but in every way. He ached to hear her voice, to smell her hair. He wanted to have a conversation with her. They’d yet to do that. What would they talk about? Was she a Game of Thrones fan? Did she prefer Marvel to DC? Did she like country and western music? Hard rock? He wanted to know. It was like an itch inside his head.

  And he wanted to slide into her tight heat more than he wanted breath.

  He wanted to feel her body sliding over his. Beneath his.

  Fuck.

  As he crossed his hotel room, his body consumed by a bonfire he had no hope of extinguishing alone, the distant eastern horizon began to grow purple with the rising sun.

  He hurried to the bathroom, stripped himself of what clothing he had and plunged himself into a cold shower.

  His hands worked his body. Every part of his body. It was a futile exercise, of course. Even when he ejaculated with the thought of Deanne filling his head, the hunger of the mating fire intensified, as if mocking his attempt to purge it from his system.

  He stood under the icy cold water, head down, eyes closed.

  If he didn’t find her again soon, he didn’t know what would happen.

  Help. He needed help to understand this.

  Killing the water, he stepped from the shower, snagged the towel from the rack and rubbed himself dry. His skin prickled and burned at the contact. The fire-mate delirium threatening to overwhelm him made the simple task a form of sensory torture.

  Christ. What would he do if he couldn’t find Deanne again? What would he become?

  “Fuck,” he groaned, throwing the towel aside.

  What would Deanne think of him not hanging
up the towel? Would it be one of those things that drove her mental? A pet peeve? Or would she just roll her eyes at him when he did it at home?

  A dry snort tore at the back of his throat. Home. He was already thinking of their home together. Shit, he needed to get this sorted out now.

  Before he went insane. An insane dragon shifter was not a good thing for the world. Not at all.

  Not bothering to dress, he snatched up his mobile phone (thankfully it had still been in his jeans pocket, along with his wallet and hotel room keycard) and rang his brother back in Australia. He had no idea what time it was in Sydney, but screw it; he needed to talk to Tyson.

  He needed answers on what was going on, if it was normal, and how he controlled it.

  The call connected three rings in.

  “Tyson Conley’s phone,” a male voice said, the Australian accent strangely wonderful to Ryan’s ears, even as it dawned on him it wasn’t his brother talking.

  “Kellan?” he asked, surprised.

  Kellan Donovan was a dragon shifter from Newcastle, a city two hours north of Sydney. He had a bitingly dry sense of humor and a reputation for being very laid-back. Ryan had met him only twice, but knew he and Tyson had an easy alliance. They were both alpha males and more than capable, from what Ryan understood, of taking the other out if any territorial dispute arose.

  It never had.

  Ryan’s heart thumped faster.

  With Ryan out of the country, and Tyson’s human Fire Mate heavily pregnant, it would be the perfect time for a dragon with a desire to expand his territory to make a move.

  Shit.

  “What the hell are you doing in Sydney answering Tyson’s mobile phone?” he asked.

  Kellan laughed. “Steady on down, Conley, and pull back on the reins of that protective anger you’ve got going there. I’m here because your sister-in-law has gone into labor.”

  Ryan blinked. “She’s what?”

  Kellan laughed again, the sound low and good-natured. “Labor. That thing females do when they’re about to give birth.”