by Kimber White
“Of course, Papa,” I said, reaching up to tussle his hair. “You know I wouldn’t miss it.”
He kissed me on the top of the head and smiled so his eyes twinkled. It was good to see. I was used to them holding so much sadness. I locked the gate behind me and headed up the porch steps.
Chapter Five
Grace
I dreamt of fire that night. It surrounded me. Orange flames licked my face, my stomach, consuming me from the inside out. But, my skin didn’t burn. I felt the pull from the center of my body and soared on a tendril of flame. The Chicago skyline twinkled below me.
It felt good. Sensual. My sex throbbed as the fire carried me higher. So warm. Then hot. So good. A pair of emerald green eyes hovered just in front of me. He was there, just out of reach. But at the same time, he was inside of me.
Gideon Brandhart. My orgasm rippled through me.
I woke groaning with pleasure and tangled in the bedsheets. Covered in sweat, my hair stuck to my face and for a moment I couldn’t see. I still felt like I was flying. Then, Baxter brought me back to earth as his tail flicked over my arm. He was standing at the end of the bed purring at me, waiting for his breakfast.
It was the most erotic dream of my life. I’d never come hard like that in a dream. I still ached with pleasure as I untangled myself and staggered to the shower. I ran the water ice cold, but it still didn’t cool me off. When I slid my finger between my legs, I found myself still throbbing and swollen. So, I stayed in that shower just a little bit longer that morning.
It was a rare Saturday morning as I had the day off. Tomorrow too. I felt guilty about it. Left to his own devices, there was no telling what Nico would do to the place.
I toweled off and put on a clean pair of shorts and a sports bra. A good run before the full heat of the day set in would do me good. I went for juice instead of coffee and flipped open my laptop for my daily email and social media roundup.
As soon as my local newsfeed popped up, my heart tripped. Gideon Brandhart’s rugged, gorgeous face smiled back at me. It was a publicity shot, taken by a professional photographer. There was a ribbon cutting ceremony today downtown. The Brandhart Foundation had made a sizeable endowment and their name was going on a new art center downtown. Gideon would be there representing his family.
In one hour.
This was crazy. Ludicrous. No matter what else he was, this guy could be dangerous. He was a shifter. It didn’t matter what kind. He wasn’t our kind. How many times had my father warned me about keeping my distance?
I had every reason to just shut my laptop and forget I ever saw that news alert. Except, I didn’t. Instead, I found myself changing into a simple, black sundress, wedge heels, and twisting my hair into a loose knot. I had no idea what the appropriate attire was for art center ribbon-cutting ceremonies, but I was going, dammit.
I don’t know what I expected to accomplish. I just knew when given a chance to run into Gideon again, I was going to take it. I grabbed The L just in time. Thirty more seconds and it would have been too late. As it was, the ceremony was already underway by the time I got there.
Gideon stood on a podium in a crisp, dark suit. God, he was handsome. Stunning. Cameras snapped away as he stood smiling next to the mayor. A few other politicians offered their platitudes on how much the Brandhart family had done for the community.
Gideon was gracious. He waved to the crowd and took the gold, ceremonial scissors from a female councilwoman on his left. Her face went flushed as he touched her wrist. A flare of jealousy went through me, driving my breath from my lungs. The woman was probably twice his age, but my pheromones didn’t seem to care.
He stepped forward as they raised the ribbon. As Gideon sliced through it, he scanned the crowd. Anyone else might have just thought it was a trick of the light. The sun was high and bright today. I saw. I knew. I was fifty feet away, nestled in a crowd of about two hundred people. But when Gideon looked up, his eyes locked with mine. His flared. The green going bright gold and swirling with flame. The same flame I felt in my dreams.
He saw me.
A tremor went through his hands as he tried to cut the ribbon. It took him two tries. Someone on the stage cracked a joke. They all laughed. Gideon handed the scissors to the man next to him and waved to the crowd.
He turned then and whispered something to the man standing beside him. His assistant maybe. Someone who worked for him, clearly, because the man’s back went stiff and he nodded, ready to do whatever Gideon said.
I shouldn’t have come. My heart thundered in my throat. I couldn’t breathe. Desire burned through me. I was both too close to Gideon and not close enough. He waved to the crowd again then handed the microphone to the mayor. A second later, he disappeared from the podium.
If my father were here, he’d tell me to run. He wasn’t, though. It was just me. Gideon and me. I shouldn’t be here. I turned to head back down the street. A light hand came from nowhere and touched my arm.
“Miss Call?” A tall, bald man wearing mirrored sunglasses and a dark, tailored suit blocked my path. He had an earpiece in like a Secret Service agent.
“I...yes?”
“If you’ll just come with me. Mr. Brandhart would like to speak to you.”
Again, my heart was a jackhammer. All reason flew right out of my head and I found myself following Gideon’s body man to the building across the street.
Chapter Six
Gideon
She was there. I knew the moment she stepped into the crowd. There were hundreds, but they all just melted away. It was as if the world stopped and everything faded that wasn’t Grace.
I don’t know how I got through my speech. My dragon thundered in my heart. The mayor handed me those ridiculous ribbon-cutting scissors and I saw a hint of scales just beneath my cuff. She was waving at the crowd or else she might have seen too.
Stupid. It was so stupid of me to think I could handle something public like this without one of my brothers here to spot me. We had a rhythm. We could sense when another of us was losing control. We couldn’t always stop it, but we could at least cloak each other until whoever was losing his grip could get the hell away.
Now, there was nobody but me. And then there was Grace. Her scent came to me even though she stood at least fifty yards away. There were no other shifters here, thank God. If there had been, no power on this earth would have kept my dragon contained. As it was, my vision went pure gold as I handed the scissors back.
Henry stood beside me. He was human, but had worked for my family for over a decade. He knew enough about what we were to recognize the signs. I gave him one command. Henry slipped back into the crowd to carry it out. For now, all I could do was get the hell out of there as fast as possible.
Tearing at my tie, I practically dove into the backseat of the black stretch limo parked behind the new art center building.
“Take me home,” I barked. I didn’t have to tell my driver I meant fast.
It would have been so much easier to just let my dragon out and fly to the helipad atop the Brandhart Building on Lakeshore Drive. If it were any other day, I would have. But, I had to get through this somehow. I felt too shaky. If I shifted now, this might be the time I couldn’t shift back.
My driver called after me as he pulled up to the curb of the Brandhart Building. I couldn’t even form words to answer. I just stormed through the front revolving doors and headed straight for the elevator. Even that was probably foolish. My dragon could rip the building apart if I shifted here. I knew exactly what my mother would say. She’d tell me to take to the sky and head for the ocean. Our ancestral lair was in Scotland, the Knoydart Isles. My dragon could do the least amount of damage there, but the idea of putting an ocean between Grace Call and me was enough to drive me insane.
As fast as I’d gotten here, Henry got Grace here faster. As the elevator opened to the roof, she was standing there. The wind picked up and caught her hair, lifting it straight up as she turned.
; She came. My God. She came. Two urges slammed into me at once. I wanted to scold her for being foolish enough to meet me here. And I wanted to pull her close and crush my lips to hers.
Madness. It was getting so much worse.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. The firestorm still raged within me. I kept my eyes down, hoping she wouldn’t see.
She crossed her arms in front of her and gave me a wry smile. “Well, you asked me to come. In fact, your body man down there pretty much insisted on it.”
She had me thunderstruck. God, I couldn’t think straight around this woman and hadn’t for weeks.
“You could have declined.”
“Is that what you wanted?”
She was standing no more than two feet in front of me. I could see a tiny pulse beating a furious pace in her temple. It wasn’t fear making her heart race though. I scented her desire coming off her in waves. I clenched my fists to try and stave off my own. My talons came out.
What had I been thinking asking her to come up here? It was almost as if…
“What are you?” she said, her voice hard, insistent.
There was no pretense with her. There never was. I felt like I’d known this woman even before I was born. Impossible. It was the sickness making me think like this. I wasn’t thinking at all, and that was the problem.
“You’re not safe around me,” I said.
“You make no sense.” She took a step toward me. “No…that’s not even it. It’s like…I make no sense since the second you walked into that bagel shop, Gideon.”
“I just…you can’t be around me. I can’t be around you.”
“And yet, you went to a hell of a lot of trouble to have your man half kidnap me and bring me up here. I mean…why here? I’m on top of a roof, Gideon. Don’t you think there were a few less…dramatic places for us to talk? You know, normal people usually do this over a cup of coffee. A walk in the park.”
“I tried that,” I said. “You pulled a knife on me and set a pack of dogs after me.”
Grace’s mouth formed a perfect circle and her dark brows furrowed. She was so beautiful. Her hair was almost black, like mine. Her eyes…the shade matched my own. Every instinct in my body told me what she was.
Mine!
“I just wanted to talk to you someplace…where I knew we wouldn’t be interrupted.”
Grace took a step back. She uncrossed her arms and slammed them to her sides. I could feel the turmoil swirling inside of her. If she were shifter herself, I would see it now in her eyes. If it weren’t for a thousand-year-old witch’s curse, I knew in my heart she would be. I just wished it were enough to make a difference.
“Fine. So, I’m here. All the way up here, Gideon. I told you, I don’t even make sense to myself since you walked into my life. All I know is that...I know you. So, say what you have to say.”
And then she had me speechless. I opened my mouth to answer but couldn’t find the words. What exactly had I hoped to accomplish bringing her up here? The thing is, I hadn’t thought that far ahead. The moment I sensed her, I just wanted to get her as far away from that crowd as possible. I wanted to protect her. But, as we stood there, staring at each other and the wind blew even harder, I knew the thing she needed the most protection from was me.
“It was a mistake,” I finally said. “I shouldn’t have brought you here, but I shouldn’t have ever come back to that bagel shop. I just…I wasn’t…”
Something changed in her posture. Her shoulders dropped. The pulse in her temple slowed. She got brave. Too brave. Or foolish. She lifted her hand and brought it to my face.
Fire. Lightning. My dragon roared silently inside my head. She could see it. I didn’t have the strength to turn my eyes away.
“What are you, Gideon?” she asked, her voice no more than a whisper. “Tell me. Tell me why my father’s blade didn’t hurt you.”
She was so close, but not close enough. I didn’t want to hurt her. I wanted to devour her.
“Don’t,” I said, but it was the last thing I wanted. I wanted everything.
“You came to me,” she said, her voice growing more insistent. “Tell me what this is. Tell me who you are.”
“Something you should stay far away from,” I said, my voice booming. I don’t know how I did it, but I found the strength to pull away from her touch. I knew in my heart it would be the last time I ever could.
“You should listen to your father,” I said. “Stay away from men like me.”
The corner of her mouth lifted in a little half smile. She had pouty, bee-stung lips. The kind that begged to be kissed. She would know how to use them on me. She was made for me. Centuries of instinct swirled inside of me.
She was human. It didn’t matter that she had shifter blood in her too. The things I wanted to do to her and with her were impossible. She’d never survive the flame.
But Shae did. That was my dragon talking. My brother Xander had taken a human mate last year. It should have killed her, but she was protected by a one-in-million spell. Blood magic. The kind no living witch could cast.
“You have to go,” I said, my voice croaking out of me. I didn’t sound like myself.
“I want to know what you are!” she shouted. “You haven’t given me a single straightforward answer. You came to me! You asked me to come up here to talk. Well, I’m here. So talk. I know you want to tell me. I can see it in...your eyes.”
Dragonfire. I knew what she saw. I could see it reflected back to me in her eyes. I’d seen one of the wolves in her family. They were Tundra Wolves. Siberian. Blue eyes. White or black fur. She carried their recessive gene. It didn’t matter what her mother looked like. Grace’s eyes shouldn’t look like they did. Hers were bright green. Just like mine.
Gideon! My brother Finn’s voice reached me. He was seven floors down inside the building, but that didn’t matter. We had a telepathic connection that grew strongest when our dragons raged.
“You have to go,” I said. “I’m sorry. I don’t have the answers you want. I shouldn’t have brought you here. I only meant to tell you…that you should.”
“No!”
A different kind of fire raged within Grace. I took a step back, staying out of her reach. If she touched me again, I knew I wouldn’t be able to control my dragon. Maybe that’s what I wanted all along. She was asking all the right questions. Why did I ask her to meet me all the way up here?
Because I didn’t want to stay in control.
“Gideon,” she said, her voice softer. She carried her little black purse across her body. I loved the way her dress hugged her curves as the wind blew it back. She pulled the knife out, extending the blade.
“Don’t,” I said.
“Dragonsteel,” she said. “Weapons forged in dragonsteel have enough magic to kill any other kind of shifter except for one.”
“I said don’t.”
In that moment, I almost wished her blade did have the power to take my life. I didn’t want to die, but the agony of not touching her was nearly unbearable. She got closer. I stayed still as a statue.
Grace flipped the blade with expert dexterity. Someone had taken the time to really teach her how to use it. With a flick of her wrist, she pressed the knife’s edge against my neck. I felt the ancient heat of the dragon who forged it. Its magic called to mine.
“I need to know what you are. I need to know why I can’t get you out of my head. I need to know. This blade. It won’t touch you. Will it, Gideon?” Her question was a dare. She pressed against the blade. The point just pierced my skin. I stayed still.
One breath. Two. Grace’s eyes widened, and again I saw my fire reflected in them.
“You brought me up here for a reason,” she whispered. “I think I know what it is.”
God help me, I may be one of the strongest creatures on the planet, but this woman rendered me helpless. I caught her wrist and pulled the blade away. The moment our skin touched, lightning went off behind my eyes.
I don’t
know who moved first. Maybe we moved together. But, the next thing I knew, I had Grace in my arms and my lips pressed against hers. She was delicious torture. Heat, light, and sound. Fire raced through my blood. I drank her in.
Then, everything went blindingly bright. I pushed away from her, no longer able to contain the beast inside of me. She came here for answers. She asked me what I was. In the next instant, she saw.
My wings unfurled and the storm clouds closed in. Anyone on the ground would see nothing but a brewing storm. It should have shielded me from Grace’s eyes too, even though she stood right in front of me. But, it didn’t. She saw it all.
My dragon rose high above her and I let out a column of fire. It felt so good. So free. The chains around my heart slipped.
“Gideon!”
On either side of me, my brothers’ dragons closed in. Finn let out a blast of heat to my right. Loch to my left. They pushed me back, sensing my loss of control.
Somehow, I found enough to hurtle back to the roof. I landed with a great thud that shook the building. I dug my talons into the concrete.
Grace never screamed. She came to me, white as a ghost. But, she was brave. In her heart, I think she’d known all along what I was. I was fooling myself to think I didn’t want her to.
She reached for me again. Too brave. Too strong. Her fingers brushed the underside of my left wing. She traced the intricate webbing and kaleidoscope of scales.
“Gideon,” she whispered.
One touch. One word. Her soft breath across my skin. It was all I needed to come back into myself. In the blink of an eye, I called my dragon back. I stood before her as the man she knew.
Finn and Loch shifted and went to the row of lockers we kept beside the rooftop door. Finn threw me a pair of pants. I pulled them on and turned back to Grace.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She shook her head and dropped her jaw. I can’t explain how, but I felt the blood rush to her head. Then her eyes rolled back and she dropped down in a dead faint. I caught her just before she hit the ground.
