Asher (Keepers Of The Lake Book 4)

by Emilia Hartley

He was tired of seeing his family happy while his insides felt like a twisted mess of fury and loneliness. Everyone had been happily mated off. Asher had to sit back and watch his friends smooch and smile and laugh. He couldn’t bear it anymore.

  Zara didn’t even want to spend five minutes with him. She did her best to push him away, but he couldn’t take the fucking hint. What kind of loser was he?

  “The waves sank our dock,” Heath said.

  “Come help us drag it out of the water and get it back into place,” Jude demanded.

  Asher heaved a sigh. He wanted to stay home and mope alone, but there wasn’t enough alcohol left to drown his misery. He might as well stave off the feelings by distracting himself for a little while.

  Zara slipped into the house through her open bedroom window. She always had it cracked in case she needed to enter unseen, which meant in her fox form. The clothes that Asher had lent her were hanging in a tree at the base of his deck stairs, so when she shifted back, she had nothing to put on.

  Once safe in her room, she shifted and grabbed a hoodie dress from her dresser. It was soft and comfortable, exactly what she needed because everything about her felt alive. Her skin sang with need. She craved touch, to be held close. It made her skin sensitive. Any other fabric would have felt like sandpaper.

  She zoned out for a moment, playing with the hoodie strings while she thought of Asher. Alone, he was sweet and soft. She never expected that side of him. He’d carried her to safety and given her the space she needed to calm down after the lake incident. She’d felt so safe that she had the best sleep of her life on his bed.

  On his bed. Where it smelled of him, like musk and spice.

  The front door slammed, and Zara jumped. She peered out her bedroom door to find Chelsea in the living room. Her roommate perked up when she saw Zara.

  “I didn’t know you were already home,” Chelsea said.

  “Uh, yeah.” She didn’t tell Chelsea where she’d been. It felt like a secret, for some reason. Like Zara couldn’t tell anyone else, or she would realize that it never happened.

  Zara stepped out to sit with her roommate. Chelsea looked like she was about to burst, so Zara figured she probably had a lot to say. Especially if she was just getting home.

  Chelsea tucked her knees under her body so that she was practically bouncing. “So, you won’t believe what happened to me today.”

  “I think I can. I was there, after all.”

  “You disappeared. It’s okay, I don’t blame you for running away from that freak accident. Anyway, like I was saying. I got pulled in by the tsunami. Can you guess who jumped in to save me? Oh my god, you’ll never guess.”

  Zara’s nostrils flared. Anger was hot in her chest.

  “Asher Knuden bravely pulled me out of the lake. It was so romantic. He told me he couldn’t imagine a world without me. Isn’t that the sweetest? He would have stayed with me if he didn’t have more people to save. I think our wedding is all but inevitable.”

  Red passed over Zara’s vision. She fought to keep her face straight and to not snarl like she wanted to. This possessive streak filled her, so sharp that she was afraid of it. Zara snatched a nearby throw pillow and dug her nails into it just to bleed a bit of that energy out through her fingers. Chelsea didn’t hear the ripping sound as Zara’s nails punctured the fabric.

  “After he jumped back in, the news crew came to interview me. I told them all about the brave man that saved me. The world is going to know that Asher and I are destined to be together. Can you believe it?”

  “Don’t you think he would have stuck around if he actually cared about you?” The words slipped out of Zara before she could stop herself.

  Chelsea stumbled over her words as if what Zara said slowly sank in. The room went quiet. Chelsea’s chatter died, and she turned a deadly glare on Zara.

  “Why can’t you just be happy for me? I have nothing else to look forward to in this life.”

  Zara rolled her eyes. “Don’t be dramatic. Your life isn’t so bad that it’s been reduced to some fantasy you have with a man you barely know.”

  Chelsea leapt off the couch, wiping away tears. “How can you be so cruel? Asher saved me. Not just literally, but, like, metaphorically, too.”

  Zara wanted to rip her hair out. She was caught between shame and jealousy, being shoved back and forth by both. On one hand, she had no reason to be this mean to Chelsea. On the other, her roommate needed a wake-up call. It would be cruel to let Chelsea believe in this fallacy.

  “If you’re going to be a cold bitch, then you can get out of my house,” Chelsea declared. “I don’t want to see you at all tonight.”

  Zara gaped at her roommate. “I pay rent here, too. This isn’t just your house.”

  Then, bitterness overcame Zara. The words clambered out of her throat before she could stop them.

  “If you don’t want to see me, then why don’t you go to Asher’s house? Huh? Oh, that’s right. You don’t know where he lives because the two of you are not a thing!”

  Zara shoved off the couch and ran back to her bedroom. She yanked her hoodie dress over her head and shoved it into a small backpack. With it, she added things like her phone and toothbrush. The fox inside her wriggled, ready to get out again.

  She should have been exhausted. Between the incident at the lake and shifting to run home, Zara should have been ready to collapse. Instead, the rage burning inside her was like fuel. It propelled her back into her fox form. She grabbed the handle of her backpack with her teeth and dropped it out the window, leaping after it.

  At first, she didn’t know where she was going. Her feet led her forward. She made sure to stay away from roads and trails. People might consider a fox carrying a backpack a weird occurrence and try to investigate.

  Ahead, she could see the lake between the trees. The sun was setting, and it cast a metallic shimmer across the water. Molten gold glimmered like the sun was pouring it into the lake. She paused and took it in, then noticed the lake house to her right.

  She’d run all the way back to Asher’s house. The tension in her shoulders eased here. She climbed onto the deck. There was no sign of Asher in the house, so she curled into a small ball and rested her head on the backpack. Sleep quickly came and overtook her. Maybe she was tired after all.

  Asher couldn’t believe his eyes.

  A familiar little black fox was fast asleep on his porch by the time he came back to the lake house. He’d spent the better part of the evening in the lake, dragging a dock onto the shore. His muscles were sore from lifting barrels filled with lake water. Still, the sight of Zara breathed life back into him.

  He bent and lifted her. She only squirmed a little, quickly falling back into sleep. Inside, he formed a small nest for her out of blankets and pillows on his bed. She nestled into them, taking a deep breath and letting out a contented sound. His heart seized like it could pause and save this moment forever.

  Asher left her alone. He fumbled toward the couch only to fall and pass out. It’d been a long day for everyone. He would have bet money that even Zane was fast asleep at that hour.

  7

  Zara woke in an unfamiliar place. She shot upright before remembering the night before. More importantly, the fight. With a groan, she dropped back onto the bed. There was a surprising number of pillows tucked around her for this to be a man’s bed. She wondered if he’d gathered them from around the house, but they all matched the comforter and bedsheets surprisingly well.

  The clothes Asher had let her borrow were tossed on the end of the bed. She wondered if he’d grabbed them right after she left or when she returned. Either way, she grabbed them and made her way to the shower.

  It was a glass enclosure with black and white tile. It felt a little like showering in the middle of the room. Asher didn’t have her favorite bodywash, but his smelled amazing. She slathered herself with it and breathed in the source of his spicy scent.

  For a moment, she let herself imagine what it wou
ld be like to have sex in this massive shower. That was clearly what it was meant for. She imagined her hands splayed out in front of her, Asher’s warmth at her back as his massive cock found the wet space between her legs.

  She shook herself. Why was she even here? She’d made the decision that Asher was too dangerous to court, and yet she ran back to him after fighting with her roommate over him. Not that her roommate even realized that’s what they were fighting over. Chelsea was blind to every interaction Zara had with Asher.

  She turned off the shower and stood there for a long while, letting the water drip off her. The air was thick with steam. Evidence of Asher was all around her, from his shampoo bottles to his forgotten boxers in the corner of the room. She shouldn’t be here, and yet she was.

  The door creaked open and the steam rushed out. The cloud dissipated and Asher appeared. He looked dumbfounded; his eyes glued to her. Rather late, Zara remembered that she was still standing naked in his shower and that the door was clear glass. Steam might have obscured some of her body, but it was quickly fading.

  His eyes heated, the color of his beast flashing over them. They didn’t turn white, but a shade of grey that reminded her of storm clouds. It was like she could see the flash of lightning in them when he looked at her. She expected thunder when he stepped forward.

  But Asher didn’t approach her. He didn’t open the shower door and join her, gathering her into his arms. Instead, he quickly spun around and put a hand over his eyes.

  “I’m so sorry. I totally forgot you were even here.”

  Disappointment filled Zara. She scowled at herself and reached for a towel. She shouldn’t want him the way she did. Zara needed to be adamant with herself. If she succumbed to her beastly desires, then she would have to break it off with him at some point. Asher was actually kind of nice. She didn’t want to have to run away from him.

  Couldn’t she just be his friend? Would that be enough for her and her beast?

  “I’m just going to go…do something else,” Asher mumbled before escaping the bathroom.

  She wanted to pull him back and trap him in the shower with her. Desire made her skin hot. Or maybe that was the steam. Zara chose to blame it on the steam. Asher wasn’t in the bedroom when she stepped out. It allowed her to quickly put on the t-shirt and boxers on the bed. She wrapped her wet hair in the towel and hesitated at the door.

  Maybe having her hair in a towel wasn’t the best look. Asher wasn’t likely to have a blow dryer in his bathroom, but she could at least fluff and brush her short mane. Halfway through, she stopped and asked herself why she cared what Asher thought of her at all. If she was just going to be his friend, then it wouldn’t matter if her hair was in a towel.

  Still, she finished what she started. Her hair was still wet, but it looked nicer than the alternative.

  Asher seemed surprised to find her wearing his clothes when she stepped out not the living room. He gawked at her before shaking his head and turning back to his task. She caught him adjusting his pants more than once, and a hot blush broke out on her cheeks.

  “Since you’re wearing my clothes, I take it you’re staying for a while?”

  She sat on the couch, her gaze on Asher and not the wonderful view outside the window. “I guess so. My roommate said she didn’t want to see me at home anytime soon.”

  He appeared with a cup of coffee. She accepted it and let the warmth fill her hands, even if her stomach wasn’t ready for food.

  “Did the two of you have a fight?”

  She ducked her head. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  Zara didn’t know how to tell him that they’d fought over him. She didn’t even want him. Why she kept trying to claim him in front of Chelsea, Zara didn’t understand. Once Regina and Oscar adopted her, she knew exactly what she wanted in a mate. She wanted not just love, but safety.

  Dragons weren’t safe.

  They were the antithesis of safe. Massive, fire-breathing, lizards were capable of so much destruction. So much more than the bears back in Monterey, and those bears had nearly torn their packs apart at one point.

  She’d left for a reason when Asher’s clan came around. To have that many dragons in one place was asking for trouble. She could only assume that they didn’t visit often because his house was near immaculate. Wherever the clan hung out must be a mess.

  “Do you have any ideas for breakfast? I’m not really accustomed to having guests stay past sunrise.” Asher claimed the seat beside her.

  “The media calls you a playboy. You can’t tell me that you’ve never had a woman spend the night.”

  “Oh, they weren’t wrong. I’ve had women spend the night, but they always leave before the sun touches the horizon. You’re the first to wear my clothes and sit on my couch.”

  Her fox growled at the thought of other women in his house. She pushed the beast’s voice aside and reminded it that Asher was only a friend. He was nothing more. All thoughts of jealousy and possessiveness needed to go.

  “Actually, this is kind of nice.” Asher sighed and leaned back, relaxing into the couch.

  Zara shook her head. “You didn’t even get any hanky-panky. What’s so nice about this?”

  He cut her a look of disbelief but said nothing. She wanted to crawl into his mind and unearth whatever thought he’d suppressed. Curiosity overwhelmed her fox. It couldn’t bear to not know what he thought of her. Zara, on the other hand, saw it as a good opportunity to draw a line.

  Asher could keep his thoughts to himself. She didn’t need to be privy to all of them.

  Asher had his phone out. He scrolled through something with one hand, his other hand pulling her feet into his lap. It was warm and intimate. Zara should have pulled away, but she couldn’t bring herself to call notice to it. So, she stayed where she was and told herself it was just to be polite.

  “Delivery options suck out here in the boonies,” he grumbled. “Our options are breakfast pizza or this really expensive brunch place.”

  “You don’t have to spend money on me,” she said.

  “Oh, but this brunch place has some killer breakfast plates. There’s a French toast egg sandwich. Have you ever heard of something so crazy before?”

  In the end, she couldn’t stop him from ordering food from the expensive brunch place. He assured her it was because he wanted something from the menu, not because he wanted to spend money on her, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was trying to spoil her.

  She didn’t stop him. She rationalized it by telling herself that he’d stopped her from getting proper groceries the other day and this made up for that. She could probably take home half of what she ordered and save it for another day.

  But, ordering food meant that she had to stick around and wait for it. She couldn’t gather her things and run away. Not that she’d been moving all that quickly before. Asher’s heat lulled her into a comfortable existence. She felt like a cat lying in the sun.

  “Why is your hair white?” Zara asked. She bit her lip, wondering if she should have asked at all. The story could have been painful, but here she was prodding away.

  “Because my dragon is white,” he responded with a shrug.

  Her brows folded together. “That’s it? Just because of your dragon?”

  “Were you expecting some sort of tragic story? Because I have those, but they don’t have anything to do with my hair. This was just the way I was born. Mom always said it was because I tried killing myself in the womb. She said I was born a ghost.”

  “That’s a tragic story all by itself.”

  His head fell back, and a sly look slid over his face. “What? That I survived?”

  She kicked him, not hard but enough to shake him. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. I’m glad you survived. What else would my father watch if he didn’t have his favorite MMA fighter?”

  His grin was so wide that she immediately regretted stoking his ego. He was going to hold that over her from here on out and she kne
w it. There was no stopping him.

  “I’d like to meet this fox-shifter. Maybe if you introduce me you can earn some brownie points.”

  Her stomach plummeted. She looked into the pool of her cooling coffee. Introducing Asher to her biological father wouldn’t improve his opinion of her, but there would be a small amount of satisfaction in it. Just to see the terror on her biological father’s face when he met a dragon shifter.

  “Did I say something wrong? I’m sorry. If he’s…if he’s not around anymore.” Asher stumbled over his words, concern etched into every line of his face. His pale eyes held grief for a tale he most likely had made up in his head.

  “No, it’s not like that. My home life was…unconventional.” She said nothing more. Reality was trying to creep in and destroy the small bubble of comfort she’d found in Asher’s presence.

  She’d forgotten about the pressure of her fox family and her failing grades at college. If she couldn’t get them back up, she would be forced to return home. The badge of failure would forever be pinned to her chest. Her biological family would use it as ammunition against her. They would rally behind their chosen husband for her.

  A fierce growl ripped out of her throat.

  Asher sat back, startled.

  “I’m sorry. That wasn’t about you. I got lost in my thoughts.” She ran her fingers through her hair and tugged.

  Asher pulled her into his lap. His arms slid around her. She knew she shouldn’t, but she leaned into him, gripping his shirt. He rested his head on her shoulder. The way he wrapped around her was like a shield. Nothing could hurt her so long as he was there.

  She wished she could believe that. He might have been able to protect her from her fox family, but he would always attract danger. He was a dragon and a fighter. She couldn’t ignore that.

  Thankfully, a knock on the door saved her from falling for him. She withdrew herself from his lap and awkwardly stood to the side while he went to answer the door. Immediately, the aroma of food slithered through the air. Her stomach growled and drew her forward.