“You don’t know the first thing about my relationship with my daughter!”
“I know it’s based on a lie! You’re withholding something that could not only be dangerous for her but those around her for whatever selfish reason!”
John pointed a finger at him. “Be careful of how you speak to me, boy.”
“I’m. Not. A. Boy.” Ryker felt it when his eyes shifted but managed to keep his fangs retracted. “You need to tell her.”
“I don’t need to do shit!” John waved a hand. “This phase, this thing will work itself out.”
“It’s not a phase or a thing, it’s a part of her, and if you keep it hidden things are going to get worse.”
“Catori’s stronger than that. That animal will continue to lie dormant.”
Ryker snorted. “If that’s what you believe then you’re either extremely stupid or in denial, because that animal is not a puppy that you can cage and put in the corner of the room. It will grow stronger. Every. Single. Day.”
John’s jaw clenched.
“You can keep playing this game, Commissioner, but I won’t. Catori will have questions, and I will answer every one of them.” Spinning toward the door, Ryker started out of the office.
“You do it, Anosov, and you lose your job.”
Ryker chuckled. “You can try that card if you’d like, Akita, but I’d be more than glad to go over your head and expose your little secret.”
When John remained silent, he said, “Exactly, asshole. Get ready for a rude awakening.” With that, he walked out.
***
John watched him walk out. “Fucking animal,” he murmured after the door closed. Rage built with every passing second. It was happening again. One of those things was trying to ruin his life. Hadn’t he gone through enough with Calla? Who did that motherfucker Ryker think he was to come into his domain and tell him what he needed to do?
In one fell swoop he cleared the top of his desk and then flipped it. Still hell-bent on causing destruction, he kicked his desk chair over before ripping the landline from the wall and throwing it across the room. The shattering of plastic gave him little satisfaction.
Leaning against a wall, he took in huge gulps of air, trying to stem the anger, the memory.
“Fucking animal,” he muttered again.
He thought of Calla. The last time he’d seen his wife’s face was right before he set both her and her lover’s home on fire. He thought of the son of a bitch’s eyes, green with orange flecks. He thought how his daughter, his Catori was walking around with those same eyes; how it reminded him every single day of what Calla had done to him.
John slapped the sides of his head, tried to forget, and tried to push it down. He clenched his jaw, but a groan escaped anyway, and with it the words, “She left me for a fucking animal.”
***
Catori rubbed her eyes and desperately tried to stay awake. She had an assignment. Exhaustion was not an excuse. Find the rogue shifter and take him down. It was as simple as that.
She bit back a yawn. Or at least it would be simple if she could keep her eyes open. Ryker, the giant bastard, had been right. Catori wasn’t sleeping. She couldn’t sleep. No matter how hard she tried, at most all she got was two hours a night. It was doing nothing for her disposition.
Her temper was worse. She was quick to get irritated and ever quicker to snap. Earlier tonight she’d broken one of her team member’s nose when he’d made a joke about her obviously needing a good fuck.
Normally she could overlook the stupid comments, but today it just hit too close to home. She kicked her legs as she comfortably sat on top of the rogue’s car. It would be just a few more minutes before he ambled out of the bar he was currently in. Catori could knock him unconscious, cuff him and call in the cleanup crew.
“You know,” a low voice said from the side of the car. “He’s gonna be pretty pissed that you’ve made yourself at home on his cute little Corvette.”
She didn’t jump, just turned her head and stared at Ryker as he stepped into view. Her heart picked up pace in her chest, hammering. Suddenly her palms felt sweaty and her mouth was dry.
“Why are you here?” Catori questioned, focusing her gaze elsewhere. If she looked at him, that would be it. She was already close to the breaking point. Having managed to avoid him for days, Catori was perfectly content with continuing that trend.
Apparently Ryker wasn’t of the same mind. He stepped closer, hands in his pockets, shoulder holster in clear view. Shrugging, he answered, “I’m kind of starting to miss you calling me rude reptile names.” Ryker leaned against the car and stared up at her through those sinfully long lashes. One side of his full pink mouth kicked up into a smile. It freaked her out. Ryker didn’t smile, and he damn sure didn’t smile at her.
“Stop it.”
He frowned. “Stop what?”
“Stop the creepy new attitude and go back to being an asshole.” She jumped down from the car. “Stop smiling and looking at me like I’m all of a sudden important to you.” Catori shoved him backwards. “And stop making me want you!”
“Hey! What the fuck are you two doing near my car?”
She turned and scowled at her target that was now running their way. Before he could get closer she had a fireball in her hand and was watching him land face-first on the ground.
“You’re a piece of work, you know that?” Ryker growled from behind her.
Swinging around to face him, she glared. “What’re you talking about?”
“I’m trying to make this easier for you, help transition you into it and...he’s getting up.” He motioned over her shoulder.
Catori rolled her eyes and calmly walked over to the rogue. After kicking him in the head and watching him go down with a grunt, she looked at the crazy man standing a few feet away. “I didn’t ask you for that, Ryker.”
He scowled. “What?”
“I don’t need someone else in my life handing me frosting-covered shit and calling it red velvet.” She got into his personal space, keeping her voice low. “You want to help me? Be the asshole that I know. Argue with me, criticize me, piss me off. But do not stand there looking at me like a kicked puppy. I need normalcy. Not bullshit.”
The muscles in his jaw worked as he stared down at her. “I get it, you know.”
She snorted, focused her eyes on his chest. “You don’t.”
“I do. Your father—“
Her head snapped up. “You don’t know anything about my father.”
“I know you’re afraid of him finding out because you think it will make him hate you.” When her eyes narrowed, he smirked. “Dear old Dad hasn’t exactly made his dislike for shifters discreet.”
Catori rubbed her temples. “You don’t have the slightest clue what I’ve put up with for the past twenty-five years.” She turned away from him, wrapped her arms around herself. “I was a pet to him; a responsibility to be looked after. There was no love there. There was no emotion. Every interaction was clinical. He watched me like I was an experiment. I didn’t get read bedtime stories. I never got to sit at his feet and watch Saturday morning cartoons. I didn’t even get to call him Daddy. It was always ‘yes sir’ or ‘no sir.’” She looked at Ryker over her shoulder. “You’re wrong, Ryker. I’m not afraid of my father hating me. He already does.”
***
She didn’t want pity, right? Or sympathy? Despite everything inside Ryker that was screaming for him to try and make the pain go away, he knew it wouldn’t be accepted. So he went with what he knew best. Being an asshole.
Smirking, he said, “I never took you for the sob story type, Tori.”
When her eyes narrowed he knew he had her.
That’s it, baby. No more self pity.
“Face it, sweetheart, you’re a dragon shifter. You can’t change it. You can’t suppress it. You can’t make it go away. That. Is. What. You. Are.” He raked his eyes down her body. “And you know it. You feel it. You try to push it down, to forge
t about it because it scares you. That other side, the primal one that causes you to go on instinct alone, is what you’re afraid of giving into. I don’t want to hear that bullshit about your father.” Ryker shook his head. “A small part of you may want to have a father, but let’s be honest, you could give a fuck if he loves you or not. You accepted that a long time ago.”
Closing the distance between them, he cupped her face and felt it when her skin heated under his palms; he could smell it as soon as her arousal spiked. It saturated the air around them in the sweetest scent—her.
“I’m standing here telling you that what you are, who you are is nothing to be ashamed of. That part of you doesn’t detract from your human half. It doesn’t change you as a person. It just adds to it. So suck it up and stop fucking whining.”
Instead of her punching him in the throat like he was expecting, Catori just gave him a soft smile. “Thank you.”
He nodded once. “You’re welcome. Now I’ll call Jace to come and get him.” Ryker jerked his head toward the unconscious rogue who apparently had a thing for doing his late-night hunting on campsites. “And then I’m gonna follow you home because we need to talk.”
She smirked. “Why did I just mentally replace the word talk with something completely different?”
Ryker bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. “Because you have a dirty mind.” Even as he said the words his cock went rigid. He wanted her. He wanted her badly. But he couldn’t push her or rush her. If he did things too soon this could blow up in his face. Catori was his mate—whether he liked it or not—and her comfort came first.
He inhaled again and cut off the growl that rumbled up from his chest at the small of her. Her brows winged but she didn’t speak. Ryker stared at her ass as she headed toward her bike and his beast perked up, demanded that he take her.
Running a hand through his hair, he prayed for patience. God help them both if she smiled at him again. Because that was all he would need to forget all that bullshit on taking it slow.
Burn For Me
Chapter Four
Where was she? She should’ve been home by now. John paced Catori’s front porch. He’d gotten the call over an hour ago that she’d handled her assignment and quickly. So why wasn’t she home yet?
Even as the question crossed his mind, he knew the answer. She was with him. John’s hands balled at his sides, anger simmering just under the surface. He needed to keep her away from that thing before it corrupted her; filled her head with bullshit about being like him.
John had accepted the fire throwing despite the fact that it was a part of the disease inside her, but he refused to lose her to an animal. He hated shifters, hated working with them, and being around them. He’d kept it hidden well over the years after having been switched from an all human unit to this one.
The only reason for that was because the higher-ups realized that after Calla left him and he found out what her lover really was, he knew too much. They had a choice, to either kill him or use him to their advantage. They chose the latter. Now here he was thinking about how much of a mistake that had been.
He’d exposed her to this, to them. Now she was slipping through his fingers. He could feel it. John’s tenuous hold on his daughter was breaking. With Ryker’s help it would officially snap, and everything would fall apart.
“No, no, no.” John shook his head, grabbed the back of his neck and squeezed, trying to relieve the sudden tension there. He’d managed to keep it hidden for twenty-five long years, and now all of a sudden his hard work, his intentions were about to be unraveled in one fell swoop.
His head snapped up when he heard Catori’s bike coming down the back road to her subdivision. John watched as the motorcycle got closer. What gave him pause was the familiar truck that was riding behind it.
***
Catori spotted John on her front porch as soon as she pulled up. But before she could say a word he’d shot down the steps, running toward Ryker as he stepped out of his truck. She got between the two men.
“I told you to stay away from her!” John shouted, pointing at Ryker.
“And I told you I wouldn’t. Ryker spoke coolly.
“John,” Catori interjected. “What’re you doing here?”
“The better question is what is he doing here?”
“That’s none of your business.”
He slapped his chest. “Everything you do is my business. I’m your father!”
For the first time she noticed his eyes were glassy and red rimmed, and then she smelled the strong scent of whiskey. “You’ve been drinking.”
John backed away, ran a hand over his face. “I’m sorry for snapping. Okay? Let’s…let’s go inside so we can talk. I…I need to talk to you. Tell him to leave, all right?”
She shook her head slowly. “No. Ryker’s staying because he and I need to talk. You need to go.”
He stomped his foot like a child. “I’m not going anywhere!”
“Akita,” Ryker said in a low tone from behind her. “She asked you to leave. Now I can call you a cab or—”
“Fuck you! I don’t have to do shit you say! I’m not afraid of you, boy.”
Catori heard the growl and felt it rumble through Ryker’s chest as she leaned back into him.
“Oh what? You’re pissed off now?” John baited. “Look at him, Catori! Look at his eyes! Pure animal! Like a fucking dog!”
She placed a hand on Ryker’s chest when she felt him trying to advance. “I’m going to ask you one more time, John. Please. Leave.”
His eyes went from her to Ryker. Then he sneered, “Oh, I get it. You’re gonna spread your legs for the freak, huh?”
That was when Ryker snapped.
***
Ryker wanted blood. He wanted it now, and preferably John Akita’s. How. Fucking. Dare. He? To stand in his own child’s face and treat her like shit made him more of an animal that Ryker in every sense of the word.
He was going for the old man’s throat before he could stop to consider his actions.
“Ryker, no!” Catori was there, in his face, grabbing his hands and pushing him back. “Ryker, look at me!”
His eyes stayed focused on his target—on the threat who’d insulted his mate.
“Ryker! Please!” The plea in her voice was the only thing that soothed that savage part of him, made the beast behave. Taking deep breaths, he stared down at her. She cupped his face in her hands.
“That’s right. Look at me. Just focus on me.” She broke eye contact with him for a moment to glance over her shoulder at her father. “You leave now or I let him go. Your choice.”
John spat on the ground and shoved past them, murmuring, “Fucking animal.”
“Don’t pay him any attention. Ryker…Ryker, look at me. Just at me.” She coaxed him with her voice to follow her, kept him distracted as John got into his car and pulled off, but damned if he wasn’t ready to follow the old bastard and dismember him.
Catori opened the door and backed inside. He stepped in sync with her as if she had him on a leash, watching her every move.
They stared at one another. Her eyes went from focusing on his gaze to staring at his mouth, and that was when he realized that his fangs had made an appearance.
“Does it scare you?” Ryker asked, slowly closing the distance between their bodies. He knew it didn’t. He scented the flood of moisture that hit the apex of her thighs, but he needed to hear her say it.
Catori shook her head at his growled question and reached up to run her fingertips between his brows and down the side of his jaw. “No.” She whispered. “It…it…”
“It what?” he prodded at her pause.
“It kind of had the opposite effect,” she finally answered. Then she made a mistake. Catori smiled.
She must’ve seen exactly what he wanted in his eyes, because she backed away. “Ryker—”
“If you don’t want this, I suggest you run.” He took off his shoulder holster and tossed it ont
o her sectional. “And I suggest you do it now,” he rasped.
***
It was happening again, that burn that hit her whole being. One part of her wanted to run like Ryker advised, and the other part wanted to stand here, to bait him. He’d defended her. He didn’t have to, but he did. She didn’t need him to, but he did. And the way his eyes stalked her now, the irises turned, his canines fully extended—it all let her know that she was no longer dealing with the man.
Burn For Me (Year of the Dragon) Page 3
