DRAGON SECURITY: Volume 2: The Complete 6 Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  Sam must have been pretty amazing for him to be that committed to her memory.

  “Tell me about her.”

  Hayden missed a slice with his knife, nearly taking off the tip of his finger. He readjusted and got back down to it before he asked, “Who?”

  He knew who I was talking about. He was just buying time.

  “Sam. Tell me about Sam.”

  He shook his head as he scooped up some onions and bell peppers and threw them into a hot pan.

  “You don’t want to talk about her.”

  “I do, actually.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to know the woman who won your heart so completely.”

  He didn’t respond. He continued to put vegetables into the pan and stir them around, watching intently as they caramelized. And then, in a low voice that was filled with reluctance, he began to speak.

  “She was a lot like you. Stubborn. Strong. She hated me the first while that we knew each other.”

  “Really? Why?”

  He glanced at me. “Because I made fun of the way she dressed.” He smiled a little. “She was raised by this ultra-conservative woman and that led to her always wearing these super long skirts and sweaters that covered her from wrist to throat even during the summer months. I thought it was ridiculous, so I teased her about it.”

  “Somehow I can’t see you dating someone like that.”

  “Neither could I at the time. But Sam … she had this way about her. She got under my skin.”

  “How did it start?”

  He shook his head, turning back to the cutting board as he sliced up pieces of chicken breast. “She was the office manager slash tech person. She never went out in the field, but for some reason Megan sent her out on a case with me and Dominic. We were trying to prove a bank loan officer was taking money under the table to give away mortgages. Sam posed as my wife. And then she was attacked on the street and we ended up in the hotel room we were using as part of the sting. And, well, you know how it goes.”

  “Romantic.”

  “Not really. But it got that way pretty quick.”

  “Did you know you were in love with her from the beginning, or did it take time?”

  He glanced at me again. “You really don’t want to know that, do you?”

  “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know.”

  He sighed. “Sam was a huge part of my life before all that happened. I think I was a little in love with her from the moment we met. I just didn’t realize it right away.”

  “And she loved you?”

  He smiled again, a smile that broke my already broken heart into smaller pieces. He was beaming. Just the thought of her made him beam like a man with an angel’s light shining through him. He didn’t look at me, but he didn’t have to for me to see it.

  “She did.”

  “Must be nice, to have experienced that perfect sort of love.”

  “She wasn’t perfect.” He set down his knife again, using it to sweep the cut up chicken into his pan. “She lied to me our entire relationship, a lie of omission.”

  “What about?”

  “She was dying, and she knew she was dying before we got together.”

  I took a swallow of wine, a part of me pleased that I at least had that one advantage on the dead fiancée. At least I’d never lied about something that I didn’t quickly come clean about.

  “She’d had lupus since she was a kid. The constant attacks, the stress it put on her body, her kidneys and her immune system, caused her heart to fail. And she was a rare blood type, so they were unlikely to find a match on any donor lists. But she didn’t tell me, didn’t want it to influence the way I felt about her—at least, that’s what she told Megan. She was going to tell me that day, but—”

  “She was shot.”

  “Yeah,” he said, bitterness filling that one word. “And her heart was so weak that there was nothing the doctors could do. She died there on the street, in my arms.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said softly, knowing exactly how useless the word really was.

  Silence fell between us for a while. Hayden stirred around his concoction, dashing on spices of all kinds, creating something that made my stomach rumble more than it already had. Then he slid the pan into the oven and began preparing rice.

  “Tell me about you,” he said, glancing at me. It was the first time he’d ever really asked me any personal questions, besides the ones about my father. Somehow, it warmed me to think he might actually care a little bit about something more than my body. “Why don’t you have a boyfriend? What were your stepfathers like? Are you close to your sister and mother?”

  I stared down into the depths of my glass. “I grew up in Cheyenne until I was twelve or thirteen. My mom was married to Tom Cooper, the man I’d always kind of assumed was my biological father. He was an insurance salesman. Not prosperous, but not poor, either. We lived a good, quiet life, until Mom grew bored and decided it was time to move on.”

  I took a sip of wine, aware of his eyes on me, but not really interested in looking at him. “We moved to Denver for a while, then Portland. She met stepdad number two when I was fifteen, a truck driver who’d been a confirmed bachelor when he took us in. That only lasted until I was eighteen.”

  “And number three?”

  I snorted. “He’s a lawyer. Keeps my mom in shoes and fancy wine glasses. But he’s a milquetoast, one of those kinds of guys who lets people just walk all over him.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “The holidays are a blast.”

  “What about your sister?”

  “Wanda.” Where did I start with Wanda? “She’s quite a character, really. She’s seven and a half years older than me and she never lets me forget it. Went to college when I was only eleven, but she came home often enough to fill my head with stories about our biological father when things began to go bad with stepdad number one. She idolized him and seemed to think he was perfect in ways that other people simply couldn’t see.”

  I sipped some wine. “When she was a freshman in college, she struggled with depression. She was admitted to the hospital a time or two, and she saw this doctor that enrolled her in a program where she could meet other kids with the same issues. She did well on the meds, but she stopped taking them a couple of years later when she got married. She wanted babies and she believed the pills would make that impossible.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  I nodded. “Wanda’s bullheaded. She does things her way or she doesn’t do them at all.”

  I poured more wine into my glass and topped off his. He was out of chores for the moment, so he came to stand beside me.

  “What does she do for a living, your sister?”

  “She’s a stay at home mom. She has three kids now, all boys.”

  “What about her husband?”

  “He’s a lawyer. Works in the same firm as stepdaddy—that’s how Mom met him.”

  “Convenient.”

  “There’s that word again.”

  He smiled softly. “Sorry.”

  I shrugged. “Wanda’s a focused mother, but her kids are terribly unruly. All but the youngest, and that’s just because he’s only a few months old.”

  “Sounds like you and your sister have something of a strained relationship.”

  “We do. She’s highly competitive. She hates that I did so well with my computer skills because she was the one who taught me BASIC when we were kids. She studied computer science at UT Austin, but never finished her degree because of the depression and then meeting her husband. She thinks I’m living the life she should have had.”

  “Jealousy’s a bitch.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  He picked up his wine glass and touched it to mine. “Here’s to family and friends. Ones you can’t get rid of no matter how much you might want to and ones you can’t make blood no matter how close you might be.”

  I smiled, touching my glass to his before taking a
long swallow. I could feel him watching me, his eyes moving over the length of my body. I’d chosen to go casual today, wearing just a pair of yoga pants and a sports bra under a simple white shirt. My hair was pulled back into a ponytail and I’d forgone the makeup for now. I figured it was just the two of us. He wouldn’t appreciate my efforts if I tried too hard.

  But he didn’t seem to mind the casual look.

  “You and Megan are pretty close.”

  He inclined his head slightly. “She was Sam’s best friend.”

  “It’s more than that.”

  He tilted his head slightly, his eyes moving to mine. “We were there for each other after everything went down. Her man walking out on her, her brother being held captive, her best friend dying … it was a hard time, and we sort of held each other together for weeks afterward. That creates a tight bond.”

  “Are you in love with her?”

  Hayden choked a little. “Why would you ask that?”

  “It’s the rumor going around the office.”

  “I’m not in love with her,” he said, clearly of the opinion that that was the most insane idea he’d ever heard. “I respect her. And she’s … she’s like a sister. A best friend. Nothing more.”

  I reached up and touched his chin, running my thumb along the wiry hairs that grew there, watching as his lips parted softly. I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to touch him. I wanted to feel him, to know him in a way no one else did right now in this moment in time. I knew he’d given his body and his heart, to another woman, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy what she’d left behind.

  He took the wine glass from my hand, setting both mine and his on the counter before moving between my legs, lifting my thighs slightly to pull them around his hips. He kissed me, his mouth soft and warm against mine. He tasted like the wine and the meal he’d been preparing, the heat of cayenne pepper still on the tip of his tongue. I slid my arms around his neck and buried my fingers in his hair, tugging him close to me.

  My heart swelled at his touch, my soul growing buoyant as I held on to him. I was not an innocent girl. I’d had lovers over the years, starting much younger than I cared to admit. But none of them had the power to take my breath with a single look. None of them could make my head spin with a kiss. None of them made every touch feel like the first.

  I moved my lips from his and ran my tongue slowly down his throat, nibbling there as he groaned, the vibration of the sound only adding to the eroticism. He slid his hands under my shirt, moving his fingers gingerly over my ribs, aware of the bruises there but wanting to touch just the same. He was so gentle that it was heart stopping. I would have almost welcomed the pain. If he didn’t care … but he kept showing how much he cared, and that broke my heart even more.

  I pressed a hand to his chest and pushed him away. “You should check your rice. Make sure it’s not burning.”

  “Yeah,” he said a little roughly.

  Dinner was ready a few minutes later. We sat outside on the deck, looking out over the water as the breeze whipped around my hair. It was cold, but we found heavy sweaters in a closet inside the house, enough to keep us from shivering as we ate in silence. The food was good, a crazy sort of stir-fry on a bed of rice. And the wine was the best I’d had in a long time.

  When I was done, I set my bowl on the table and walked down onto the beach, going out to the surf for a moment, watching the waves come and go in gentle movements that were almost peaceful. I wondered what Hayden would think if I stripped out of my clothes and jumped into the water to take a long swim in the ocean. He’d probably think I’d finally flipped my lid.

  So what?

  I expected him to call out to me as I tossed the borrowed sweater onto the sand and stripped out of my shirt, but he didn’t. He probably wasn’t even paying attention. The bra hit the sand, then the pants, and the water took its place, plunging my nervous system into restart mode.

  I practically ran out to where the water came up over my hips before diving in, submerging myself completely in freezing, salty water. I hadn’t gone swimming in a long time, but I was the star of my high school team years ago. It felt good to move in this environment like I didn’t have a care in the world.

  It made me feel more like myself.

  I swam for a while, keeping a close eye on the shore so that I wouldn’t wander out too far. I could see Hayden on the deck, watching from the railing. He didn’t seem particularly annoyed, but he didn’t seem happy, either. My muscles tired sooner than I’d expected. It’d been a long time since I’d done something like this. With a slightly disappointed sigh, I headed into shore, the shivering beginning the moment the breeze touched my skin.

  “You realize it’s November?” Hayden called as I approached the shore. “Even in Texas it gets cold in November.”

  “I’m aware,” I called back, bending to scoop up my clothes. I held them to my chest, the shivers growing worse as I made my way up to the house. Hayden disappeared for a moment, then returned with a heavy blanket, quickly wrapping it around me as I made my way up the steps.

  “Thanks,” I muttered as the warmth enveloped me, calming the shivers a little.

  “You’re insane,” he hissed against my ear.

  “I just wanted to forget for a minute.”

  “Forget what?”

  “Everything.”

  He sighed as he swooped me up into his arms, holding me close as he turned to slip us both through the narrow opening in the sliding glass door. Rather than settling me in front of the fireplace, as part of me hoped he would, he carried me into the master bath. He set me on the edge of the sink counter while he turned on the water, checking three times to make sure it was the proper temperature before turning back to me. He rubbed my skin with the heavy blanket, trying to warm me with friction before setting me in the tub.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” he said as he sat back on his haunches, watching me settle into the warm water. “You could catch pneumonia or something.”

  “You catch pneumonia from a virus, not cold water.”

  “Why do you have to make things so difficult?”

  “Is that what I’m doing?”

  He groaned, raising his hand like he wanted to smack me. Instead, he slipped his fingers over my jaw, pressing two to my bottom lip.

  “I don’t want to want you, Waverly. Don’t you know that?”

  “I do.”

  “But you make it nearly impossible.”

  I sat up and kissed him, my lips rough on his. He buried his fingers in my tangled ponytail, tugging me so roughly against him that I cried out a little against his mouth. I tugged at his shirt, not sure if I wanted him in the water with me or if I wanted it gone. A little of both, I think.

  He leaned into me, following me as I settled back in the tub. After a second, his leg came over the side and he joined me, fully clothed. I laughed, but then he was kissing me again and all I could think about was his hand, the one that was traveling slowly down my belly, eager for him to touch what lived below, what swelled, just waiting for his touch.

  He drove me crazy. I used to make fun of girls who made that statement, telling myself that it was impossible for anyone to drive another person crazy with pleasure. Sure, it felt good. Sure, it was an enjoyable experience. But driving one insane implied some ability that went above the physical and above the possible. Only stupid girls could believe such a cliché.

  Yet …

  Sometimes the right person could make all those insane clichés come true.

  His touch made me forget where I was. Water splashed on my face when I raised my hand to touch his shoulder. His shirt stuck to him as I tried to slip my fingers underneath, the memory of the hills and valleys of his impressive chest calling to me.

  “You looked like a siren out there,” he whispered close to my ear, “a fucking mermaid, moving through the waves like you were born to do it.”

  “Maybe I was.”

  “I wasn’t sure if I should go out there
and rescue you or sit back and enjoy the show.”

  “The latter. That was my intention.”

  He pulled back a little, his hand brushing the hair from my face. “I’ve never known anyone like you.”

  “I hope not.”

  “You’re going to be the death of me.”

  “Or all the happiness you won’t allow yourself.”

  I pushed against his shoulder, rolling him in the water as my hands finally found access under his shirt. I pushed it up, my lips skimming his belly as I worked my way downward. He tangled his fingers in my screwed up ponytail, encouraging me. I snuck a peek at him, smiling at the look of bliss in those blue eyes.

  I had to undo his jeans and maneuver the wet denim to expose that thick cock, but it was worth the effort. I ran my hands over the length of him, smoothing my palm over his head a few times, drawing small groans from his throat. I watched his face again, his eyes slipping shut and then opening again, his fevered gaze on my face. He knew what he wanted, but he was content to wait for me to get there. I wanted to torture him a little, the way he sometimes tortured me.

  I ran my hand down the underside of his shaft and further, gripping his balls where they were still tucked in his jeans. He groaned again, a little louder this time. I smiled as I rolled his balls in my fingers, then moved my hand slowly back up the length of him. Then down again as he moved his hips, his eyes telling me he was done playing. He wanted what he wanted.

  So I gave it to him.

  He purred as I took him into my mouth, running my tongue slowly over the rim of his head. Then more of him, letting him slide slowly to the entrance of my throat. He moved his hips, encouraging me to take more. And I did, suddenly filled with this overwhelming need to make him happy, to offer him as much pleasure as I could. He’d done it for me often enough. This was my version of him carrying me into the house when I was freezing.

  His fingers moved in my tangled hair, tugging me closer and closer to him. The water was an issue, but I found a way to work around it. I just didn’t breathe at the wrong moment. Hayden sat up, removing his shirt, leaning forward to run his hands over my back and around to my breasts. I loved the feel of his hands on me. It only made the pleasure I got from pleasing him that much better.