Christin looked shaken up and she clung to him as he got to her bedroom. She was lying down, her eyes closed, but she wasn’t sleeping. She’d popped up as soon as she heard his voice. He reached her and took her into his arms. Broch never wanted to let her go. He was trying his best to deal with everything, but there was something more to it.
“I am so glad you are here, even if you had me followed.”
Broch hadn’t wanted Christin to know about it, but there was a chance to do it and he had. He had been keeping tabs on her since he helped her get out of prison. He had been the one to let her go and he wanted to know what she would do. Broch was also attracted to her from the get-go and maybe that was why he had wanted so desperately to know about her. Whatever it was, it kept him up at night. Now that she was back in his arms, Broch was able to breathe again. She was safe and that was apparently all that mattered to him. It was strange to feel that way toward a woman he didn’t know, one that had so many secrets, but Broch kept telling himself that all of it was worth it. He just knew that it was.
Christin started kissing him. He was holding her, hugging her into his arms and there was a moment where she had taken it another way. Broch’s body was still on fire from the night before and the kiss was leading to something else quickly. All he had to do was bend her will to his. Considering she was kissing him with a passion that he didn’t even know she possessed, it was a good idea to think that she would.
Broch growled when he heard his phone ringing. It wasn’t coincidence, it had to be something else. Why was it every time he went to touch her, someone called his damn phone? If it hadn’t been so important the last time, Broch would have ignored it.
When he pulled away, Christin made a whining sound and her whimper cut through him like a knife.
“I have to get this. I’m sorry.”
She nodded, but he feared that she would change her mind by the time he came back. She had done it before, so it wasn’t all that hard to think that she would do it again.
“Stay here, Christin. I will be right back.”
He said it with force, so that she knew that he wasn’t playing. It would take a real emergency for him to not come back to that bed. A genuine emergency was the only thing that was going to take him from his course.
Chapter 18
Broch
“What the hell do you want, Leonard? Someone better be dying.”
“Well, they are already dead, Broch. You need to get back here. The elders, they are all gone.”
Broch didn’t know what to say. He was silent for so long that Leonard didn’t even think he was still on the line. His heart had stopped; it didn’t seem to be beating in his chest any longer. There were thirty elders. How could they all be dead?
“What happened?”
“Dragons. Fucking dragons!”
Broch cursed loudly. He knew that was what the man was that they interrogated. Why didn’t he realize that it was going to come down on him? He should have known that it wasn’t over. He knew it wasn’t, but he had sidestepped his responsibilities so that he could lie up there with a human. He was disgusted with himself, even more so with everything going on. He was still trying to justify the two of them being together.
The elders were dead after all. It’s not like he could save them…
Fuck. Broch couldn’t believe he even thought it.
“What are we going to do, Broch? Why the hell are there dragons attacking us? I didn’t know that we had beef with any of them. It doesn’t make sense. Interspecies battles aren’t uncommon, but usually we know why. Right?”
Broch didn’t get it either. Christin’s full name came back to his mind, and he asked Leonard to look into her and her parents. There had to be something to it, more than what was jiving in his mind right now. There was no way that the dragons were targeting them for nothing. They had a reason and he wanted to know what it was. More than that, he had a feeling that his new house guest might be the cause of his recent troubles. They were used to being attacked, but the concerted effort that was happening now, the murder of shifter elders, didn’t seem to be something that was random. It felt personal.
He got off the phone with Leonard after getting out a few orders. He was trying his best to hold it all in, which was almost easy when he came back and she was still in bed how he left her. The problem was that he didn’t have time for any of that. He had time for nothing fun. He needed answers.
“I don’t think that this is the right time. I have to leave again, take care of some things. I will be back later, okay?”
Christin frowned, sticking her lip out and telling him that she didn’t want to be left in the same way again. Broch could see that she was just as needy as he was and when she started to pull her shirt down, he stopped her.
“Please don’t do that, Christin. If you do, I won’t be able to stop myself.”
She grinned and suggested that maybe that was the whole point.
Her shirt came off and Broch groaned inwardly, and then out loud. That look of desire was back and it was pointed at him. She wasn’t playing games that he wasn’t there to do, what he was there to do. It was all in the open and heaven help him, Broch wanted her even more. He felt bad for wanting her in such a way, at such a time. It was painful, to say the least, turning her down after he’d crawled on top of her and started kissing her, pressing his hard body against hers. Broch knew that he had to stop, but he didn’t want to.
“Please put your shirt back on.”
Christin scoffed. She tried to hold him there, but he had to go. He had a lot of dead elders on his hands and dragons that were apparently attacking his people. He had to go, because there was no way that he could stay.
