“Where's the fire?” she asked, and Briggs groaned because that was how we all reacted to that joke.
“We’re low on ice.” I pointed at our sad foam cooler. There was plenty of ice, but I needed to move and put distance between me and the pull that was making my hands shake.But the ice was at the drinks table where he was standing.
I walked toward the drinks table because I was out of options that didn't involve running to the parking lot and driving away, which would raise more questions than getting ice. My legs felt weird as if they belonged to someone else, and my dragon was narrating again.
He’s ten feet away and he’s looking at the water. Now seven feet. Oh, he's gorgeous up close. Four feet now.
I reached for a water bottle at the same time he did, and our fingers collided. The jolt wasn't subtle or gentle or any of the poetic words people used to describe the mate connection. It was a lightning strike, and it traveled from my fingertips up my arm and into my chest where it detonated.
He yanked his hand back. His expression suggested he was someone used to being in charge but he’d just lost the reins. His eyes were darker than they'd appeared from across the field, but I shivered under the intensity of his gaze.
“Sorry,” he kinda croaked.
I shoved the bottle toward him because if I held onto it, he'd see my fingers trembling. “All yours.”
Up close, his scent was devastating. Deep and warm, with a smokiness that wound through me. I stuffed my hands in my pockets to keep them from reaching out and touching him again.
“Good turnout this year.” He glanced around the park.
My brain latched onto that mundane comment, and I clung to the version of myself that wasn't falling apart inside. I was the competitive guy who’d roasted Station 12. That was me, not whoever this was.
“You say that like you're hosting. Is that a Station 12 thing? Taking credit for stuff you didn't organize?”
His eyes widened, registering shock, maybe because I'd come out swinging.
He was taller than me by a few inches, and his posture screamed military or officer training or both. “You're the lieutenant.”
“Larkin.”
“Percy.” I didn’t shake his hand because if I touched him again, I wasn't sure what would happen, and I couldn't afford to find out in front of sixty people. “I’d say good luck with the cup, but I don't want you to have any.”
Ask him to meet us later, my dragon begged.Or just drag him behind the equipment trucks. I'm not picky.
The guys called me from across the field. Something about ice, which was ironic since that was my cover story. I grabbed the bag from the cooler, grateful for the excuse to leave before my dragon staged a hostile takeover and took his scales.
I brushed past Larkin as I walked away, and that shoulder-to-chest contact had me shivering.
“See you out there, Lieutenant.” I didn't look back. If I did, I'd stop walking, and if I stopped walking, I'd turn around, and if I turned around, my dragon would do something we'd regret.
I jogged to my crew and dumped the ice bag on the table.
“You were gone a while.” Briggs took a swig from his water bottle. “Did you get lost?”
“Long line.”
There was no line, but there was a lieutenant with dark eyes and a scent that had turned my insides to mush, and a dragon who wouldn't stop saying the word mate. There was also a six-week competition that I was supposed to win against the man, a fellow dragon shifter, the universe had apparently decided was mine.
I picked up my abandoned hot dog and took a bite, but it tasted of nothing.
Hallie studied me. “What’s wrong with you? You’re all jumpy.”
“Nope.” I plastered a grin on my face.
When we packed up and I climbed in my truck, I sat in the parking lot for ages with the engine off and my hands on the wheel. Eventually I pulled out toward Trenton while the alpha’s scent clung to my skin and I pondered what I was going to do.
I pressed my forehead against the steering wheel and groaned. My dragon was replaying the moment our fingers touched. The worst part wasn't the pull, the heat, or my shaking hands, it was that I wanted to march back across the field, find him, and kiss him. And I didn't even know his last name.
THREE
