Except that right now he wasn’t.
“He’s fine,” Davin said, and when I glanced up, he was scowling at my cousin.
Hard to blame him, since it was the third time in as many days that something had kept us from making our way back to his apartment after dinner. I wasn’t used to dating a guy at all before having sex, let alone whatever the hell this was. We’d agreed to date almost a fucking month ago, and somehow, hadn’t found the time to seal the deal yet.
Was this what being an adult was like?
If so, I wanted to find out where I could cancel that subscription.
Yeah, business was booming and we’d installed no less than twenty-five paid security systems in the last month, but it turned out that took a ton of time. Sure, it was also making us a lot of money but...dammit, I wanted to sleep with my hot boyfriend. The fact that another few months like the last one would let me cover the building’s yearly tax bill without relying on Arthur and Amelia was paling in comparison to the fact that it had beenmonths since I’d gotten laid. I hadn’t yet managed to see Davin naked, and that was the biggest concern I had.
My boyfriend was hot, sue me.
Sexton gave a little cough then, and his eyelids fluttered, but his eyes didn’t open.
I frowned at him, then looked up to Davin. “He’s not fine. Come here and help me turn him over.”
Sure, I could turn Sexton over by myself. I didn’t doubt that, but I suspected that I would also bash his head on the cement without a little help.
Davin was not only a hot, gorgeous boyfriend who was excellent at kissing, but a good one in the most basic of ways. He bent and grabbed Sexton’s phone at his feet, then came right over, not even questioning whether my cousin needed the help.
Sure, he disliked and mistrusted Sexton, but me? He had considerably softer feelings about me. So he hefted most of Sexton’s weight while I moved his shoulders and cradled his head to keep him from being concussed as we moved him around. Or rather, further concussed, as it became apparent when we got him onto his back that he’d already landed on his face when he had fallen.
There was a huge red-black abrasion on the left side of his forehead that was still oozing blood, complete with bits of asphalt and...other things embedded in his skin.
I cringed in sympathy and suspected that if he could see himself, Sexton would have a breakdown. His suit, a very expensive Ralph Lauren number in hunter green, was probably trash. The beige sweater vest he was wearing under it was literally torn, and he was covered with dirt and fuck only knew what else from the ground in an alley. Even a relatively clean alley was still an alley, after all.
His lids fluttered again, and this time his eyes opened. They took forever to focus on me, and I worried the concussion wasa serious one. Could a hospital help with a dragon concussion? No, Doc. Doc was the answer.
But then he blinked and really looked at me, breathing in deep. His voice was hoarse and hesitant when he spoke. “You came.”
“Of course I came. You called. You needed help.”
Davin grumbled something about Sexton being the most inconvenient relative anyone had ever had, but he only sounded half serious about it. Sexton, on the other hand, squinted, frowning. “Wait, I’m alive.”
“Of course you are,” Davin said, scoffing and rolling his eyes. As though he wouldn’t have been bothered if we’d arrived to find Sexton dead. Maybe he didn’t like him, but not liking a person was a far cry from wanting them dead, let alone wanting to personally discover their dead body in an alley.
Sexton frowned and started to lift his head to look at Davin, but winced and fell back before managing to get very far. He was breathing hard, and there were tiny beads of sweat breaking out on his forehead. That and the unfocused look in his eyes seemed very much like a concussion to me.
And were his cheeks hollower than they’d been yesterday at lunch? Definitely. He looked like he hadn’t eaten in a week, when I’d watched him eat no less than two entire sandwiches at lunch the day before. Sure, they’d been boring turkey clubs with no sauce but mayo, but they’d still been a substantial amount of food.
His head lolled in my lap, and his eyes fluttered again as he looked up at me. “I should be dead, shouldn’t I? Why leave me alive?”
That was...fair, if a dark thought. After all, from what I’d been told, the other dragons before us had all disappeared without a trace. They hadn’t been attacked, drained, and left to continue on.
Given what I knew about the impossibility of actually stealing a dragon’s power, it made more sense to drain Sexton and leave him to get better so he could be attacked again, but what did I know about being an evil mastermind? I couldn’t even program the clock on the office coffee maker after the power went out that one time.
Without moving his head this time, Sexton glanced around the alley suspiciously, frowning. “Maybe they...maybe they knew about you. Maybe they were trying to lure you here.” He jerked, his hands pressing into the ground beneath him as he tried to push up, but he failed entirely, his whole body going slack. Suddenly, he was panting. When he looked up at me, there was something like rage in his eyes, and I’d never seen that before. I’d seen him annoyed or frustrated or irritated. But this was on a new level.
“Are you okay? I mean, I know you’re not okay, silly question, but what’s going on?”
He gave a deep sigh and let his eyes fall closed, then managed to grit out, “I can’t move myself.”
Right. Drained of power. Not to death, but enough that he didn’t have any of his own energy left.
Jeez, that sucked.
I refrained from saying that I was sorry, because I suspected that someone feeling sorry for him would only add to the sense of impotent rage. It was always annoying, being unable to do anything about any situation. Being unable to do anything at all? Well, I’d never experienced that, so I was going to cut Sexton a lot of slack for a while.
