Bear spray wouldn’t have stopped him. A locked car door wouldn’t have stopped him. Nothing in my small arsenal of self-defense would have mattered.
He hadn’t.
He’d left the knife for me. He’d left a cashier’s check at my door. He’d brought me anonymous gifts. He’d stood between me and danger without hesitation.
He had all the power in the world, and he had chosen patience.
My throat ached. My vision blurred. I pressed my palm flat against my sternum, where the pull toward him blazed so fiercely I half expected to look down and see light pouring through my shirt.
The dragon—Lucan—lowered his massive head, slow and deliberate, until his chin nearly touched the grass. Themovement brought his glowing violet eye level with my tear-streaked face. A low rumble rolled through his chest, vibrating the ground beneath my feet, and the sound wasn’t threatening.
It was careful and tender, if something that size was even capable of it. It was a purr of sorts. He wouldn’t hurt me. Not his dragon. Not him, the man.
I didn’t understand how I knew that was the message he was sending, but it was. I believed him.
The pull in my chest built into something overwhelming, spilling through me and filling every empty place I hadn’t even realized was there. My ribs ached with it. My vision swam. And the thing that terrified me most was that none of it felt like fear.
It felt like recognition.
My feet moved. I didn’t tell them to. They carried me forward through the tall grass, closing the distance. Lucan held perfectly still as his eye tracked me, the pupil adjusting as I drew closer.
I stopped at the side of his head, close enough to feel the heat radiating off him. My hand lifted before I could second-guess it, my fingers pressing against his cheek.
There were no scales there. The hide was smooth like suede that had been warmed in the sun for hours. Underneath, I felt the dense firmness of muscle and bone.
I spread my fingers wider, and the warmth soaked into my palm, up through my wrist, and settled where the roaring pull lived.
My hand followed the curve of his jaw to the column of his neck where the scales began. They overlapped in rows, each one smooth on the surface and thicker than expected. The center was as hard as polished stone, with edges that tapered to a razor-like thinness.
I stood there with my palm pressed to a dragon’s throat, and for the first time since my life imploded, I felt steady. There was solid ground beneath my feet and breath in my lungs. I was awoman with no money, no plan, no safety net, standing there with tears on her face and her hand on the impossible.
My gaze found Reese across the clearing. She stood with Kade’s arm draped over her shoulders. She was smiling. It wasn’t a “gotcha” smile or a “wait until you see what’s next” smile. It was a “welcome to the club” look. The kind of expression one woman gives another when words would only cheapen what just happened.
I swallowed hard and turned back to Lucan.
The shift happened as fast as the first one. One blink, dragon. The next blink, man. Lucan stood in the flattened grass, naked and breathing hard. His skin was damp with sweat, and his purple-tinged eyes locked on mine.
Kade was already crossing the clearing with a pair of athletic shorts in his hand. He tossed them to Lucan without breaking stride.
Lucan stepped into the shorts and pulled them up as Kade stopped beside him. “You two good?”
Lucan looked at me, and I nodded.
Kade clapped Lucan’s shoulder once, then turned and walked toward the ATVs where Reese was waiting. They climbed on, and within seconds, they disappeared down a trail, leaving Reese’s truck behind.
Lucan watched me. He looked at me as if I were the center of his world. Like the mountains and the sky itself existed only as a frame around the place where I stood.
The danger shifted inside my chest. “He might hurt me” dissolved, and in its place, a fear bloomed that was so much worse. I sat down hard on the ground.
He might be the only thing that could make me feel whole again.
Chapter 16
Lucan
My dragon sang.
There was no other word for it. The rumble that started the moment her fingers pressed against my scales hadn’t stopped when I shifted back.
