Page 59 of Dragon’s Rebel

Chapter 26

Once he’d decided to woo his mate with a fun date, Thorne had work to do. Rebel caught up with him while he was at one of his computers in the Batcave, patching all the ward monitoring systems and feeds from the newly-installed security cameras into a phone app, so he could monitor them remotely.

When all of them were at the bowling alley.

“You’re really serious about this group date thing,” she said, leaning against his desk. “Have you ever even been bowling?”

She was so close he could reach out and touch her. He wanted to—she’d just taken a shower and she smelled delicious. But he still wasn’t sure what the rules were, in their relationship.

But if they were on a date, casual touching and kissing were usually okay, weren’t they? Expected, even. And Rebel seemed to like kisses. Neck kisses, especially. He remembered her soft moans from their night together, and felt his dick start getting hard. He tried to ignore it.

What else did she like? Challenges.

“Afraid I’ll beat you?” he said.

She rolled her eyes. “You’re not going to beat me. You’ve never been bowling. You probably don’t even know how to keep score.”

“I looked it up on the internet. And I have superior strength and reflexes.”

She patted him on the head teasingly. “Of course you do.”

He smiled tantalizingly at her. “You’ll see.”

He went back to his work, but she didn’t leave. She just stood there, leaning on the desk, arms folded, looking at him strangely.

“Are you just going to stand there and stare at me all afternoon?” he asked finally? Having her there was not making his boner go away.

“No,” she said. “I’m just trying to wrap my head around cautious, security-obsessed Thorne the Guardian vacating the lair for an entire evening, just to go on a date. A human date. Not that I don’t want to go, but isn’t it a risk?”

“That’s what the alert app is for.” He indicated the screen. “We’ll know if anything tries to breach security, and we can fly back here in two minutes.” His face darkened for a moment. “I mean, Zane and Tyr can.”

She put her hand on his shoulder, acknowledging how much it sucked that he couldn’t fly with them. “Looks like you have everything under control,” she said. Her voice grew teasing again. “And if you want to learn how to have fun, far be it from me to stop you.”

“Human women like fun,” he said, going back to his program. Fun wasn’t his strong suit, but if that was what she needed, he’d do it or die trying.

“Hey,” she said, her fingers grazing his cheek. He looked up, startled. “You don’t have to change yourself for me,” she said. “You shouldn’t change yourself for anybody.”

He turned his head and impulsively kissed her hand, warmth spreading through his chest. He liked that she liked him the way he was. But he should change, if how he was couldn’t make her happy. He should be whatever his mate needed.

“Just be ready at six,” he said. “And you don’t need to eat dinner. We’re having pizza and nachos at the bowling alley.” Proper bowling food.

He’d looked that up on the internet, too.

When Rebel and the other mates appeared at six o-clock, Thorne was bowled over. And they hadn’t even gone near the alleys yet.

Blaze and Rebel and Tempest had gone into a girl-huddle earlier, and then dragged Zane away. Something to do with fashion and conjuring proper bowling outfits for them.

But when he saw what they’d come up with, his mouth dropped open. They had on matching black bowling shirts covered in sequins, with the shirttails knotted up under their breasts, leaving their midriffs bare.

Those were definitely not regulation.

They were paired with low-slung jeans with plenty of spandex for ease of movement. And to hug every curve.

He looked at Tyr looking at Tempest and saw how silly he looked with his mouth hanging open, so Thorne closed his. He looked back at Rebel and swallowed hard.

There went that boner again.

Rebel walked over to him and twirled around so he could get the full effect. “What do you think?”