“Stop confusing me,” she uttered as she caught up to him.
He weaved through the Crew as they were saying their goodnights.
“Uh oh!” Amos sang out. “First fight as a couple.”
“Shut up,” Trina and Nuke both demanded as they passed.
Nuke lurched at him and slapped the empty foil drink package out of his hand. “Nobody drinks Capri-Suns after the age of thirty.”
“That’s a made-up rule!” Amos yelled.
Cora giggled and covered her mouth when Amos glared at her, and maybe in the wee hours of the night, Trina would wake up and find that funny, but right now? “Look,” she whisper-screamed. “I don’t know what I’m doing here. Everything confuses me, and is unfamiliar, and collides with everything I’ve ever been taught. And you…you…”
“I’m what?”
“You’re a dragon, aren’t you?” she asked.
A hissing sound escaped him and he jerked those dark eyes to her. His elongated silver pupils appeared and disappeared, and he shook his head, and continued on to the trailer at the end.
“What’s your real name?” she asked softly.
“What is it you said? Some secrets should stay buried?”
He climbed the stairs and made his way into her old trailer. She followed and paused just inside. “That’s why I can’t stop running.”
Nuke lifted her duffel bag to his shoulder and frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You aren’t really here, Nuke. You said empty words, but they are damaging, and here is why. I’m so goddamn hungry to hear words like that because I’ve been through something. Because I’m still going through something. And it feels good to think someone would catch me when I fall, and ooooh I’m going to fall, Nuke. I’ll fall hard. It feels so damn good to think I’m not alone, but it’s not the truth. You can’t share basic parts of yourself with me, and I can’t share basic parts of myself with you, so what kind of friends can we really be?”
He inhaled deeply, his nostrils flaring slightly with the movement. His hair hung in his face, and his eyes were as black as the night. His face was twisted into something fearsome that would scare people on the street, but it didn’t scare her. She understood it. There was another half of her too. One she hid.
Nuke adjusted her duffel bag on his shoulder and sauntered to the door.
“I can get my bag,” she murmured.
Nuke paused right beside her, inches away.
She thought he would give her the strap of her duffel bag when he turned to her, but he didn’t. Instead, his eyes drifted to her lips, and there was a charge in the air between them. Electricity, almost. And she did want to give in. She didn’t want to ignore the desire. She wanted him to kiss her. Wanted it so badly because she knew it would wash away the rest of the world for a while.
“You know what I like?” he asked. Nuke lifted his hand and traced the outside of her birthmark. The giant one on her face, the mark she couldn’t ever look in the mirror without seeing. The one she used to get teased for when she was a child, the one that made her feel like she looked plain as an adult. She’d never let anyone touch it before now, but it felt good. It wasn’t burning their skin like before. It just felt warm, and comforting.
She leaned into his hand and shook her head. “What do you like?”
“Your birthmark carries through to your animal. It’s the only thing that stopped me tonight. It’s the only reason this place isn’t in ashes right now.”
Chills, chills, chills as she absorbed the dangerous things he admitted. He was capable of great destruction. But he’d just told her she was capable of stopping his fire. Never in a moment of her life had she felt power before now.
He leaned in and pressed his lips to hers, and her body short circuited. She had no control. He was dangerous. He was off-limits. He would bring the wrath of Manning and all of the Crow Blooded, but in this moment, she didn’t care. Right now, she was free. His lips moved against hers, and his hand slipped to her waist. She could feel the pad of his thumb under the hem of her shirt, and it brushed her skin right above her jeans, and oh, she just melted. Right against his chest, she melted. He took up every molecule of space in here. Filled her lungs, filled her chest, filled her mind like a quick shot of good whiskey. His tongue brushed past her lips and she opened wider for him, slipped her hands over his shoulders and held on tight. She didn’t want it to end, and he didn’t rush. Instead, he ran his fingertips down the length of her birthmark, down to her neck to the tip of her collar bone, down her arm. He trailed fire where he touched her, but it wasn’t painful. It felt soooo good.
Nuke eased back from the kiss and searched her eyes. “Tarek Alias Asheater.”
And he walked out with her duffel bag.
He’d given her his name. It was a dragon’s name. Everyone knew the stories of the Asheaters. Legends never died, but the dragons had. They hadn’t been around for a millennium. Humans had killed them off ages ago. At least…that’s what everyone thought.
He’d just given her a secret.
At the bottom of her stairs, he turned and looked back up at her. “You coming?”
With a nod, she murmured, “Yes.”
“Good.” A slow-spreading smile transformed his handsome face, and he offered her a hand down the stairs. “Don’t fall.”
Ha. Silly dragon.
It was already too late for that.
Chapter Eleven
“Trinadel Delilah Hogue.”
“Trinadel,” he repeated. She loved the sound of her name on his lips.
He bent his knee up where he sat against the wall, and rested his arm on it. Trina was lying on her side in the recliner he’d pulled in here for her.
“My mom used to call me her little Del Del. Because it was the end of my first name and the beginning of my middle name. Sometimes she’d call me Del Pickle. You know, like the type of pickles? Because I used to want extra pickles on my sandwiches.”
He cracked a grin. “My dad had nicknames for me and all my brothers.”
“What was yours?”
The smile fell from his face. “He called me Fier. He knew an old language. He never told me whether it meant Fire or Fear, though. When I would ask him, he always told me ‘what does it feel like it means today?’ I was always afraid when I was a kid, so most of the time I was Fear.”
“Afraid of what?”
He waited a few seconds before he answered, “Myself.”
Trina’s heart reached for him. She scooted closer to him on the recliner. “And what does it feel like it means today?”
“Fire. The Fear left years ago.”
Wow. “I want to get to where you are someday. No fear.”
“Mmm. To get rid of fear, you have to become the thing you’re afraid of.” He canted his head and studied her with those dark eyes that never seemed to miss anything. “I don’t wish that on you.”
Movement caught her eye, and she startled at a mouse that trotted across the floor and into the kitchen.
“Little vulture,” Nuke murmured as he tracked the rodent’s movements. “No crumb stands a chance in this house.”