Crouching Tigress Horny Dragon (Fire Mates #3) (7 page)

The woman studied her. “Shelter? A homeless one?”

Deanne nodded. “Somewhere safe for you. Where you’ll know I can’t hurt you or take your daughter. Somewhere you can be warm while I call my father.”

“I have a cell phone. You can call him on that. And we can meet him at the police station near the park’s main entry.”

Police station.

Deanne chewed her bottom lip. Julian had raised her to steer clear of the authorities. But she couldn’t turn her back on the woman and her child. She couldn’t. She needed to help them. She
wanted
to help them.

Because it was the right and decent thing to do.

Ryan’s earlier statement, delivered straight into her mind when he was a dragon and she was gripped in his clawed foot, came back to her.

Her heart thumped harder and faster into her throat.

Damn him, why did she have to think about him now?

“Here.”

The word jerked her back from the unsettling thought. She blinked, focusing on the woman before her.

She was holding out an old cell phone, its illuminated small screen telling Deanne it was functional.

“Call your dad,” the woman said. “We will wait for you at the police station.”

Deanne swallowed.

The woman smiled, the expression soft and wry. “No, I don’t know why I’m trusting you either. There’s just something…”

“She’s like a warm angel, mommy,” the little girl offered, her whisper loud enough for Deanne to hear. “I bet she can fly.”

Warm. Fly. The words messed with Deanne’s sanity. As did the woman’s unexpected kindness.

Taking the phone, she placed her anklet in the woman’s palm, and then straightened to her feet and walked a few yards away.

The woman watched her, eyes contemplative, before standing and shedding her top jacket.

Beneath it was another jacket, this one far more threadbare and tatty.

“I’ll leave this here,” she said, placing it neatly on the cardboard bed.

Her little girl scrambled to her feet and held up her arms to her mother with implicit trust.

The woman scooped her up and hugged her close to her side as the child wrapped thin arms and legs around her hips.

Deanne’s throat grew thicker still. It was hard to swallow.

The sight was tearing her apart.

“The police station,” the woman said to Deanne as her child tucked her head beneath her chin and locked her ankles around her waist. “Hold on, baby,” she whispered against the little girl’s head.

They hurried away, the woman’s strides quick and long. She glanced back often at Deanne, as if expecting to see her coming after them.

Deanne stayed motionless. She didn’t even move toward the jacket waiting for her on the cardboard.

She wouldn’t move until the woman could feel better about how much distance was between them.

Finally, as the darkness of the night folded around them, concealing them from Deanne’s sight, Deanne dialed Julian’s cell.

The call connected after the third ring. “Yes?”

“It’s me,” she said.

Her father’s deep voice filled her ear. “Did you kill the Australian dragon?”

Deanne’s heart quickened. Her mouth grew dry. No, she hadn’t. But she had done
something
to him. Something she shouldn’t be capable of doing. No human that she knew of, not even the strongest or most experienced of
Extraho Venator
had ever disabled a dragon in human form with a single punch, let alone send one flying through the air with…with…

Damn it, she still had no explanation for how she’d done what she’d done.

“Hello, Julian,” she said instead of answering. “Glad to know you’ve been worried about me.”

Her father grunted. “I have no fear for you when you are facing a dragon, Deanne.” His thick Russian accent turned the declaration into a rough dance of sounds. “Do you know its classification yet?”

“
Y Ddraig Goch
,” she answered, picturing Ryan’s shimmering blood-red scales, his four legs, his serpentine neck and massive, broad wings. “But he is very Australia when human. No hint of his Welsh line at all.”

Julian grunted again. “
Y Ddraig Goch
? Very ancient species. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen an
Y Ddraig Goch
. Are you sure?”

Deanne closed her eyes, unable to kill the memory of being held by Ryan in his foot as they flew above Chicago. “Very. I witnessed him shift from human to dragon to human again.”

“And you did not kill it?” His contempt and disappointment leached through his voice. “Why not? The word is it’s only young. Kestar has it at less than two hundred years.”

“Kestar?” Deanne scowled. “So
that’s
who was in the alley? Kestar is a moron who fucked up my kill.”

“Language, Deanne,” her father scolded.

Deanne ground her teeth. “I’m sorry, Julian.”

“When are you going to finish the kill?”

Letting out a sigh, she searched the darkness before her where the homeless woman and her daughter had disappeared. “Soon,” she said, turning toward where she’d left Ryan on the ground.

He wasn’t still there. She knew that. She didn’t know why, but she could feel he was gone.

Something deep in her existence cried out for him. Something she didn’t want to acknowledge; a craving. Not just a sexual one, but something far more profound…

“I can find him again without any problem,” she said.

“Why are you calling me then?” her father demanded, clearly impatient with their interaction. He had little time for failure. She had failed tonight. Big time.

Balling her fist, she returned her attention to the direction the mother and child had headed. “I need you to bring me some clothes, two of my warmest jackets, two blankets and some food—a box of granola bars, if nothing else—to the police station near the main entry of Marquette Park.”

Silence greeted her statement. Followed by, “Clothes?”

“Yes, Father,” she said, pulse wild. “I’m currently naked and in need of your assistance. Please hurry. I have questions I cannot answer—and I hope you can.”

He answered with a dry bark of a laugh. Deanne couldn’t miss the contempt in the humorless sound. “I have questions you
better
be able to answer, Deanne.”

Deanne swallowed at the disapproval in his voice. “Then it’s going to be an interesting conversation. Please hurry.”

She pictured the woman whose phone she now spoke into. Pictured her child. Looked at the jacket on the cardboard, given without argument. Remembered the way the woman protected her daughter. Felt their love for each other in the face of such a harsh life. She heard the child’s hungry tummy rumble. Saw her shiver in her mother’s arms.

She thought of the obscene amount of money she herself had in bank accounts throughout the world.

“Oh,” she said before her father could disconnect the call, her heart racing, “can you also bring the keys to my Barrington apartment, please? The investment property I bought last year? I’m going to give it to a woman I met tonight.”

She didn’t wait for Julian to respond.

She needed to get to the police station. She needed to make sure the woman and her child were safe.

And then, after she got some answers from her father, she needed to track down the Australian.

He may have given her the most incredible orgasm of her life, but he was still a dragon and she was an
Extraho Venator
.

That was the only relationship, the only connection between them that mattered.

A relationship that would end when her crossbow bolt pierced his scaly hide and she cut his heart from his chest.

T
he sting of human urine, disinfectant, and vomit filled Ryan’s breath.

He struggled to open his eyes, his head and shoulder a throbbing world of dull pain.

Whoa. What had hit him?

Bright light attacked him, white and glaring and directed straight at his face.

The smell of sick and dying people swamped over him. Electronic beeps and wheezing artificial breaths scraped at his ears.

Where was he?

Squinting against the light, he repositioned himself on the…the…bed? He was on a bed? How had he come to be on a bed?

Eyes protesting against the glare, he looked around himself.

He was in a hospital room.

His breath caught in his throat.

Shit, he was in a hospital room. Ah fuck, no. No, no, no. This wasn’t good.

Dragon shifters and human hospitals did
not
a good combination make.

Looking down, he saw only a hospital gown covered him. No clothes or undergarments to be found. A white bandage wrapped his right shoulder with firm pressure. He was also connected to one of the beeping, wheezing machines positioned beside the bed via an IV and some other tube.

It took his brain a second to realize the other tube was feeding oxygen into him through his nose.

Ryan ground his teeth, wrapped his fingers around the IV tube and yanked it out of his arm.

A distant shard of minimal pain later and the needle no longer pierced his skin.

Good. Who the fuck knew what the doctors had been pumping into him?

Tossing the IV tube aside, he pulled the oxygen feed from his nose, up over his head and let it fall to the floor.

Damn it, how long had he been here?

Closing his eyes for a moment, he focused on his body.

A burning hunger broiled and churned in the pit of his gut and groin. The mating fire. He was still in the mating fire. He’d met Deanne in the bar at least four or five hours ago. They’d consummated their relationship a little while after that.

Ha, good one, Ryan. What relationship? The one where she denied what she is and then somehow knocked you unconscious?

Growling, he planted his palms on the thin mattress and swung his legs over the edge.

The floor was like icy bites of pressure on his bare feet.

His head swam, a sudden tidal wave of black fog washing over him.

Around him, the beeping machines continued. He heard someone cough. Someone said something but he had no idea what.

Fuzzy. It was fuzzy. Muffled.

The black fog rolled through his vision. His stomach did a loop-the-loop.

Whoa.

Dragging in a deep, slow breath, he closed his eyes and counted to five, willing his rapid heartbeat to steady.

What the hell had Deanne hit him with?

“Buddy?” a voice said from nearby. “I don’t think you should have—”

Ryan opened his eyes and stood.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Startled shock filled the voice. “Buddy, you need to sit—”

Swinging his stare to the elderly man gaping at him from the bed next to his, he frowned. “How long have I been here?”

The old guy gaped some more, head wobbling in what might or might not be a shake.

Ryan scowled. What was the old guy’s problem? Hadn’t he ever seen someone get out of bed before?

“What’s wrong with your eyes?” the man croaked, shrinking back into his bed.

Ryan froze. Eyes? What was wrong with his—

The room. Its colors. Its light. You’re seeing like you would if you were in dragon form, not human. Your eyes…

He swung around, searching for a mirror.

None. What he did spy was the polished steel pole attached to the headboard of the elderly man’s bed.

With a low growl he definitely recognized as
not
human, he damn near launched himself across the bed he’d just vacated, grabbed at the pole, and stared at his warped reflection in it.

“Wh-what are you doing?” his fellow patient gasped.

Shit.

Ryan’s heart slammed up into his throat.

Shit. His eyes weren’t their normal color. Or even human.

They were his dragon’s eyes. No, not quite. They were some fucked-up mash of the two.

Shit.

He needed to get out of here.

He needed to find Deanne. He needed to talk to Tyson. He needed—

“Sir,” a new voice—this one female and aghast—stabbed at him from behind. “You need to return to your bed
now
.”

Ryan squeezed his eyes shut, gripping the pole like a lifeline. Was it whatever they’d pumped into him? What Deanne had done to him? Or something else? Was he overdue joining with his Fire Mate? He knew the twelve-hour period of the mating fire was one big, hot mess of sexual hunger and out-of-control libido. He knew it was one of the few times the dragon was more powerful than the human in control.

Did he just need to find Deanne and sink into her exquisite heat to stop whatever was going on?

Christ, he really should have listened to his brother when Tyson was talking about the mating fire. Was this what Tyson and Sera went through? Or had it been different for them because Sera was human?

Or was this different because Deanne was fighting it?

“Sir? You need to get back into—” A firm hand touched his shoulder.

He spun before the woman—the nurse, maybe? Or a visitor to the old guy?—could say
bed
.

Fearing what was going to happen, but needing to see all the same, he fixed her with a level stare. “I have to go.”

He hadn’t meant the words to come out as a snarl. He was unraveling. Losing control of his dragon.

This
so
wasn’t good.

The nurse squeaked, sheer terror flooding her face. “Oh my God, what…what’s wrong with your eyes?”

He pushed past her. There was no other option.

Gown flapping around his thighs and bare butt, he hurried from the room, ignoring the nurse shouting behind him.

The slap of his bare feet on the linoleum floor punched through his head, an echo of his heartbeat punching in his ears.

People shrank away from him, their shocked stares and horrified cries telling him he definitely didn’t look his best.

A rain of fire prickled his skin. His blood turned molten. His bones the same. The air he sucked in seared his lungs immediately, the moisture particles in each inhalation boiled by his body by the time they filled his trachea.

Fuck.

He was on the verge of shifting.

“Stop!” a male behind him yelled. Ryan recognized the sound of authority in the command. Cop. Or security. Either way, he couldn’t do as instructed.