Blackwing Dragon (Harper's Mountains 5) (6 page)

“You started it, Brenton!” Marny yelled. “You’ve been starting shit in my diner for two straight months now. About damn time you got your ass beat.” Marny gripped Rowan’s elbow and led her to the door. “Go on now before you have a mob after you.”

“Th-thanks, Marny.”

“Sure thing, hon.”

But when Rowan looked into her eyes, Marny wasn’t smiling anymore. She looked scared. Rowan’s dragon eyes did that to people. About now they would be glowing and churning gold like the sun, and her pupils would be elongated.

The walk back over to the motel parking lot seemed to take an hour. She could hear police sirens in the distance. They didn’t make her hurry. She had time—time which she needed to think. Kane had an artificial leg, and it was something he was obviously really uncomfortable with. Why else had he evaded the hell out of her questions about it earlier? But that wasn’t the only thing that had her concerned.

That man in there was right. Kane couldn’t be human. She’d felt his strength with her own hands. His power had rivaled hers, but he didn’t feel like a shifter. She had sensed nothing supernatural about him. He didn’t have a smell or waves of dominance like a bear would have. And he had to be a grizzly shifter—nothing else made sense. He’d shaken her off like she was air. Her. One of the biggest and strongest dragon shifters left on earth.

Dark Kane was hiding dark secrets.

The door creaked open under Rowan’s urging. The room was dark except for the single light over the sink at the back that illuminated the bed in a soft glow.

The room looked empty.

“Kane?”

“Don’t come in here,” he said in a voice she didn’t recognize. He sounded like a demon.

Rowan looked back out over the parking lot to the diner where the cops were pulling up, lights flashing. Going inside with Kane didn’t feel terribly safe, but waiting out here was definitely a bad idea.

Rowan eased into the room and squinted her eyes, letting her night vision adjust. “Where are you?”

A growl sounded from the other side of the bed, the guttural noise much too realistic. A damn shifter! Didn’t that beat all? She’d spent the entire day with him and not even guessed he was anything other than human.

Rowan padded carefully around the bed and hesitated. Kane sat there, sans shirt, knees drawn up, elbows resting on them, hands dangling in front of his legs, muscles flexed, and his eyes glowing a strange green color. Eyes that he wouldn’t let her see directly. The second she sat down in front of him, he angled his face away from her. This sucked. He still wouldn’t let her see him.

“What are you?”

Kane adjusted the leg of his jeans to cover the hint of metal, but she swatted his hand out of the way. “I already saw it, and I don’t care.”

Kane huffed a disgusted sound. “Bullshit.” He flipped his hair over to his other cheek, hiding his eyes completely from her.

“I don’t! You having a bum leg doesn’t make any difference to me.”

“Yeah?” he asked too loud. “You aren’t secretly rejoicing? Your job just got ten times easier. And it’s not a bum leg, Rowan! It’s fucking
gone
. It hurts all the fucking time, and it’s not even there. It’s like I can still feel it…burning. My nerves are shot—fuck! Just kill me already so I don’t have to pour my whole fucking life story out for you, Bloodrunner. This sucks enough without you knowing how weak I am.”

“I’m not here to kill you, Kane, you bulbous dumbass.”

“Then why are you here?” he yelled.

“Because Harper’s pregnant!” Rowan clapped her hands over her mouth and wished she could swallow that secret back down. She’d just betrayed the Bloodrunners before she’d even joined them.

Kane slid her a quick, glowing glance. “She can’t shift?”

Well, Rowan was already going to hell, so she may as well do it thoroughly. With a deeply irritated sigh, she removed her hands and scooted closer until she was sitting right in between his legs. He leaned as far back into the side of the mattress as he could manage, but at least he allowed her this close. “I’m here to protect Harper’s crew until she can call on her dragon again. As soon as she has her baby, I’ll be heading back to the Gray Backs where I belong. Now let me see.”

“See what?”

“You know what.”

He worked that jaw muscle good, stalling as he shook his head like she was pissing him off. Whatever. If she was sleeping in a room with a man, she at least wanted to know what kind of man he was.

Slowly, she reached forward and cupped his cheeks. His dark whiskers rasped against her palm, and gooseflesh surged up her arms. Gently, she pulled his face to hers, but he’d closed his eyes.

“You know,” he murmured softly. “You know what I am, right? You know, and this has all been some fucked-up game you’ve been playing. Some mind grenade you are about to pull the pin on.”

“Riddles, riddles, but I told you I’m not a brainy girl, Kane. Open your eyes.”

Kane slid his palms up her arms and gripped her wrists as though he was about to pull them away. But he didn’t. They stayed just like that, linked, touching, connected as quiet seconds dragged on. His heartbeat sounded so fast, like a hummingbird’s wings.

“Please,” she whispered, stroking her thumb under his eye.

Kane opened his eyes, and the green color glowed fiercely, too bright to pass as human. It wasn’t the bright hue that terrified her, though. No, her terror was from the long, reptilian pupils that constricted as he focused on her.

“Oh, shit!” Rowan released him and crab crawled backward until her head hit the corner of the wall. She had to get out of here! Rowan scrambled up and bolted for the door, but Kane was there, his giant hand flat on the surface and pinning it closed.

A soft sob left Rowan’s throat as she backed into a corner. “Wh-who…what…what…?”

Kane canted his head like an animal, his eyes glowing just as bright on the dark side of the room as they had on the light. “You really didn’t know?” He took a deliberate step closer to her, and she cowered in the corner, ducked her face away, gave him her neck. Kane was a monster. A monster just like her but worse. Kane could hide and pretend to be human.
Run!

Kane’s limp was back as he squared up to her. He wrapped his hand around the back of her neck, and this was it. He was going to strangle her. He was going to kill her!
Dragon!

But inside, her dragon was quiet and still. She was awed.

“Look at me, princess.”

Breath shaking, Rowan obeyed him, lifted her chin, and forced her eyes open. He didn’t look mad. He looked…sad. “I’m not going to hurt you, Bloodrunner.”

“You keep calling me that like you aren’t of my clan.”

“I’m not.”

“B-b-b—” Rowan squeezed her eyes closed and tried again. “Blackwing?”

“Blackwing Dragon,” he confirmed. But right when she thought he would shift his hand around her throat and choke her, his grip went gentle, and he pulled her against his chest. His arms slid around her shoulders, and he just stood there, holding her.

Rowan’s body went into shock. That’s the only thing that could explain her traitor hands sliding up the strong curves of his back and hugging him.

Softly he said, “I thought Damon sent you to kill me.”

“And you still helped me?”

Kane laughed a dark chuckle. “Well, I didn’t claim to be smart. And you lost your damn treasure. By the way, why the hell didn’t you put your treasure in your carry-on?”

“They wouldn’t let me. It was too big.”

“So everything you have told me is real. None of this is some fucked-up game to lure me into a trap?”

“No! God, I had no idea what you were talking about half the day. Fucking Blackwing Dragon. Are you going to kill me?”

Kane snorted. “Princess, you are perfectly safe from me. Trust me on that one.”

“Trust you? I just saw you play punchy-punchy murder on that guy’s face in there. Wait.” She eased back and moved his chin to the side, examining his split lip, which still looked like it needed stitches. “Why aren’t you healing? Why isn’t your dragon speeding this up?”

Kane made a
tick
sound behind his teeth and jerked his jaw out of her grip. “I’m not like you.”

“Okaaay,” she drawled, nodding like a bobble head. “I have about forty-five thousand questions.”

“I bet you do.” He slipped his hands from her shoulders, limped to the sink at the back of the room, and began filling the bowl of his hands with water. As he washed the blood off his face, his back muscles worked gracefully. His tattoos stretched from the knuckles of his left hand up his arm and over his shoulder, but his back was smooth and ink free. Delicious man.

Her sex pulsed once like it was a hungry little clam. Of course she would be sexually attracted to the one person on earth she couldn’t ever have. A fucking Blackwing Dragon! Their people were enemies. Had been for millennia. The war between Bloodrunners and Blackwings had annihilated the damn species.

But his ass looked so fucking firm, she wanted to bite it. She suddenly wanted to bite his bicep, too, and his shoulder, and those little indentations above his hips and maybe his bottom lip. Basically she wanted to eat him up like the psycho she’d apparently turned into.

With a slow, dazed blink, she said, “Question number one, do you always remove your shirt when you are pissed off?” If so, she would make a mental note to anger him often.

“There was blood on my shirt.”

“Oh.” She scrunched up her nose and sat on the edge of the bed. “Gross. Question number two, can I see your peg leg now?”

“What?” He shot her the dirtiest look she’d ever caught. “Fuck no. And it’s a prosthetic leg, not a peg leg. I’m not a damn pirate.”

“Come oooon,” she begged, laying on her side on the bed. “I’m going to be imagining it all night, probably dreaming about it, and it’ll be way worse than it actually is. My imagination is ridiculous.”

“Hell no. I haven’t shown it to anyone. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell your crew about this either. Or Damon.”

“Why not?”

“Because I already have to fight just to prove I’m strong. I’m challenged all the time. Telling the world I’m disabled isn’t going to help me. It’ll get every asshole who wanted to claim they bested a dragon picking fights with me.” He ran a towel over his face to dry it and turned around. The one light above him cast all his pretty muscles into deep, shadowed indentations. Now she wanted to lick him
and
bite him. What was wrong with her? She should be fleeing the Blackwing in terror. She’d heard rumor one still existed, and here she was, in the same tiny room with him.

Her survival instincts were broken.

“For the record, you sure as shit didn’t look disabled tonight. It took all of my strength to get you off that guy.” She cleared her throat delicately and picked at a long, loose thread on the comforter. “By the way, thanks for that. For defending me.”

“The guy tripped me,” he muttered.

“You were pissed off on my behalf before that, though. You told them to stop throwing stuff at me.”

“Yeah, why were you cowering to humans anyway? I don’t get it.” Kane crossed his arms over his chest and studied her. “I don’t get you.”

Those four words hurt like lashes. “Welcome to the club.” And no, she wasn’t going to get into why humans scared her more than shifters. She wasn’t about to share her deepest, darkest secrets with a Blackwing Dragon. She wasn’t a brainy girl, but she wasn’t dumb enough to sign her own death warrant either. Oh, she understood why he didn’t want others knowing he was down a leg. Any sign of weakness for a shifter could tip the balance of safety and death. She wasn’t exposing her weakness to him. Not tonight. Not ever. “I’ll show you my boobs.”

Kane’s face went slack. “What?”

“Show me your prosthetic leg, and I’ll take my shirt off.”

Kane’s eyes narrowed and dipped to her chest. Rowan grinned because he was actually considering it.

“Bra, too,” he negotiated.

“Naturally. Can’t see my boobs with my bra on. Do we have a deal?”

Kane was frowning hard and looked super suspicious. “Is this one of those things where you back out after I take my pants off—”

Rowan pulled her ripped-up shirt off her head, then peeled off her bra. She squealed, closed her eyes, and covered her boobs with her cupped hands. God, she couldn’t believe she was doing this.

When she opened her eyes again, Kane was smiling bigger than she’d ever seen. He was stunning. He strode forward a couple steps and unbuttoned the fly of his jeans, arched an eyebrow seductively, and jerked his chin at her hands.

“Maybe we should turn off that light.”

“Nooo, that wasn’t the deal, princess.” He flicked his fingers. “Nipples.”

She giggled and eased her hands away, then laid on her side and rested her cheek on her hand. “Now drop your pants, Blackwing, and show me that sexy bionic leg.”

Kane’s smile faded away, and he was now staring at her chest with an entranced look. She’d hypnotized him. Rowan jiggled her boobies around and laughed. He cleared his throat hard and looked down at his crotch with a frown. “Sooo, the leg looks rough.”

“Is it green?”

Kane snorted. “No, it’s not moldy, Rowan.”

“Does it have tentacles?”

“Okay, okay,” he said, that sexy smile returning. Kane pushed his pants down and stepped out of them.

She wanted to take all of him in, so Rowan sat up in bed and worked her gaze from top to bottom. His dark hair was tossed to the side, covering his right cheek, and his glowing eyes watched her carefully. His muscular neck dipped down to defined pecks, and his perfect nipples were drawn up tight as if the cold air from the vent was getting to him. His arms were massive, like two sledge hammers ready to do some serious damage, and his abs flexed with every shallow breath he took. He wore briefs—black, sooo shocking—and one leg was powerful, big, and defined. But his other leg was thinner, tapered at the knee, and disappeared into the cradle of a metal prosthetic. On that leg, there were deep scars that stretched from his knee up his thigh, and they looked red, and painful.

“Does it hurt?”

Kane adjusted his massive erection and winked. “It doesn’t right now.”

Rowan giggled. Of course the man would find an innuendo at a time like this. “Is it from combat?”

Kane nodded once, slow. He made his way to the bed, and she was enamored with the way the leg moved with him. He had really good control of it, even though he limped. He sat down right beside her. “I haven’t ever come right out and showed this to anyone.”