Crouching Tigress Horny Dragon (Fire Mates #3) (8 page)

Increasing his speed, he dodged and weaved patients and medical staff alike, seeking an exit.

“Stop!” the order came again, louder this time.

The air around Ryan began to waver. His head roared. His skin burned.

Slamming against a door on his right, Ryan sprinted down a long corridor. He yelled at people to get out of his way.

They did. Usually screaming.

The cop/security guard followed, shouting
stop
over and over.

He’s going to risk shooting you soon, Conley, if you don’t do something.

The thought, sardonic and amused, scratched at Ryan’s fraying control, a second before the inevitable happened.

“Stop,” the demand boomed after him, louder than before and tainted with disbelief, “or I’ll shoot.”

Clichéd
, that sardonic side of Ryan tsked.

The crack of a gun firing shut the sardonic side up. A heartbeat before a bullet scraped against Ryan’s left deltoid.

Crap. The guard/cop really
had
shot at him? What the fuck? Where the hell was the Taser?

The dragon he was screeched, incensed. Enraged.

Ryan ignored it, just as he ignored the gun-toting cop/guard running after him. Blood seeped from the fresh wound in his arm, but he ignored that as well. It meant nothing. It would heal before anyone would see it, including himself.

What
he
needed to see was a way out. A door. An exit sign.

“Stop!” the guard shouted.

Does he really think I’m going to
? Ryan wondered, skidding sideways into a sharp left before scrambling back into a sprint down a new corridor.

An alarm began to blast around him.

This was so not—

A second shot cracked the air, puncturing the wall on Ryan’s right. Directly above the head of an elderly woman in a wheelchair.

The woman screamed.

“Whoa!” Ryan burst out, dread an icy river through his veins. The idiot was going to kill someone, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be Ryan.

Hitting the brakes, he stumbled to a halt, raising his hands to his head as he did so. “Don’t shoot,” he yelled over his shoulder, scanning the area around him.

People cowered behind whatever they could, their faces white with fear.

Fear of the mad man fleeing from a cop/guard, or fear of the monster possibly now standing in their midst, he didn’t know.

His control over the shift was tenuous at best, but he was still human. At least, his form was human.
What did he look like
?

“Don’t move!” The command was bellowed from behind him. “Turn around.”

Which one is it?
Ryan wondered with exasperated impatience as he searched his surroundings. There had to be an Exit sign somewhere. Surely. Even a door leading out to a—

Ahhh.

A relieved breath puffed from Ryan.

There.

“Turn around,” the order came again. “Slowly.”

Stare fixed on his escape route, Ryan let his lips curl into a smile. “Dude,” he tossed over his shoulder. “I’m afraid
slowly
isn’t an option for me anymore.”

Without waiting for a response—and really, there was no response that would change his next course of action—Ryan sprinted for the floor-to-ceiling picture window farther down the corridor, threw himself bandaged-shoulder first at the single pane and launched himself—in a shower of splintering glass—out of the hospital into the darkness beyond.

He shifted just as gravity took greedy hold of his human body.

Turned into his dragon form with such speed his body screamed in agony.

The chilly night air licked over his scales and he propelled himself higher into the clouds. The fact it was still night was a cold comfort to him. Not just because it meant there was less of a chance of him being spotted flying away from the hospital. It meant he hadn’t been there long. It meant Deanne couldn’t be far away.

It meant he would be able to find her, track her, easily.

Once he found somewhere safe to land.

Beating his wings with more force than he ever had before, he flew higher. The clouds would offer some coverage.

His senses detected faint shouts way below him. If he were to risk a look backward, he suspected he’d see his gung-ho cop/guard gaping up at the sky from the broken window.

He didn’t risk a look backward.

Instead, he thumped his wings faster, streamlining his body as much as he could to increase his speed.

For reasons he didn’t think entirely sound, he returned to the park near the bar where Deanne had first approached him. The chances of his clothes still being there were slim, but slim was better than buck-naked-and-hunted.

With the craziness of actually mating with Deanne, her freaking out about it, her trying to run away from him, her denying what she was, and then her sucker-punching him after he’d let her plummet through the sky for a while, he’d forgotten there was an
Extraho Venator
out there somewhere with Ryan and/or Deanne in his malevolent sights.

The cold night wrapped around his human form the second he shifted back. Curled into a semi-crouch, he scanned the surrounding area.

No movement. No hint of life beyond a family of squirrels in a nearby tree, startled, no doubt, by the sudden appearance and disappearance of an apex predator so close to them.

He lowered his gaze to the dark ground, resuming his search for his previously discarded clothes. Hell, even his jeans would suffice. Something to allow him to get back to his hotel room without being arrested. As incredibly well hung as he was, he didn’t think the size of his dick would save him from being cuffed and dragged away for walking the Chicago streets naked.

“C’mon, jeans,” he murmured in his best I’m-wanting-to-win-a-million-on-roulette voice.

It took him way longer than he would have liked, but eventually he found his clothes. At some point while he’d been flying all over the place with Deanne dangling beneath him, some kind of animal had taken a dump on his shirt. Maybe one of the squirrels in the tree?

Casting aside his shirt (damn, he’d really liked that shirt, as well), he let out a wry chuckle. Rendered shirtless by a small furry critter. Huh. Tyson would never let him live it down if he knew.

A few moments later, wearing his jeans, sock (only one. Who knew where the other was?), boots, and jacket (suspiciously smelling very musky. More squirrel attention, perhaps?), he exited the park.

By the time he reached his hotel—located a few blocks from the bar he’d first met Deanne—the tugging pull of the mating fire was beginning to build to an almost painful heat within him again.

His body, his soul, everything he was, craved Deanne. Not just in a sexual way, but in every way. He ached to hear her voice, to smell her hair. He wanted to have a conversation with her. They’d yet to do that. What would they talk about? Was she a
Game of Thrones
fan? Did she prefer Marvel to DC? Did she like country and western music? Hard rock? He wanted to know. It was like an itch inside his head.

And he wanted to slide into her tight heat more than he wanted breath.

He wanted to feel her body sliding over his. Beneath his.

Fuck.

As he crossed his hotel room, his body consumed by a bonfire he had no hope of extinguishing alone, the distant eastern horizon began to grow purple with the rising sun.

He hurried to the bathroom, stripped himself of what clothing he had and plunged himself into a cold shower.

His hands worked his body.
Every
part of his body. It was a futile exercise, of course. Even when he ejaculated with the thought of Deanne filling his head, the hunger of the mating fire intensified, as if mocking his attempt to purge it from his system.

He stood under the icy cold water, head down, eyes closed.

If he didn’t find her again soon, he didn’t know what would happen.

Help. He needed help to understand this.

Killing the water, he stepped from the shower, snagged the towel from the rack and rubbed himself dry. His skin prickled and burned at the contact. The fire-mate delirium threatening to overwhelm him made the simple task a form of sensory torture.

Christ. What would he do if he couldn’t find Deanne again? What would he become?

“Fuck,” he groaned, throwing the towel aside.

What would Deanne think of him not hanging up the towel? Would it be one of those things that drove her mental? A pet peeve? Or would she just roll her eyes at him when he did it at home?

A dry snort tore at the back of his throat. Home. He was already thinking of their home together. Shit, he needed to get this sorted out now.

Before he went insane. An insane dragon shifter was not a good thing for the world. Not at all.

Not bothering to dress, he snatched up his mobile phone (thankfully it had still been in his jeans pocket, along with his wallet and hotel room keycard) and rang his brother back in Australia. He had no idea what time it was in Sydney, but screw it; he needed to talk to Tyson.

He needed answers on what was going on, if it was normal, and how he controlled it.

The call connected three rings in.

“Tyson Conley’s phone,” a male voice said, the Australian accent strangely wonderful to Ryan’s ears, even as it dawned on him it wasn’t his brother talking.

“Kellan?” he asked, surprised.

Kellan Donovan was a dragon shifter from Newcastle, a city two hours north of Sydney. He had a bitingly dry sense of humor and a reputation for being very laid-back. Ryan had met him only twice, but knew he and Tyson had an easy alliance. They were both alpha males and more than capable, from what Ryan understood, of taking the other out if any territorial dispute arose.

It never had.

Ryan’s heart thumped faster.

With Ryan out of the country, and Tyson’s human Fire Mate heavily pregnant, it would be the perfect time for a dragon with a desire to expand his territory to make a move.

Shit.

“What the hell are you doing in Sydney answering Tyson’s mobile phone?” he asked.

Kellan laughed. “Steady on down, Conley, and pull back on the reins of that protective anger you’ve got going there. I’m here because your sister-in-law has gone into labor.”

Ryan blinked. “She’s what?”

Kellan laughed again, the sound low and good-natured. “Labor. That thing females do when they’re about to give birth.”

“Egg or baby?” Ryan blurted out.

Kellan snorted. “That’s the sixty-million-dollar question. My sister is in the bedroom with them.”

Ryan let out a ragged sigh of relief. Kellan’s sister was a nurse. And a dragon. No matter what Sera gave birth to, Kayla wouldn’t be freaked out in any way.

Ryan pictured the twin brother and sister shifters in Tyson’s home, helping Tyson and Sera with the biggest moment of their lives. A finger of guilt stabbed at him.

He should have been there. Instead, he’d bolted to the U.S. when the attention from Tyson’s public shift started to get on his nerves. Christ, what a tosser he was.

“Is Sera okay?” he asked, watching dawn paint the eastern sky a deep purple-pink.

“Kayla says she’s good.” The dry laugh that was always in Kellan’s voice made Ryan want to smile. “Your brother, on the other hand…”

Ryan frowned at the dangling declaration. “What’s up with Ty?”

Kellan chuckled. “Let’s just say he’s not coping and leave it at that. When he’s holding his babe in his arms, he’ll be a million times better.”

“You got much experience with babies, Donovan?” Ryan asked, his gut a twisting knot.

Shit. His brother needed him and he wasn’t there. Instead, Tyson had turned to a guy who was, essentially, a rival. As such.

“Only those I deal with when giving talks at schools,” Kellan answered.

A picture of Kellan surrounded by excitable young school-age children filled Ryan’s mind. Kellan Donovan, one of the most intimidating dragon shifters in Australia, a dragon with scales so black they seemed to devour any light around them and a fire blast so searing it once melted tungsten metal, was also the “face” of the state’s fire brigade educational unit and the man who spent a lot of his time when not fighting fires visiting schools for presentations.

Ryan chuckled.

“Yeah, laugh it up, Conley,” Kellan reproached. “One day I’ll be laughing at you with your own kidlets.”

The comeback reminded Ryan exactly why he’d called his brother. Smile fading from his face, he rubbed at the back of his neck. “Any chance I could talk to Tyson?”

“Hold on. I’ll check.”

“Thanks, dude,” Ryan said.

“
Oi, sis?
” Kellan shouted. Ryan had to jerk the phone away from his ear to save his preternaturally sensitive eardrums. Kellan would know that. One of these days, Ryan was going to thump the bastard in his sizeable arm. “Can Conley 2.0 talk to Tyson?”

Conley 2.0?

Ryan rolled his eyes. And then snorted back a laugh when Kayla’s faint answer came through the phone. “Not unless they both want Sera to rip their wings off.”

“Hear that?” Kellan asked Ryan.

“I did.”

“Can I help you with anything?”

The unexpected offer stilled Ryan, even as the unrelenting heat of the mating fire flared again. He hadn’t had that much to do with the dragon from Newcastle. Kellan wasn’t a rival to Ryan—Ryan was never planning to be an alpha, thank you very much. He was quite content with being an omega. Omegas came with zero responsibility—but Kellan was still an apex dragon with apex, alpha instincts.

As if aware of Ryan’s uncertainty, Kellan sighed. “I’m not going to exploit your weaknesses, Conley, if that’s what you’re thinking. Just one guy asking another guy if he needs a hand with anything. If it helps, I know the Australian ambassador in the U.S. His daughter is a firefighter here in Newey.”

For a moment, the urge to spill the beans to Kellan about everything happening to him rushed through him. Kellan was over a hundred years older than Ryan. He was experienced in facets of human and dragon life Ryan had yet to even consider. The word was, he’d dealt with more than one
Extraho Venator
in ways best not described. The other, more muttered word was, he was insanely good in bed and had defeated the mating fire’s power (although that rumor seemed ridiculous to Ryan now, given what he was going through).