Dig my hands deep into the pockets of my shorts. The waistband rides low. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”
He stares at me. His eyes intense. Bright. More gold today than brown or green, and my heart pinches a bit as I’m reminded of the amber Mom sold, a piece of my soul lost. His eyes have always been piercing, but this is different. It’s like he’s seeing me for the first time.
And I guess, in a way, he is.
It’s there in those expressive eyes. The hurt. The betrayal. I did that to him and can’t hide from it. Hurting him hurt me. More than I could ever expect. The pain is up there with losing Dad. With leaving the pride, leaving Az and Nidia. With feeling my draki slip away like mist between my fingers. And betraying my kind…even if they were planning to clip my wings and betray me.
“I took the day off,” he announces. Like I asked.
“Your dad just lets—”
“I don’t ask my dad. For pretty much anything. As long as I don’t flunk out, he doesn’t care.” The grooves along his cheeks deepen. “He cares about other things.” He nods slowly at me. My stomach cramps. “You can guess what those things are.”
The cramping takes a severe twist. Here we go. I might as well say it. Get it out there. He knows I know.
“The family business,” I volunteer.
His lips press into a grim line. “Yeah. My family business is hunting your family.”
I inhale, hate to ask, but have to know. “Did you tell them about—” His voice bites out, “Do you really think you would still be alive if I had?” His angry eyes claw me.
I sink onto the couch, pluck at the edge of my shorts. “I guess not.”
He shakes his head. “You saw that room at my house—”
“Yes,” I say quickly, not wanting to discuss his family’s trophy room. It haunts me every time I close my eyes. “I know what your family is capable of.”
“And you still came to my house?” he snaps. “Do you have a death wish?”
“I didn’t have much choice!” I hug myself, squeeze tightly as if I can shield myself from his anger.
Sighing, he lowers himself beside me. Closer than I expect. Closer than I want him right now. I smell his soap. His skin. Slowly, the smolder builds in my chest until I taste heat in my mouth. Smoke in my nose.
“Guess you’re not an enkros,” he says. “You’re a…dragon.”
I can tell he has a hard time saying this. I almost smile. “No. I’m not an enkros. And we’re not dragons. Not in a long time. We just descend from them. We call ourselves draki.”
“Draki.” He nods slowly, then leans in close, eyes angry. “You’ve had a good laugh over all this, huh?” His voice is as soft as a feather dragging across my waking skin.
“No.” I tremble. From dread or pleasure, I don’t know. Maybe both. He really shouldn’t be this close to me. “None of this has been what I’d call amusing.”
“I guess not. You know, you could have told me—”
“Could I?” I rub a hand over my forehead, directly at the center where it’s starting to throb. “Like you were so open with me.” At least my voice is strong, even as my insides quiver.
His expression hardens to stone. “What did you expect me to do? Tell the girl I can’t get out of my head that my family hunts mythical creatures? That they’re obsessed with the chase? The kill, making money by butchering up—”
“Stop!” I hold up a hand, working my lips, trying to chase down the bad taste from my mouth, stop the churn of my stomach. Because I don’t want to know all the details. Can’t bear hearing about what his family does to my kind. What he’s witnessed them do…maybe even had a hand in it. Standing in that shop of horrors he calls home is a memory I’ve yet to erase from my head.
“But you knew,” he says. “You saw me before.” His eyes are fierce, his words a savage rush—each one like the sharp dig of a knife. “You knew me from the mountains. That first day in the hallway, you recognized me.” His eyes feast on my face, dropping to my neck, down my body. Again, like he’s seeing me as he did in that cave. In the bathroom.
Seeing through my human skin to the draki underneath. “You had to know I could never hurt you. I didn’t then. How could I now?”
I get up and move into the kitchen, desperate for distance from him just then. But he’s not about to grant me that.
He follows close on my heels, announcing, “I knew it was you all this time. Don’t kid yourself.” His gaze burns feverishly bright. He reaches for my face with both hands, like he’s going to pull me close for a kiss.
“What do you mean?” I jerk away, and move around the small island, comforted to have something between us.
Frowning, he stares at me and continues, “Before I could understand it, I…remembered you. Sensed you.”
Somehow, this doesn’t surprise me. Standing at my locker with Tamra, there had been something in his eyes, his face.
He lifts a hand again, and this time I let him touch my face. I turn into his hand. My skin sighs against the cup of his palm. I move my mouth, taste the salty musk of his flesh.
His voice stokes the fire within me.
“I remember you. You were like burning firelight in that cave, all shimmery, dancing color.” I lean closer over the island, mesmerized by his words, his hand on my face. If he keeps talking this way, he’s going to see me like that again. “Tell me you thought about me. That you think about me now.”
My lips move, but I can’t speak.
His hand drops, and I feel suddenly cold. Bereft. The way I’ve felt for so long now. Even before arriving in Chaparral. Since I manifested at age eleven and lost myself. Became simply the fire-breather to everyone who knew me. My parents. My sister. Cassian. They saw me as that first and foremost. I guess even I’m guilty of that. Of seeing myself as nothing beyond the last draki fire-breather.
Only now, here with Will, I realize I’m something more. Someone not bound by the rules of her pride, her race, her family. Someone who can be loved for herself, draki or not.
“I thought about you,” I whisper, my voice not my own. It belongs to someone else.
Someone brave, someone about to risk everything and follow her heart. “I’ve never stopped thinking about you.” Somehow, I doubt I ever will.
Then, I’m rewarded with his hands on my face again. His lips on my mouth, brushing so softly, so tenderly, but the hunger is there, held in check. I feel it like a storm rising on the air. My breath shudders against his lips and he kisses me harder, his hands on my face tightening. For a moment, I let myself forget the rumbling winds. As his hands angle my head, I grip the hard curve of his biceps and enjoy the press of his body against mine.
His lips start to feel cold, icy moving against mine, and I realize it’s not him. It’s me, growing hotter. Too hot. With a gasp, I break from him, round the island, and grip the hard edge of the counter in both hands. The storm winds settle. He still doesn’t know about my particular talent, and I’d rather him not learn this way.
His chest lifts and falls with ragged breaths. He says my name with such need that I take a long blink. When I reopen my eyes, he looks calmer, steadier. I don’t feel quite the same need to bolt when he holds out his hand. His eyes promise the refuge I crave.
Placing my hand in his, he guides me back into the living room.
“Tell me now,” he urges, the glitter in his eyes desperate and hungry for the truth. “I want to know everything about you.”
He already knows. At least the biggest secret of all. And while logically I know I should keep as much as I can to myself—for the sake of my pride, my species—I can’t. Not anymore.
Not with him. I can hold nothing back. Not with the boy who protected me countless times. In the mountains. In his house. Even that day at school. If he wanted to harm me, he would have done so long ago. If he wanted to hurt me, he would not look at me the way he does. He couldn’t fake that. I don’t want anything coming between us again. It’s time for the truth.
“My mother, Tamra…they’re not like me. Not…draki.”
He looks at me, confused as he takes my other hand in his. I plunge in, explain the pride to him, how we live, manifest and demanifest. How our evolution has provided us with the greatest means of protection—allowing us to shift into human form. “You see, it’s impossible to maintain human form while we’re afraid and threatened. It’s a defense mechanism of our species…to revert back to our true form where we’re stronger and can use our talents. That’s why I started to manifest in the bathroom when Brooklyn and her crew jumped me.”