A week later, Javier decided to return the favor and treat the ladies to dinner. He’d finished grinding through a few math assignments online and had just rose from the couch to take a break when he saw the pizza deliveryman parking by the curb.

Before the guy got out of his car, Javier was out of his seat to flag him down.

“Order for Yasmin Silva?”

“Yeah, that’s me.” When the kid cocked a dubious eyebrow, Javier chuckled. “My girlfriend placed the order. I’m paying for it. How much did she take me for?” He glanced at the considerable amount of food, four pizza boxes, wings from the smell of the hot and spicy buffalo sauce, and garlic bread. His stomach made a dragon-sized rumble.

“Uh, seventy-three dollars and forty cents.”

Javier passed the teen a neat stack of five twenties. “Keep the change.”

“Dude, thanks.”

“No prob.”

After the guy left, Javier crossed over to the other side of the duplex. Since his hands were occupied, he funneled a shot of earth magic to the planter growing alongside the porch. The leafy plant grew an additional foot and sprouted pink buds amidst the verdant green leaves, like a time lapse video. He tapped one into the doorbell. What good were florakinetic powers if he couldn’t use them as a third hand?

Yasmin opened the door a moment later, purse in hand. “You’re here faster than—Huh?”

He cracked a big grin. “Was someone looking for this, or is it all mine since I paid for it?”

“Uh…” She blinked at him. “What’d you do that for?”

“It seemed the neighborly thing to do. And maybe I was hoping for another invite. Nothing will convince me the three of you can devour this much food.”

Yasmin glanced at the overgrown plant spilling from its container. Her lips twisted, as though trying to hold back a smile, but her eyes gleamed with amusement. “I dunno. Amaya can put away some hot wings. Did you do that to my rose bush?”

“Maybe.” An ounce of magical concentration bent a stem toward her. The rose blossom kissed her cheek.

“Brat.” Despite her chuckles, she leaned into the silken flower and nuzzled it, reminding him so much of a cat.

He missed her animal form and the old days of running alongside her through the overgrown jungle flora in their beastly bodies. Back then, he’d been small enough to travel without disturbing the plant life. “Well, can I come in?”

“Come on.” She gestured him inside with one arm. Javier slipped past her and mentally patted himself on the back for being in the right place at the right time. “But later on you’re gonna have to plant that bush in the ground.”

“Fair enough.”

Gillian looked over form the couch and smiled. “You are much better looking than our usual pizza dude. New job?”

“Nah, just happened by at the right time. You ladies mind if I join you?”

“I don’t mind. Amaya! You mind if our hottie neighbor crashes our dinner?” Gillian yelled toward the stairs.

A second later, Amaya’s voice echoed downstairs, “That’s cool!”

“Thanks.”

He carried their dinner bounty to the kitchen and laid out boxes across the counters. Starving, he popped open the first box then frowned at the weird contents. “Hey, Yaz, why does this one have lettuce on it?”

“That’s a taco pizza. There’s salsa, grilled steak, lettuce, tomato, shredded cheese, and crumbled up tortilla chips.”

“And this one?” He eyed the second box, trying to pick out the flavor. “Are those wine soaked pears?”

Yasmin leaned over. “Yeah, with gorgonzola cheese and arugula.”

“Whatever happened to normal toppings like pepperoni?”

She rolled her eyes. “Bucca’s has fun pizzas. But if you keep looking, you’ll see there’s a bacon cheeseburger in one of the boxes able to satisfy your meat craving. The fourth is a goat cheese and rosemary chicken.”

“Fancy ass pizzas are unnatural,” he muttered. “It’s like offering pineapple on pizza.”

“Hawaiian pizza is amazing.”

“It’s disgusting.”

Yasmin poked him in the arm with her index finger, delivering a mild zap that zinged down his nerves to his spine. “Blasphemer.”

“Pineapple does not be—Whoa, what the hell?” He’d barely jerked from her electric touch, but a wild flurry of tickles flooded down his body after the shock ran its course. She’d actually cast a spell on him. A playful one, a but a spell nonetheless, subjecting him to the sensation of inescapable tickles. “That’s magical battery. I should call the police,” he teased.

“It is not.” She put on an exaggerated scowl, but her smile slipped through a few times. “And wouldn’t it be assault?”

“No, assault is verbal. Battery is unlawful physical action.”

Gillian cocked a brow. “Look who’s actually learning despite burying himself under a mountain of studies. Nice. How’s it going anyway?”

“I enjoy it. Makes it easy to learn when the material is fascinating. Of course, most of my courses this semester are core requirements for the university. Fall should be different.”

Amaya popped into the kitchen and claimed a slice of goat cheese and chicken pizza. “I’m late to the party, but I want it on the record that Yasmin should have been in witch’s prison a thousand times over for all the stuff she’s done to us.”

“My gods, you exaggerate.”

“Last year she hexed my hair green.”

“It was St. Patrick’s Day.”

“For a month,” Amaya finished while Gillian chortled.

Even Javier had to snort back a laugh. “Things must never be dull here.”

“Yeah, she keeps things interesting,” Gillian said.

Despite his misgivings about their unusual designer pizzas, he took a slice from each box and piled on a mountain of spicy wings. When the ladies finished their selections and moved to the couch, Javier managed to snag a spot between Yasmin and Gillian, settling against the cushions with his plate on his lap. Amaya shot Yasmin a helpless look, a meek shrug of a shoulder, and settled in the empty recliner.

Score one for Javier.

“Keeping your grades up?” Amaya asked.

“Of course.”

Yasmin snickered. “He’s a dragon. They don’t fail at anything.”

Javier hid his grin behind a pizza slice. Dragons certainly didn’t fail at anything, especially when it came to earning back the girls of their dreams.

It was hard to be irritated with Javier when all of his recent accomplishments filled her with delight. He’d come far from being the lazy dragon bumming off his parents, living carefree in a stylish beach house. Yasmin picked at her taco pizza and tried not to look over for the fifth time. He’d already caught her staring once.

And she’d been forced to lie and say there was a spider on his shoulder.

Then to cover that lie she’d had to conjure a spider, which was a bit of magic she still struggled with from time to time. She’d reached over and swept the imaginary arachnid from his shirt, summoned a sweet black widow from the garden, then opened her palm to reveal it.

The moment they’d seen it, Gillian and Amaya shrieked up a storm until Yasmin teleported it back outside.

Was it sexy or what that Javier hadn’t even flinched? Spiders fascinated the guy.

Meanwhile, her friends had been unsettled for the past half hour.

“We’re going to have to spray down the house,” Amaya said. Her gaze darted around the living room, as if expecting a whole nest to swarm out of the tiny crevice and from beneath the furniture.

“We don’t have to spray.”

“Widows are poisonous, Yaz,” Gillian insisted.

“Venomous,” Javier said. “If you bite it and get sick, it’s poisonous. When it bites you, and you get sick, it’s venomous.”

“Whatever, know-it-all.”

Javier’s grin spread to Cheshire Cat proportions. Yasmin bit back her laughter. Intelligence was sexy, and the dragon did it so well.

Gillian shuddered. “It probably won’t do anything to either of you since y’all are shifters, but I’m sooooo not landing in the hospital over a spider bite.”

Yasmin hid her smile behind her drink. Later, she’d fess up to the girls and calm them down, otherwise she was bound to return home and find her father spraying down the premises with some spider-repelling concoction from her mother—or worse, an actual pest guy in the yard.

“Anyway. I’m going to bed.” A series of creaks, pops, and low groans came from Gillian as she struggled off the couch to her feet. “Night, y’all.”

Yasmin glanced at her. “Huh? You’re going to bed?”

“I have a quiz in the morning, and the gym kicked my ass today.”

“You kicked your own ass,” Amaya said, laughing as she collected the plates from the coffee table and stacked empty glasses. “I think I’m done, too. Movie’s over, and I wanna read in bed for a little while before I pass out into this food coma.”

So much for friendship. She recognized their devious plan for what it was—leave her alone with Javier.

Credits scrolled over the screen and romantic music played during the movie’s final moments,

Fortunately, he rose a moment later and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Thanks for letting me hang with girls. I had fun.”

“It was the least we could do after you paid.”

“It wasn’t a problem. Besides, I owed you. Anyway, I’m gonna head on out. Thanks again.”

She jumped up. “I’ll walk you to the door.”

“You don’t gotta do that, Yaz.”

“Hey, my mama taught me manners.” And it gave her a few more minutes in his company.

They moved through the house from the living room to the dimmed entrance hall. There wasn’t a noise in the house, her friends quiet upstairs. Too quiet.

“So, uh… Night.”

“Yeah. Night.” Then he didn’t move.

Mentally, she tried to will him to budge from the stoop.

They stood on the threshold of her door for an awkward ten seconds before Javier took matters into his own hands. Or maybe she met him halfway, because one moment she was admiring the breadth of his shoulders in his nice button-down shirt, and in the next, his mouth was slanting over hers.

Yasmin made a tiny sound of surprise in her throat. Instead of jerking away, her traitorous body moved into him—plastered against him. Her nipples beaded into hard points.

Then she laced her fingers through his hair. He’d cut it, and part of her mourned the lost inches. On the islands, it had almost reached his back. Now, it was shoulder length.

Still perfect and silky and soft under her hands.

Wait, wait. Kissing Javier was bad, because friends didn’t make out in deserted doorways.

A Herculean force of will allowed Yasmin to pull her mouth away from his tempting lips, even though she was dying for another taste.

Javier didn’t go after her again. He watched her, green eyes smoldering and muscled chest heaving beneath a fitted gray tee. His nostrils flared, and his gaze darted down to the juncture of her thighs. It wasn’t fair that she could be so wet from one kiss. And it was doubly unfair that the last thing either of them needed was to further complicate shit between them by becoming fuckbuddies.

“This isn’t a good idea. Things were already...”

“Already what?”

“Confusing.”

He shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll see.”

We’ll see?

“Anyway, night, Yasmin.”

She stared at his back as he walked away and wondered what the hell had just happened.