Chapter Eight
“Whoa,” Tessa murmured, sitting straight up in bed when a mighty crash sounded outside, making the ground shake.
She sat stock-still for a minute, clutching the sheets, blinking at the morning light, wondering where she was.
Her dreams had been filled with a confusing blur of images — like barbecues that turned into bonfires and raged out of control — but no loud noises. Not like the sound of a hang glider crashing through the trees and tumbling across the lawn in front of the house.
Then she remembered — this was Hawaii, not Arizona. And — oh, my — that probably wasn’t a hang glider outside her door.
She threw back the sheets and ran to the front door, where she wavered for a second. What if that was Damien Morgan coming to steal her away?
But Morgan, she decided a moment later, would bellow and roar, and all she heard outside was a low, rumbly moan. Slowly, she cracked open the door and peeked.
Nothing. Not in her line of sight anyway. But the moan grew louder.
She edged a few inches out, holding on to the doorframe as if a tornado might come along and whip her away.
“Tessa.” A whisper reached her ears, barely audible over the sound of the sea and the rustling foliage. The sound was so low, it would have been easy to dismiss. But instinct drew her closer, and her soul cried out. What if that was Kai? What if he was hurt? Before she knew what she was doing, she’d thrown the door wide and rushed outside.
“Kai?”
She got as far as two steps off the porch before screeching to an abrupt stop.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered, backing up slowly.
It wasn’t Kai. It wasn’t even human, and it sure as hell wasn’t a hang glider.
It was a dragon. A real-life dragon, lying crumpled on the ground.
Tessa gulped down the scream in her throat, unsure if she was more fascinated or frightened. She’d been half hoping the shifter thing was an elaborate hoax. Hoping that when Ella had shifted to fox form in front of her eyes, there’d been some kind of trick involved. But holy smokes. The creature that lay before her was as big as a truck, and its chest rose and fell with each heavy breath. Its ridged tail flicked quietly, sending pebbles tumbling over the beach, and its claws clutched at the ground.
It’s in pain, she realized.
She stood frozen in place, wondering what to do. Wondering what it would do.
The dragon moaned. One massive wing dragged across the ground, bent at a strange angle, while the other was folded neatly across the beast’s side.
Tessa. The whisper reached her mind exactly as its eyes opened, focused on her. Eyes so blue, they rivaled the sky.
She stiffened, and her breath caught.
“Kai?”
He blinked, and her heart jumped into her throat. It really was him. And whoa — he really was a dragon shifter.
Her heart thumped the way it had when she’d first met him at the estate gate — hard and heavy, along with an achy sensation under her ribs and a yearning she couldn’t explain.
One second, she was rooted to the ground. The next, she rushed up to him and fell to her knees. “Kai…”
His muzzle was almost as big as her torso, but her fear had vanished, replaced by the instinct to hold and help. How badly was he hurt? Was he dying?
“Keep still,” she murmured, touching one of his long, tapered ears. Marveling at how silky it felt despite the weather-hardened appearance. Crying at the pain she could sense.
She scanned his huge body, trying to make out the nature of his injuries, but her mind kept stalling out on the basics.
Wings. Kai has wings.
Great, sectioned wings that looked remarkably delicate despite their sheer expanse. A broad, armored chest that rose and fell with every heated exhale, and a ridged neck. All that and incredibly blue eyes that gazed at her in a mixture of wonder and relief.
“Kai,” she whispered, rubbing his ear.
She couldn’t make out any details, only that patches of his leathery skin were darker than others. Was that blood? And the wing — was it broken?
A low, rumbly sound echoed through the ground, and she jerked away. But the sound stopped, too, and that wave of yearning swept over her again as if leaving an inch between her body and Kai’s was too much. As if she belonged there with him.
When she reached out gingerly and started stroking his ears again, the rumble resumed and Kai sighed.
That rumble wasn’t a growl of warning. It was a dragon’s version of a purr. He liked being petted.
And damn, she liked it, too. Her body warmed, and if it hadn’t been for his injuries, she’d have been tempted to curl up beside him.
She kneeled, touching his ears, trying to process the jumble of emotions inside. Fear. Wonder. Worry. Love.
Whoa. Wait a minute. Love? She stared at her hand as it moved over his ears.
She was probably just mixed up. Still in shock over all that had transpired in the last twenty-four hours. That had to be it, right?
But the ache inside her grew and grew, and she found herself moving closer to the dragon.
Closer to Kai, her soul whispered deep inside.
She closed her eyes, still stroking his ears, telling herself she wasn’t crazy. Just a little mixed up. Running for help seemed like a sensible option, but she couldn’t drag herself away. She couldn’t think clearly at all, as if she was in a bubble, apart from the world. Apart from everything but Kai.
He pressed into her hand, begging for her to continue. A minute ticked by, and the warmth between them grew steadily, filling her with comfort and hope. Time ticked to a stop, and every breath stretched to infinity. Tessa kept her eyes shut tightly, because she’d never felt anything so magical in her life.
But then Kai groaned again, and her eyes snapped open.
“Oh,” she breathed as reality set back in.
He was human again. Human and sprawled on his side, with his bare back covered in gashes and blood.
“Kai,” she cried, touching his shoulders, wondering if she’d just imagined the dragon part.
“Tess…” he murmured.
“Oh, my God. Kai.” The words stuck in her throat and recycled themselves a half-dozen times as she tried to calm herself down.
His hair was matted and mussed, and a long, dark burn line extended down his back. Down, down, and down, right to—
“Oh, my,” she said, half whisper, half gasp.
He wasn’t just bare-chested. He was bare everything. And any inch of his tanned, toned body that wasn’t smudged with blood or soot was scratched, or worse.
She nearly asked, What happened? but decided she’d rather not know. Not when she had more important things to do. She dashed back to the porch to grab a towel, then returned to Kai’s side, ready to stem the flow of blood in the worst of his wounds.
“Get Silas,” Kai said in a voice as dry and cracked as his lips.
“I need to stop the bleeding first.”
“I’m okay,” he croaked.
“You sure don’t look it. Now hold still.”
She checked the biggest gash, but the blood was mostly dried. In fact, the wound was already closed. The scratches all around it were healing, as was the tear across his lower back.
“I’m fine,” he rasped, rolling to his side.
He certainly wasn’t fine, although he wasn’t the oozing mess she’d feared. She threw the towel over his hips — not that he seemed the least bit embarrassed by his nudity. More like she was.
Her necklace swung out from her neck when she knelt, catching the morning light. Kai reached up and touched the pendant.
“Same color as your eyes,” he whispered. “Beautiful.”
His eyes were glowing again — deep blue fringed with mesmerizing little yellow sparks — and his hand cupped her cheek. Tessa covered his hand with hers and held her breath. A whale could breach right out of the ocean behind them, and she wouldn’t be able to tear her gaze away from Kai. The outside world grew muted and far away, and all she could hear was the rush of blood in her veins.
“Tessa,” he whispered. But then his eyes slid shut, and his head tilted to the ground.
“Kai!” She squeezed his hand, then shook his shoulder. “Kai!”
Panic welled up in her, but she gulped it down. She’d be no help if she turned into a blubbering mess. What she had to do was remember whatever it was she’d learned in that first aid course, so long ago. Something about checking the scene and checking breathing, right?
She kneeled down and saw a blade of grass stir under Kai’s breath. He’d passed out, but he was alive. What next?
Calling for help. She had to find someone. She looked around. Which of the other men lived closest? Where were they? Reluctantly, she pulled away from Kai and sprinted up the path. And damn, she’d never been so happy to see Silas, musing over a mug of coffee in the open-sided meeting house as just then.
“Help! Kai is hurt. Please help.”
Within minutes, Silas and Boone were kneeling at Kai’s side.
“Kai,” Silas growled, shaking him roughly.
“Hey! He’s hurt.”
“Not that hurt.”
Tessa gaped. A second later, her vision went red, and a switch in her flipped. Before she even knew what she was doing, she’d grabbed Silas’s shoulder and shoved him back. He sat, ass in the grass, blinking up at her.
Everything went very, very quiet, and Boone muttered, “Oh, shit.”
Somehow, his comment fueled her anger again, and Tessa thrust her hands to her hips.
“He’s hurt. Are you going to help him, or should I do it myself?”
Boone stepped back. Silas glowered.
“We heal quickly,” the dragon shifter said as his tanned face turned a deep shade of red.
“Do you? I wouldn’t know,” she said, refusing to back down. “All I know is that there’s a hell of a lot of blood on his body and a couple of very serious gashes.”
Silas jumped to his feet in one quick, effortless motion and stepped right into her space, staring her down. “There are many things you don’t know about the world of shifters, Miss Byrne.”
“I know that’s no way to treat an injured man,” she shot back, refusing to be cowed. Later, she’d let her knees knock and her teeth chatter at the power and anger she sensed sloughing off Silas. But not now.
They stood staring each other down until Hunter lumbered down the path, creating enough of a ruckus with his size that the impasse was broken.
“Carry him,” Silas muttered, stepping away from Tessa.
Hunter took Kai’s shoulders, and Boone grabbed his feet while Tessa fussed from alongside. She did her best to keep the towel looped over Kai, too, which made Boone grin.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. Shifters ain’t modest.”
Shifters might not be, but she sure as hell felt funny gawking at a naked man — even if the man in question was the one she’d been fantasizing about hours earlier.
“And the next time you’re injured, Boone?” she asked, arching an eyebrow at him.
He laughed. “Then I hope you’re here to take care of me, sweetheart.”
She nearly smiled, but then frowned, because the likelihood of there being a next time was slim. She’d be on her way soon, for one thing, and she really didn’t want to see any of these men hurt, for another. Not even Silas, as much as he rubbed her the wrong way.
Kai was a big man, but Hunter and Boone carried him easily. They followed a winding path up the steep slope of the estate. A stream skipped along the flagstone path, the edges overgrown with flowers and leafy bushes she couldn’t name. When they reached what had to be Kai’s house, Tessa stopped and gawked for a moment. The view was spectacular, and so was the house. Stone walls squared off by huge expanses of glass backed into the cliff, retreating into a dwelling that was part Frank Lloyd Wright, part dragon’s lair. Rather than windows, the entire front was made of sliding glass doors, and they were all pushed open, welcoming in the sky and the light.
“Watch out,” Boone muttered as they maneuvered Kai onto the couch.
Tessa followed them inside. The place was imposing from the outside, but it was cozy inside, with colorful rugs and framed images on the walls — one of a lush, mist-covered mountain, another of a yellow flower, growing beside a rock.
Silas stood frowning at the door for a while, then motioned the others out.
“You.” He pointed at Tessa. “Stay if you insist. But you’ll see that he’s all right.”
He spun and walked away.
Boone waggled his eyebrows before following Silas. “Go at it, Nurse Tessa. You’ve got your patient all to yourself.”
She caught her protest a minute before it left her lips. She’d insisted on helping, so here she was.
She ran a hand over Kai’s forehead. His breathing was steady, and his wounds were no worse than before. In fact, the longest gash was already scabbing over. But he was still a mess, and she wasn’t going to let him lie there in that state.
She set off, roaming the house for supplies. The living room was airy and sparsely furnished. The kitchen was a gleaming, modern expanse with white counters and white doors. The bedroom—
She gulped and forced her eyes away from the king-size bed with its tangled sheets. Too late, though — her dirty mind was already spinning with a dozen intimate images.
“Bathroom,” she murmured, ordering her legs onward.
The bathroom was huge, with a spacious, blue-tiled shower she would have loved to try out. Like the rest of Kai’s home, it was a little bare but orderly, with shaving utensils lying enough out of place to give the space a homey feel rather than something from a photo shoot.
She grabbed a towel from the bathroom and a bowl of warm, soapy water from the kitchen and proceeded to wipe Kai’s skin clean.
Silas was right. Kai seemed fine. Slumbering, not suffering, as she’d initially feared.
She rose and stepped back, watching him for a minute. He looked ten years younger now that he was at rest. All the worry he carried with him, all that…that — whatever it was he kept bottled up inside — was gone, at least temporarily. She reached out, brushing a finger along the sharp line of his eyebrow, tracing the upward curve.
Okay, Tessa, she caught herself. Quit drooling. Quit dreaming. Get on with it.
She forced herself to step back and look around the strange mix of bare-bones bachelor pad and fancy lifestyle magazine. The furniture was all hardwood with smooth, creamy tones. The floor-to-ceiling bookshelf was filled with beautiful books, and every window was hung with a glass ornament of some kind that caught and reflected the light. She walked over to one and touched it gingerly. The glass bauble seemed impossibly fragile, the blue color practically alive. The next window had a yellow ball like a tiny, tropical sun, and the next—
She stopped and held her breath. In the next window hung an emerald pendant exactly the color of her necklace.
Same color as your eyes, Kai had said. Beautiful.
She held her pendant up to the one hanging in the window and turned it this way and that, doubling the green splotch it cast against the white wall of the room. They were different shapes and sizes, but the color was exactly the same.
“Beautiful,” she whispered.
The beam of green light lit a framed photo of a young boy with a happy couple. The woman had Kai’s blue eyes, and the man had his upswept eyebrows. Kai with his parents. Tessa touched the frame gently then pulled away. There was something intensely private about the photo — private and sad. She turned away with a sigh.
The rest of the house — what there was of it, because it looked bigger from the outside than it really was — was also decorated with colorful baubles, and she couldn’t help wondering whether that was a reflection of Kai’s personal taste or whether all dragons liked shiny, beautiful things that infused their world with energy and light.
A spiral staircase wound upward, and she padded the stairs quietly, wondering where they led. Another room? A rooftop deck?
The latter, as it turned out, and she whistled at the view. The neighboring islands seemed bigger and closer from up there, and she swore she could make out a glimpse of Oahu between Molokai and Lanai. She stood at the edge, closed her eyes, and spread her arms wide. What would it be like to be able to fly? To turn and soar and glide over the mountains and the sea?
The breeze teased her hair as childhood dreams rushed out of the dark recesses of her memory and into the present, telling her how easy flying would be. All she had to do was curl her fingers slightly to bank left or right. To climb upward, all she’d have to do was tilt her chin up and head for the sky.
It felt so real. So vivid. So achievable. But then she opened her eyes and remembered. Those weren’t wings flapping — it was just the movement of her sarong in the wind. And the cool kiss of upper altitude air on her cheek was just the pinch of the sea breeze.
She sighed and backed away from the edge, suddenly sheepish. She’d better get down before anyone noticed her acting like a shifter wannabe.
Kai was breathing easily, and his wounds weren’t a fraction as bad as they’d been before. Tessa wanted to pull up a chair and watch. Could a dragon shifter heal before her very eyes? But she felt too much like a voyeur watching him sleep, so she stepped out to the main veranda and looked out again, standing at the edge to feel closer to the sky. Would she ever understand shifters? Did she want to?
A scuffing sound dragged her gaze around to the right, where Boone was coming up the stairs.
“Hi,” the wolf murmured, eyeing her strangely.
“Hi,” she whispered so as not to disturb Kai. But Boone hardly seemed to glance Kai’s way at all. He just stared at her.
“What?” she demanded a second later.
Boone shook his head quickly. “Not afraid of heights, huh?”
He pointed at her feet. Oh. There was kind of — well, a cliff there and no rail. She’d barely noticed, somehow.
“No, not afraid of heights,” she murmured, backing up slowly. She glanced at the upper level and realized there was no guardrail there either.
Boone’s eyes drifted to her neck, and she reached up to touch her pendant while he murmured a vague Hmm sound.
“What?” she asked. It was just a cheap pendant her grandmother had given her.
He snapped his eyes away. “Nothing. How’s our patient?”
She nodded. “Better. I think.” But then she pictured the extent of Kai’s wounds when she’d first found him and winced. “Has he really been hurt worse?”
Boone shrugged. “Yep. We all have.”
She frowned, wondering why, where, when. Wondering if she really wanted to know.
“Bet it still hurts, though.”
Boone’s brow furrowed, and he rubbed his abdomen absently — the spot of an old wound? “I’ll save you the gory details, shall I?”
She gulped and nodded.
“Let’s just say it hurts like hell. But we heal.” His voice was cavalier, but his eyes gave the truth away. “Anyway,” he went on quickly. “The airline called. They found your bag. Want me to take you to pick it up?”
She paced back over to check on Kai and stood there deciding for a moment, reaching up to touch one of three colored baubles as she did.
Boone snorted behind her. “Dragons. They sure do like their shiny things.”
She looked up at the row of three suncatchers. One red, one orange, one yellow. The color of fire.
I like shiny things, too. She smiled, turning to look at another set of two hanging farther away.
Boone chuckled. “Shiny things, precious things. And no sooner do they have one than they want another.”
She looked at Kai again, not keen to leave him alone. But he did seem all right, and the thought of having her things again — the few possessions she’d grabbed in her rush to flee Phoenix, that is — made her nod quickly and follow Boone down to the driveway and along the row of cars.
He hung a left at one arch of the garage, grabbed a helmet, and pointed to a motorcycle. “Ready to ride?”
The sleek black-and-chrome bike looked like it could zip her to the other side of the island in five minutes flat. But she hung back, in part at the idea of riding that close to anyone but Kai — no, thanks — as well as at the practical aspect.
“Not exactly space for a suitcase, is there?”
Boone sighed and put down the helmet. “Fine. We’ll take the Lamborghini.”
She snorted. “Sure. Why not the Lamborghini?”
She didn’t so much step into the low-riding vehicle as crouch and slide, then sat there, afraid to touch any part of the leather interior.
“Nice,” she murmured. “Is it yours?”
Boone laughed out loud as he hit the gas and sped backward out of the garage. The tires squealed, and the turn pushed Tessa against the door.
“I wish,” Boone said, throwing it into forward. “But I get to use it.”
“Nice,” she murmured, wondering about the arrangement at this estate. Was the owner a rich shifter who worked around the world like Damien Morgan?
In minutes, Boone had peeled out of the driveway and onto the main road. The car was so fast, she didn’t realize how fast they were going until she noted the coastline whip past.
“Um, aren’t you going a little—”
“Damn,” Boone muttered as red and blue lights flashed from behind. “Officer Meli.”
Tessa looked back, trying to place the name. “Who?”
He sighed. “Officer Meli. She always gets her man. Even if he’s the wrong man.”
Tessa wondered what that meant but remained quiet as a mouse as Boone pulled over and rolled the window down.
“Aloha,” he called cheerily.
When the policewoman bent at the window, her thick braid rolled over her shoulder. It was the same Asian-island beauty Tessa remembered seeing before.
“Mr. Hawthorne,” the officer said without reading his license.
“Officer Meli. How fast today?
“Seventy in a forty zone.”
“New record?”
“Hardly.”
Boone grinned. “I’ll try harder next time.”
Officer Meli ripped the ticket out of her notepad and handed it over. “Please don’t.”
Boone waved good-bye and drove away at half his previous pace. The second they were around the first turn, he sighed and tossed the ticket into the back seat where Tessa spotted several more.
“Don’t those get expensive?”
He shrugged. “Probably.”
She cocked her head. “Are you that rich?”
He snorted. “Me? No.”
“Is Silas? Or the estate owner? How does that work anyway?”
Boone pursed his lips and eased the car into third gear, hitting the speed limit in five seconds flat. “Look. I like you. I’d love to tell you what you want to know. But I can’t, even if I, personally, trust you.”
“Meaning the others don’t?” She thought of Silas with his stern face and Cruz with his wary tiger’s gaze.
“Let’s just say they have their issues with humans.”
“And you don’t?”
He laughed. “Oh, I have issues. Just not with humans.”
She scrutinized him. “So is Silas the owner of the estate?”
He flapped a hand over the steering wheel. “I wish I knew.”
“You don’t know?
He shook his head. “Look, we all have our secrets. Him. You. Me—”
She raised a hand in protest. “I don’t have secrets.”
His gaze dropped to her neck. “You sure about that?”
She furrowed her brow and touched her pendant. What was he talking about?
Before she could ask, he went on. “Listen, you want to know about Silas’s finances, you can ask him. You’d better brace yourself, though, because his people skills are a little lacking. Of course, he is a dragon.” Boone grinned. “Me, last I checked, I had $586 in the bank. But that was a few months ago, so who knows.”
Tessa folded her hands in her lap and looked over the Pacific, glittering under the sun on her right.
“Tell me about dragons,” she said.
He looked at her, letting the car’s speed inch up again. “What do you want to know?”
“Like why Morgan would want a mate.”
Boone sputtered in surprise. “Morgan said that?”
Tessa nodded, watching the wolf closely.
He kept his eyes on the road and grew serious for the first time. “Dragons are like most shifters. They believe in destined mates.”
“Destined mates?” Her pulse quickened as the words zipped around her mind. Why did they sound so familiar?
Boone’s hands opened and closed around the wheel. “Like a soul mate, I guess.” He was trying to sound casual, she could tell, but not really succeeding. “But more, too. Someone you love and protect and cherish forever. The one person in the whole world who really understands you. Someone who—” The words bubbled out of him until he shut his mouth abruptly. “Something like that, anyway.”
Tessa stared. Did Boone have a mate? Had he lost her?
“Forever?” she whispered, thinking of Kai.
Boone gnawed his lip before answering. “A lot of shifters believe that nonsense. That there’s only one person out there for you, and when you find her…”
He let the silence hang for a moment, then cleared his throat.
“First time in Hawaii?” he asked, changing the subject abruptly.
Tessa studied his profile then gave in.
“First trip to Hawaii.” Would it be her last, too?
She spent the rest of the drive in silence, as did Boone. Tessa’s mind bounced from Kai to Morgan and back again all the way to the airport. Seeing her suitcase gave her a ridiculously giddy rush, and she was tempted to clutch it in her lap the whole way back to Koa Point. That bag was hers. The things in it were hers. The second Boone dropped her off at the guest cottage, she ran inside, opened the suitcase, and started touching her things, reassuring herself, just as Boone had reassured her that it would be better to leave Kai alone for a while longer. She sat on the floor and picked up her favorite blue shirt just because she could. Because she had that little bit of control back. Her best sandals were in there, too, along with her diary and her prize possession — her grandmother’s leather-covered cookbook. She hugged it tightly, then kissed the worn cover and set it aside.
Clean underwear — three whole pairs — were a huge bonus, as was her favorite pair of jeans. When she lifted them out, the brown cardboard corner of a box poked up from the bottom of the suitcase, and she lifted it out. She’d grabbed the mail on her flight from her apartment. Ella had hurried her the whole time, and that little package had been among the bills and letters she’d received.
She sat on the bed and studied the return address.
“Aunt Frieda?”
She’d never been close to that side of the family. In fact, she’d found it hard to feel close to either side of the family after her parents’ bitter, drawn-out divorce when she was a kid. Still, it was nice to hear from someone every once in a while.
It took some work, but she ripped the tape apart and opened the box, where there was a note and a small wooden box inlaid with mother-of-pearl that shone in the sun.
Hello Tessa,
I’ve been going through a few last things of your grandmother’s. She wanted you to have this. Hope you’re doing well and that the cooking business is good.
Love, Frieda.
Tessa held the box, wondering what her aunt might say if she wrote an honest reply.
Cooking business was going well until I was attacked by a dragon. Currently in Hawaii. Not sure what I’ll do next…
She sighed and opened the clasp of the box. Funny how the plain rosewood felt a little warm to the touch. Maybe that side of her suitcase had been facing the sun on the drive back from the airport. She held the box up to her nose, sniffed the wood, and smiled, because it smelled like her grandmother’s house. Her refuge — her home away from a confused home throughout high school and college. She’d visited regularly in the six years since, right up until her grandmother’s death six months ago.
Her grandmother had gifted her the cookbook in person, three years earlier, but never mentioned this box. Tessa remembered it vaguely — one of many cluttering the top of her grandmother’s shelves back home. What might be inside?
She popped the top open, spread the silk handkerchief padding the inside, and stared.