Drago stood in the coffee shop waiting for his order completely confused by what he’d done. His visit to Ms. Jami Raye’s apartment had not gone as expected.

Her lack of cooperation when it came to them having a conversation annoyed him and yet, here he stood accommodating her by ordering coffee after going so far as to ask her how she took it.

Black, two sugars. That didn’t say much other than she was about as no fuss as the run down building she lived in. He’d been expecting some sort of half caff espresso skinny mocha latte nonsense.

He surveyed the nearly empty coffee shop, scanning and memorizing the faces. He also opened his senses to check for shiften. The longer he stayed in this town the riskier his position became. Any run in with the local shiften population would not go well. If they could tell what he was that is.

As a half breed he didn’t exactly conform to shiften or human expectations. Humans tended to fear him without understanding why, and he imagined shiften would be just as uncomfortable as soon as they got an idea of what lived beneath his skin.

Dragen.

The heat of which he barely kept contained under certain circumstances.

Speaking of heat. His inner beast had more than stirred during his strange encounter with the counselor woman. First her scent had penetrated his senses as he’d approached her door and then when he’d heard her voice for the first time, almost unbearable heat had risen inside him. Not to mention his cock.

He’d gotten rock hard from her voice. What was he? Twelve?

Drago frowned. Or maybe it had just been too long since he’d taken a woman to his bed. He didn’t much care for distractions and the need to relieve himself of any built up sexual tension qualified as a top-notch distraction. And apparently, based on today's encounter, a necessary situation to deal with.

“Drago?” A young woman behind the counter called out, hesitancy in her voice and two coffees in her hands.

He approached the counter, watching the barista's demeanor change as he got close. He wasn't blind to the effect he often had on women and he sometimes used that to his advantage.

She also surveyed him from head to toe before meeting his gaze again with a wide smile across her face. “Drago?” she asked.

He nodded, reaching for the cups. Oddly, her attraction didn’t phase him. If he’d truly gone too long without release with a woman, his dragen should have reacted. Sure his cock was still hard, but that had been the situation since he approached Ms. Raye’s apartment.

“Do you need sleeves or a tray? Anything else? Anything at all?”

Her implied meaning came across clearly. Maybe in a different time and a different place he could have given her his assistant’s phone number and arrangements could have been made.

“No, thank you. This is all I require.”

Her smile faltered, but she quickly recovered and handed him his drinks. Her fingers grazed his and he noticed the delicate soft skin across long, graceful fingers. Something unusual happened. Absolutely nothing. Normally by now, he would have imagined this woman's lovely hand wrapped around his cock.

He shook his head and turned away. Something definitely wasn’t right here. He grabbed a small table in the far corner of the room and took a seat against the wall. This angle gave him the perfect vantage point to keep an eye on the entire room as well as the entrance and allowed no one to sneak up behind him.

These people didn’t know it, but sneaking up on a dragen could come with dire circumstances even when he had control. On a day like today, when grief knocked at his heart and the puzzle of his out of sorts reactions worried him, he would be especially dangerous.

He glanced at his watch. It had been twenty minutes since he’d left Ms. Raye to her preparations and expected it would be a while longer. His experience with women, while not vast, had been frequent enough for him to conclude that they needed quite a bit of time to prepare themselves for leaving the house.

He plucked his cell phone from his pocket and prepared to settle in. There were always emails to read and phone calls to make. His business had grown to every time zone around the world, which meant that at any given time someone was waiting for something from him.

A bell tinkled in the distance, signaling someone had opened the front door. Drago glanced up and down so quickly he almost missed her entrance. But the moment her scent hit him again his heart skipped a beat.

He looked up again and found the object of his questions standing stock still inside the door, staring at him. Her eyes wide with lips slightly parted. He had no idea of what he’d expected, but the petite, attractive woman with no make up, torn at the knees jeans and a bulky sweater for attire, not to mention the brown, wet hair braided down her back was not it.

Sondra’s file had indicated the woman as an addiction counselor and he’d just assumed she'd be much older. The little waif standing by the door with her hands locked together in front of her, looked barely old enough to have finished high school let alone college.

Their gazes locked onto each other. Drago felt his pulse pound through every inch of his body. He’d already locked onto her scent, but now he had a face to match the voice he still heard talking to him through a locked door. She looked kind of frail and nervous standing across the room as if she wasn’t sure if it was him or not.

He decided to make things easier on her by standing and crossing over to her. This close, her sweet, clean scent surrounded him, making his whole body hard and tense.

“Ms. Raye?” he asked, pretending he wasn’t totally certain of who she was to put her at ease.

She nodded, still saying nothing.

“Maxim Drago.” He held out his hand. She stared down at his palm for a moment before she slid her small, almost delicate hand into his. The immediate arc of connection made her mouth fly open on a gasp. He swallowed thickly, glad to see he wasn’t the only one being affected by this strange meeting. “Call me Drago, everyone does.” Of course a second after he said those stupid words, he regretted them. He wanted to hear her silky voice call him Maxim over and over again, preferably while he gave her pleasure.

“Okay, Drago,” she said, her voice whisper soft.

The way those two words slid through his mind, Drago had to swallow thickly before he could continue. “I’ve saved us a seat and already received our coffees. I had yours prepared precisely as you requested.” He waved his hand in the direction of their table and indicated for her to proceed him.

The human part of him, that could be crude when necessary, watched her walk. The worn denim of her jeans hugged a curved ass that wiggled in such a way he had to stop himself from reaching out to touch her.

Dammit, he was a mess.

When she reached the table, he moved around her and pulled out her chair. Once she was situated he took the seat across from her and nodded to her cup.

“Should still be piping hot. You got here much quicker than I anticipated.”

Her reaction caught him by surprise. He felt her heat a moment before her skin tinged pink with a blush. His own blood heated in reaction. Drago ground down his teeth and tightened his muscles to maintain control. But it wasn’t easy. There was something special about this woman and he wasn’t about to pretend there wasn’t. Never in his life had he struggled this much around a female.

“I didn’t want to keep you waiting. Thank you for understanding I wasn’t comfortable being approached at my home.”

Drago cringed at the remnants of fear he heard in her voice. He’d been such an idiot. It wasn’t customary for human females to open their private homes to complete strangers. There were inherent dangers when it came to a female living alone and he’d not considered that.

“It wasn’t my intention to make you uncomfortable, Ms. Raye.”

“Jami, please. It feels weird to be called Ms. Raye.”

“Is that not your name?”

She sipped her coffee before she answered. “It is. But every time you say it I half expect to find my mother standing behind me and that’s a bit unnerving. Besides, I’m not a very formal person. And under the circumstances, I’d prefer Jami.”

“Your mother’s presence would unnerve you?” He didn’t understand that so he filed it away for further questioning at a later time.

She smiled, a sweet transformation that made Drago’s cock get impossibly harder.

“Considering my mother should be at home in Texas, it would be weird for her to suddenly be here.”

It was his turn to smile. Apparently Jami Raye had history that extended beyond this strange town. For some reason that made him feel better about her.

“If your family is in Texas, what brought you to this place?”

Her eyebrows raised. “You not a fan of Serenity?”

He clenched his jaw and went for the obvious rather than dwell on the fact that he should never have come here. “I came here to find the woman I call sister. That I didn’t find her until it was too late makes me hate this town with a passion.”

Jami visibly cringed and Drago immediately regretted being so blunt. It wasn’t her fault Sondra was dead. At least he didn’t think so. His gut told him she was as innocent as they came and that made him nervous. He’d need to protect her from the people in this town.

“Of course, I’m sorry. That was pretty insensitive of me,” she said.

He reached across and touched her arm, relishing for a moment that arc of heat that passed between them again.

“I’m sorry for being so blunt. It is our way.”

“Our way? As in your family?”

He shook his head. “In Russia. It is where I am from. We do not generally mince words and we speak our minds plainly. It is a cultural difference here that I have not adjusted to.”

Her brows pulled together. “Does that mean Sondra was from Russia as well? I don’t remember ever hearing her slip into any kind of discernible accent.”

“We moved to the United States when Sondra was a little girl. Before she even spoke much. I guess you could say she was more of a New Yorker than anything else.”

“That’s where you’re from?” she asked, her expression openly curious.

He nodded. “Yes. Our family is all deceased now. Sondra was all that I had left. I guess it is just me now.”

Sadness clouded Jami’s beautiful face, a sadness he hated being responsible for. “I'm sorry for your loss, Mr. Drago. I really had thought Sondra was pulling her life together. Her death came as quite a shock.”

“To you and me both. I still can not imagine her being involved with drugs as the coroner says, let alone an overdose of them. I’d never even seen her drinking more than a glass of wine.”

Jami reached for his hand. “Drug addiction is an insidious thing. It makes people do many things they normally would not have. If it helps, addiction of this kind is a disease. It requires extensive treatment and Sondra had barely begun. I didn’t even know she had a brother yet.”

Reluctantly, Drago withdrew his hand. As much as he craved this woman’s touch, the thoughts and talk of Sondra as no longer alive were driving him crazy. More so, they made him antsy. He didn’t want to sit in this coffee shop any longer. He needed space and air and—he met Jami’s gaze—this woman.

He scraped his chair back and stood, holding out his hand. “Walk with me, Ms. Raye. In public of course, for your peace of mind. I just can’t stand being cooped up inside right now. I need some fresh air.”