Lance did better than put some pants on. He wrapped a blanket around his waist and stood up with easy grace. Every movement he made was strangely compelling.

At least it’s relatively dark, she thought, a second before he reached out and did something to the light switch above the bed. Keeley’s stomach flipped over.

It had taken her what felt like hours of terrified groping around the room to even find the light switch, let alone turn it on. And even then she’d only been able to turn it onto its lowest setting. Just enough that she could see the walls closing in around her.

Her heart started beating faster. Stop that, she ordered herself. Stop it, stop it, calm down—you’ve had all night to get over this, just stop—

She looked around the bedroom, hoping that seeing it properly as a room and not as a shadowy box would help fend off her impending panic attack.

And knowing it was Lance’s, too. For some reason, the thought helped her heart calm down.

The room was gorgeous. Even nicer than the penthouse suites at the hotel. One wall was all gray stone, like the side of a mountain; the others were a cool black and… non-existent?

Keeley gaped at the empty space, which appeared to open out onto a staircase leading out to an even larger room. Damn it! I’ve spent the entire night freaking out about being boxed in an unfamiliar room, and there was all this space only a few feet away this whole time?

“Excuse me.” Keeley almost jumped out of her skin at the sound of Lance’s low, deep voice. “I’ll just wash up before we go down.”

“Um. Sure.” Keeley froze her train of thought in its tracks before it could follow those two words—go down—into the gutter.

She stifled a sigh of relief as he pushed through a door in the stone wall. A moment later, she heard a shower turn on.

Wait. Was that better than having to force her eyes to keep off him, or worse?

He’d left the door open behind him. Worse. Definitely worse.

Keeley turned deliberately away from the bathroom door, with its calming sound of rushing water and the less-calming promise of all that water running over Lance’s naked body.

What the fuck is wrong with you? Last night you were almost killed, you spent the night trying desperately not to have a panic attack, and now you can’t stop thinking about hooking up with some guy you only just met?

Keeley picked Maggie up. The little dragon had gotten herself entirely tangled up in Keeley’s gran’s necklace, and Keeley absently started untangling her limbs as she focused on keeping her back to the bathroom door.

Hooking up. God, she sounded like a teenager. Except teenagers probably didn’t call it that these days, not that she would know. Hell, she didn’t even know what people her own age called it.

She just knew what she wanted to do, regardless of what name you stuck on it. Run her hands over those muscles. Taste his lips, and feel his strong hands on her, wanting her as much as she wanted him. Wrap her legs around—

“Stop,” she burst out, and groaned. “Oh, fuck. What is wrong with me?”

Keeley winced and covered the little dragon’s ears. Or where she thought its ears might be, anyway.

“Sorry, baby,” she muttered.

A soap bubble of happiness burst against the side of her mind and she blinked.

“Shit, that feels weird. Um. Sorry again. And… it’s good-weird, anyway.” She paused. “Definitely a better weird than most of the other sh—stuff that’s been happening to me lately.”

She shivered. Dragons, guys turning into giant cats—that, she could deal with.

It was the sight of the shiny new scar on Lance’s chest that made her soul quake. And the memory of sitting over his unconscious cat-body all night, watching his chest rise and fall and wondering each time if this would be when it stopped moving.

When are you going to learn? You ruin anything you get involved in. And this time, Lance is the one who got hurt.

Her fingers itched with the memory of splinters and broken skin. She rubbed them together absently. Now that she could see the size of the bedroom, and how it was a sort of mezzanine or loft over another enormous room, her chest felt less tight and she could breathe more easily. One less thing to worry about, which frankly, she needed right now.

Yeah, especially when you’re expecting Lance out of the shower any minute. Clean and glistening.

She gritted her teeth and slammed one open palm against the nearest wall. It was cool and smooth, as she discovered as she ran her hand across it.

This feels more like glass than wallpaper or paint, she thought. Maybe it’s some sort of rock, like the other wall?

“Looking for the switch?” Lance’s voice did terrible, terrible things to Keeley’s insides.

She’d been so focused on not listening to the sound of the shower, she hadn’t noticed it turn off.

Oh, God, she thought. What’s gonna be worse—turning around and seeing him fresh from the shower, or staying here staring at the wall and imagining it?

“Uh?” she muttered, because “Isn’t the light already on?” was too many words for her brain to handle, apparently.

“Here.”

Damn it, she could feel how close he was, even if she was still staring at the wall. His voice felt like the softest touch on her skin, making her shiver. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him press his hand against the wall a few feet away.

Light shone from the walls. Keeley jerked back, blinking, and then gasped. The light wasn’t coming from the walls—it was coming from outside. The walls were actually windows, looking out over the city.

Sunlight glittered off a hundred thousand windows and, in the distance, the water.

Keeley whirled around, Maggie chirruping delightedly in her arms. The windows ran the whole length of the walls and up to the ceiling, making the room feel like it was out in the open air. The larger room down the stairs lit up too, as its wall-windows turned transparent. Light filled everywhere that Keeley could see.

She turned back to the window, staring at the city stretched out below.

“It’s like standing on the top of a mountain or something,” she whispered.

“That’s the idea.”

Lance’s voice was warm, and touched with just a hint of smugness. Keeley turned to face him and swallowed hard.

He’d toweled off and pulled on a shirt and pants, but his arms still glistened with a few stray drops of water.

Muscly and glistening. Oh, hell. She was so fucked.

Running off with him last night was one thing. People had been trying to kill her and Maggie, and he was helping her get away. Simple. Mostly because it had all happened so quickly, she hadn’t had time to worry about what happened next.

But then he’d kissed her. He was dying, and he’d kissed her, and then everything had gone white and she’d found herself in a dark room and his whole body had shivered and she’d thought he was about to actually die right in front of her, and instead he’d turned into a fucking giant cat.

And instead of taking the opportunity to run the fuck away and get out of the city before Sean figured out she’d betrayed him, she’d sat next to him. Paralyzed. Unable to tear her eyes away from him as the bleeding stopped and his heartbeat became stronger.

She had no idea what was going on. But two things were for sure. The world was a hell of a lot more complicated than she’d ever thought possible.

And she still couldn’t stop thinking about that kiss.

Well, that stopped right now. She might have been too paralyzed with terror before to think about her situation, but her brain was finally starting to unfreeze. And she had far too much shit to deal with right now without adding a pathetic crush into the mix. She needed to tell him, now, that she was leaving. Whatever was happening here with dragons and cats and whatever else, she wanted no part of it.

Lance smiled at her, one eyebrow raised. “Are you ready to go down?”

Keeley swallowed, hard.

I am so fucked.

“Sure,” she croaked.

Keeley didn’t watch Lance walk down the stairs from the mezzanine bedroom, because even the thought of seeing how his ass fit those pants made her skin fizz embarrassingly. She looked at her own feet and Maggie snuggling in her pocket, and nervously rubbed at her fingertips.

Which meant that when Lance suddenly stopped, she walked straight into him.

She jumped back immediately, her cheeks blazing. Lance smiled at her, apparently not noticing that her entire head might as well have just caught fire, and Keeley looked away quickly. His smile was just as mind-melting as his ass.

“Sorry,” he said. “I should probably grab my phone—you know what? Never mind.”

His green-gray eyes were so warm, it made her feel dizzy. She looked away, gravitating towards the massive windows. It was so light already. She must have been here longer than she’d thought. Hours and hours, watching Lance slowly come back to life.

The space below the bedroom felt like a living room, with a huge leather-covered sofa, rugs, and a drinks cabinet. A row of bookshelves either lined one wall, or was the wall. It was all light and airy, and Keeley couldn’t even imagine how much it cost.

My whole apartment could fit inside the space that sofa takes up, she thought.

“How high up are we here?” she asked out loud.

“Almost high enough.” From the way Lance said it, it was an old joke. Just not one she understood the punchline for.

“Cats like to be up high, huh?” Yeah. Just act casual about all the craziness. Be cool.

She tapped the window, feeling herself relax as she took in the view. I like to be up high, too. Far away from Sean and all his bullshit. She bit her lip, threads of unease winding through her gut.

Poking her head out of Keeley’s pocket, Maggie copied her, her claws scraping at the glass.

Behind her, Lance coughed. “Snow leopards do.”

“What?”

“I’m a snow leopard. Not a giant cat.”

She turned to him, eyebrows raised. “Isn’t a leopard just a sort of giant cat?”

Bad Keeley. Don’t tease the nice man who saved your life.

But she’d already decided she was going to leave as soon as she could. A little flirting couldn’t hurt. Could it?

Bad, Keeley. Very bad.

Lance narrowed his eyes—Bad—and a smile danced around his lips. Double bad. A thrill went up Keeley’s spine.

“Actually, if you’d like a closer—” Lance staggered, his face going gray. He staggered backward, barely managing to support himself against the wall, and Keeley was at his side in an instant, jamming her shoulder under his arm.

His head fell onto her other shoulder, his breath hard and hot on her collarbone. Another shiver went through Keeley, but this one had nothing to do with lust. All the warmth and life had gone out of his face in an instant.

Just like the night before.

“Sorry,” Lance grunted. Keeley had flung her arms around him and felt his back muscles spasm as he tried to stand upright. “Might be—more exhausted than I thought. Healing—”

“So that’s a no on you making breakfast, then?” Keeley’s voice blared in her own ears, so loud and sharp that she winced. Her heart was pounding like she was the one about to pass out, not him, and something inside her—

She shook her head. She was being stupid, panicking and imagining things that weren’t there.

Lance laughed weakly into her shoulder. “Not today. Sorry.”

“Well, then.” Keeley anchored herself under his shoulder. “I hope you like sandwiches.”

Fanciest fucking sandwiches I ever made, Keeley thought five minutes later.

She’d helped Lance to the kitchen. He’d made it—barely. Keeley’s legs were shaking by the time she dropped him into a chair at the kitchen table.

At least seeing him almost pass out had made her libido calm down. And the cool blast of air from the fridge when she opened it helped on that front, too.

Lance had more food in his fridge and pantry than Keeley had seen outside of a grocery store. She grabbed a loaf of bread—the fancy stuff that didn’t come pre-sliced—and an armful of cheese and deli meats, and began blindly slapping sandwiches together.

“You really don’t need to do this,” Lance protested as she dropped a plate of sandwiches in front of him. “I—is this salmon and pastrami?”

He sniffed the top sandwich warily, and Keeley winced as he bit into it.

“Mf’s del’cious,” Lance murmured through a mouthful of mixed fish and meat.

Keeley picked at a hunk of bread as he demolished the sandwiches. She knew that if she thought about it, she would realize she was actually hungry, but her brain was busy. Without Lance’s hot bod to obsess over, it had moved onto more serious things.

Like the fact that she’d almost been murdered. Twice. Or three times, maybe. It depends on how you look at it.

Anyway, as it was, if she did eat anything, she’d probably throw it up.

“Talk to me, Keeley.”

Keeley jumped in her seat, making Maggie cheep in alarm. She reached into her pocket to calm the baby dragon while she tried desperately to haul her thoughts into order. “About what?”

“You’ve been glaring at me the whole time I’ve been eating. Something’s got to be on your mind.”

Keeley pinched her eyes shut. “Sorry. I was just—staring into space.” Or staring at you like a creep. Take your pick. “How are you feeling?”

“Better. Thank you.” Lance smiled.

He’s looking better, too—oh, for fuck’s sake. Whatever protective home-maker urge Lance’s weakness had awoken inside her was shoved aside by another entirely different urge. Keeley gritted her teeth.

“Sorry about the weird sandwiches. There’s a reason I’m a maid, not a cook,” she said, glaring at the top of the table.

“They were just what I needed.” As if to prove the point, Lance bit into what she was pretty sure was a slab of salmon-and-some sort of goopy white cheese. “Now. I told you I’d answer any questions you had, and I will.”

“Okay,” she began slowly. Where to start? Dragons? Giant cats? Getting shot at and blown up?

Keeley took a deep breath. “You can turn into a… giant cat. Snow leopard. Let’s start with that.”

She tipped her head back in time to see Lance set down his sandwich. Just for a second, his eyes gleamed silver, the pupils flaring out into cat-like slits.

A moment later, his eyes were normal, and Keeley’s heart was racing.

“That’s as good a place to start as any,” Lance said, and began to explain.

Ten minutes later, the whirlpool in Keeley’s brain was no calmer, and she felt as though the top of her head was about to fall off.

“Wait,” she said, holding up a hand. “Just—let me see if I’ve got everything straight?”

Lance nodded, and Keeley swallowed, looking down at Maggie curled up in her pocket.

“You’re a shifter. Is that what you called it? Which means you can turn into a snow leopard. Which I saw earlier, thanks for the surprise demonstration, by the way.”

Lance’s eyes crinkled. “It’s not just snow leopards. Other shifters have other animals. Meerkats, panthers, lions—even sharks.”

“Sharks.” Keeley stared flatly at him as she waited for her brain to process the new information. “Okay, no. Giant cats, yes, tiny dragons, yes, but sharks—no, thank you.”

“Oh, come on. Zhang’s great. You might not have realized she’s a shifter, of course. It’s not like she would have had the opportunity to shift here in the city.”

“Who’s Zhang?” Keeley stared at him, running the last few minutes of conversation over in her head. Had she missed something?

Lance sat back, frowning. “I’ll admit I don’t remember much after we shielded on top of the shipping container, but I do remember feeling Zhang and the others approaching. I assumed they brought you here.”

“N-no…” Maggie wriggled around in Keeley’s pocket, and she automatically wrapped a hand around the tiny dragon.

“Then how did we get here?”

Keeley stared at Lance, and he stared back, honest confusion radiating from his face. She took a deep breath as Maggie poked her head out of her pocket.

“You really don’t remember?”

Maggie cheeped, and Lance’s eyes flicked from Keeley’s, to the baby dragon, and back. Keeley took a deep breath.

“Okay. Well, that was actually going to be my second question, anyway. Do we need to be worried about Maggie randomly teleporting us places?”

Lance stared. His stare turned into a frown, and his frown deepened into confusion.

“What?” He sat back in his chair like all the breath had been knocked out of him. “Teleporting?”