He tried to forget about her. Tried so very hard. But one thing kept slapping his mind over and over.

She left. Chandra actually fucking left.

Tomas didn’t know whether he should fly into a rage or…fly into a rage.

She fucking left.

For some reason, when she was given the option, he didn’t think she’d take it. Why would Chandra take it? Tomas had brought her to his most secret of places.

Shared things about himself.

Learned things about her, too.

But she fucking left.

She wasn’t allowed to do that.

I’m not done with her. He might never be done with her.

Ever since their time at the cabin, he felt an odd possessiveness towards her. Tomas wanted her by him, always. A part of him understood it was more, though, than the thrill of ownership. He just couldn’t have said what the feeling was.

Love.

No, it couldn’t be love. He didn’t believe in love. Didn’t allow love.

But what did that leave, because his obsession with her—three days now since she’d left—was more than simply wanting to possess her. She was his treasure. His. She belonged in his collection, never mind the somewhat dubious morality of owning a person. Tomas was having problems with thinking rationally.

She did that to him. Made him crazy.

Totally unacceptable.

So what should he do?

Leave her alone? That was what his grandmother suggested when he accepted her call later that night, an emasculated part of him wondering if Chandra was begging to return.

She wasn’t.

According to his grandmother, Chandra had left without a word about Tomas. “The girl is better off with her own kind. We have our own troubles to deal with now that we’ve been outed to the world.”

Except, what if Chandra was in trouble? She knew more than she should, knew about Parker and his experiments. Knew about Tomas and his aerie.

She posed a security risk.

Funny how easy it was to justify his chasing after her as something he had to do for his own safety.

Once he decided to look, she didn’t prove hard to find. The building she lived in was tucked on a side street on the outskirts of San Francisco, not exactly where he would have pictured her. Chandra would look so much more at home naked on his bed.

Given Tomas’s need for subtlety, he arrived via taxi rather than by dragon, mostly because he didn’t find it very noble appearing to be seen flying through the air carrying a satchel of clothes—and somehow, wandering apartment halls naked tended to freak people out. Something about indecent exposure.

Excuse me, there is nothing indecent about my body.

Stepping out of the taxi, Tomas paid the driver and tipped him well. A generous temperament was something he also collected. The IRS gnashed their teeth every year at his donations to charity. He stacked those receipts high on his pedestal as a show of his philanthropist nature.

Once inside the lobby—the security door only needed a hard yank to snap open—he eschewed the elevator for the stairs. In his mind, elevators were nasty death traps waiting to snare the unwary and plunge them to their death.

The stairs proved quickly mounted as he took them three at a time, and he did not huff in spite of the fact that there were six flights.

Having memorized her apartment number beforehand, Tomas didn’t need to check and strode with brisk purpose down the hall.

At 612, he paused, hand raised to knock.

Knock. She’sss here. I can sssmell her.

He hesitated.

Why did he hesitate?

Surely, he didn’t fear seeing her again? That was foolish. He could already imagine her overjoyed expression when she flung open the door and found him there waiting.

Or would she scowl? Chandra didn’t exactly behave as expected. She had, after all, left.

Surely, she expected him to chase.

Expected him to chase…

The very idea she might have manipulated him froze him. Had she planned this?

What if she had? What if, all along, she’d left, probably cackling with his grandmother about how she’d have Tomas crawling back… Because she’d made him care.

I do not.

Then why are you here?

Tomas stared at the closed door, waiting for the real answer, caught in a complex web of uncertainty. He didn’t like it one bit.

Uncertainty wasn’t something a dragon should ever experience, especially not over a human.

Thump.

The noise caught his attention as he turned to leave.

Someone was inside.

Of course someone was; Chandra lived here.

It meant nothing. Probably her cleaning house or being clumsy—humans ever did lack the grace of a cryptozoid and could never hope to match the finesse of a dragon.

Thump, and a small cry. A woman’s cry.

Tomas didn’t think twice. He whirled and kicked in the door.

It bounced off the wall as he strode in, fists clenched, ready to mete out justice or rend his garments that he might fight in true dragon form.

And who would he fight? Certainly not the woman who was on her knees mopping up spilled food.

A woman who stared at him with round eyes and an even rounder mouth.

“What are you doing here?” Chandra exclaimed. She stood and tugged on the hem of her T-shirt—a shirt that clung to her upper body, delineating the bra she wore. The travesty.

I can’t wait to strip that from you.

He inhaled the sight of her from her tousled hair to the track pants sheared off at her knees. “You can relax. I’m here.”

“I can see you’re here. You broke my door.”

He shrugged. “I thought you were in danger.”

“You thought wrong. You can’t just barge in. Why didn’t you knock?”

He could only repeat. “I thought you were in danger.”

“Who’s in danger?” The owner of the male voice appeared suddenly—and without scent.

Tomas didn’t think; he reacted, springing upon the intruder and pinning him to the floor, an arm across his neck. The other man had the same caramel skin as Chandra. He wore an earring, a thick diamond in one lobe, and sported spiked hair and rounded eyes.

“Who do you work for?” Tomas growled, letting a little of his dragon peek through.

“Tomas! What are you doing? Get off him.”

“You know this man?” He eyed the stranger with no scent. A wyvern, but of which family, he couldn’t tell. More perturbing, the male wore no shirt. No shirt and he was in Chandra’s apartment early in the morning. “Who is this male, doctor?”

Chandra sighed. “That’s Ishaan. My husband.”