Adrian

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The dragon inside me squirmed in frustration. The entire time my body had been in dolphin form it wanted out. It took every ounce of willpower I had to keep it at bay ... until I looked at Reese. Her presence there in the water with me had calmed the urge to swim out to sea to change into the beast. My heart leaped in my chest when I heard her giggle as I circled her, pressing myself gently to her. Now she wanted to leave. Again.

She acted as if my dolphin disgusted her, which was my greatest fear. Shit.

Showing her my dolphin was one thing, a thing she apparently didn’t like, but showing her the beast inside me would surely send her packing no matter how charming I thought I could be.

I stared into her tear filled eyes as she sat holding her knee, grimacing like she was determined not to let one teardrop fall from those beautiful pools of emerald.

“Let me take a look.” I gently pulled the oversized sweatpants up and over her knee but it was difficult to tell how badly she was injured in the dark. “It’s too dark. Let me help you,” I said and picked her up in my arms to carry her up the rest of the way to the house.

“I can walk.”

“Unless you have the ability to levitate, I prefer to carry you the rest of the way.”

“I don’t, but really, Adrian, I can walk.”

I’d already figured that out from the other night when she’d fallen from the boat. If she had the ability to propel herself back to the boat, I’m sure she would have. “You tripped on my stairs. It’s my responsibility to make sure you’re okay. I don’t want you putting any pressure on that knee until I can get a better look at it inside under the lights.”

“Really, I’m sure it’s fine,” she argued however the way she grimaced and nuzzled her face against my shoulder told me she was in pain.

When I reached out to open the sliding door, her body shifted a bit, loosening the towel I had secured around my waist. It fell to the floor, leaving me completely naked, my hard as steel cock on display. From the moment I shifted into the dolphin the beast wanted out and made it quite clear he was determined to make himself known in one way or another. I wanted to blame him for the erection, though I knew it was all of me. Reese excited me beyond words. Holding her in my arms, against my naked body, made me want to show her exactly the kind of man I was.

“Fuck.” I glanced down at the towel that lay in the doorway.

When I set her down on the sofa, she pressed her hands into the suede sofa, holding herself up before sinking into the softness until her face was eye level with my junk. She made a soft gasping sound and her eyes widened as she cupped her hand over her faint smile.

“Oh!”

“Sorry.” I snatched one of the throw pillows from next to her and covered myself. My cock twitched when it rubbed against the coarse fabric, making me wince. The dragon liked Reese and made no qualms about his desires for her, but he was still too unpredictable and I feared he might accidentally hurt her if given the chance to show himself.

I sidestepped my way to the door where the towel lay on the floor and snatched it up, securing it once again around my waist. Kneeling in front of her, I examined her knee. The bump wasn’t too bad, but a small bruise had already started forming.

“Wait. Let me ...” she pushed herself up to a standing position and I held on to her arms as she balanced mostly on her uninjured leg, “... just see if I can put any weight on it.” When she placed both feet on the floor, I hesitantly let go. “See? It’s fine. I just banged it a little. It might bruise, but otherwise, I’ll be fine.”

“Please don’t leave.” I kept my voice soft, pleading. I needed to find out exactly what was bothering her. Why did she suddenly decide to take off right after I showed her my dolphin?

Her forehead wrinkled and she rubbed her tightly clenched fist over her bottom lip, keeping her gaze down. She finally nodded and sat back down again and I thanked my lucky stars she wasn’t insisting on leaving right away. “I’ll get some ice for your knee. Can I get you a fresh glass of wine?”

She nodded again. “Yes. I could use some wine. Providing you don’t knock it out of my hand again.”

I cringed, remembering her wet dress still hanging in my bathroom. This was the second time tonight she’d threatened to leave. Crap, I was batting a zero out of three hundred.

“I should probably put some pants on. I’ll be right back.” I took off for my bedroom, the beast wishing she’d stop me. But what did I expect? The woman seemed practically traumatized by the sight of my dolphin. I shrugged into a pair of well-worn jeans that were comfortable with plenty of room for my out of control genitals and headed to the kitchen where I poured us some wine and grabbed a bendable frozen ice pack from the freezer.

“Hold this on your knee. It’ll keep it from swelling more.” I handed her the frozen pack and set her glass on the table.

I sat a few inches away from her, positioning myself slightly toward her. She glanced at me and her gaze dropped to the tattoo on my chest. She smiled and then looked down at her glass. Lifting it to her lips, she sipped. She didn’t say anything about the tattoo, and I was glad. I wasn’t ready to reveal that side of me. Especially since she was clearly having a difficult time just accepting the dolphin.

I took a hefty gulp of my wine. My gaze found hers over the rim of her glass and she sipped quickly, but her beautiful green gaze never left mine. “I’m sorry if my dolphin offended you.”

“No. It didn’t. I promise it didn’t.”

“Then what’s the problem? Why were you suddenly going to bolt as if you’d just seen some horrific beast?” I was well aware of my casual use of the term but I needed to know exactly how she felt about seeing something that might seem frightening.

“I shouldn’t have acted that way. I’m sorry. Your dolphin is not the problem.” She fell silent for a few seconds, adjusting the ice pack on her knee. Then she looked up at me. “Do you shift into other beings as well?”

Her question caught me off guard. Would she accept “it’s complicated” as an answer?

“I’m not a multi-shifter like a lot of other shifters.” I kept it at that. It wasn’t an all-out lie, but a small stretch of the truth. My mother had been a dolphin shifter, and even though people with abilities only inherited them from the parent of the opposite sex, I’m fairly certain my maternal grandfather may have been able to shift into a dragon, though he’d never mentioned it to my mother or to me. And at this point in the evening, I wasn’t ready to share all that with Reese. Not yet. Not until I gained her trust.

She nodded in understanding, though I could tell there were more questions running through her head.

“Tell me why you were about to leave.”

She shook her head and pulled her hair up in the back, scraping the strands away from her face and neck as though she were going to put it in a ponytail only to let it drop from her hands and return to hanging down her back. I wanted to run my fingers through those long tendrils, but first I wanted to fist them in my hand and tug her head back slightly while my lips and tongue explored her mouth again. The sound of her heavy sigh brought me out of my fantasy as she said, “It doesn’t have anything to do with you or your shifting ability.”

I scoffed. “Is that your polite way of saying, ‘It’s me, not you?’”

She frowned. “I suppose it does sound that way.” She fidgeted and turned away, not looking at me. “But Adrian, I work for you. You’re my boss, and I just have this sneaky suspicion that others might ...”

I shook my head and lifted my hands, palms facing her. I had to stop her right there, knowing what she was about to say was bullshit. “Don’t pull the ‘I work for you’ card on me, Reese. I’m not your boss here. I already told you I want to get to know you. So aside from the small amount of blueprint discussion we had, you know you’re not here with me tonight as my employee. I’m just a man who wants to get to know you.

“You have to agree, our relationship shifted when, well, when I did. No, it was before that. When you lifted this coffee table using only your mind. And besides all that, I’m attracted to you, Reese. I can’t stop thinking about you, and it has nothing to do with any of that, truth be told. It has to do with you and I and figuring out what to do with this attraction simmering between us.”

I paused, drawing in a deep breath and let it out, then plowed on.

“I don’t see you as my employee. I see you as a beautiful woman who I want to get to know and spend time with. A beautiful woman whose opinion I admire and an intelligent woman who makes me want to be a better man. If you’re worried about other people talking, you can work from home for all I care. And if it turns out that whatever it is that we may or may not have started here is wrong, then I’ll leave you alone and never approach you again. Don’t not give me a chance just because you work for me.”

She sucked in her lips and her gaze met mine. Now maybe she would talk to me. “Tell me the truth, Reese.”

“Okay. You deserve to know the truth. I like you, Adrian, I really do. Although the fact that I work for you is a valid argument, and is still in the back of my mind, there is another reason. I’m not sure I can handle being with a shifter. I have issues with trusting shifters.”

“I would never ...”

“Wait. Let me explain. When I was thirteen I was attacked by a shifter dog.”

“Attacked? What kind of dog?” I was on my feet now, ready to kill the next beagle I saw, knowing that was ridiculous, especially since I liked dogs.

“I don’t know what kind of dog. It was large though, a mixed breed of some sort. It was a boy who liked to torment my sister and me when we walked by his house, which we had to do in order to get home. He would laugh at us at school saying things about us being scared of a little dog so we knew it was him. Anyway, one day the dog had me pinned to the sidewalk, growling and mauling the back of my jacket as it stood on my back. Quinn hit it on the side of the head with a rock.”

“Good for her.” Now I liked her sister, protecting Reese that way. She had to be more of a go-getter than Reese had indicated. 

“The next day we saw the boy and he had a large bruise on his forehead. He left us alone after that, but the whole experience has made me cautious of shifters.”

“Did he ever bite you?”

“No. Just tore my jacket.”

“That stupid adolescent boy. As ferocious as the dog had seemed, I have a sneaky suspicion he never would have hurt you. I happen to know a thing or two about preteen boys and believe me when I say, they are not the best communicators. In fact, they don’t have a clue how to talk to a girl they like and therefore, mess up with stupid antics that only make girls hate them. I’m sure it was his way of showing you that he liked you.”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s what my dad said, but I didn’t believe him. Though the dog did stop rushing out at us after Quinn hit him in the head. After that day, he sat on his front stoop and watched us. Sometimes it was the dog, sometimes it was the boy.” 

I placed my palm on her cheek, then stroked her hair away from her face. “Baby, I’m so sorry that happened to you. I would never hurt you. You have to believe that.”

She nodded. “I’m trying.” A tear escaped from her eye and I wiped it away with my thumb.

She opened her mouth to speak again, then she closed it, and I closed the distance between us. I couldn’t stop myself. My feet moved of their own accord, my dragon practically purred. Did dragons purr? Because mine sure felt like a contented cat now that Reese confessed her reasons. Now I wanted to protect her.

When my lips touched hers, it was as if my entire body became whole, like the three parts of my being—me, the dolphin, and the dragon—melded together in a way we never had before. We were one being, and the beast became placid. I’ve never felt such an inner calm before. A warm tingle flowed through my veins as the dragon moaned, as though it finally found comfort in something soft. The softness of Reese’s lips.

I broke the kiss to feather my lips along her skin, from just below her earlobe down her neck, to the top of her T-shirt. My hand roamed inside the soft cotton and up her ribcage, settling just below her breast, cupping underneath it, waiting for a sign from her that she wanted more.

When her arms slid up my back, she tugged me closer and we sank backwards on the sofa. My hand found its way over her breast, caressing gently, as I kissed her again.

When she shoved me backwards I stopped kissing her. My eyes widened and my pulse quickened. I pressed my hands against the cushion, frozen in a state of desperate anticipation. Fear coursed through my blood as I waited for her to say she wanted to leave again. But then she surprised me by tugging the T-shirt up and over her head, tossing it over her shoulder to land somewhere behind the sofa. My gaze locked on her perfect breasts, nipples hard and begging me to taste them. My heart beat with such fervor I thought it might pop out of my chest.

“You’re staring,” she said in a soft, sexy voice.

I sighed, feeling the corner of my lips curve into a stupid half smile. “Can’t help it. You’re so beautiful.”

God, I was ready to move forward, but I needed to know, needed to clear up all issues so we could move on. “What about the fact that I’m your boss?”

“I still have issues with that, but I’m willing to put them aside for now, because the truth is, I want you.”

“Oh, baby. Those are the best three little words I’ve ever heard you say.”

Then I bent down and covered my mouth over one of her erect nipples, skimming my teeth over the hardness then flicking it with my tongue while she moaned with pleasure. The beast inside me stirred, reminding me of his existence, reminding me that he wanted more.