Chapter One
The smooth surface of the polished stone slipped out of her hand and easily into her pocket—followed by the littlest thrill she always got with a perfectly executed theft.
Betsy ran her hands over the pretty stones. None of them were particularly valuable, but put it up on eBay or Craigslist with a dumb history, and some sucker would give her fifty dollars plus shipping for it. She continued through the store, looking and touching, but nothing else tickled her fancy that day. The store was full of trinkets and bottles and dried flora. It was musty and dusty. Still, with enough time, she’d probably find a few more things that were worth pocketing.
She made a mental note. Bernard’s Menagerie, worth a few more trips.
Moving toward the door, she waved to the shopkeep, who smiled and waved back, with no idea that there was a little something in her pocket. “Thanks for stopping by! Please come again!”
Oh, I will. Betsy giggled to herself.
The inconspicuous car sat at the curb, waiting for her. A 2004 Corolla, Wyatt had lifted it because it was blue, older, and super common on the roads. It wouldn’t stand out anywhere. Smiling at the driver, she slipped in the passenger side.
“Anything good?”
“Not right off the bat.” Betsy buckled herself in as the car slipped away from the curb. “Lots and lots of potential. The whole town really. There’s some old shit here that we can hock for a good buck.”
“Good girl!” Wyatt laughed, patting her knee. “I got us a place in the apartments here for three months. That should be enough to pocket what we can and move on.”
Betsy watched as the grossly quaint little town rolled by outside the car. Their apartment wasn’t far from her last ‘theft of choice,’ but far enough for her to see that this part of town was old. Very old. And confirming that, the apartment building they pulled up to was very Edwardian in design.
She sighed, feeling like she ought to cross ‘Edwardian’ off the list of words she had a right to use. She was a petty thief and con artist. Who would ever believe that she not only knew what it was, but loved the architecture and history of the period.
The buildings were, nonetheless, very pretty and well maintained. All part of that small town American charm that had attracted Wyatt and his innate sense of a good place to scam. She’d been skeptical that Pine Valley, Minnesota, would have anything at all that she could pocket or lift, for the tiniest of profits. But already in the past two days, she’d lifted and cased enough places on High Street and Main Street that she was assured a decent profit.
Wasn’t that really all she needed? She didn’t need trappings of American life. White picket fences? Fresh laundry hanging in the backyard? A dog? A mortgage? Let the others deal with that. She’d been a part of it and look where it got her. So fuck the middle class—she’d skim her living off their little trinkets and nothings.
She watched Wyatt as they drove through the little complex to where they were staying. He was ruggedly handsome, with a short beard—though not short enough to be a douche-beard, nor long enough to go for the lumbersexual look—and dark brown hair. His eyes were light brown with a gorgeous ring of dark chocolate around the edge. His skin was olive tanned, lending a hint to the 1/16th Navajo in his blood. High cheekbones, a high forehead, and always well groomed.
She’d fallen for him, hard, the third year of school. He walked in with a swagger, a black leather coat, and an attitude, and she was done. He took a shine to her too, and she was willing to follow him anywhere. The first few times she watched him steal little things—razors, earrings, a shirt—she was appalled. But he convinced her to slip a necklace into her purse from a big box store, and that was the end. Betsy was hooked—on petty thievery and Wyatt.
Wyatt had grown up a thief. His whole family was full of petty criminals, and the occasional grand thief. He’d gotten into Duke by cheating and lying, and had wormed his way into a full scholarship by forging papers and lying about his status. It had really been a first-class scam job, Betsy realized later on. She had loved going to class and learning for the year they were there and scamming and thieving to get by. Eventually, though, Wyatt got restless and wanted to move on from there.
And Betsy went with him, drifting from small town to small town, grifting and palming and stealing their way toward Vegas. Toward some dream that was nebulous and tenuous at best.
The problem with Wyatt, aside from being a thief, he was cheap. For all the heists they had pulled in the past five years, he always cheaped out where he could. Stolen or cheap cars. Two buck chuck if he was feeling honest. The nearly-expired fruit and meat. He wasn’t below scamming a church out of free food. It wore on her, his cheapness. She had called it frugality at first, but no. He was cheap. Frugality would have netted her the $125 sneakers, not the $10 knock-off Keds from Walmart.
He couldn’t even steal her a nice pair of shoes.
But at the same time, she knew he didn’t really understand the difference. Which meant a basement apartment. With way-high-up windows that let in almost no light, and pipes that gurgled and popped and trickled every time a faucet or flush was needed.
It was a nice building—but the piping was not what Betsy would call well-planned. Or modern.
“Wyatt...”
“Don’t ask me.”
“Come on, Wyatt. Why are we pulling all these jobs if we end up sleeping at the final u-bend of the shitters all the time?”
He pressed her up against the door, his hand going to her breast, kneading it. “We’re saving, Betsy. You want a house in the high desert, with dogs and cats? We have to save the money we earn.”
Betsy enjoyed Wyatt’s hands, and a moment later his lips on her nipple, thinking about what he said. Did she want a house in the high desert? Not so much. The cats and dogs—and kids—sure, but she wasn’t going to get a choice of where they were going to live? And what were they going to do for money then? Were they going to teach their children how to be petty thieves and cheats? She—
“Oh, shit,” she gasped, his fingers in her panties knocking out all conscious thought out of her head.
“You love my fingers.” Wyatt breathed hard.
“I do, I do.” Betsy squirmed against the door. “Time to break in the new place?”
“I plan to fuck you on every surface in this house.”
“Promises, promises.”
“Every. Surface.” He yanked her panties and pants down and off and scooped up her leg. She loosened his pants and shoved them out of her way so she could wrap her hand around his dick. This was the way it always was—after a successful theft, they burned off the adrenaline with a good fuck. And it was always a good fuck with Wyatt.
He slipped himself into her waiting heat as Betsy angled her hips so he could drive himself deep, deep inside her. His finger found her clit and teased her as he drove into her relentlessly, slamming her against the door.
“God! Yes!”
With each thrust of his cock, each press of his finger on her clit, she remembered why she was with him. This primal joining, this feeling of being full, wanted, desired. And he was damn good at it. It was less than five minutes before she screamed out with her climax.
…She could never bring herself to scream his name...
Staring up at the ceiling after another rousing round of sex, Betsy found herself sighing deeply. “Are we going whole hog here? Or just picking and choosing?”
“I don’t know yet,” Wyatt said, yawning.
“You always have a plan. And I always have to correct it.”
“I picked the place and decided to canvas on fly this time. This is an old town. There might be some antiques we can work with here.” Wyatt rolled to stare at her. “Dinner?”
“I didn’t go to the grocery store.”
“We can order in. There are eight whole restaurants we can order from!”
Betsy rolled her eyes and grabbed her night shirt, tossing it on. Padding out to the living room, she found the menus the landlord had given them when they moved in. There was a Chinese place, a pizza parlor, Pond & Duck Restaurant take-out, and Drakes. There was also an advertisement for Creek Café for the best breakfast and lunch in the town, as well as a Thai-Japanese place, an Italian joint, and Pho, of all things.
The town. All six thousand people. What the fuck did they all do for a living? Middle of nowhere, and it was the same question that always came to mind when they cased a tiny little place like this.
Wyatt took the menus as she tossed them on the bed. “The usual?”
“Of course.” Betsy shrugged. “Who would guess that there’d be Pho in Buttfuck, Minnesota?”
He gestured vaguely to the east. “There’s a university here. They’d be shit out of luck if they didn’t have pizza and Chinese. Nice to see the diner, though. That’s a nice option. Take away. We can probably confuse a meal or two of them once in a while. Breakfast place too.”
Betsy nodded and lay back in the bed. “Pizza? There’s a coupon.”
“And a fast clock.” Wyatt laughed. “They have the thirty-minute guarantee.”
Betsy stared at the ceiling. She’d go grocery shopping tomorrow at the small grocery a few blocks away. Coupons and fast fingers would keep the bill down. For now.
* * *
Betsy found herself walking through the water.
The water was cold. Considering she was naked, the fact that she wasn’t shivering or cramping and dying from the exposure was nothing short of a miracle.
There was a thin layer of ice over the lake, barely a hint and easily broken, but robbing the liquid of its glass surface. Despite that, the moon gleamed on down. She didn’t know this water, even though she’d always had these dreams. Cold, wet, icy. Always night, always the moon. And always naked.
The surface shimmered, a distance away. It was what she waited for in the dreams. The shimmer in the distance, and then instinct took over and she dove into the clear, cold darkness of the water.
The beams of the moon still filtered down to her. Betsy never dove deep; she never had to. She was dynamic in the water the way her body could never be in the air, on land. Swimming was natural and with a few kicks of her feet she sped from the rocks near the shore line over the cliff that plunged deep, deep into the dark.
The shimmer she had waited for glistened as brightly under the water as above. Desperately, she swam toward it, a new feeling invading her body.
Lust. Desire. Craving.
Love.
The moon guided her through the water to where the shimmer was looping and twirling. It dove and surfaced and spun and shone. Blue light through blue water on blue scales.
Scales.
Scales of every shade of blue. Light, dark, and everything between. Sleek and gorgeous and—
—desired.
The great shining scales turned toward her, and the massive head of a dragon turned and stared at her. Icy blue eyes, more human than most humans she had ever seen, stared at her and she saw joy there. Pure unadulterated joy. Her eyes reflected it back at him.
Him?
Before she could think more on that, the great dragon slipped into the water and a moment later, slipped between her legs. She caught the scales and was pulled along at speeds that would have blinded or yanked anyone else off the huge creature.
If she had not been under the water, under the moon, she would have yelled in sheer delight at the sensations slipping through the night pressed around her body.
What was this? She wanted nothing more than to stay in the water with this great dragon. No wings for this creature that defied explanation—instead, he whipped his tail from side to side to propel him through the water. She belonged here, in the cool blue depths.
Are you happy here, agapi̱té éna?
More than words can say.
The cold does not bother you?
Neither does the lack of air. Shouldn’t it?
No. Not with me.
Betsy laughed as the dragon slipped from between her legs. She continued forward, and in the next moment, a pair of big strong arms caught her in motion. She looked up in the water to find those same blue eyes in the handsome face of a man. There was no time to think—he caught her mouth and kissed her hard.
Fuck me. She wanted to feel him here in the water.
No.
The denial hurt.
I will not fuck you. Not this time. But I will have you here, joined with me.
In the water.
The water, the air, the land, the sky. Wherever, whenever you will welcome me.
His hand grazed down to her breast.
She sat up in bed, her waking chased by a great, shaking snore from Wyatt.
Goddamn it.