Nightfall (Nightmare Dragons Book 2) Read online

  Yes, he wanted to be by her side, especially after what they’d done.

  But no, he could never admit that to himself, let alone say it to Sasha.

  Thankfully, she didn’t question him or his motives, just snuggled close to his chest as he closed the bedroom door behind them and turned off the light.

  The darkness beckoning outside could wait another night for his return.

  Chapter 14

  Somewhat to Dare’s surprise, he woke up first the next morning.

  It took a substantial amount of willpower to get up and fix breakfast for Sasha instead of lying in bed and admiring her perfect form while she dreamed about something in her sleep.

  By the time she came downstairs, sufficiently dressed for work in a practical-looking pair of pants and a shirt, her hair held back by a headband, Dare had already set a plate of French toast with coffee on the table for both of them.

  “How’d you sleep?” Dare asked, wondering if regular mornings as a human passed something like this.

  “Pretty well. Thanks,” she replied, tucking a stray lock of blond behind one ear as she sat down, sniffing the food. “It smells great.”

  “Yeah, I’m no chef, but a hundred years is enough time to get good at practically anything.” He took the seat across from her, aware of the tension in the air.

  And haunted by pervasive memories of last night. Of Sasha coming at his touch.

  Sasha took a sip of coffee, then started on the plate he pushed in front of her. While she ate, Dare poked at his own plate, trying not to stare at her while his mind wanted to wander.

  “So do you have work today?” he asked, trying to fill the silence.

  There was nothing to mention about last night because last night had been a necessity. A measure to ensure Sasha’s safety. The fact that it had been mind-blowing was merely incidental.

  She chuckled, finishing a syrup-drenched bite of breakfast. “Yes, most humans have work every day.”

  “I know that.” He huffed. “I was just thinking I should come along, too. Just in case anyone is targeting you after being at the bar last night.”

  She paused a moment, watching him with a raised eyebrow. “Now that I’m marked, it shouldn’t be a problem, should it?”

  He could sense the slight change of inflection as she said the specific word that had led to more than just a little action last night. And if he wasn’t wrong, she was blushing.

  “I don’t know,” Dare admitted, “which is why we can’t take any chances.”

  “Really, no one should be following me. I was just fine after being kidnapped by you the first time, remember?” She pointed at him with his fork, and he felt the stab of his own reckless actions.

  But back then, even though it wasn’t so long ago, he felt he was going to lose everything if Lillian and Sasha had exposed Nathan.

  Now it felt as if he had so much more to lose.

  “You’re too important to me now to let anything happen, Sasha. Especially now that I know just how often trouble does come your way.”

  “Yeah. Trouble that starts with D and ends in E and rhymes with care.” She finished her sentence by finishing her meal, leaving them both in silence.

  Even if Dare had a comeback, he couldn’t deny that he was probably the biggest trouble in her life right now.

  Which was why he couldn’t stand aside waiting for some other trouble to catch up to her.

  “I’m still going with you.”

  “I know.”

  The drive to the library was uneventfully radio-filled, and by the time they got in, Sasha was fully in work mode. Part of Dare suspected it was the same reason he found himself immediately perusing the shelves of the romance section, but as long as they weren’t talking about it, there was nothing to admit, right?

  For what seemed like forever, he pulled books off shelves, scanning them as he kept an eye on Sasha’s movements throughout the library as she worked.

  Gradually, though, he found himself moving from romance to horror, picking a particularly gory one to sit down with and explore.

  It was a horrible story involving a disenfranchised carpenter and his reign of terror on a small town, and Dare wanted to show it to Sasha, just to ask what kind of human would write this shit.

  Plus, he was curious to see what she was up to and wanted an excuse to track her down.

  He found her in an obscure section of the library, wholly focused on reorganizing a shelf of what looked like books on random hobbies.

  “Hey, Sasha, have you read this? I found it a bit interesting, at least.”

  He kept his tone casual because they were in her place of work, but now that he was closer to her, he could scent her soft floral fragrance. He could see the little wisps of hair that had escaped her headband, and all he could think of was how to get it on in the library without getting caught.

  As if he still needed to mark her.

  “What?” She looked down at him, still distracted. When she saw the book in his hand, she shook her head. “I’m trying to work, Dare. This is my job. I can’t have you distracting me all the time.”

  Dare folded his arms but didn’t speak.

  A tense moment passed, everything they’d done the night before hanging potently in the air between them.

  Sasha let out a sigh and looked at her watch. “Maybe you could just get lunch? Then we’ll eat together. How about that?”

  Dare shrugged. “Sure. Just don’t get kidnapped while I’m gone.”

  That made her smile, and Dare strode off, leaving the library to get something fast. For some reason, being away from her too long made him uncomfortable.

  After grabbing some sandwiches from the deli across the street, he headed back into the library, looking around for Sasha.

  Then he heard voices breaking through the silence of the endless rows of dusty bookshelves.

  “You never appreciated me, Sash. Not then, not now.” It was a man’s voice, trying to sound calm but on the verge of breaking.

  Dare swiftly passed by aisle after aisle of books, following Sasha’s scent, until he found the right one. At the far end, near the wall, Sasha was standing by her cart while a short man, probably only a few inches taller than she, paced back and forth.

  “I told you already. I’m dating someone,” Sasha said earnestly.

  The man shook his head, but Dare was already closing the distance between them as fast as he could.

  “You don’t have to lie, Sasha. It’s just sad,” the man said, getting closer to her. Sasha frowned at him as he neared, almost close enough to touch her. “I know you want me back—”

  “Hey, back off, shorty,” Dare interjected, snatching the guy by his jacket and throwing him back against a bookshelf. The shelf tilted back, then gradually rolled forward again, a few books falling off but otherwise not creating a ruckus.

  If Dare had used more than a fraction of his strength, every shelf in the library would be down right now.

  The man, stunned but relatively unharmed, bristled angrily at the remark on his height. But when he looked up to see Dare staring down at him and cracking his knuckles, he blanched visibly.

  “Yeah, try something, short stack. Please.” Dare could feel one eye twitching, forearms tensed, fists wanting any excuse to tear the guy in two.

  Perhaps a bit of an overreaction, but most humans were scum anyway, so Dare didn’t think so.

  All humans who weren’t named Sasha.

  To Dare’s disappointment, the man ran off as fast as his stubby feet could take him. When Sasha let out a sigh of relief, Dare turned to face her.

  She was smiling a little, her exasperation dimming. Just the sight of her posture relaxing took the edge off the anger inside him.

  Dare wanted to go on about how he couldn’t leave her alone for two minutes without something happening. Wanted to remind her just how badly she needed him. But seeing the soft smile in those blue eyes took the ground out from under his feet.

  “Honestly, do I
need to mark you in some way to keep humans off, too?” Dare asked, cocking a hip and glancing back in the direction the jerk-off had left seconds ago.

  “Maybe,” she said, and they both laughed a little. And with the laughter came embarrassment as they both got caught off guard by the mention of marking and the memory of the previous night together.

  “Thanks for saving me. Again.” Sasha bent down to pick up a fallen book, replacing it in its proper location on the shelf.

  “Yeah, well, protecting humans is my specialty. I just never focused on one in particular until now.” He mirrored her by picking up another book but handed it to her since he didn’t know where it was supposed to be.

  “I appreciate it,” she said.

  The quiet isolation of the library made everything they did, everything they said, feel so much more intimate. Like there was nobody else in the world but the two of them.

  “I just need you for my own purposes. That’s why,” Dare said, trying to shove the odd warmth in his heart out of the way. “Hey, we can fix this later. Let’s go eat.”

  She nodded, and they found a table in the common area where he pulled out sandwiches he’d bought for them to enjoy.

  Well, for her to enjoy. For him to pretend to look human to the rest of the world.

  They ate in relative silence before Sasha smiled to herself about something.

  “What is it, snack?”

  “For a second, I was afraid you were going to knock down the entire nonfiction section of the library.”

  Her smile became a giggle, then several loud snickers as Dare joined in with a chuckle of his own.

  It somehow felt so… normal. So casual between them.

  And at the same time, it was the most foreign thing to him in the world.

  When Sasha was done laughing, wiping a small tear of mirth from her eye, she looked across the table at him. “So are we going to the club again tonight?”

  Dare rubbed the back of his neck, thinking it out. “No.”

  Sasha cocked her head slightly.

  “Actually, I’ve been thinking we should start on hooking you up with someone.”

  As he spoke, Sasha’s smile started to fade. Seeing that felt like acid on his soul. Yet he’d made a promise. One he intended to keep, for both of their sakes.

  But mostly Sasha’s.

  “As amazing as last night was, we both realize this can’t go anywhere, Sasha. We need to keep our heads on straight.”

  She looked straight-up disappointed now. What was he doing wrong?

  “As much as I like you—which I have to admit is a lot more than other humans—I’m not meant to be your mate.”

  “No, no, I get it,” she said, dropping the remains of her sandwich and brushing her hands off. “I was just asking if we were going to the club again. I didn’t mean anything specific by it. Sure, let’s go to a club for humans. Let’s go meet some guys.”

  By now, she’d gathered the remains of lunch and was standing, turning her back on him to throw the garbage in a nearby trashcan.

  “Good. I know of a place where we can go tonight that—”

  “You can tell me after work,” she said, looking at him over her shoulder before turning down a corner. “Until then, don’t bother me.” Her voice carried just barely over the stoic silence of the place.

  Dare’s lips tightened in a grimace.

  He didn’t like the idea of Sasha meeting other men, either. In fact, he hated it.

  But it was too late now. He’d sworn to find her someone safe she could be with. Someone who wasn’t a nightmare that turned into a monster when midnight came.

  And he was going to find Sasha that someone even if it killed him.

  Chapter 15

  Dare scowled as he waited on the couch in the living room, wondering why it was taking Sasha so long to get ready.

  He knew he needed to pull back on his possessiveness of her. The incident with her ex at the library had shown that, but it was easier said than done.

  He looked at his watch and leaned back against the cushions with a groan, not looking forward to what they were doing tonight.

  He’d rather stay in with her, “marking” her. But despite feeling the best he’d ever felt in his life, he knew they couldn’t continue doing things like that.

  None of this was the reason he’d found her. He needed to keep his eye on the horizon, which was hard when every time he saw her, she seemed to be more beautiful to his eyes.

  Perhaps they were malfunctioning.

  Finally, her door opened and she came down toward him, dressed in a retro-style red dress that hugged her hips and hit midcalf, showing off curvy legs and petite ankles. Her hair was back, clipped up with pins and a headband, and she wore small sparkling diamonds at her ears.

  Her cleavage looked outrageous, soft and peeking above the low V of her neckline.

  He swallowed hard as he stood, trying not to show how he was affected. He rubbed the back of his neck. “So this is how you dress to go out? No wonder trouble follows you.”

  She ignored him, pulling on a jacket and grabbing her purse. “I don’t usually get as much attention as I did at Club Crimson. Usually, I have to try pretty hard.”

  “I don’t know if you have to try this hard,” he muttered, holding the door open for her and looking out into the night to check things were safe before they headed down to the car.

  As they drove, she smoothed her dress down, seeming a bit uncomfortable in its tightness. Why did that make it even more hot?

  Dare pulled at the crew neck of his tee shirt, feeling a little too warm in his jacket. “You’re going to get me in trouble for sure.”

  She smiled at him. “No, I’m not. Dare, outside the shifter world, I’m not really pursued by humans.”

  “Too bad. I could use the excuse to eat one right about now,” he said darkly.

  She laughed at that. “I mean, the bad thing with Phil happened, but prior to that, there had just been users galore.”

  “Didn’t your dad tell you to look for better?”

  Sasha was quiet. “He died when I was little. Hit by a drunk driver.”

  That made Dare take a pause. As they pulled into the club parking lot, he looked over at her. “You want to talk about it?”

  She shook her head.

  “I’m sorry I was insensitive.”

  She waved a hand. “It’s okay. The woman who did it felt terrible, and my family got by okay. I guess that’s where I learned to forgive others. Sometimes you have to in order to move on. My mom remarried and is living out west, and my brother is finishing up a PhD in college.” She shrugged. “I guess I did grow up mostly without a dad.”

  He frowned. “I think you grew up fine. I think you’re one of the best people I’ve met.” Maybe the best.

  “And you’ve met an awful lot of people, haven’t you?”

  “A century’s worth.”

  She rested an arm on the door of the car and turned to him, seeming in no hurry to get out. Since they were already at a club to find someone to date her, he didn’t think it would hurt to just connect for a little while longer.

  “Lillian told me you had a creator. Were you really born in a tube?”

  “I grew up in a lab,” Dare said flatly. “Until they threw us out that is.”

  “Threw you out? How?”

  “When they discovered what we were… that we hadn’t come out right, they abandoned us. Our creator tried to tell us that there was a chance for us, that if we kept our ledger, we had a chance of one day being accepted back into our world. She said, in a hundred years, she would come for us, but she never showed up.”

  “That’s awful,” Sasha said, shaking her head. “What ledger?”

  “You might have seen Nathan’s,” Dare said uncertainly.

  “No.”

  Dare sighed as he pulled the small book out of his pocket and handed it over to her. “There it is.”

  “It’s… all red,” she said, flipping through it.r />
  “I didn’t say I did a good job with it.”

  “What does red mean?”

  Dare thought for a long second. “It means those are people I killed. Black would be people I save. Nathan probably has tons of those because he can see into the future and knows the effects of his acts. But I can only write red.”

  “But you… don’t kill unless you have to.”

  “That’s correct,” Dare said. “And I think in the end, my ledger would work out.” Or not. He hadn’t known if the creator would take one look at it and kill him.

  But it still would have been better than being left to rot in the dark.

  “So when they threw you out, how old were you?”

  He rubbed his neck. “Old enough to know it was awful. Old enough to fear I wouldn’t survive.”

  “But you did.”

  “With my brothers,” Dare said. “If someone attacked us, we learned how to kill. When we were old enough to hunt separately, we split up. The only thing we were explicitly told to do is hide from the human and shifter world. We were warned any contact would destroy us.”

  She smiled, putting a hand over his where it rested on the gearshift. “And has it?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  She let out a breath of relief. “Good. I didn’t think so.” Her eyes looked up at the bright neon sign over the club. “Should we go in, then?”

  “I’m ready if you are.” But he wasn’t ready. Not at all. She was his, in a messed-up part of him that he wasn’t able to explore. The thought of anyone touching her…

  “Okay, let’s go,” she said nervously, opening her door and stepping out of the car, giving Dare no choice but to join her.

  It felt odd to have talked to her, to have told her things he hadn’t discussed with anyone but his brothers. It made it that much more unpleasant that he now had to let her go.

  Had to find someone else for her.

  But he was the one who’d insisted on it back at the library. He couldn’t afford to weaken now. It would only confuse her. And she seemed fine with this option.

  Why that rankled, he didn’t know.

  He held open the door to the club and immediately realized it was quieter than the shifter club. The music still pulsed and lights still strobed in the darkness, but the shapes bobbing on the floor were more relaxed and in control.