Tourmaline (Awakened Sea Dragons Book 2) Read online

  Was it really so unbelievable that she could have met someone and gone off with them? “I’m with Kai.”

  “The crazy guy?”

  Renee rolled her eyes. “Yes. He’s not that crazy. Well, he helped me. It’s a long story.”

  “I don’t care,” Liz said, annoyed. “Just get back here. I need someone to vent to.”

  “I can’t,” Renee said.

  “Yes, you can,” Liz said. “Just tell him you don’t date crazy people and get back here to help your best friend.”

  Renee took a deep breath, summoning patience, knowing her friend would date this “crazy” person in a second if given the chance. It would never occur to her to call Liz back from a date, so why did Liz think she could do it to her?

  “No,” Renee said firmly. “I’m busy now. We can talk when I get back.”

  “Fine,” Liz said tersely. “But don’t blame me when he hurts you.” Then she hung up the phone, and Renee exhaled slowly.

  Perhaps Liz was right. Perhaps hoping for anything would only lead to heartbreak. But even though Kai had hurt her feelings, he had always tried to find her after and make things right. And he had tried to protect her multiple times. And if she just subtracted his heavy-handedness and sometimes blunt words, she could see that he’d never been trying to hurt her.

  But still, she knew how he looked and how she looked, and while it was interesting to explore this, she wasn’t going to lose touch with reality. Maybe he was the type who was attracted to big women, and maybe he’d want to sleep with her, but that didn’t mean he wanted a fat woman on his arm.

  Or maybe that was just the voice of everyone who’d ever made her feel bad about herself swirling around in her head.

  Maybe she should let Kai speak for himself, without all those other people speaking for him.

  Heaven knew he never sounded like anyone else.

  So she took the liberty of making some popcorn and a microwave dinner she found in the fridge and continued to wait for her erstwhile “suitor” to come back.

  About an hour later, he did, and she was surprised to see he was soaking wet as he pulled the window open and managed to climb in.

  “Kai!” she said, standing to gape as he stood there dripping in front of her.

  She ran for the bathroom and grabbed two towels, bringing them over to him. “Here. Warm up.”

  “I’m fine,” he said with a growl. “I couldn’t get a good confession. And the hotel security stopped me.”

  “Stopped you from what?” she asked as he rubbed the towels over himself, shaking rather like a dog.

  “Killing him. I guess they heard his screams.”

  Her jaw dropped. “What were you doing?”

  His expression was darker than she’d ever seen it. “I just took him in the ocean to see how he liked being incapacitated. I wanted to know if he knew of anyone else. I wanted to know where he’d gotten his drugs. I guess he was too busy screaming to tell me. The security guards were luckily too disgusted by him to do anything to me, but they did warn me not to do something like this again.”

  She nodded, sitting on the couch, feeling lightheaded. He’d done all this simply because someone had attacked her and could do the same to someone else?

  “But I can’t just do nothing when someone like that is out there. When they almost hurt you.” He looked at her, and she felt lost in his blue eyes, so stormy, so tense.

  A desire to calm him went through her, but she felt frozen in place.

  Then she realized he’d done it for her. He’d been worried for her. Locked her in for her.

  No one had ever treated her like that. Like she was a treasure waiting to be stolen. Someone who had to be protected.

  She squirmed uncomfortably as he tossed the towel aside and strode for the shower.

  “I’ll wash off and calm down, and then we will continue our talk. I’ve been told that I shouldn’t converse when I have a temper.”

  And then, before she could stop him, he was gone, the bathroom door closing behind him. The sound of a shower turning on filled the air and stifled any attempts she might have made to call out to him.

  She supposed there was nothing anyone could make this man do if he didn’t want to, so she’d just have to wait.

  Kai let the water pour over him, hoping to give his anger a chance to abate before going back to face his mate. He shoved his head into the hot, steaming stream and let it burn him slightly, hoping it could distract him from the white-hot rage burning inside.

  After he’d landed outside the window and started to track his prey, it had truly settled in him that someone had tried to hurt his mate.

  Drug his mate. Rape his mate.

  The level of sneaking evil some humans could get up to was astonishing. He was still surprised by the vileness of some people.

  He’d never been a great fan of humans, always saving their hides as was his duty in the ocean, but never spending any more time around them than was absolutely necessary. He’d been with his siblings since being awakened, and then with other dragons, so he hadn’t had much experience with humans other than movies and the news.

  Until he’d come to this resort. Then he’d gotten to know and interact with a few of them, but hadn’t gotten any bad sort of impression.

  He wondered how a dragon like Aegis, with the ability to read minds, didn’t go around charring humans constantly.

  All of the gem dragons, metal dragons, and other land-dwelling dragons had the ability to read minds, both their own and those of humans, and now Kai sort of understood why.

  Humans could be terribly evil.

  He took a deep breath. His mate was safe. She was waiting for him in the living room. She’d been worried for him, giving him towels. She’d stayed, as he asked, and didn’t even seem mad.

  He let out a slow, hoarse exhale. He knew he should be glad the humans had stopped him, taken his prey into their hands. He didn’t really need Aegis flying out here to break him out of human jail. Nor did he need a lecture.

  He wanted to go out and see his mate, but he didn’t want to screw it up again, and with his head spinning, he was worried he would.

  “Stay calm,” he said to himself in a low voice, planting a hand on the shower wall in front of him. “Calm down.” He breathed slowly, thinking of the ocean, being back in dragon form, swimming toward the horizon, jumping in the air far from land where any humans could see him.

  Just the thought of it made breath catch in his chest, made warmth come over him, soothing him completely. Yes, the ocean was still his home; that was certain. But what about Renee? Wasn’t she part of his life now, too?

  They would have to start her swimming lessons tomorrow. Perhaps they could work out a way to spend half their time on land and half on the sea, or…

  No, he couldn’t think about that now. Perhaps Seaton was right. It was time to accept that they had awakened and didn’t have the same purpose in the water anymore. They had to find a new way to live.

  He turned off the water, noticing steam all around him in the bathroom, fogging up every mirrored surface, and groped around for a towel. He grabbed one, wrapped it around his waist, and then wiped at the mirror with his hand.

  What he saw looking back at him was still foreign. He still wasn’t used to his human self.

  Tall. A slightly darker skin color than Renee, who was creamy and pale. His skin was smooth and delicate-looking like all human skin, despite the fact that he knew his was as strong as impenetrable dragon scales.

  He was large by human standards but puny compared to dragons.

  He wanted to see his old self, huge and shimmering blue, able to take on anything.

  He raised an arm and flexed a human muscle, wondering if Renee would find his muscles attractive the way certain other women at the resort had seemed to.

  He hoped so. She sometimes seemed almost afraid of him, so he hoped he wasn’t too big for her.

  The tiny, puny human who had almost attacked her had appare
ntly been her type. He was still angry, thinking about how friendly she’d been to him compared to how she treated Kai.

  But he had to admit the other man was exactly what Kai wasn’t. Smooth. Sneaky. Pleasant. Non-intimidating.

  But Kai wouldn’t apologize for what he was. Powerful. Strong. Honest, above all else.

  As much as he could be with his collar on and Aegis ready to breathe down his neck if he made a wrong move at any moment.

  He longed to tell Renee he was a dragon. To explain why he really was as odd as she thought him (though, according to other dragons, that still didn’t explain it fully).

  But he couldn’t. He would have to win her this way, as a human, no matter how awkward that was.

  He walked into his room to pull on clothes. Humans definitely knew how to do clothing, if one had to wear them at all. He pulled on soft sleeping trousers and a tee shirt that was a little tight but the largest size he had found.

  He stretched at it, rolling his shoulders, and then focused on staying calm as he went to see his mate.

  He walked into the living room, meaning to seem staid, but his heart started leaping the second he laid eyes on her soft, wavy hair and blue dress slipping over rounded shoulders. Her curvy, generous form just begged to be pulled into his arms and kissed into oblivion.

  Still, he knew enough to know that humans needed to be asked before such things.

  Kissing her lips had been one thing. Before he kissed more, he had to be certain.

  And he definitely wanted to kiss more. He stared at her in awkward silence, stunned by the fierce want in his body to lose himself in her, to give her pleasure beyond her wildest dreams and see her fall apart in his arms.

  But she barely knew him, so how could she ever understand that?

  “I don’t know what to say when you look at me like that,” she said, running soft, little hands over her bare arms.

  He sat on a stool at the counter, feeling a little off balance. What was he supposed to be doing again? Right, continuing their conversation.

  “I’m sorry I took off like that.”

  “Can you fix the door?” she asked. “It kind of makes me uncomfortable.”

  “Oh, right,” he said, walking over and putting his hand up, focusing heat to move the metal back into its original place.

  He trusted his mate wouldn’t run out right now. She wouldn’t have waited for him without calling a manager otherwise.

  “There,” he said, opening the door swiftly before shutting it to show her it worked. “I didn’t mean to make you a prisoner. I simply didn’t want to worry while I wasn’t here to protect you.”

  She raised a perfectly arched brow. “I wasn’t aware that protecting me was your job.”

  He rolled his lips together. What was he supposed to say? She wasn’t aware of dragons, so she wasn’t aware she was one’s mate. How did he explain that protecting her was not just his job, but his reason for breathing at the moment?

  Chapter 6

  She patted the couch next to her. “Come over here. Don’t look so afraid of me. You’re such a big guy.”

  She’d invited him to sit by her. Happiness pumped through him as he sat next to her, careful not to get too close. Like with a small animal that had finally decided to trust him, he didn’t want to move too quickly and scare her off.

  “So what happened?” she asked.

  “I just went and found him,” Kai said. “After you told me what he was, I couldn’t leave him out there. It was my fault he got away.”

  “No,” she said. “You stopped him from hurting me. It wasn’t your fault he left.”

  “I should have stopped him. I did. Now I don’t want to talk about it.” He cocked his head, looking her over, letting his eyes linger on her breasts, her belly, her soft, feminine hips. The female human form was truly something to take in, though he’d never thought so before he’d met his mate.

  “Are you a… a chubby chaser?” she asked.

  He raised an eyebrow. “What?”

  “Well, if you don’t know what a roofie is, I guess you wouldn’t know what that means either. I mean… It means you like… bigger women.”

  “No,” he said. “I like small women, like you.”

  “I’m not small.”

  “You are compared to me.”

  “All women are compared to you,” she said with a snort of frustration.

  “I don’t want all women,” he said. “I only want you.”

  Her mouth snapped shut at that, and he noticed she had the cutest little dimple at the right side of her lips. “I just mean… Do you like women who are fat?”

  He sat up abruptly, letting out an angry breath. “There you go again, calling yourself something that you would apparently be mad at me for calling you. I don’t get what you mean.”

  “My body,” she said, gesturing to herself nervously. “I’m not like… like Liz.”

  “Is that your friend?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Well, if you’re asking, I obviously prefer you to her.”

  “See, that’s not obvious at all,” she said. “Most people prefer Liz.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” he said, folding his arms. Still, his mate was modest, too. That was a fine quality.

  She rolled her eyes and leaned on the arm of the couch, as if she were frustrated with him somehow.

  He didn’t really get it. He’d been living with the other dragons, and some of their mates were much like her in form. Some were different shapes than others, but all were very desirable to their mates. Wasn’t that all that mattered?

  She made his mouth water, and everything, from her hair to her fiery golden eyes to her softness, felt as if it had been made perfectly for him.

  But he could sense this topic was important to her, so he decided to try and understand it. “Fat,” he said, looking over at her. “Is that this?” He reached out to take a soft handful at her waist and was shocked when she slapped him sharply, knocking his hand away before he could even touch one soft little inch.

  “Hey!” he said. “What was that for?”

  “That’s my body!” she said. “You don’t get to touch it however you want.”

  He lifted his shirt and studied his abdomen. “But I don’t think I have any. How am I supposed to show you what I mean?”

  Her face was deep red as she looked away from him. “Maybe I really should have left after all.”

  The hurt he could feel from her nearly broke him, and he scooted closer, gently reaching out as she allowed him to take her chin in his hand. He turned her face so she could see his eyes when he spoke.

  “Renee, I think you’re beautiful. Why does the rest of it matter?”

  “I just… My whole life, people have made fun of me,” she said. “It’s hard for me to believe you could just walk in and want me without being some sort of… sicko.”

  “Sicko?” he asked. “The guy I just tried to drown is a sicko. I’m just a little bit odd. But not because I like you. In fact, you should give me the names of everyone who made you feel this way, and I can hunt them down and set them straight. You are beautiful.”

  She shook her head, but he didn’t release her. “I’m not. I know that. I just… If you have a fetish—”

  “What is a fetish?”

  “Oh gosh, you’re innocent,” she said. “It’s when someone is turned on by something odd—”

  “Liking you isn’t odd,” he said, feeling frustration rise in him. This went beyond modesty. What was wrong with his mate that she couldn’t see what he saw in her? Marina was right about human women. They saw themselves all wrong.

  He wondered if it was human men who did that to them.

  “Who made you feel like this?” he asked. “That you aren’t beautiful just as you are?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” She put a hand over his wrist, trying to make him release her, but he couldn’t. This was just too important. He had to make sure she heard.

  �
�You’re right. It doesn’t. Every woman I’ve met wants me, and I want you. I really, deeply want you. Why won’t you just believe me and take all I have to give?”

  “I want to. I… I don’t want to get hurt,” she said, turning her eyes away from him. “I know I’m wrong inside. I know I shouldn’t feel this way—”

  He kissed her then because he couldn’t see her hurt anymore and because he was an awkward dragon who didn’t know how else to show her what he was feeling. How incredibly beautiful she was.

  How much he wanted her.

  How he would never let anyone hurt her in this world.

  He’d known there would be difficulties when he met his mate, but he’d never expected it would be like this. Still, Renee was worth it. If she needed him to show her, he’d show her as often as possible.

  Until she believed it as much as she believed in the sun. Until she was as sure of her beauty as he was sure of the tides.

  She resisted for a moment, squirming awkwardly, then relaxed against him, her soft hands going up to circle his neck as he pressed her back against the couch, deepening the kiss.

  She moaned slightly, letting him press his hard muscles against her soft curves, and he slipped his tongue between her lips, pressing her open gently so he could explore her wet depths.

  She moaned again, and her arms wrapped tighter around him, her soft body pushing up against him, feeling like utter heaven, unlike anything he’d ever imagined in his life. Her tongue thrust against his in a hot dance.

  She was shy, tentative, and he was as well, wanting to take it slow, wanting not to scare her, trying to follow the signs of her body in what she wanted.

  Her hips unexpectedly thrust up against him, and he smoothed a hand over her soft waist, unable to resist grabbing and holding her there as she ground against him. He wanted to cry at the amazing feel of her body, the softness his dragon had never expected to find, the way her whole form seemed to accept and encircle him, the way his hand was so firm in contrast to her vulnerable curves.

  How much it made the protector in him want to breathe fire at the entire world to keep them away.

  When she was here like this, moaning against his mouth, becoming bolder in asking for what she wanted, her small body writhing and pressing to his, her hands digging into his shirt now and pulling at his collar, he felt his human and dragon in total agreement for the first time in so long.