Moron.
However, Orion didn’t feel like playing games – chasing after the car again until the driver realized he was trapped. He had no idea what was going on with Cadence in there; was she alone? Was she being abused? He needed to get her out as soon as possible.
He directed a low, carefully controlled stream of fire at the tires and melted them, and the car jerked and froze in place, glued to the road.
He stalked towards the car and bashed his mighty head against the driver’s side. The door caved in; the window exploded inwards.
The driver let out a scream of terror, and a moment later, he scrambled out the front passenger door and fell to the ground. He leaped to his feet, stumbling back.
Orion reached out and clawed open the rear passenger door, and Cadence stumbled out. She took a few steps back, looking around in bewilderment.
Then the driver reached into his jacket, pulled out a gun, and started firing at Orion. The bullets bounced harmlessly off him, but some of the ricochets splatted in the dirt dangerously close to Cadence. Orion responded with a blast that fried the man to a blackened, crispy statue that stood upright for a moment and then fell to the ground with a thud.
Orion quickly shifted back into human form and stood there naked in the chill spring evening.
Then he saw the look on Cadence’s face. It was dismay.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, baffled. Hadn’t she wanted to be saved?
“You’re a fire dragon,” Cadence said. “That’s why my cousin didn’t know anything about you. It didn’t even occur to her to look at your clan.”
He stared at her, his heart sinking.
“You mean…oh, crud.”
She nodded unhappily. Then she closed her eyes and blew out a breath, and the air in front of her went frosty. Ice crystals formed and drifted down to the ground.
She knelt down over a puddle on the ground and blew on it. A very thin skin of ice formed.
She stood up again and sighed. “Yep, ice dragon. Weak, wimpy, ice dragon who can barely make a snowflake.”
Chapter Four
Well. It made perfect sense that he’d never heard of her, then. Of course the registry wouldn’t have listed her as a potential match for him. Ice dragons and fire dragons didn’t mate. Not that they couldn’t, it just wasn’t done. The last time an ice dragon and a fire dragon had got together, it had ignited a war between their two clans, and large parts of Italy had burned down. Of course, that had been five hundred years ago, but dragons had long memories.
She was all wrong for him.
So why did she feel so desperately, urgently right?
“You…you saw my eyes go red back the restaurant,” he protested. “Only fire dragons do that. Ice dragons’ eyes go blue.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t grow up with dragons, remember?” she said. “I grew up with humans and wolf shifters.”
“Ah. I see.” What to do, what to do? He should fly her back to her place and resume his search for an appropriate mother for his young. He should never see her again.
Yep. That was what he should do.
He stood there, staring at her lean body, her wild tousled hair, the delightful freckles standing out on her pale skin. He admired the curve of her small breasts and the sexy bump in her nose, and imagined another dragon claiming her.
Hot rage shot through him, and before he could stop himself, he let out a small jet of flame from his nostrils. It flared red and yellow before it vanished.
Cadence didn’t notice. She was staring off at the city skyline, standing out in sharp relief against the setting sun. After a long, long moment, she looked back at him. “How did you find me here?” she asked, her voice distant and sad.
“I was trying to find you. The waiter told me you’d left in a cab. I called the cab company, and they insisted they hadn’t sent a cab to your area, so I went out looking for you.”
“Well, thank you for that.” She looked at the dead man’s burned body and shuddered. “I can’t imagine what would have happened if you hadn’t come.”
“Anyway,” he said. “I wanted to tell you the reason I reacted that way to the waitress. She didn’t just wander by and spill that soup by accident. She’d been hitting on me all afternoon – even followed me into the men’s room.”
“She did not.” Cadence’s eyes flashed angrily and went reptilian for the briefest moment – blue, with vertical black slits for pupils.
Was she jealous? And why did he like the idea so much?
“Oh yes she did. Offered to show me a good time right there in the bathroom stall, if I could see my way to leaving a very generous tip. I threw her out, and she came by my table and dropped a napkin with her number on it on my lap. When she approached you, I saw her deliberately spill the soup on you.”