Hidden Dragons (7 page)

What was that he’d been thinking about being a potentially good boyfriend?

He let out a sighing laugh. To be a good boyfriend, first you had to find someone you wanted to be good to.

He straightened, positioned across from his dining nook, where he kept his at-home workspace and computer. His brain felt too fried for research. A shower and an hour of shuteye should cure that. Chances were, his killer faerie was unreachable already.

When he returned to his bedroom, clean and clearer of head, he saw he’d tossed the contents of his pockets onto his unmade bed. Sun from the two broad windows winked off the brass knuckles.

It was like they were mocking him.

Fine. He’d put them on and see what happened. He could “research” while he napped. If some magical message had been encoded into the metal, his decidedly non-magical werecop brain would be more receptive.

He didn’t bother dressing, simply got into bed and lay on his back. His fingers slid easily through the electrum rings. Nothing happened, though the knuckle-dusters felt like they’d been made for him. He flexed his fist to test them. Still nothing. They were just cold metal.

Resigned to feeling foolish, he pulled up the sheets and closed his eyes. His body hummed from the day’s events. Surprising that glittery fae . . . running into the subway . . . watching the female die . . .

You know already
, she’d said.
The universe chose you for a reason
.

Clearly, she’d mistaken him for someone more in touch with the mystical.

He shifted onto his left side, his muscles itchy, the hand that wore her gift curling around the palm bar. His cock was hardening, but he ignored it. He was tired of jacking off, tired of a life where everyone but him had someone awesome to come home to. So what if he wasn’t as exciting as his friends? He was a decent guy. Not ugly and not a loser. It shouldn’t be that hard for him to find a partner.

Sleep snuck up on him gradually. He thought back to high school, where more than one girl had chased him. He’d fooled around with a couple, but they hadn’t been keepers. He’d had his eye on someone so out of reach she might as well have been made up. Had he established his romantic pattern then? Was he doomed to only want women he had no chance of snagging?

And the dream was on him. He recognized the hallway at North Heights High, dull tan lockers stretching forever in either direction. In front of him was his locker from senior year: 1212 with the sticky lock. Not that he wanted to open it. Snow White was in the way. She had her back to the dinged up metal, like she meant to keep him from the schoolbooks he’d stowed inside.

“Want a bite?” she asked. She showed him a ruby-skinned apple. She’d already taken a chomp, her red lips glistening as she licked them.

Jesus, she was hot. Her glossy black hair fell in waves over her smooth shoulders, her soft blue eyes too mesmerizing not to get lost in. Like all her kind, she was tall, as elegantly curved as an X-rated fae princess. Her legs were so long and graceful they made him hurt.

“Where are your clothes?” he gasped, stunned by her bareness.

“Gone,” she answered, doe-eyed and innocent.

She didn’t even look slutty naked. Her pussy hair was a perfect triangle, her breasts snowy velvet knolls tipped by strawberries. He swallowed. She was wriggling her bottom against the locker, like maybe she was horny. That idea was too much for his libido. His erection shuddered inside his jeans, the frickin’ Pocket State Building of hard-ons. Only she revved him up this bad, like he’d die if he didn’t get his cock inside her.

Maybe she wanted to kill him. She caught her full lower lip in her pearly teeth.

“Come on, Rick,” she coaxed, surprising him by knowing his name. “Don’t you want a taste of this?”

She meant the apple, but he wasn’t interested in that.

“I want you,” he groaned, the truest true confession he’d never made. “If I don’t have you, I’ll go crazy.”

Her eyes were bold, her irises glowing like an excited wolf’s. She slid her silky arms up around his neck. “Take me,” she purred. “I’ve been waiting for you to wise up.”

He kissed her like he was starving. He was naked too then, maybe from her magic. She hiked herself up his body, long legs tightening around his waist. He meant to wait. Girls needed to be ready to take guy his size. Then her nails dug into his back, and he just couldn’t. He shoved his cock all the way into her wet pussy.

She felt so good his vertebrae tried to melt.

“Oh my God,” he said, breaking free of the kiss to pant. Overwhelmed with desire, he pressed her harder into the locker. Her breasts were soft on his chest, her sex hot enough to burn. She squirmed those tight walls around him, making him even more insane. His tip was squashed deep inside her. Fourth of July sparks shot up it.

“You’re big,” she said breathily. For a second, he feared he was too much for her. “I like that. I want you to protect me.”

Rick’s cock threatened to have a seizure. Growling low in his chest like the wolf he was, his hands clamped around her bottom. He drew his hips halfway back to thrust.

“I’ll protect you,” he vowed. “I’ll fucking protect you good.”

His eyes snapped open before he could slam in. Shit. Talk about wet dream
interruptus
. A monster erection pounded in front of him, as huge and desperate as if he’d been having sex for real. His right hand was trying to grasp it, but the damn electrum knuckles were in the way.

He could hardly get them off fast enough.

“Shit,” he hissed as he gripped himself.

He pulled two-handed all the way up his pole. God, he was close, like he’d been teased for hours and needed to come or die. Unable to hold back, he spit on three fingers and rubbed the head. His neck arched with pleasure. That was it. That was . . . He rolled onto his back so he could fuck his right hand while his left fingers rubbed. He grunted, grinding his butt cheeks together and thrusting compulsively. His cock was steely, the hot spot at the base as itchy and tender as if someone else were there. All werewolves had a gland there, one that turned their sensation dial to ten if it switched on for a partner. His bulbus shouldn’t feel like this when he was alone, but it was driving him crazy. He pumped faster, tightening his fingers, making sure they squeezed as tight as they could on the achy spot.

His hand was big, but his stiffened cock was longer.

“Unh,” he said, his scalp nearly lifting off.

He twisted his grips like he was opening a jar, one on his swollen base, one on the slippery crown. A bundle of sheet was caught between his thighs. It strafed his balls like a woman’s nails.

“Cass,” he gasped. “
Fuck
.”

His orgasm blasted off. His hips snapped up for it, jism shooting like a fountain onto his chest. The pleasure was sharp and hard and left him as mellow as melted caramel when it trailed off.

His panting breaths were loud in the empty room.

I said her name
, he thought. Cass’s name. Snow White. The breathtaking unattainable bane of his high school existence.

This wasn’t the first time he’d jacked off to fantasies of her. It was, however, the first time a mysterious dying faerie told him he already knew the person he was meant to protect.

It might not really be her, of course. Rick might
want
to play her knight in shining armor because he wanted her. His own wish fulfillment could be obscuring the true message. Then again, what if it
was
her, and he convinced himself not to help? Could he live with the consequences of letting her be hurt?

He groaned aloud at the conundrum. One thing he knew for sure: going to see Cass Maycee would be embarrassing.

CASS couldn’t swear things looked better in the morning, only that she was determined to tackle them. A cautious walk across her bedroom brought the first knockback. The picture of her father, which had fallen down last night, lay in a compact puzzle of its own broken glass. Careful not to endanger her bare feet, Cass fished it out by the frame. Though this was unharmed, part of the photograph was blackened, as if the paper had smoldered and then gone out. Her father no longer sat at his worktable, caught in that long-ago moment of creation. A rough edged smudge replaced every bit of him.

Dismayed, she touched the carbonized shape with her fingertips. She didn’t know who would have done this except for him. Indeed, perhaps this was what he’d been looking around for in Gran’s study. He should have reminded Cass she’d promised to destroy it, rather than summoning up the juice to do it long distance.

But maybe he thought she’d fail to follow through again. He must have realized how precious the photo was, how it symbolized their connection. This saddened her even more. Did he truly mind that she loved him like a human? Not cool and remote and proper but complicated and messy.

“I still love you, Dad,” she said stubbornly. “Burning this picture doesn’t give you your way.”

Poly reminded her with a head butt and a yowl that it was time for breakfast.

The little bell on her collar jingled. That was funny. Cass didn’t remember hearing it yesterday.

“Aaow,” Poly insisted.

“Oh fine,” Cass said. “At your service, your highness.”

Once the cat was happy, Cass squared her shoulders to face her second source of anxiety: the dolorous Maycee portrait hall.

Her gran had been obsessed with her ancestors. Behind her back, Jin and Bridie used to call her the Mayflower Madam, a nickname they’d probably understood too well for twelve-year-olds. The tall barrel-ceilinged corridor ran the length of the penthouse, more than sufficient wall space for hanging every Maycee Gran could dig up. The earliest were near the foyer. The original farming family each had their own oil portraits, painted by Resurrection’s version of Rembrandt Peale.

As a girl, Cass had wondered how they felt—those presumably practical-minded tillers of the soil, swallowed without warning by an unfamiliar reality. They’d been the first residents of the Pocket, before faeries or demons or any of the descendants of the Stranded who’d gradually found their way to this supe haven. As the city rose, magically and otherwise, Maycees stood ready to greet newcomers, happy to show them around and sell them whatever staples they might require. Gran’s relatives had excelled at commerce from the get-go.

Cass smiled at Isaiah Maycee, the patriarch of the first Maycees, prosperous and proud in his Victorian business suit. The vibe the portrait gave off was barely there, probably coming more from the painter than Isaiah. This, she concluded, wasn’t what she’d come to find.

She drew a slow breath and focused, trailing three-quarters down the hall before her willies jumped out at her. She’d paused at a photograph of Agnes Maycee, taken during the era of beehive hairdos. It must have been new. Cass didn’t remember seeing it on previous visits. Agnes’s frosted bubble-gum pink lipstick did nothing to improve her smug half smile. Aside from not liking her expression, Cass couldn’t say what was wrong with her. The photo didn’t feel haunted; in fact, its subject might not be dead.

“Don’t care,” Cass muttered and focused herself again. She spun a camouflage around the picture, something she’d always been good at. When she was done, the picture looked like a bundle of greasy cardboard, safe to toss down the trash chute to the furnace without some janitor being tempted to rescue it.

That business taken care of, Cass fulfilled her promise to Rhona to spell a couple boxes of baby-safe detergent with extra stain-lifting power. She fixed her own breakfast next, a slightly pathetic bowl of Wheaty Charms. She ate them standing at the acre-long kitchen island, switching on Gran’s TV to keep her company.

Clearly, she needed to get a job. She’d had them when she lived Outside. Being nothing but a department store heiress was already boring her.

For two whole seconds she thought about adopting like Rhona had. That idea didn’t feel right for her. She had a maternal streak, but it wasn’t as strong as her best friend’s. Cass wanted something more like a
purpose
, something she’d be proud of when her long half fae life eventually wound down. Her gran had felt that way about the family stores. Cass had no clue what would inspire her.

Lost in thought, she put her empty bowl in the dishwasher. The news had come on the small TV. A human in a waitress outfit was being interviewed by a reporter. Cass was watching WQSN, so the extra energy the interviewer radiated was probably shifter.

“It was the scariest thing I ever saw,” the woman declared breathily. “Two pureblood faeries trying to kill each other with big long swords. If I hadn’t been riding the train so late, I would have missed the whole thing!”

“Did you fear for your life?” the handsome newscaster asked.

“Absolutely!” the woman said, clearly more excited than fearful now. “It was like an action movie, the way they flew and flipped across the platform. The male was amazing. I could hardly breathe watching him. Of course it was sad when the female passed. She was so beautiful. I’d never seen one of them up close before.”

“Sheesh,” Cass muttered, switching off the program.
One of them.
Why did non-fae have to be so weird about purebloods? She could tell the woman wasn’t thinking of what she’d seen as having happened to real people.

~

WQSN’s interview with the waitress was all over the radio in Rick’s car. This didn’t make him happy. True, he hadn’t told the cop who questioned the witness to warn her off blabbing to the press, nor would a warning necessarily have stopped her. Knowing this meant he couldn’t chew out Compton or even himself too much.

He simply hated when homicides became public entertainment. The end of a person’s life was due more respect.

When the radio announcer promised more details coming up, Rick clicked the program off. The tease was a lie at least. No one had anything of substance to divulge—including him, sadly. Anyway, it wasn’t worth losing his cool over.

He had other reasons for doing that.

A search for Cassia Maycee on his home computer had yielded a long article on the death of her grandmother. For a human, Patricia Maycee was quite the luminary. Businesswoman. Sponsor of charities and the arts. Interestingly, only Cass was mentioned as a “survived by.” Rick was under the impression Patricia’s daughter was alive.