“Let’s do this, then,” she said, setting her purse on the table. She got up and walked around to Wrath. Without asking she sat across his lap and opened the camera app on her phone. “Smile.”
His shock subsided quickly and he put his arms around her waist, pressing his cheek to hers. Damned if that little bit of skin contact didn’t feel like a slice of heaven. His neatly trimmed beard tickled her cheek and she wondered what else it might tickle as she took the selfie. Warmth pooled between her legs.
She thought she felt something long and firm against her outer thigh before she got up. At least she wasn’t the only one affected.
She was already sending a message to Clarence as she sat back down on her side of the table.
Jess: Not leaving yet. I met someone. :)
She sent the message with the image attached.
Little dots appeared on the screen as Clarence wrote his reply.
Clarence: WTF? That guy looks a lot like Drake. He said it’s a family thing. That’s probably the guy you’re supposed to avoid. I sent him the picture to confirm, not that he’s been responding.
She showed the exchange to Wrath. He grinned, revealing adorable dimples. “That’s a good picture of you,” he said. “I wonder what has my brother so busy he can’t be bothered to rescue you from me. I could be doing anything to you right now. I could be forcing you to watch golf on television or giving you a history lesson on ancient Akkad. Truly vile things.”
She barely heard anything after he said I could be doing anything to you right now, but the word “Akkad” caught her attention. She decided she could cover her brief loss of concentration with that.
“What can you tell me about Akkad?” she asked.
He shook his head. “More than you want to know.”
Jess spotted Mark coming over to her table. She’d exceeded the allotted time for her break. It was Mark’s turn.
Wrath noticed the same thing.
“You don’t have to work here anymore. The job’s done,” Wrath said.
“I know, but I don’t want to leave them shorthanded. That’s just rude,” Jess said, getting to her feet.
“Can I see you after your shift? I’d like to know how my brother responds.”
“Sure, I’m off at two.”
She was already looking forward to seeing him again and he wasn’t even gone yet. Maybe Drake backed out because he realized it was cruel to send someone who looked like Wrath’s dead wife to torment him. She hoped that was the case. If not, then she didn’t think she could work for him anymore.
If he was truly that petty, she didn’t want to work for him anymore. She supposed she’d find out when he responded.
Chapter 5
Wrath carried on with his morning. He sent a quick text back home to get Brad to watch Jess at the bistro to make sure she didn’t try to slip away, and his adopted little sister, Lily, to find as much information on Jess as possible. Then he got into his truck and headed over to the grocery store.
He was surprised at the silence from his dragon side. No alerting to Jess being a threat, and no chanting mine in the back of his mind like it did with virtually every woman he met. Sure, it was broken, but at least it had been consistent up until that point.
Stupid silent dragon.
If only his dick had been as unopinionated. He knew Jess felt his raging boner when she was on his lap. Granted, he could scent her arousal, so he wasn’t the only one affected. It’s just that it was humiliating for one of the oldest sentient beings on the planet to not be able to contain the response of his dick to the feel of a slim female body pressed against his.
His groin tightened again. It was an odd reaction, much like what he’d heard it was like to find one’s true mate. From what he’d heard, a dragon would be in a hyper aroused state until he bedded his mate for the first time. Then it eased up.
He needed to stop thinking about her body, so he distracted himself with more important things. He went over what he knew about Jess and why she was there.
He’d confirmed that she was sent by his family or, more specifically, Etel. That meant Etel found him. That thought burned away all warm thoughts of Jess. Wrath had never really liked Etel. At their first meeting, Etel bluntly told Wrath that his mother would never come back for him because he was too dangerous.
That set Wrath off. At only six, he had little self-control. He tried to burn Etel with dragonfire while Etel stood there looking bored. Then Kur had come in and ripped off Wrath’s wings to stop the tantrum. They grew back, of course, but that was Wrath’s first meeting with his family. Alal was the one who picked up Wrath from the floor and took care of him. Funny, the younger dragons all thought Alal was the bad one.
Thinking of the pain Kur put him through physically and mentally made Wrath's knuckles turn white as he gripped the steering wheel.
How Etel found him was the real question. Wrath, like Alal, had wards tattooed on his body to prevent their half mage brother from using spells to track them. Etel could use a spell to track anyone he’d been in close contact with, which did not necessarily include all his brothers. It did include Wrath and Alal, however. Hence the wards.
The wards also prevented tracking through any magical bonds that may exist within the family.
That left conventional means of tracking.
As far as Wrath could tell, there was no reason to suspect the imminent resumption of hostilities. If he knew Etel, and he did, Jess was there to both spy and coerce Wrath into something. She may or may not know what was going on and she may or may not
