Nevada was staring tiredly at Candace as though she disliked her life. “This. This is what I was trying to warn you about.”
Candace wrapped her arms around her chest and bounced to warm herself. The breeze was making the temperature feel ten degrees colder than it really was. “Can I come in?”
“Yes,” Nevada and Nox said at the exact same time Beer and Torren said, “No!”
Beer was a weird nickname, but okay.
Candace cleared her throat, exposed her neck, and avoided both dominant male’s angry gazes as she stepped under Torren’s massive arm. Whoo, he smelled like hotboy cologne.
“Did you just smell my armpit?” Torren asked in that deep, gravelly voice.
Chills. That’s what his voice did to her. Chills rippled up her forearms. “Maybe,” she muttered. “You smell good.”
“I showered today.”
“Congrats!” Nox said.
Candace could see him now, standing on a warn leather couch with a beer in his hand. He gave her a wicked smile and a two-fingered salute. “Good to see you again, Stripper Sally.”
“Cinnamon,” Torren growled from behind her.
“Actually, she goes by Candace in her real life,” Nevada explained. She didn’t seem shy at all anymore, and it was so strange to compare her to the girl she’d talked to in the library. They were two totally different people.
“Oh, I get it. Candy,” Nox said. “Cinnamon candy. Plus forty points for the BJ jar.”
“You don’t get points for everything you do, you moron,” Beer said.
“You just admitted we’re playing, though,” Nox said, his blond brows cocked.
“No. No, no, no, I was saying if we were, there would be rules—”
“Minus fifty points for Beer being boring.” Nox rolled his head back and made a snoring sound.
“I hate you,” Beer muttered.
“I L-word you,” Nevada told Nox.
Nox grinned. “I’m hungry for—”
“Noooo,” both Torren and Beer groused.
Nox gave a Grinch smile and finished his joke with, “Nevada.”
Candace giggled. She couldn’t help it. These boys were a mess, but they were interesting and kind of funny. When she looked up at Torren, he was watching her lips.
“Nice laugh,” he said, “for a stripper.”
“Whatever that means,” Candace popped off. “Rude.”
Torren frowned, his dark eyebrows drawing down deeply, like she’d confused him. Perhaps he wasn’t used to someone calling him out on his bad manners.
“You don’t smell that sad,” he said, crossing his arms over his massive chest.
“Because I’m not.”
“I thought you would be all sickly and pathetic.”
“Again. Rude. I dance at night. I do what I have to do to make money. You’re hiring a girl to have sex with you, so you can’t judge. You aren’t a saint either, Torren.”
When she said his name, he flinched as though he’d been slapped, and his eyes went round.
“Buuuuuurn,” Nox murmured. “Called out by some five-foot-two wildcat, meow.” He clawed up his fingers and hissed, and in the kitchen, Nevada laughed.
Torren jammed a meaty middle finger at Nox, his eyes never leaving Candace. “I didn’t hire you, nor am I interested.”
“Lie,” Nox said, jumping in the air and landing on his butt on the couch cushion.
Torren huffed an animalistic breath and glanced at Nox with the meanest frown before he gave his attention to Candace again. “I wouldn’t hire you for sex if you were the last—”
“Also lie,” Nox said. “You’re lying right now. I can hear it.”
“And furthermore, you couldn’t handle a man like me in the bedroom—”
“Also probably a lie because she’s a stripper.”
“Shut up, Nox!” Torren bellowed. In a flurry of blurred movement, Torren made it all the way across the room and blasted Nox in the jaw. The speed and accuracy and power behind that hit made Candace jump. Nox wasn’t defenseless, though. It was as if the grizzly shifter had been ready, because he was already up, blasting Torren in the face right back. There was a crack of a broken nose and then both monster men went to the floor, all locked up.
“Shouldn’t we stop them?” Candace yelled at Beer, who stood by the fireplace with his hands on his hips, looking at them in disgust.
“They do this all the time,” Nevada explained, ignoring the fight as she chopped up a tomato. “We’re having hamburgers and hotdogs today,” she said, lifting her voice over the splintering sound of the end table they’d just smashed through. “That probably sounds weird because it’s cold and snowy outside and not hamburger weather, but the boys are really good at grilling, and we don’t have a lot of money between us.”
Torren took a hit to the ribs and grunted in pain. And then something horrifying happened. The red-haired man inhaled and parted his lips, then blew a tiny sphere of fire, no bigger than a golf ball, at Torren, who was going to town on Nox’s face. When it hit him in the back of the neck, the man yelled in pain and pulled off Nox, his hand gripping the burn like that would make it better.
And it hit her.
Beer.
Vyr.
This was the Red Dragon.
Holy. Shit.
Candace backed slowly to the door. She was in the lair of the mother-freaking out-of-control dragon shifter who was wanted for shifter prison. Who had burned all of Covington just six months ago. Who had burned half the damn fox den here. How had she been so dumb? Of course, this was Vyr. She’d been so focused and nervous about Torren, she hadn’t paid enough attention to the real danger.
“Where are you going?” Nox asked, blood streaming from his nose.
“Uh, I just remembered I already have dinner plans.”
Vyr narrowed his eyes, but now they were terrifying. They were churning silver with elongated pupils. Dragon, dragon, dragon, shit, shit, shit.
Pain behind her eyes nearly blinded her, and she doubled over.
“Whoa,” Vyr said. “What do we have here? Wildcat, indeed. Pretty kitty. Bad kitty. What got you into stripping?” He was approaching slowly, hunting her, stalking her. Candace’s back hit the door. She’d convinced herself over the last few days that she wasn’t scared of anything, but in this moment, she knew she’d been wrong to be so careless. To think she was safe from anything.
“Stop,” she pleaded.
“You haven’t done this long. Not long enough to smell sad yet, huh, pretty kitty? Two years.” Vyr angled his head from side to side, keeping her trapped in his gaze. The pain was so bad in her head she went to her knees.
“Stop,” Torren rumbled.
“Dead.”
“Please stop,” she begged, her eyes burning with tears.
“Your dad.”
A sob wrenched from her. Dad. Dad, Dad, Dad, I miss you, Dad.
Torren blasted Vyr across the face with a closed fist, and the pain faded instantly as the gorilla shifter picked him up by the shirt and ran him into the wall. He slammed the dragon shifter against it so hard the wood splintered around his body.
“You want to die?” Vyr yelled.