Nevada had never giggled so much at a family dinner before. She sipped hers, but Nox drank his down and made a sour face.
“Speaking of friends,” she murmured, putting her arms over his shoulder as he slowed them into a simple side-to-side dance. “I like that you talked to yours about me.”
Nox set his empty glass on a passing tray. “What do you mean? I told you I don’t have any.”
“The dinner invitation. And this dress.”
He frowned, and when he slid his hands to her waist and squeezed gently, the butterflies in her stomach moved lower. “What invitation?”
Uh oh. Too late to back out now. She whispered, “The invitation for your formal welcome dinner? 1010 Briar Way. Wednesday at six o’clock?”
Nox’s face morphed from an uncertain smile to fury in an instant. A soft rumble rattled up his throat, and his eyes changed to a piercing blue so light they were almost white. Such heaviness came off his skin in waves, Nevada couldn’t inhale, and she couldn’t meet his eyes anymore. Slowly, she backed away a few feet and clenched her hands in front of her stomach.
“Never go to that address.”
The sudden seriousness of his tone woke her fox up just enough to want to run away. “Wh-who is it from?”
Nox’s one hand slipped back to her waist, and he cupped her neck with the other. Then he dragged a fingertip down her jawline, hooked a finger under her chin and lifted her gaze to his. He lowered his lips to hers and kissed her like they were the only ones in the room. His beard tickled her face, but he tasted so good, and his lips were so soft as they moved slowly against hers. He slipped his tongue into her mouth just once, and then he eased out of the kiss. She’d asked him a question, but for the life of her, she couldn’t think of it now. All she could do was hold onto his wrists and stare up into his soft blue eyes and try to stay upright, because that kiss had been so unexpected from a gruff man like him.
His blond brows lowered slightly though, and he looked troubled.
“What is it?”
“I’m gonna go. I should go. I shouldn’t have come here.” He looked over at her family’s table and then back to her with a troubled expression. Nox released her, eased away, and put painful distance between them. “Stay out of trouble, Nevada,” he murmured, but there was real warning in his words.
Before she could tell him to wait, beg him to stay, Nox Fuller spun on his heel, made his way out of the country club, and left Nevada staring after him, completely baffled to what had just happened.
That man had walls a hundred feet tall. He was all jokes, and when he got too serious and showed something real, he bailed.
Nox was a runner, but Nevada was a stayer, stuck for always in Foxburg.
And for the first time in a long time, she didn’t want boring. She didn’t want to stay in her comfort zone, didn’t want to be stagnant anymore.
She no longer wanted to coast through life, but wanted a challenge to push her to be better. And the most interesting challenge had just walked away.
She couldn’t follow him because he didn’t want her to, but she couldn’t face her family for another two hours of them picking at her.
She was stuck.
Couldn’t go, couldn’t stay.
Trapped.
Nevada stood there feeling like she was knee-deep in quicksand and sinking inch by inch into a flatlined, vanilla life that would swallow her whole.
And suddenly it felt like her chance to escape was walking out the door.
Chapter Seven
“What the fuuuuuck am I doing here?” Nox slapped his leg with the present wrapped in grocery store bags and the pages of a porno magazine he had bought at a gas station. He shouldn’t give this to her. Hell, he shouldn’t even be thinking about her, much less stalking her back to her apartment.
But Vyr knew where she lived. Right? He’d sent her that stupid dinner invite, so he had been looking into her, and she shouldn’t be unprotected from the Red Dragon’s game—whatever it was.
Plus, he’d hated leaving her earlier to the wolves, aka the foxes, aka her snobby family, in the country club. He’d sat in the parking lot like a chump, forcing himself to stay outside by sheer force of will. He wanted to dance with her more, kiss her more. Taste her lips, her neck, her wrist, ankles, inner thighs, pussy. She’d started a fire in him with the needy noise she’d made in her throat when he’d pressed his lips to hers. It was soft, a growl meets a helpless sigh, and he wanted her to do that a hundred times more. Nah, fuck that, he wanted her writhing on his cock, screaming his name.
He hooked a hand onto his hip and hung his head, stared at a crack in the concrete walkway before he gave his attention to the apartment window again. The light was on, and a shadow moved across the room inside. His heart rate kicked up at being this close to her. What the hell was wrong with him? He didn’t do bodyguard duty. He wasn’t a hero. He didn’t do protective. He hurt things. That was his gig—hurting. Why did he suddenly think she would benefit from him being anywhere near her? He was the reason Vyr had an eye on her in the first place.
Stupid magical man-witch-dragon. Wizard-dragon? Whatever, it didn’t matter. Vyr was magical, he breathed fire, he was huge and destructive, and he had his attention on Nevada. Nox wanted to rip his oversize lizard-throat out and be done with this. Human law enforcement would probably give him a medal for putting a dragon down. Too bad Damon wouldn’t be so charitable with his actions. He would turn Nox to ashes and then eat him. There wouldn’t be a cave deep enough to hide from the blue dragon if Nox hurt his son.
Nox tested himself and tried to walk back to his truck, but a growl rumbled up his throat and his legs locked. And there he stood, like a big, dumb statue, breath freezing in front of his face because it was colder than Vyr’s heart out here.
Pissed at how weak he was, he turned and chucked the present like a newspaper delivery boy. It flipped end over end toward her apartment until it flew an inch past Nevada’s face and hit the door.
“Aaaah!” Nevada had barely ducked out of the way in time.
“Well, why did you open the door? Watch where I’m throwing that,” he groused, crossing his arms over his chest. She kept making him feel something he didn’t recognize, and he was getting suspicious that this gritty, churning sensation in his chest was guilt. Gross.
Nevada stooped and picked up the gift. “Is this a Playboy magazine?” she asked softly, fingering the ripped edge.
“Well, they didn’t have any wrapping paper with dicks on it, so I had to improvise.”
“Or you could’ve bought normal wrapping paper?”
“Boring.”
Nevada scanned the street behind him. “How did you know where I live?”
“I stalked you. I put a tracker on your car that first night at the grocery store, and I’m not sorry so you might as well not act offended.”
Her frown was the cutest fucking thing he’d ever seen, and he wanted to bone her like eight times right now.