And here was this woman. Fucking beautiful. Curves making her look like the number eight, grade-A tits that would fill his hands, narrow waist, thick ass. He couldn’t stop thinking about bucking into her from behind. Long brown hair curled into waves, soft brown eyes that turned gold when she was scared or when someone got too close to her, full lips that gave him easy smiles the more shots she had. Red. She’d painted her lips red to match that skin-tight tank top she wore under the gray, knee-length cardigan. She was a stunner. Nothing else in here was pretty to look at but her, and it made it hard to concentrate. She kept ducking her gaze and blushing when she spoke in that soft, shy voice of hers. She was a good girl that he wanted to turn bad, and fuck what that said about him.
A short, bald dude passed too close again, and Nevada shrank away, her tits brushing the counter in her hurry to get as far away from him as possible. Nox clenched his fists on his thighs to resist the urge to rip the guy’s throat out just for scaring her. Nevada was going to murder Nox’s instincts if she didn’t get ahold of her anxiety. Already he had shoved two guys away who had passed too close.
She was pouring over the map and nibbling on a fancy-as-fuck nacho. Her bottom lip was pouted out in concentration, and he wanted to duck under her face and suck on it. The monster in him really wanted to wipe the shot glasses and napkin dispenser off the counter, shove her on top of it, rip her pants down, and fucking unleash on her from behind. And screw whoever watched him claim her. But she wasn’t corrupt like him. She probably wouldn’t appreciate getting publicly dominated. But maybe? She had made him cookies. Cookies were a good sign. She’d thought about him enough to get up early and bake. She’d spent time on these.
He opened the tin and shoved a whole cookie in his maw. Fucking delicious. He’d been a lying little liar when he’d told her he hated cookies. His sweet tooth was his favorite tooth.
“I don’t remember there being any trailer parks in any of these areas,” she murmured, arching her petal pink nail over a set of mountains on the map. The only one I know of is here, right outside of town.”
“Huh,” he murmured around the bite of cookie. Vyr and Torren wouldn’t settle that close to town. The Red Dragon needed space for when he had to Change, and Torren was a bigass dominant silverback with no family group. He would need seclusion or he would go nuts. Maybe they had dragged trailers onto flat land in the mountains somewhere, but he’d done a record check and Vyr hadn’t purchased land here. No one had in the last three months.
Nox scratched at the edge of his thumbnail with his pointer finger in a nervous habit he’d kept since he was a child. Maybe the Red Dragon’s credit card was stolen. Or maybe Vyr was paying some asshole to make a purchase every once in a while to keep trackers off his trail. Maybe he was across the world in hiding and Nox had been duped. Perhaps he and Torren weren’t here in Foxburg at all.
He’d done research on every shifter in the area, and to his knowledge, there had only been two. An old rogue grizzly up in the mountains and a female tiger shifter who only lived here in the warm months and traveled for work when the snow hit. Nox glanced out the massive picture window at the front of the room to the river outside. The clouds were gray and swirling, and the wind was whipping at the trees across the water. Snow was close, and that tiger was probably already long gone.
“Why aren’t you registered?” Nox asked curiously. Usually he didn’t give a shit about anyone’s background, but this had been bothering him. He hadn’t known fox shifters were even still around.
“Because none of us are. It’s against the rules.” Was that a slight slur in her pretty bell-tone voice?
He grabbed the bartender’s attention with a two-fingered wave and growled out, “Water.” He didn’t thank the lanky man, Alex, his nametag read, when he set the drink down in front of him. Nox felt zero guilt for rudeness. He would give him a big tip instead of forcing himself to be fake-polite. Money spoke louder than words always.
“What rules?” Nox asked, pushing the ice water toward her.
She picked it up and automatically sipped it. He didn’t like that. She didn’t know him, and he could’ve roofied that drink for all she knew. He was going to have to train Nevada to be more careful when she was drinking.
“Fox rules,” she whispered. “There’s lots of them.”
“But you’re supposed to register. It’s human law. They like to keep track of us.”
“F-word human law.”
Apparently, she really didn’t cuss. For a moment, he considered saying something to piss her off to see if he could get her to say “fuck you.” Barely resisting the urge, he asked instead, “How do you avoid registration? How do you avoid anyone knowing about you?”
Nevada snorted. “Step one, stay a hundred miles away from the dragons. The stupidest thing you shifters do is put yourself under their wings. You know they’re targets, right? They’re like this big beacon of light for human law. They’re watched closely, and so are all the shifters who gather under them for protection. No one cares about foxes in Foxburg, Nox Fuller, you wanna know why?”
“Kind of,” he admitted through a scowl. Why the fuck did he care about this so much?
“Because everyone’s looking at Damon’s Mountains, Harper’s Mountains, and Kane’s Mountains. They’re looking at the dragons, because they’re like missiles. They’re the only weapons the humans are afraid of. What are a few shifters in a tiny town? Nothing to concern themselves with when they have dragons gathering armies.”
“Armies?”
“Not literal armies. They’re just gathering shifters in crews. Safety in numbers and all, but look at it from the humans’ point of view. You have freaking dragons gathering allegiant shifters under them. Big predator shifters. Doesn’t matter that they are just building families and crews and bonds and friendships. To humans? They’re armies. It’s easier than you’d think for lesser shifters like me to get away from registration when there are firebreathers wreaking havoc. Foxburg is safe because there are no dragons here.”
Oh, the irony. Because if Nox was right, the biggest, baddest, most volatile dragon was here somewhere. At the first sign of a fight, Vyr would burn this place to the ground and devour the ashes of Foxburg.
“That’s a good theory,” he said nonchalantly.
“It’s not a theory. It’s worked for decades for the den.”
“The den?”
“The fox den. I shouldn’t be talking about this.” She sipped her drink again. “It’s just I don’t talk much at all, and sometimes I miss the sound of talking?” Nevada said it like a question, and Nox frowned.
“Why don’t you hear talking?”
“Because I’m on the outside of the den. Always on the outside. I’m different, and different for foxes is a very bad thing. I’m not shunned, but people don’t seek me out either. I work from home because I’m scared of people. I play music all the time or I would drown in silence. And lately I talk to myself because I miss the sound of a voice.”
“Is that why you were shopping late last night?”
She dipped her chin once and wouldn’t meet his gaze. Shame tinted her cheeks red. “I have brothers and sisters. Lots of them. We make big families. Have lots of kits. They all found pairs, and my parents can’t find a match for me, so I just stay the same, year after year, no improvement, stagnant, living in a town where I don’t belong.”