The Protector (Fire's Edge #4) - Abigail Owen Page 0,22

wasn’t ready to answer that question. Yes would be the shortest path to the truth. But this was Lyndi. He knew her hang-ups when it came to mating. Everyone knew.

“So what do you want?” Drake grumbled. “My blessing?”

“I want no secrets in case this blows up. Consider yourselves informed.”

Through Drake’s grunt Finn stood up offering a hand and a grin. “Good luck.”

Yeah. He’d need it.

…

Sneaking around made Lyndi feel like she’d covered herself in baby oil. Just gross and wrong on so many levels. But that’s exactly what she was doing.

Mind-blowing sex with Levi hadn’t just scratched an itch—it made her burn with a need for more.

She’d had other lovers. Few and far between. Many dragons took human lovers while they waited for their mates, and she vaguely knew Levi had from time to time based on subtle comments. None that had made any big impact on him, though. She hadn’t had human lovers. Instead, she’d taken dragon lovers, mostly while she’d lived in Everest. The pickings were fewer out here. Even back then, before Levi, those encounters had felt…hollow. Just a release. Because she was never going to be the woman those men chose.

In almost every way, things would be a thousand times easier if what just happened with Levi was the same. A release and move on. But giving herself to him had been nothing like those others.

Nothing.

She couldn’t—she shouldn’t—let herself want more. One time was for a small piece of a memory to hold close with fondness after he was gone. More than once, even in the short time they had left, ran the dangerous risk of turning into more than just panty-melting, mouth-watering, heart-pounding sex.

Life-altering sex, a small voice tacked on.

She ignored the voice, and taking the coward’s path of avoidance, poked her head into the family room to find most of her boys lounging in front of the TV in various drooping states across the comfy couches. The baseball game they were watching held zero interest, but at least Levi wasn’t in here, which strangely had her both breathing easier and wrestling with a frustrating tweak of disappointment.

Disappointment was bad. That whispered of a need deeper than orgasms.

“Hey Lyndi-Loo-Hoo,” Mike sung out, swinging his leg over the arm of the couch. She’d long ago gotten used to his almost pink eyes, which reminded her of an albino mouse and somehow fit his goofy, rarely serious personality perfectly.

“Mikey-bo-bikey,” she sang back, trying to sound normal.

“We’re heading to the house in a bit. It’s Attor’s turn to babysit and we thought we’d go with him. Want to join?”

Back to her house he meant. The halfway house for dragon shifters—providing motherless dragons in the Americas colonies with a home so they wouldn’t have to go rogue. Orphans weren’t the most stable of shifters, which was why their communities didn’t take them in. Hell, some of those kids, when she’d found them, had been this side of feral, which was why only the oldest and most controlled—Mike, Coahoma, Attor—had been pulled into the enforcer team.

The other sixteen boys had moved into the headquarters for a short time before Drake had been set as the new alpha by the Alliance. As a visible display to that governing body that the Huracáns were returning to normal, the youngers had moved back to her house.

Luckily, those still struggling with control had bonded to other boys in the house rather than to her, which meant she wasn’t leaving them vulnerable. And Mike, Coahoma, and Attor traded out with her staying at the house so that an adult was always present.

Even with the extra help, she tried to go home as often as possible when she wasn’t on call or training with the team. Every time she did, she sort of expected to see the place leveled. As things stood, pigsties were less filthy. She seemed to be the only adult who bothered to enforce chores. It wouldn’t hurt to have a chance to knock the boys into cleaning up under her stricter eye.

“Sure. Come get me when you go.”

As casually as she could, she wandered into the kitchen. Delaney and Cami glanced up from where they sat at the long kitchen table with their coffee cups. Despite the length of time she’d spent with the guys on the team through the years, Lyndi had to admit she’d needed these women in her life.

Delaney was tall and slender, an elegant flier in dragon form, and as brave as anyone Lyndi knew. Beautiful with her