turning darker as his gaze dropped to her lips. “You can call me whatever you want to call me. Although a few things I hope you’ll call me top the list.”
Just to escape the tension clotting the entire cab of the truck—either that or jump his bones—she popped the handle and hopped out. “Tempting,” she mused as he got out and walked beside her. “There are so many ways I could go.”
He said nothing, obviously waiting for her first shot.
Normally she would’ve started listing out slightly mean words like dickhead, or… She bit her lips as nothing came to her other than dickhead. Okay. So suddenly her mind was shutting down, because, for some inexplicable reason, she didn’t want to be mean to Levi. Lyndi scoured her imagination, but that wasn’t helping much.
“I mean there’s the obvious, like…dickhead.” Dammit. She had not meant that to come out.
“Be nice,” he admonished gently. Then chuckled. “Although, now that you’ve experienced that particular…errrr…part of my anatomy, I guess I could take it as a compliment.”
Heat flared up her neck and into her cheeks, because now she was thinking of exactly how that word could become an endearment between them.
She shook it off. “I could call you clown.” Of the members of the Huracáns he was the one with a solid sense of humor. Not goofy like Rivin and Keighan, though. More like he refused to let his being a hard-as-nails warrior change his personality, which seemed to lean toward naturally optimistic. And a big fat tease. At least clown was a nicer, less suggestive term.
“What? Funny how? Like I’m a clown? Like I amuse you?” Levi immediately asked in his best Joe Pesci impersonation. He held open the door to the training room and waved her inside.
Lyndi chuckled despite herself. “Or I could go with something embarrassing like monkey butt, or sparkles…or nugget.”
“Nugget?”
They passed behind the lockers, through the bunk room that never got used, only there as a prop for the humans who might happen by, and into the kitchenette. “You know, like a gold nugget.”
He scrunched up his face in distaste. “You’re right. That’s way worse than dickhead.”
She slapped her palm on the scanner, opening the sliding door into the mountain, and grinned. “Hey, you started this.” She let a sly expression slip over her features. “Or maybe I’ll treat you like one of the boys. Call you Rowtag.”
“No thanks.” Immediate and definitive.
Good. She didn’t want him being one of the boys, either, though she wasn’t willing to examine that need any closer. “Hmmm…I’ll have to think about it more.”
“Think about what?” Rivin popped out of his door, the first at the top of the stairs, to ask as they entered the foyer. Like a freaking jack rabbit.
“A nickname for Levi.”
“I didn’t say nickname,” he protested immediately. “I said endear—”
“What do you think of Nugget?” She hastened to cut him off. The last thing she needed right now was everyone knowing they were together.
Sleeping together, she mentally corrected, then just as swiftly mentally adjusted that to fucking.
Fucked, she altered it again. Once. That was it. He’d be gone in a week and it would be over.
But do I really want that to be it? a small voice whispered. When all I have is a few more days with him?
Who knew if, once he was back in the bosom of the clans, he’d ever return? Hell, he could be killed in the fighting. Reports of battles and losses had been vague, but not good. Her dragon pushed her to grab on to the man with both hands and not let go.
If she wasn’t standing in front of Levi, Rivin, and now Keighan who’d come from Rivin’s room where no doubt they’d been getting up to something kinky, as it suddenly smelled like sex in here, she would’ve dropped her head in her hands at the mental contortions she was putting herself through. What is wrong with me?
“Nugget!” Rivin crowed. “Love it.”
“Classic,” Keighan said. “Gold dragon, totally get it.”
Levi lifted a single eyebrow. Though his expression remained pleasant, there was no doubt that was a warning.
“Maybe not?” Keighan looked to Rivin who just shrugged.
“I’m surprised Lyndi didn’t come up with something meaner,” he said.
“She did start out with dickhead,” Levi mused, sliding her a glance filled with teasing trouble. “But we both agreed that wasn’t…”
Oh gods, what was he going to say?
“Appropriate.”
She let go a silent breath and gave her head a miniscule shake that only Levi would catch. The way his grin