Page 154 of Centaur Bolt

One of Kiko’s brows rose. “Wow. Maybe the party isn’t over.”

“It’s Havoc,” I gasped. “He’s—well, I’m connected to him.”

The second brow joined the first. “Who is Havoc?”

“My Dragon.” The words were out before I thought about them, and Vali’s brows rose too.

“Is that the Dragon you dreamed about?” Kiko asked.

“The red Dragon?” Vali’s words came out constricted, as if she were being strangled.

Kiko frowned. “What do you mean, you’re connected to him?”

Havoc was running his fingers around an extremely sensitive bit of himself, and it robbed me of breath. So instead of speaking, I gently moved Fang onto my knee, and pulled the shoulder of the sweatshirt aside.

I hadn’t let Cara heal it. And it rendered Kiko temporarily speechless.

“This Dragonmatedyou?” Vali sounded almost stricken.

Havoc was climbing to heaven. I couldn’t help it. I writhed. Kiko’s eyes gleamed.

“What about Marcus?” she asked.

“He took off for home,” I gasped out.

Despite my predicament, the words were laced with pain. And Kiko lost her grin. “But he’s your mate, too.”

“Apparently not,” I said through clenched teeth.

“What a stupid male,” the Satyr hissed.

But I barely heard her. Because I was not only caught up in what Havoc was doing. I was also catching glimpses of what he wasthinking.

He was planning on coming back. Which would have been good, except the reason he was up on that cliff, jerking off like crazy, was so that he wouldn’t be tempted to screw me instead.

It was like a knife to the heart. And it completely derailed what my body was doing. Fang jumped to the ground as I hunched over my folded legs and fought to keep myself together.

“Riley!” Keeping a careful eye on the Webspinner, Kiko moved next to me and put an arm around my shoulders. “What is it? Is your Dragon okay?” She sounded confused, as if she couldn’t understand how he could be beating off one second, and in peril the next.

My life was spinning out of control. I couldn’t stop the tears now. But the arm around me squeezed. “Tell me,” Kiko said.

She was incorrigible. And had little sense of responsibility. And I’d be lucky if she didn’t tell everyone with a dick exactly how crazy my existence had become.

But above and beyond all that, she was my friend. So my mouth opened, and I said, “Marcus won’t even talk to me now. And the Dragon—I don’t know why he bit me. He doesn’t want me, either.”

Kiko absorbed that, and then, she said, “Why don’t you start at the beginning? Tell me everything.”

I hiccuped a laugh. If a Satyr ever wore a slogan on a tee shirt, “Tell me Everything” would be it.

But as soon as I could speak, I did tell them “everything.”

At the end, Kiko merely smiled at me, and her arm tightened in a good, long squeeze.

“They are male, and therefore, idiots,” she said, releasing me to wave her hands for emphasis.

“If you are dreaming of them,” Vali interjected, “Then Fate has chosen them for you.”

“They don’t want me.” My tears welled once more.

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