Page 7 of Drawn By Dragonblood
The lessons I’d learned?
One, trust my instincts. Second, rich and powerful men took advantage of anyone and everything to get what they wanted. And finally, never start a new job without clearly lined expectations and a goddamned contract.
But Dakota didn’t know the real reason behind my being fired, and I wasn’t about to tell her the truth of why we struggled to make ends meet. All due to trusting the wrong fucking guy.
Finding work since then had proven impossible, and were it not for her support and love, I probably would have jumped off a bridge over my inability to provide for her. All because I couldn’t stand the thought of anyone having a sampling of what had been mine since childhood.
She was the one good thing I had to my name, and I wasn’t going to open a can of worms by allowing a third person’s lust to tear us apart.
My friend had claimed he simply wanted to fuck, but I knew better. One taste of Dakota, and he would have been addicted for life, same as I was. Her nurturing spirit was calming, her beauty breathtaking, and her sweetness impossible to ignore.
Dakota Ebel was craving personified.
“W-would you care to join us for breakfast?” Dakota asked, pulling me back to the present, her breathless tone betraying her unrest and arousal that should have had me raging with jealousy.
“I’m sure he’s just passing through,” I said at the same time his low, rumbled “I would love to” pebbled my arms again.
Dakota’s smile didn’t reach her hazel-green eyes as she slipped her hand into mine with a tight squeeze of reassurance. She peered up at me in question as though seeking my direction as she often did before making decisions, and being the sap that I was, I nodded.
Did she not know by now that I would give her anything she wanted, everything I could?
“Join us,” I echoed her invite without looking at the stranger, my words easing the tension on my wife’s face. “Please.”
“We’re just having instant oatmeal and some dried fruit,” Dakota said, bending to rummage in my pack and putting her ass on display.
In my peripheral vision, I caught Elijah enjoying the view too.
Again with the lack of jealousy slithering through my guts, but I forced a frown and cleared my throat, feeling the need to show who the alpha was on the small, treeless hill we’d camped upon.
Elijah’s focus flitted to my face. An intensity resided in his gaze, like an ancient wise one who could read souls and futures. The power in those unsettling orbs wasn’t something new to me. I’d been too fond of fortune tellers in my younger years before responsibilities had settled in.
One palm reader had called me a beast, curiosity in her watery eyes as she’d peered at me.
Another had stated an aura of blue like she’d never seen wrapped me tight in its embrace, one she claimed would be covered by a much darker one. She hadn’t been able to tell me what the vision had meant.
My foster mother, who’d been sitting beside me at the time, had laughed at the woman’s words, but Dakota hadn’t when I’d told her the next day at school. She’d been filling her mind full of fairytales about shape-shifters and elves long before I’d met her. She had also insisted she had a sixth sense about some people, and I hadn’t made fun of her when she said she felt as though she ought to know something about someone but couldn’t figure it out. Like a hazy picture in her mind, no matter how hard she focused on certain people, she couldn’t discern whatever it was that teased her brain.
Even though her wandering eyes had never been anything sexual, it was that draw to other people that pissed me the fuck off. Dakota belonged to me and no one else. I even hated sharing her friendship. Call me an obsessed, possessive asshole, but I couldn’t help myself.
When we were twenty, some douche had pulled her focus off me when I’d been mid-sentence about something I couldn’t even remember now. She’d followed after him like he had her on a leash, and I’d gotten jealous as fuck. Once I’d caught up, my instincts demanded she stay away from him since that magical bullshit sixth sense she claimed made her spine tingle didn’t actually exist, and I’d said as much. Our public fight ended in a breakup that had me ready to take my own life. We’d managed to talk through it a few days later after I’d calmed down, but I knew she still suffered from guilt when her gaze strayed on occasion.
Sometimes, I caught her doing a double take on a person on the street, her eyes narrowed, gaze thoughtful, but she never spoke of whatever she supposedly sensed anymore. I swallowed down my jealousy each and every time because I refused to make her feel like shit again even if no one had captured her attention like that guy had. She’d taken snapshots on her camera of all of the people she had a weird draw to except him, which I really would have hated. Dozens of pictures sat on her laptop, her “strange” file of random people who she claimed meant nothing to her but she felt connected to.
I would be fine as long as they stayed in pixel form and didn’t come between us physically.
Like I imagined Elijah Tolzman doing.
Older and no longer a fan of the fantastical, I never wasted money on fortunes or palm readers, but the man intruding on our breakfast peered at me in a way that made me want to ask if he could see the future I’d always dreamed of. Plenty of money to allow Dakota a life of luxury, even if she claimed to not want it. All the babies she desired to fulfill her dream of having a real family with children who grew up with unconditional love and acceptance like neither of us had. Enough of a cushion that should I ever lose my income again, we wouldn’t have to worry about the electricity being turned off in our one-room apartment. Cash on hand so dinner would be more than boxed mac and cheese—even if we both loved that shit.
Dakota stood, making me the one to break Elijah’s stare.
She handed me the oatmeal packets and one of the tin coffee mugs we’d already used and cleaned, her attention flitting toward our guest like he was a train wreck she couldn’t look away from. I recognized her curiosity and wondered how badly her fingers itched to pull out her camera and capture him from every angle.
Why the fuck didn’t I care?
Turning my back on both of them, I hunched back down, emptying the oatmeal packets into the two bowls and coffee mug.
We’d been hiking for a mere four days, and I’d about had it with the camp food. Jerky, tuna packets, and beef stew made up the bulk of our meals, supplemented with dried fruit and whole-grain wraps that tasted like cardboard. I was so damn ready for a bloody steak and a fluffy baked potato, loaded with all the good stuff.
