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God, he did his best to bring his thoughts back to monitoring the situation in the here and now. But she definitely had a way of distracting him.
Keep her safe.
His dragon was on point. That instinct was pouring off of him.
Yes, buddy, fine. ‘And keep her safe’.Being a shifter could be exhausting. His dragon might be the big, scary, badass part of him as far as others were concerned, but there were times it felt to him like being chained to a toddler.A big, scary, fire-fucking-breathing toddler of course. That could fly. And rip a man to shreds with its bare claws.
What does Bloom really have to gain from all this?
Once again his mind wandered. His more cynical mind responded immediately.She wants to protect her bar, of course. The Tree.That was true, but what was wrong with that?
And what about those women? She had nothing to gain from protecting them. She certainly didn’t have to charge in there in the first place and mace that guy.
He chuckled at the thought of it again. But he knew the expression, the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree. He laughed at the unintended pun.
Her father had always looked out for the little guy. His dad used to say that Mr. Hawthorne was one of the good ones.
Yeah, and it seemed to have gotten him killed.
He turned the mental page. Her father aside, she was pretty impressive, really. And not your typical fa— Half fae.
A few hours had passed by now. Dax himself had already drank three waters and eaten three appetizers as well. This was going nowhere.
“Okay, guys. I think we call it.”
“Copy that,” came back from multiple voices.
“But let’s be careful on our exit too,” he said.
“Hundred percent,” Jack said. “Okay, they are wrapping up.”
“Copy,” Dax said. He had already paid and wanted to be sure the coast was clear for them on the way out. He stood quickly, and just as he turned to take in the restaurant, he was met by Bloom, who had apparently risen at the same time and taken a step toward the exit. The two immediately became entangled as Dax reached out his hand to steady himself. Had it not been for his superior reflexes, they would have definitely gone down in a pile. As it was, though, Bloom did go down. Or at least she took out a chair that smacked the ground as she lost her feet. Dax caught her fully under the arms, though, and absorbed her body.Her soft, warm, delectable body.It was only with some effort that he managed to avoid grabbing her anywhere he shouldn’t.
“Heads up, Bloom’s down,” Jack called out.
“Was that a shot?” he heard almost immediately from Rollo, who didn’t have eyes on them at the moment.
After the initial shock, Dax quickly patted her down, from her ass up her back. He was pretty sure there had been no shot, but needed to check nonetheless.
“You sure you didn’t miss anywhere?” she said under her breath.
Is she flirting with me?
Feeling nothing but healthy, solid flesh, he determined she had not been shot after all, and began to help her to her feet. “Just making sure,” he said.
“Um hm,” she replied as she adjusted and smoothed her dress.
“Chief? Everything okay there?” Jack’s voice came again over the comms.
“Um, affirmative,” he whispered into the mic as he once again turned to leave. Then in a voice that was perhaps a little too loud and a bit to theatric, he added, “Be careful, miss.”
With that, he finally headed out, letting Marius attend to her as he exited the restaurant ahead of them, scanning for threats the whole time.
“Okay, guys. We’re heading out. Stay alert.”
“Roger that.”
As the operation wound down, he went over it all in his head. It had gone by the numbers. It just hadn’t worked.
