The Mate (A Fire's Edge Short Story - Prequel)

Chapter 4

Fallon

Fallon paused outside the door he'd been directed to, battling nerves that'd never had a place in his life before. Overconfidence was his thing, but Maddie and this entire situation had tossed him into a sea of the unknown.

The dragon side of his nature was getting harder to contain, as the beast inside him pushed to claim his mate and fly her far from this overblown place. Fighting his instincts was turning into a slow form of torture.

Fallon knocked. A few moments later, his mate opened the door. Per the instructions he'd sent earlier in the day, she'd dressed casually in jeans and a black tank top clinging to the curving lines of her body, closer to the Maddie he knew, though still no funny one liner on the shirt. Her wildflower scent wrapped around him like a blanket and every part of him went hot then hard.

Everything in him screamed to claim her. Now, her green-grey eyes reflected her emotions—and for once he couldn't read her.

Damn. He had a long road to travel. Fallon hoped like hell the time together he had planned made an impact on what appeared to be a wall of immovable woman. Urgency thrummed through him like a guitar strung too tight. Any second, he'd break the string. Meanwhile, he tried to force his dick to calm the hell down as his dragon half pushed at his insides, demanding his mate.

"Ready?" he asked, unable to help the dark timbre in his voice.

She crossed her arms. "I have a condition before I go anywhere with you."

Strike immovable. Make that impossible.

He raised a hand to hide his smile. She was awfully cute when she got all bossy. Something he'd noticed when they'd worked together on those cases. Or she'd worked and he'd done his best to subvert her efforts, knowing the fires were dragon related. He'd had no clue that they were related to a dragon mate—his mate.

"No talk about before," she said, ticking off the rule on her fingers. "No innuendo. No teasing."

"I'll try," he said, his voice a world of doubt. His plans hit on lots of before.

She ignored him. "No touching."

"Got it," he agreed. Then immediately he stepped into her, crowding her, but not touching.

Maddie bumped into the door as she tried to back up and scowled. Yup. Adorable. Especially the way she flushed, sweet pink coming up her neck and over her cheeks. At least she wasn't immune to the physical aspect, which threatened to take them both down in flames.

"Hey," she protested. "I just said—"

"I'm just getting an idea of the boundaries." Perhaps a bad idea given the impact her closeness had on his body.

"Not this close," she said.

He straightened, but didn't move backward. "Better?"

She planted a hand on his chest and pushed until he'd moved a few feet away. "This should be your limit."

"Copy that." No arguments. He had to walk a fine line of trying to connect while not pushing her beyond her limits.

Again, she frowned, but didn't comment on a term that they'd used often during their investigations.

He angled to the side, indicating with a wave of his hand that they should get going. Head held high, she sailed by him. Careful not to touch, he placed a hand at the small of her back.

She glanced over her shoulder, then up at him eyebrows raised, and he shrugged. "I was taught to escort a woman. It's good manners. I'm not touching."