Page 16

16

Elle

I scurried to my new apartment and changed into my work clothes without letting myself think about where I was. I’d process that later.

Then I headed to work, all the while trying to ignore the pleasant soreness between my legs. Every time I thought about it, I blushed hot and hard. No one had ever made me feel like Az did, and I didn’t even mean because of his anatomy.

Although that had been its own kind of magic. Next time, I wanted to see if I could take them both. With an attentive, generous partner like Az, it would be mind-blowing.

Shit. Maya was giving me side-eye from across the room. Probably because I kept blushing.

“What are you still doing here? Come to rub it in our faces?” she demanded when I paused to pick up an order.

“Excuse me?”

“Those fucking dragons made it impossible for normal people to live here. I thought you got that, and now you’re cozying up to one. More than one, by the looks of it.”

Fuck. I’d forgotten that pictures of me with Az were all over social media. Of course everyone here had seen them by now .

“Fuck off, Maya.” See if I switched shifts with her again.

My stomach clenched. She’d get her pick of my shifts if I quit. Which, let’s be real—if I married a dragon, it’d be pretty stupid to keep working as a server.

My stomach did a somersault as I recalled all the ways that could fuck up my life. No money of my own, no say in my own life. Could I trust Az not to do that to me? I didn’t like to test people, but keeping my job felt like an important one. Would Az let it go even though it bothered him, or would he act like Dwayne did a few months into every one of Mama’s jobs, finding small thing after small thing to complain about until he’d worn her down enough that she either quit or got fired?

When I looked around, I noticed Cal pointedly ignoring me as well. Maya and I had our differences, but Cal and I had always been friendly. What the hell?

During a lull, I sought him out. Maya’s hostility, I kind of understood. She and I had always butted heads, and she’d made her disdain for all the changes the dragons brought clear over the last few months.

“Cal?”

He gave me a flat look but didn’t respond.

“You got something you want to say to me?” I kept my tone soft, my stance open. A question, not a challenge.

Cal crossed his arms. “Me? No. I always knew you were closed-mouthed, but I didn’t think you’d be running around with a local celebrity and let us all find out from our phones. You didn’t have shit to say to me, so no, I don’t think I’ve got a thing to say to you.”

Fuck. “I wasn’t keeping secrets, I was just…” Keeping it quiet? That was the same thing. I huffed out a sigh. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t like that. I just don’t like people gossiping about me.”

He snorted. “Good luck with that. ”

Right. I’d kind of signed up for it, hadn’t I? I went to run my fingers through my hair, only to encounter the messy bun I’d thrown it in earlier. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it would happen like that.”

“Sure. Whatever. Jen just sat someone in my section, so…” He turned and walked away.

“Drinks later?” Jen asked when I passed her.

“On me.” I wanted to do something nice, something to counter the way my stomach sank every time one of my coworkers refused to make eye contact with me.

Jen’s eyebrows drew together. “I can still pay for my own drinks. I’m not that hard up.”

I pinched my nose between my fingers. “Let me treat you, damn. You were so patient with me when I was first learning the ropes here, and I want to repay the favor.”

She scrutinized me. “Fine.”

The rest of my shift was uncomfortable as hell. Customers looked at me like I was on display, while my coworkers, except Jen, alternated between snide comments and ignoring me.

That night at drinks, Jen relaxed back in her seat. “Don’t take Maya and them too seriously. They’d do the same thing you are; they’re just jealous because they saw your pictures online.”

I groaned. “ I haven’t even seen those damn pictures yet.” I’d been a little too afraid to look.

She pulled up her phone and showed me her social media.

He looked sharp in his expensive, tailored suit. Next to him, I looked like a mess. A bobby pin stuck out of the back of my updo, and frizz haloed the top of my head. The lines of my dress were creased.

Stupidly, I scrolled down and read the comments.

Looks like Az’zael is slumming it .

@summergurl26 be nice. She’s probably never had to go to one of these before. I don’t think Kilinis was even a real city until a couple dragons moved in.

Of course Kilinis was a real city. We just weren’t doing that great before the dragons rolled into town.

She couldn’t even get her highlights touched up for this!

I didn’t have highlights.

Below that was another picture. Some brave idiot had snapped Az and Tika right before he scolded her. They both looked like they were on the verge of attacking, while Udar smirked in the background.

Uh oh. Looks like she got in over her empty blonde head. Wonder if the red one caught her skanky ass flirting with the bronze one?

I swallowed back the hurt. Their speculation was wildly inaccurate, but I’d seen enough internet pile-ons to know that wading into one would make it ten times worse.

Maybe one of them will get fed up and eat her.

God, it felt like some of the commenters wanted that to happen. They didn’t even know me, and they wanted me flayed open for their enjoyment.

Another picture of me and Az leaving the venue, his arm wrapped protectively around me.

Nice to know the new dragons like local girls. Maybe I’ll try “running into” Az’zael at city hall .

Something squirmed inside me, hot and angry. Some random thot wanted to catch my boyfriend’s eye?

Hysterical laughter bubbled up behind my lips. “Boyfriend” seemed like such a mild word for Az.

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Oh shit. Did someone try to dox me in the comments? My stomach twisted and turned, and I shoved the phone at Jen. “I didn’t think… I mean, he’s not, like, famous, famous.” I knew there’d be pictures, and that people might see them, but there were hundreds of comments and shares. Thousands of likes.

“Come on, of course it was going to be all over the internet that Az was dating a local,” Jen said.

Thank god Mama wasn’t on social media much. I should have called her yesterday and told her everything, but I’d gotten so wrapped up in Az that it’d slipped my mind.

Like magic, my phone lit up with a message from my mom.

What the hell, Elle?

“Fuck. Okay.” I covered my eyes. “No. Wait. Fuck. What do I do?”

“Keep dating him as long as possible? Quit this bullshit job? I’m not seeing any issues.” Jen took a sip of her drink.

I texted back.

I’ll call you later.

“It’s not that simple,” I said. It would be so easy to quit Norma’s Kitchen and never look back. But what would that make me?

“Simple? You hooked a dragon! Reel him in, and introduce me to his green friend.”

I grimaced. “I think Niemrin is into some librarian chick.”

My phone buzzed again. I ignored it. I’d call Mama as soon as I could.

Jen rolled her eyes. “Some other dragon, then.”

“Oh, come on, Jen. We’re friends and you didn’t even want me to pay for drinks tonight. You think it’s easy to just hand everything over to a fucking dragon?”

“That’s the point. He’s not a friend, he’s a dragon. They think differently than us. Not to mention, they have way more cash to burn.”

“It’s just weird, okay?” My face flamed, and I fidgeted in my seat. “I keep expecting Az to pull some kind of dick move, but he hasn’t. He gave me an entire fucking apartment. A nice one. Free for four months because he wants to move in together afterward.”

My mouth kept moving, emptying the contents of my squirming guts into Jen’s waiting ears. “Even when he’s being kind of a dick, he owns up to it in a weird way. Like, he was jealous about something kind of stupid, and instead of pretending that was totally chill and normal and I’m the asshole for having a problem with it, he was honest about how fucked-up his feelings were and said he was working on them.” And he’d been pretty embarrassed by his jealousy rather than blaming me for inciting it.

Jen muttered, “The bar is in hell,” and patted my hand. I gripped hers tight.

“It’s not just that. He didn’t even want a sugar baby! Christ, Jen, I forgot to tell you. Apparently, dragons give people money when they’re interested in, like, serious dating. He wants me to marry him. ”

Jen almost fell out of her chair. “Like…wedding rings, until death do you part?”

I wrinkled my nose. “Probably not wedding rings. I don’t think they do that, but yeah, ’til death does us part.”

She stared at me with huge brown eyes. “Oh. Um. That’s a lot.”

“I know!” Sweat broke out on my skin. “He was so confused when I tried to explain that I thought our relationship was temporary.” I’d felt like shit about the mistake, but what was I supposed to do? Lie? Promise to marry him after a week’s acquaintance? Go back in time and do everything differently?

“Like, I still don’t think he gets that offering to pay me for my time isn’t how humans date.” Just this morning, he’d offered me anything I wanted if I would spend the night with him. Half of why I’d agreed to get drinks with Jen was because I was hoping to sort my head out before I saw him again.

Jen shut her mouth with a click. “So you’re dating for real. He’s respectful of you. He wants to marry you, and this is somehow still a bad thing?”

“He thinks four months is a reasonable timeline to decide if I want to marry him.” I scrunched up my nose, trying to recall that blur of a conversation. “Actually, he offered me extra time when he saw how panicked I got. But he said that’s several times longer than dragons usually take to decide something as permanent as marriage.”

“Yeah, okay, four months is real quick.”

“Every time I moved too fast with a guy, it went terribly.” I snorted. “I moved in with my last ex, Adrian, in less than a year, and right afterward he lost his job and ‘couldn’t find’ a new one.” My meager savings had disappeared in three months, and my credit cards were maxed out in six. “It’s not like I have to worry about that with Az, but it’s so fast .” Mama moved in with Dwayne after five months because both their leases were up and two can live almost as cheaply as one, and look where that got her.

Jen made a face. “Yeah. I got married right out of high school and left his ass within a year. We were both too young to have any business getting married.”

I hadn’t known Jen was divorced. “I’m sorry. That must have been hard.”

“When I found out he was cheating? Yeah. The divorce itself? I don’t know. We hadn’t been married long, so that part was pretty easy.” Jen thought for a moment. “Is Az’zael the kind to cheat?”

I recalled his vehement demand for exclusivity, and disgust at the suggestion that he might seek out someone else. That made a lot more sense now. “I don’t think so. But they never seem like it at first, right?”

Jen shrugged. “That’s just love. You gotta trust sometime, right? I don’t know about you, but I won’t let a few assholes destroy my ability to trust someone else. That’s not how I want to live.”

“I don’t want to live like that either.” And I was trying not to, I really was, but he could ruin me. Doubly so, if I handed over my heart.

But he made me feel like…like maybe if I wasn’t always so in my head about doing what he expected, like maybe if I gave him a chance, he’d appreciate me for what I was. He’d appreciated every glimpse I’d shown him of myself so far.

I finished up with Jen, and since I was already downtown, I walked to Az’s—and my—apartment complex. Although it was dark, there were still a fair number of people out, mostly college students and young professionals barhopping. The streets were well-lit—one of the least controversial improvements Az’zael had implemented in Kilinis.

I pulled out my phone to call my mom and blinked at it. I had two new messages from an unknown number.

Heard you’re coming to our next family dinner.

If Az doesn’t buy you something nice to wear, let me know and I’ll send something over.

Fuck. That was definitely Udar, and that was definitely a bad sign. If Az was jealous of his baby sister, he’d flip if he knew his brother was offering me gifts. Especially if they were things Az would be expected to get me.

I should tell him. If his brother was a total fucking creep, Az deserved to know, right? I mean, how did Udar even get my number?

I bit my lip and shoved the phone back in my pocket. Az already knew his brother was an asshole. He’d promised to talk to Udar about dropping by my apartment, but obviously Udar didn’t give a shit.

What would telling Az about some text messages really achieve? I’d just be throwing another bomb into what was obviously an already complicated family dynamic.

And Udar was his brother . I was an only child, but I’d been on the outside looking in on friends with siblings plenty of times, and it was always, Oh, he’s such a dickhead. What’d you say about my brother? Only I can say that shit.

Az wasn’t trying to make me and Udar be best friends or anything, right? I just had to ignore this asshole, and he’d get the picture.

Decision made, I called my mom. I needed to get my own complicated family stuff dealt with.

“Why did Miss Anne have to be the one to tell me you were mixed up with some dragon?” Mama skipped any pretense of a greeting when she picked up. Miss Anne was an elderly Black woman who lived across the hall. She and my mom became friends when they realized they both fed the same stray cats.

“Oh. Um.” I started walking faster, dodging other pedestrians. “I didn’t want to tell you until it was serious.”

“Serious enough to get photographed at some fancy-pants event is serious enough to tell your mother.”

I winced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know that would happen.”

“What the hell, Elle?” A door shut in the background, then her voice lowered. Right. It was past eleven at night. Dwayne was asleep.

“Is this how you’ve been able to send me all that money?”

My stomach dropped. “Um. Yes?”

“So you told that dragon all our business? You know Dwayne hates it when you give us money. He’ll be furious if he figures out you asked your boyfriend for it.”

I’d never given Dwayne a cent in my life. I gave Mama money. She was the one who always gave it straight to Dwayne, and Dwayne was the one who always flipped out about it.

But since pointing that out would only start a different argument, I said, “No. He gave it to me. It’s a dragon dating custom.”

I opened the door to the apartment building. Glanced at the elevator and took the stairs, even though it was fifteen flights. We still needed to talk, and I needed to move while I did it.

“And what does a rich boy like that want in exchange for all that cash?” Mama demanded.

“Mama. Please.” The plea echoed off the hard concrete of the stairwell. I lowered my voice. “He’s not like that.” As if I hadn’t made the same assumption.

Although…I remembered the way he’d reacted in the dressing room. He’d said dragons didn’t give blow jobs. The idea of introducing him to that pleasure had intoxicated me, but now I wondered ag ain—had he pursued me because I’d do things a dragon wouldn’t? Did he want a human, any human?

“Look, why don’t you meet him?” I swallowed. “I’m supposed to meet his parents next week, so he’ll want to meet you, too.”

Nerves raked my insides. If Az’s family was as glamorous and exacting as his siblings, what was he going to think of Mama’s unrefined manners and my modest upbringing? Not to mention Dwayne’s penchant for taking offense at the smallest slight. This was a disaster waiting to happen.

Mama breathed for long seconds. “He wants you to meet his family?” I could practically hear the gears turning in her brain, deciding hey, maybe he isn’t so bad.

How much of my family should I let him meet so early on? He had no notion of the disparity between our classes, had thought I owned an entire apartment complex. Mama lived right here in Kilinis, but my extended family was out in Elliston.

How would I explain trailer parks? A double-wide would fit in his living room. Would he look down on them, and by extension me? I couldn’t date yet another guy who thought he was better than me.

“Yes.” I forced a brighter note into my tone. “I’ve already met his sister and brother.”

“Did you get on?”

“I think so.” I wasn’t about to delve into the nitty-gritty with Mama. Az had assured me Tika liked me, even if she had a funny way of showing it. Udar was a whole different kettle of fish. He seemed to like me a little too much.

“Fine. Dwayne and I can meet your dragon. But I don’t want him thinking we’re a charity case.”

I gripped the handrail and dragged myself up the stairs while we chatted about lighter, easier topics until I stopped at Az’s apartment door. After hanging up, I took a deep breath and knocked.