Page 4 of Drawn by Dragonblood (Blood Born #1)

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.

“So where are you from?” Dakota asked, sitting cross-legged on the ground beside where I squatted. She’d tugged on a sweatshirt, big enough to hide her braless, aroused state.

Elijah sat on my other side, his closeness warmer than the bed of coals in front of me. Something inside me felt that tug again, the need to sit at his feet and hope he gifted me a soft word or strong hand.

The fuck?

I blinked hard, erasing the picture from my mind.

“My home is just shy of two miles in that direction,” Elijah said, pointing toward the southeast as his scent rolled over me. He smelled of fire and brimstone, spice and sex.

I stretched my neck side to side, fighting off the strange lust stiffening my dick, even though I wasn’t exactly disturbed by the attraction I felt for him.

Last thing I needed was to come untouched in my boxers.

That would make for one hell of an awkward situation since I wasn’t exactly quiet when busting a nut.

“I didn’t think anyone lived around here,” Dakota said, a smile in her voice. “Your own Castle in the Clouds like that mansion down in Moultonborough?”

“Something like that.” That sensual smile played on Elijah’s lips again, and I focused on pouring boiling water over the dry oatmeal, wondering why the hell I didn’t care that he looked at my wife like he wanted to lick her from mouth to toes.

I handed Elijah one of the steaming bowls and a spoon while shoving my bitterness deep and attempting to not salivate over the man.

“Thank you.” Elijah’s full-on smile weakened my knees, and I sat with about as much grace as a two-year-old on ice skates.

At least I didn’t spill my cup of maple and brown sugar oatmeal. Yay?

Dakota shifted so our legs pressed together. Her usual affection or a silent assurance of her faithfulness, I didn’t know. Either way, I appreciated the action because my brain and body didn’t know up from down.

“Just out for a stroll?” I asked and spooned up a mass of the grossest breakfast food on the face of the planet.

“Something like that,” Elijah echoed himself, his voice softer with a hint of the smile lingering on his perfectly formed lips above a soul patch.

I ought to be suspicious of his lack of a real answer, but my usual caution had gone into hibernation or some such shit. What about the dark stranger made me comfortable over being sexually attracted to another guy? I shouldn’t trust the man, but something inside me wanted to.

Fucking yearned for it so damn hard I swore I’d fallen into an alternate reality.

I tore my gaze off the dude’s face and shoved the too-hot oats into my mouth. The burned tongue at least kept my twitching dick from swelling to the point of needing my hand.

Seriously. What the fuck was wrong with me?

Dakota was all I had ever wanted. Hell, I’d never even thought about another woman that way—let alone a masculine guy who would look fucking fantastic decked out in black leather and a harness.

I shook my head, blinking that image from my mind too.

From the first time I’d seen Dakota in middle school, I’d known she belonged to me and I to her. Like magnets, we had drawn each other in, and tearing apart at the end of every school day had been painful for me.

I found out later it had felt the same for her.

The first time we’d kissed, the longing for happiness that had haunted me every day faded as true joy flooded through me from the gentle brush of her lips and the sweet taste of her breath.

And when we’d finally had sex? We had only been sixteen, but the stars had aligned, the off-its-axis world of my foster parent’s home righted.

I’d found heaven and a different kind of magic buried deep inside Dakota’s wet warmth.

It would be another two years before I could light out from where I’d spent my childhood filled with verbal and emotional abuse. An eternity of being told I was a worthless piece of shit, daily reminders that I was unloved and unwanted by the people who had created my sorry ass.

Whoever the hell they were.

I had no desire to find my real parents. They hadn’t wanted me, so why the fuck would I go looking for them?

Like me, Dakota had grown up in a foster home, clueless as to her parentage and desirous of a husband and a bunch of kids to love. But at least she’d been lucky in having foster parents who’d nurtured and cared for her.

We were peas and carrots, just like Forrest Gump had claimed of him and Jenny, but so far, we hadn’t been able to get pregnant.

The push for that had ended when I’d been fired since I couldn’t provide for the two of us let alone a third little human.

We’d discussed IVF, but that plan got shot to shit when I’d lost my income.

Even though my swimmers had failed for the previous handful of years in giving my wife what she wanted.

Dakota had gotten an IUD to ensure didn’t have a kid at an inopportune time.

“Are you heading toward Mount Washington?” Elijah asked, and I glanced over at Dakota rather than laying eyes on the man who made me question who and what the fuck I was.

The trip had been my wife’s idea, and we’d been walking our feet sore up and down mountains I couldn’t remember the names of. Washington, though, that had been one hell of a sight.

“We’ve been there already,” she answered him.

“Back to civilization then,” Elijah said, deducing we headed out of the mountains toward the south.

“I wouldn’t mind getting lost up here.” The longing in Dakota’s voice, her eyes glowing with desire, made her even more beautiful to me.

My heart ached to hold her, protect and give her an easy life. Everything her heart desired.

Disappearing from the woes of reality sounded fine by me—if we’d been somewhere closer to the equator. A warmer location than where we’d been trekking the last couple of days. But Dakota loved the mountains. Who was I to say no?

If it lay within my power, everything Dakota wished for would be placed at her feet. She was my reason for living, after all, and no way in fuck would I ever allow someone to wreck the life we’d built together.

Even if the stranger led my thoughts down a dark, delicious-looking path I’d never dreamed of walking.