“Stop. This is a lot, Candace.” He shook his head and looked at her like she was everything. That expression on his face? It made butterflies flap around in her stomach. “I know how hard you work for every penny, and I know what it costs you to work that job. This?” He lifted the sixty bucks. “This means more than I can even tell you.”
“We’ll do it as a team,” she said softly. “Someday she’s gonna hear your voice, and I’ll be so proud of you for getting there.”
“We’ll do everything as a team. I can’t wait for you to meet my sister and her mate, Greyson. And my parents. They all love you already because I can’t stop talking about you. You’ve changed my whole life for the better.”
“Even though I get stripper glitter all over everything?”
Torren belted a laugh. “My life is a lot more sparkly, that’s for sure.”
He leaned over the seat and cupped her neck, pulled her to him, and pressed his lips against hers. Usually they were fire and gasoline when they touched, but sometimes, on occasion, Torren would go all soft like this. For her. She loved him both ways. She loved him just as he was.
There was something so freeing about loving someone just as they were, mess and all, and knowing they would return that acceptance in kind. What a beautiful thing not to have to ever pretend. What was the point when Torren was okay with everything? Her job, her animal, her emotional days, her damage, her fear of losing him. He looked at those things like he thought they were beautiful, and she did the same for him. His fighting, his inner beast, his protectiveness, his devotion to Vyr, his damage. He was perfect to her, shaped exactly right to match her unconventional edges.
He sipped at her lips for a long time, and she melted into him. Let him take his time, let him keep them slow, while she reveled in his soft touches on her cheek, her neck, her hand, her thigh.
But there was this moment when chills rippled up her arms. And when Torren eased away with a frown, she knew he’d felt it, too.
He scanned the woods out the window and turned the radio all the way down. He sat there frozen, just like her, listening for something just beyond their heightened senses.
“I feel watched,” she admitted on a breath.
“Same,” Torren rumbled. He rolled down his window and rested his elbow on the open frame, chewed the corner of his thumbnail as he stared out into the woods, listening. “It’s too quiet.”
“It’s always quiet in the winter, though,” she said optimistically.
“Mmm,” he murmured. He eased onto the gas, but as they drove, he kept his window down and his attention on the woods like she did.
There was nothing out of the ordinary, though. No tracks, no movement, and the closer they got to the mansion, the less her instincts blared.
“Animal maybe?”
“Maybe,” Torren said. He flicked two fingers toward the house where Vyr was sitting on the roof, eyes on the woods, one knee bent, one leg dangling over the edge of the gutter. “But then why is the Red Dragon watching the woods, too?”
“Okay. Playing the devil’s advocate, Vyr sits up there a lot, and I have a theory about it. I think the ground isn’t his home. It’s not his happy place. He only allows himself to shift every three weeks, right? Imagine if you forced HavoK to stay silent for three weeks at a time. You would feel all broken up and confused. I think Vyr sits up in the air because it makes his dragon more comfortable. Plus, look. The rest of the crew doesn’t seem concerned.” She pointed to where Nox and Nevada were sitting in duct-taped lawn chairs in the snow, facing each other, spitting a piece of gum back and forth between them, catching it in their mouths. They cheered each other on each time they caught it.
“God, their love is so weird,” Torren muttered.
“Yep.” Candace scrunched her face up. “I feel like we could take them, though.”
Torren was staring at them with narrowed eyes. “I was just thinking the same thing. Do you have a piece of gum?”
Candace peeled into giggles. Of course, Torren would be up for playing. He was good at that, and highly competitive with Nox for reasons she would probably never fully understand. “Sorry, fresh out.”
She didn’t even try to open her own door. A, the moving box in her lap was full of her collection of romance books and was heavy. And B, she’d learned early on that Torren liked to open doors for her. All doors, and he pulled out her chair for her at restaurants, even if it was just a fast food place. And any chance he got, he liked to carry her things. He’d explained he would never be able to buy her a lot of material things, so he liked to take care of her in the ways he could. It was really sweet and made her feel special every time he did, so her smile stretched her face as he jogged around the front of his ride and opened her door. He pulled the box out of her lap as if it weighed nothing and waited for her to grab a stack of clothes from the back of his car. This was the last load from her apartment, so the back was stuffed with mostly odds and ends they’d left until last to transport.
“I made dinner!” Nox called as they made their way to the front door.
“I’m not eating whatever you cooked,” Torren muttered. “You burn everything.”
“By ‘made dinner’ I mean I bought pasta from that new Italian place in town. Crew dinner! Page sixty-nine in the Manners and Shit book: spring for food every once in a while.”
“Plus, I like when we all eat together,” Nevada said. “And I’m tired of instant noodles. The bills are paid this month, so let’s celebrate. We even got a box of wine. Thirty-four glasses of crisp white for eleven dollars.”
“I like crew dinners, too,” Candace admitted. “Feels like those fucked-up, dysfunctional family meals on funny television shows.”
“Exactly!” Nevada exclaimed excitedly. “That’s what I was telling Nox just yesterday!”
“Uh, yeah, I remember that conversation,” Nox muttered, staring at the open Manners & Shit book he’d pulled from his pocket.
“Lie,” Nevada called him out.
“In my defense, I’m pretty sure that was around the time you said the word ‘blow,’ and all I could think of was your mouth on my d—”
“Does your mind ever get out of the gutter, Nox?” Vyr asked from the roof.
“The gutter is the best place for the mind to be,” Nox explained primly. “It’s dark, quiet, and wet—”
“Stop. Talking,” Vyr demanded. There was steel and order in his words, and Nox choked on his retort. Tried again but failed to push a word out, so he lifted a middle finger instead.
“Someday I’m gonna bite off both of your favorite fingers,” Vyr muttered. “We need to eat fast if we’re going to do dinner.”
“Why?” Torren asked, turning toward him before he reached the front door.
His gaze was intense on the Red Dragon, who only shrugged up one shoulder and responded, “Storm’s coming.”
Torren’s jaw clenched. “What does that mean?”