“Nox?” Fanny asked, tossing her a disgusted look. “What kind of pedigree could a man named Nox possibly have.”
“No pedigree. I don’t care about that.” She sounded shaky but was sticking up for herself, and she was kind of proud of that. For strength, she pulled the note from Nox’s friend out of her purse and clutched it against her stomach. He liked her. He’d told his friends about her.
“Nox the fox,” Jack said with a snort. “What unoriginal parents named him?”
Fanny giggled. Jack chuckled. When Fanny laughed harder, Jack followed suit until they were both belly laughing.
Jerks. Nox was a badass name for a badass grizzly shifter from Damon’s Mountains, not a wussy fox like Stupid Jack and Stupid Fanny.
“Well, your name means ‘butt,’ so who should really be laughing?”
Jack slammed on the brakes so hard she lurched forward and hit her forehead on the back of Fanny’s seat. He twisted around and grabbed her hair before she even had time to settle back against the seat. He yanked it hard and growled, “Listen here, you ungrateful little bitch. Fanny went to great trouble to find you a pairing. Do you know how many males rejected you just on your name alone? Dozens, but she didn’t give up, and she found Darren, and now you’re making fun of her name?”
Nevada winced and ducked her gaze. “You’re hurting me,” she whispered.
Jack released her hair and shoved her head back hard. “Good. Think twice before you try to be clever again, sister. The den hates you. Best you don’t make enemies of your family, or where would you be? Marked with shame, without protection, all alone, and rogue. You would be nothing more than dragon food.”
Holding the aching side of her head, Nevada shoved her door open and got out.
“Get back in the fucking car!” Jack yelled.
“I’m going to walk,” she said meekly, her gaze on the road under her heels. She was trying hard not to cry, but her eyes were burning and tears were threatening to spill to her cheeks.
Jack hit the gas so hard his tires spun out and left her in a trail of burnout smoke as he sped away. She coughed and waved her hand in front of her face, and now her eyes were burning from tears and smog. She should’ve ignored Jack’s calls all week about riding together and just taken her own car. At least it wouldn’t be a far walk. She could see the turnoff for the country club from here.
With a frustrated, tiny human growl—because her wussy fox was holed up deep inside of her shaking and whining—she took off her heels, lifted the hem of her dress, and made her way up the road, ignoring the three cars with her family inside that refused to pull over and offer her a ride the rest of the way.
Her head still hurt where Jack had pulled her hair. He’d always done that when they were kids too, when he didn’t like something she did or said. He’d never grown out of the bully phase, but really, that was how most of the den acted. Kindness wasn’t a popular virtue, and so Nevada was left on the outside from yet another character flaw.
Her feet hurt by the time she made her way up the winding road and past the golf course a half an hour late. Maybe Nox was already here and could be a buffer when Mom and Dad got onto her for her irresponsibility—as they did anytime she was thirty seconds late or more.
But when she made her way inside the grand room where everyone was sitting for dinner, she didn’t see Nox. An awful feeling hit her in the gut like a punch. Maybe he’d come and gone, or maybe he was standing her up. That last part felt right.
Mom looked mad from her seat at the biggest table near the wall. She and Dad always sat on the ends of the great table like a king with his queen. Mom waved her over with a curt, two-fingered gesture, then jammed her finger to an empty seat next to Darren. Crud. She wanted to cry again, and one last time, she searched the crowd and the tables, but Nox really wasn’t here.
Of course he was standing her up. She was just Nevada—uninteresting, anxious, and submissive. And he was built like a bodybuilder, so handsome and tattooed and funny, and a dominant grizzly bear shifter to boot. He had no problem talking to people, he was seventeen levels out of her league, and everything was lame. How silly she’d been to get her hopes up like this.
Feeling dejected, she made her way to her seat and sank into it, wishing with everything she had that she could press her back into it hard enough that she could disappear completely for the next three boring hours. She fingered the soft satin of her flowing dress and huffed a humorless laugh. She’d even matched the black fabric to the black and white plaid shirt he’d said he was going to wear. How stupid could she be?
“Hello, Nevada,” Darren said from beside her. “You’re looking very healthy tonight. Have you lost weight?”
Gross. Someone kicked her under the table, and she yelped. Across from her, Fanny gave her a filthy look and jerked her head toward Darren.
“Um, no, I haven’t lost weight.”
Darren frowned and leaned toward Fanny. “You said she was working with a trainer.”
“She is,” said a deep rumbling voice behind her. “A sex trainer. She’s been wearing me out. You’re a vodka girl, right?” Nox asked, setting a pair of shots on the fancy cream and gold table linen next to the wine glasses.
The entire table went silent and froze, probably because Nox was dressed in mid-thigh cut-off shorts, a white T-shirt that read Bone Ripper across his tightly puckered nipples, and was he wearing…?
“Are those baseball socks?” she whispered, pointing to his yellow and white knee-high socks.
“Why, yes they are.” Nox straightened his spine and placed his hands on his hips. He twisted this way and that like he was stretching his back, but it made his dick bulge against the seam of his shorts. She was pretty sure the head was going to poke out the bottom at any moment. He looked like he’d been in a brawl. Although the left side of his face still sported green half-healed bruising, her attention kept drifting back to his crotch.
“What are you doing here?” Darren asked loudly.
“Currently? Currently, I’m here to eat caviar and snails and try to get into this one’s pantaloons.” He gave Nevada a sexy-boy wink. “She’s playing hard to get, though. Skootch, mother fucker,” he said to Darren, flicking his fingers at him. “I need to pull up a chair. Are you using this?” he asked loudly to the table behind them. “No?” he asked when they just stared at him like he had three heads. “Great.”
With a screeching sound, he pulled the chair across the wooden floor. The entire room got quiet and turned to stare. He flipped it around and slammed it down beside her too hard, then gracefully and slowly lowered himself down beside her. He was invading Mom’s space, and if she hadn’t looked like she was about to breathe literal fire on Nox, Nevada would’ve laughed.