Lerin's Bride (Crystal Glass Dragons 3)

4

Olive

He was even more breathtaking in sunlight.

Lerin’s red hair was like fire, shimmering in the morning sun and begging to be touched. I behaved, limiting myself to snatched glances as we walked towards my house. He was a stranger after all.

“How was work?” he asked.

It felt like an easy question, but I couldn’t be honest. I’d spent the last six and a half hours thinking of nothing but him. It was almost like he was a lump of distant hot coal that I could feel getting closer and further from me, the ebb and flow feeding my temptation. When my shift was nearly over, I couldfeelhim turning the corner onto this block. I ran out of the shop, hardly remembering to take my apron off, to find him approaching.

“It was okay, not too busy,” I answered instead. I didn’t need to scare him off before I could get a second kiss. “What have you been up to?”

He was still wearing the same clothes, which meant he’d probably started his day when I did, instead of ending it. I tried to think of what kind of job called for someone to work those hours, and all I could think of was my kind of work…or someone who didn’t want to be seen working.

“It was good. I explored the city and you’re by far the best part of it,” Lerin answered. His voice was a little gravelly, a little suggestive. I wished I could have shown him around the city instead of letting him go it alone.

“There’s not really much to explore,” I said, squinting into the sun. He shot me a confused look, and I obliged with an explanation. “I’ve lived in Springfield my whole life and nothing really surprises me here anymore.”

“Ever consider moving somewhere else?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that.

Of course, I wanted to move somewhere else.

This city was great, but it wasn’t exactly how I’d pictured spending my whole life. I wanted to live in some place where I didn’t feel like another ant on a giant mound. I wanted to change someone’s life. But I wasn’t going to divulge all this to a stranger.

“Where are you from?”

I’d avoided asking this earlier, but I didn’t recognize Lerin’s accent.

“Not far,” he admitted. “I grew up in a tiny community just outside Ember Abyss.”

I fought down a laugh of surprise. Ember Abyss was already a very small town; I couldn’t picture how a much smaller one would look.

The main thing that stuck in my mind, though, was that Ember Abyss itself was a shifter colony.

I didn’t have anything against shifters. They were just people like anyone else. But I couldn’t understand them. Humans were already complicated enough without the added stress of fated mates and figuring out whether animal forms could play well together.

I heard once about a wolf shifter who accidentally attacked his rabbit-shifter wife.

Those kinds of stories were always conveyed in horrified hushed tones, but I couldn’t say how sure I was that they were real.

People loved to start drama where there was none.

I wasn’t sure if there was a way to ask if he was a shifter without seeming rude, so I erased the question from my mind as we arrived at my duplex apartment.

“Thank you for inviting me over,” he said with a broad grin.

“Yeah, of course.”

His eyes paused heavily on mine as I let him in, and I questioned if this was a good idea. I didn’t know the man. He was wandering the streets at night and just happened to stand outside my work. There was no telling whether he was trustworthy—or whether he’d been lying to me.

Still, I didn’t want to spend a single second away from him.

He was thick honey, and I was plain flour sticking with desperation.

Leading him through my tiny living room and kitchen, I was relieved I’d cleaned the night before. There was no way I would have invited him over if my home was in its usual state of disarray.