The Dragon Marshal's Treasure (U.S. Marshal Shifters 1)

He smiled, and she looked at it upside-down, her head tilted back. He had a very bitable lower lip.

“Vintage often gives you better value,” Theo said. “As with the lace.” He seemed to be doodling on her bare shoulder with one fingertip and she found it funnily soothing. “Tell me about your job.”

“I asked you first.”

“You did, didn’t you? All right, Miss Marcus, I like my job—at the moment, I like it even more than usual. Thanks to my family, I know a lot about worth and a lot about antiques, so I handle most of our asset forfeiture cases. None of them have ever gone quite like this. I’m sorry that’s how we had to meet.”

She shook her head and then nudged herself upwards just enough to kiss him. “It was always going to be a bad day, Theo, but you made it so much better.”

“I know it’s hard to go through.”

“I just keep telling myself that it’s like Gretchen said. This will help people, and every little bit will mean something. If it will make things better for the people Dad hurt, I’ll rip the light fixtures out of this place with my bare hands.”

“You’re a good person,” Theo said softly.

She could feel herself flush, warmed by that down to her toes. She knew it was silly to go through life hoping to get approval or praise and she was good about not expecting it. But after a life spent trying to be as good as she could be to make up for what she knew her dad was—she felt a kind of prickle behind her eyes to be described that way.

“And I like protecting you,” Theo said. “Looking out for you. I don’t like that I have to, but—I think I’d want to do it anyway, necessary or not.”

Usually she was the one who did the protecting.

You can still protect him, a voice seemed to whisper. You might not have a gun and washboard abs, but you know how to deal with family hist

ory. He needs that.

And if it was too early for her to care about what Theo St. Vincent needed, she didn’t care.

I’m falling in love with him. I’m falling—

Asleep.

6

Theo

That morning’s dawn came without dragon weather skies. That was fine with Theo, who watched the sun come up from the half-moon attic window. He’d already gotten everything he wanted.

He’d even gotten out of the brass band of a bed without waking Jillian, which made her the deepest sleeper he’d ever known. Maybe this was the one time she got to be completely selfish, completely self-indulgent.

It certainly felt selfish and self-indulgent of him to look at her like that. She was still naked from their lovemaking, her bare skin a dusky peach against the ivory sheets, her lightly freckled shoulders exposed where the covers had fallen down. The sheet was gossamer thin and clung to her body, highlighting the curves of her hips and belly and hinting at the dark rose of her nipples. He could still remember the taste of her there, so slightly but distinctly different from the taste of her mouth or her skin. Somehow the taste of her nipples and their texture against his lips and tongue had foreshadowed the sweetness between her legs.

She looked like a priceless Pre-Raphaelite painting, all tumbled red hair and rounded arms.

My mate. I found my mate.

Even if he hadn’t been a shifter, he would have known soon enough that they were meant for each other. It wasn’t just her laugh or her unruly hair. It was how she cared about duty and honor, how she dove into hard but necessary work, and how she kept on being kind and selfless despite everything she saw from life. He wanted to spend his day getting to know her. He wanted to spend his life getting to know her.

He checked his phone. He had roughly a hundred “I told you so” texts from Gretchen. The last one said: I had to explain what’s going on to the team. So you just have the harder job now of explaining what’s going on to HER. She’s a smart woman. She’ll know it’s good news.

But was it good news for her? It wasn’t like she didn’t already have enough upheaval going on in her life. Maybe she hadn’t been looking for sudden, destined love.

He knew their connection meant something to her, even if, being human, she couldn’t perceive it immediately. She hadn’t taken him into her bed casually. That had been plain enough in her eyes, which were too expressive to hide tenderness, and just as plain again in her lovemaking, which had been too enthusiastic to deny passion.

Maybe she would be pleased.

Of course she will be pleased, his dragon said. We are her treasure just as she is ours.

No one did smugness quite like a self-satisfied dragon.