Midlife Dragon Daddy (Midlife Shifters Book 10) Read online

  It was stunning. She couldn’t believe this was happening. It was the last thing in the world she could ever have imagined.

  You weren’t going to do this. You’re not going to do this.

  But she was. Heat was rushing through her body. She threaded her fingers through his hair and pulled his head closer to hers so that she could kiss him more deeply. Letting go, backing off, felt impossible.

  He’s going to have to be the one to stop things, if they’re going to stop. Because I’m not going to do it.

  It didn’t seem like he was going to do it either. His hand was running up her thigh now, up under her skirt, resting briefly on her ass before moving upward to adjust the waistband higher. Now she was really exposed, her skirt settled just below her breasts and falling to the top of her hips.

  He trailed his hand back down, hooking his fingers in her panties and tugging them to the floor as he did so.

  Haley couldn’t suppress a gasp of shock and pleasure.

  He groaned into her mouth as he probed her with his fingers. He was so familiar. She knew exactly what that groan meant—that he had found her wet, and it was driving him wild.

  He would have stepped back to look at her. That was the move that came next. They had done this so many times that she could have recited the steps they usually followed together out loud.

  But it didn’t happen.

  He didn’t step back and look at her body.

  Instead, he pushed her right down on the bed and thrust into her so suddenly that Haley couldn’t hold back her cry.

  She hadn’t felt this in years. Someone holding himself over her, moving inside of her, loving her so deeply and physically—

  No. He doesn’t love me. I don’t love him. That’s not what this is.

  She had to cling to that. When she and Ryker had been intimate before, it had always been out of love. She had been sure she’d love him until the day they died. But that love was gone. This was something else.

  It doesn’t matter. I don’t care.

  She didn’t want it to be love, after all. She despised him for what he had done to her. But the feeling of his cock thrusting inside her...she could enjoy that. She deserved to enjoy it! He owed her something like this!

  She wrapped her legs around his back and lifted her hips to him, fucking back against his thrusts, taking him deeper.

  Ryker let out a groan.

  It had never been like this between them before. Always before, Ryker had led the way in their lovemaking. She’d never taken an ounce of control for herself. But now she was. Her anger flared again, and it felt good.

  Yes. Fuck me, you fucker. Give it to me good. I’ve earned it after everything I’ve been through. I should get as much of this as I want.

  His hips stuttered.

  “Don’t you stop,” she growled, digging her heels into his ass.

  But he lifted his body away from hers and glared down at her, and Haley saw with a shock that Ryker was just as enraged as she was. She had thought he had just been overcome with arousal, but no. He was hate-fucking her just as much as she was hate-fucking him.

  God, that shouldn’t make it hotter, but it did.

  His hand closed over her mouth, and she dug her teeth into the meat of his palm. It was an effort to stop herself from biting down hard enough to draw blood, but that wouldn’t have been a good idea. He was still bigger and stronger than she was. And besides, they were both shifters. What they were doing was dangerous. If either of them lost control of their anger, this would end very badly.

  He fucked her harder now, and she heard the change in his breathing that meant he was getting close. She would have recognized it anywhere.

  “Do it,” she hissed. “Do it. I fucking want you to.” Be damned if she was going to let him believe that he was getting the best of her. He was going to be well aware that every bit of this had been on her terms just as much as his, that she had wanted it every bit as much as he had.

  She reached for him and pulled his face to hers so that she could kiss him again. The kiss felt more like a brawl.

  He yelled into her mouth as he came, and Haley shuddered around him and forgot which way was up.

  Ryker collapsed beside her on the bed, and his breathing began to steady.

  Chapter Fourteen

  HALEY

  As Haley’s body began to calm down, the anxiety over what she had just done began to creep in.

  Ryker. I just had sex with Ryker.

  She’d enjoyed it, it was true. But it had been a terrible idea. It was only her second time meeting with him, and she had been so sure that she wasn’t going to let anything like this happen between them.

  She got up and scrambled for her clothes, hasty and immodest. She was aware of Ryker’s eyes on her, but it didn’t matter. He’d seen her naked a hundred times.

  Except that...well, her body wasn’t the same anymore, was it? She’d been barely out of her twenties when she’d left the clan. She was ten years older now. She knew the time showed in the sags and wrinkles of her skin.

  Suddenly feeling humiliated by the whole situation, she tugged her skirt back into place. She grabbed her shirt from the floor and put it on, not even bothering with her bra.

  “Leaving?” Ryker asked.

  He sounded so cool. So calm. He hadn’t been that calm when he had been fucking her. He’d been as caught up in the emotion of it as she was. She knew that.

  Unless she’d misread him somehow.

  No. I couldn’t have misread him. I know Ryker as well as myself.

  But that wasn’t true anymore. Just as everything he knew about her was ten years out of date, he had now lived a quarter of his life without her too. There was plenty she didn’t know about him. Maybe she had misjudged what that sex was about for him.

  Maybe he hadn’t been hate-fucking her at all.

  Why did that make her feel so much worse?

  Because hate is a feeling. It’s big. It’s passionate. My anger toward him is big and passionate. I wanted to believe he felt something in return.

  Maybe she had been deluding herself.

  Maybe he really had just been looking for a quick fuck.

  It didn’t sound like the man she’d been married to. But she wouldn’t have believed that he would throw her out of the clan, either, and he’d done that. Who knew what else he might do?

  “I need to get home,” she said, not looking at him.

  “We have more to talk about,” he pointed out.

  She nodded. “Later.”

  He didn’t try to stop her as she hurried out the door and out of the hotel. She wondered, vaguely, why that was—had he simply gotten what he’d wanted from her? He’d seemed to think it was vital that they resolve the plan today. Now he was willing to let her leave. What had changed?

  She didn’t want to think about it too deeply. She wanted to get away.

  By the time she reached the outside, she was breathing rapidly, trying to calm her body down. Her vision was blurring and her chest was heaving. She knew what was happening—it had happened many times before—and this time, she gave into it.

  Her wings stretched out behind her, unfurling in the setting sun. Her spine lengthened and her hands and feet curled into claws. The shape of her eyes seemed to change as the irises of her eyes grew larger.

  She sighed in relief and beat her wings twice, taking to the air. She circled once, staying low, and then climbed higher, high enough that she might be mistaken for a large bird.

  The one really good thing about Shifter Town was that you could fly over it without worrying. Everyone there was a shifter. Everyone already knew about this other world. But here, over this hotel where Ryker was staying, there were almost certainly humans. She needed to be careful.

  She drifted south, back toward home. Soon enough, the human buildings fell away and were replaced by the shanties that made up Shifter Town. Every one of them looked as if it might fall over in a stiff wind. This place was a disaster.

>   I can’t believe we live here.

  Her feelings about Shifter Town were so strange. So confusing.

  On one hand, she was genuinely proud of the life she had created for herself and her son. She had raised a healthy boy of ten years despite the most adverse circumstances imaginable. When he’d been born, she hadn’t believed she’d be able to do it. She remembered many nights of holding him and crying, believing she was an unfit mother and would never be able to provide him with the kind of life he deserved.

  He did deserve better. But she had taken care of him. She had done more than she’d ever believed she would be able to do.

  Maybe Valerie was right. Maybe I’m making a mistake by working with Ryker. Just look at what happened today. It was a mess. I can’t take the chance of something like that happening again.

  But as she circled over Shifter Town, each circle bringing her closer to the ground and to a landing, she knew that she would be going back. This wasn’t over. She was going to see this job through.

  This place just wasn’t good enough for her family. It wasn’t safe for them. And if she had the opportunity to provide them with something better, she was going to take it, no matter what.

  It would probably mean eating humble pie when she went back to Ryker. She was going to have to agree to do things his way—no more fighting, no more dredging up the past. Because today’s argument had led directly into sex. And that definitely couldn’t be allowed to happen again.

  She touched down outside her shack and went inside, feeling worn out and confused.

  The place was empty. Danny would be with Valerie. She was glad for the opportunity to relax. She lay down on her bed and closed her eyes, trying not to imagine how it had felt to have Ryker’s body on top of hers.

  Chapter Fifteen

  HALEY

  I have to make things right between the two of us, Haley told herself firmly.

  She had dressed very carefully and deliberately today. It would be a mistake to go back over to Ryker’s hotel wearing the kinds of clothes she’d been wearing yesterday. She needed an outfit that wasn’t so accessible. If she had had time to think yesterday, she might have summoned the willpower to put a stop to things.

  So today, she was wearing the most complicated, difficult clothes she owned. Fitted blue jeans with no stretch at all, difficult to unbutton and even more difficult to slide a hand down. A bulky sweater that was tight around the neck, so it would be difficult to peel over her head. And beneath that, a sports bra. It would take some serious work on both their parts to get her naked. She wouldn’t be able to lose her head and fall into sex with him the way she had before.

  Still, she paused outside his hotel room door and took a couple of deep breaths, making sure she had her wits about her. Then she raised a hand and knocked firmly.

  There was a shuffling sound inside, and Haley’s pulse accelerated.

  The door opened.

  Ryker stood in his boxers and nothing else, his hair rumpled and his eyes bleary, in spite of the fact that it was almost noon. He had just woken up, and Haley was willing to bet that he was a little hungover. She’d certainly seen him in that state often enough to recognize it.

  He squinted at her. “Haley,” he said. “Didn’t expect to see you back here so soon, I gotta say. You didn’t get enough yesterday?”

  “Can you just...can we not be shitty to each other for a couple of minutes?” Haley asked. “I want to talk to you. For real.”

  He searched her face and evidently came to the conclusion that she was being serious. “Yeah, okay,” he said, stepping back to let her in. “Let me put something on.”

  Haley took a seat at the same table she’d been sitting at yesterday and looked pointedly away, out the window, as Ryker dressed himself. It was weird to be averting her eyes from him less than twenty-four hours after sleeping with him, but she was worried about the reaction she might have if her gaze lingered on his naked form. She didn’t want to allow herself to get sucked in.

  Clad in loose-fitting jeans that were so faded, Haley thought he might have owned them since they’d been married, and a worn t-shirt, Ryker came over and joined her at the table.

  ”What’s up?” he asked. “You took off pretty quickly yesterday. Were you upset with me?”

  “No,” she said. “Not with you. What happened—it was both of us. I could have stopped things at any time if I’d wanted to. But I didn’t.”

  He nodded. “I’m not sure what happened,” he said. “I didn’t mean for things to go that far between us. I took you seriously when you told me you’d only take this job on the condition that we wouldn’t get back together.”

  “Okay,” she said. “That’s good to know.”

  “Maybe it’s for the best if we don’t work together after all,” Ryker said. “I can find someone else, I’m sure—”

  “No, hold on,” Haley interrupted. “That’s not what I want.”

  “It’s not?” He frowned. “I kind of assumed you’d come here to call things off.”

  “No,” she said. “I came to apologize for yesterday. For running out on you the way I did. It was foolish of me. I should have stayed to talk about our plans for the coming months.”

  “Yeah, well, you made it pretty clear what you think of my plans,” Ryker said.

  “I wanted to apologize for that, too,” Haley said.

  Ryker raised his eyebrows. “Oh, yeah?”

  “This is a job,” Haley said. “I’m getting paid to do it. That means I agree to go along with whatever your terms are, even if they’re not particularly fun for me. And I knew this wasn’t going to be enjoyable for me when I agreed to do it, so there’s no sense in my giving you a hard time about it now. Better to just lock down the details.”

  “That’s how you really feel?” Ryker asked.

  Haley nodded. “And I promise you won’t hear any more complaining from me,” she said. “You tell me what to do and I’ll do it, from this moment on.”

  Immediately, she wanted to bite her tongue. Couldn’t she have found a less suggestive way to say that? She could see the sparkle in Ryker’s eyes that indicated he’d registered the double entendre and that he wanted to make a joke at her expense—

  But the joke didn’t come. Maybe he had decided to hold back. For whatever reason, he said nothing about it.

  “All right,” he said. “We’ll stick with it, then. You’ll be all right with everything I brought up yesterday?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Pretending to be pregnant?”

  “That’s fine.”

  “And living around the rest of the clan? You won’t mind it?”

  “I will mind it,” she said. “But what I’m saying is that I’ll do it. It’s worth it for the money.”

  “Okay,” Ryker said. “As long as you’re sure. I don’t want us to keep having this argument.”

  You don’t want us to keep having sex, she thought, but she didn’t say it aloud. After all, she didn’t want that either.

  “The payment?” she said.

  “Right,” he said. “Can I write you a check?”

  “I don’t have a bank.”

  “Well, I haven’t got it in cash.”

  She waited.

  He looked resigned. “I can get it,” he said. “Do you want to wait here?”

  “That’ll be great,” she said. “And once I’ve got the money in hand, we’ll be in business. I’ll be on call whenever you need me.”

  “I’ll need about a week to make the final arrangements,” he said. “But then it’ll be time to go.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  RYKER

  “This is not going to work,” Barty said.

  The two men were sitting on the porch outside Ryker’s house, beers in hand, staring out at the setting sun. Ryker had come back to prepare the house for Haley to move in—he was sure she was going to want a room of her own, and he was equally sure that it would be vital to keep up the pretense that they were sharing a
bed, so he’d purchased a pull-out sofa and converted one of his spare rooms into a guest room for her. They could tidy it up in the day, and no one would ever be the wiser.

  Barty was the only one who knew that the story Ryker would be telling upon Haley’s return was a lie. Ryker had hoped that Barty would get on board with the idea, but so far, he didn’t seem to have done so. He still had his doubts.

  I guess I can’t blame him. This is going to be really complicated.

  “It’ll work,” he told Barty. Someone had to keep confident around here. As alpha by birthright, confidence had always come a bit more easily to Ryker than it seemed to come to others—although, he thought, Haley certainly seemed to have a lot of confidence these days.

  “How can you be so sure of that?” Barty said. “Once you say she’s pregnant, you’re on an incredibly tight timeline. If we haven’t overthrown Shane within about three months, it’s going to start to be really obvious that she’s not pregnant at all. And if Shane realizes you lied to try to assume power, things are really not going to go well for you. He’ll definitely exile you. He might try to kill you.”

  “I don’t think he can kill me,” Ryker said.

  “He can try,” Barty said. “And you know he won’t play fair. He’ll get his goons to gang up on you. If it’s four or five of them against just you—”

  “You’d fight with me, wouldn’t you?” Ryker asked.

  “I mean, sure,” Barty said. “But still, that’s only two of us.”

  “If it came to a fight, I think more people might be on my side,” Ryker said. “There are a lot of people who are chafing under Shane. Members of the clan have watched him smacking their sisters and their daughters around for a long time now. Except for his close followers, no one really wants Shane leading us.”

  “You can’t count on that,” Barty said. “And anyway, a clan isn’t a democracy. It’s not just about who people think should be in charge. The alpha role isn’t something to take lightly, and that’s important to the members of this clan too. They’re not going to just depose Shane because they don’t like him. They have to believe he’s being replaced legitimately.”