Iszak (The Dragon's Mate Book 2), page 10
Lyssa sighed and gave her head a shake. “Look, I understand that as a member of his family, you must be worried. It’s obvious that he didn’t tell you about the break up, so he must not have told you that I had a restraining order against him for stalking and harassment. Your brother broke into my home, destroyed my things and harassed me for months. It got to the point where I was afraid to leave my house. You can’t know how relieved I was when the police finally arrested him.”
None of this was a surprise to Julia, because Lyssa might not realize it but she was not the first woman that Kevin had done this to. Unfortunately for her, none of his other girlfriends had the courage to stand up to him. The reason he’d done this to Lyssa was because he believe that he could get away with it. Apparently Lyssa had proved him wrong.
“Good for you for standing up to him. You’re the first woman who has.” A look of surprise crossed Lyssa’s face, as if this was not what she was expecting to hear. “I’m well aware of what kind of man my brother is. I haven’t spoken to him in years, and like I said, my father wants me to find him. If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t be here bugging you. I just have another question and I’ll leave you to get on with your day.”
Lyssa pulled back the sleeve of her coat and looked at her watch. It was an elegant piece of jewelry and had small diamonds surrounding the face. There was a large diamond ring on her finger, and it flashed in the sunlight. By all appearances it looked like Lyssa had moved on from her trouble with Kevin.
“You’ll have to make it quick. I have to be at work.”
“When was the last time you saw him?” Knowing her brother and her father the way she did, she was certain that Kevin would have called Gerard to help him get out of the mess he was in. If he was still in jail, her father would not have sent her here.
A closed look descended on Lyssa’s face and her eyes shifted away. Julia watched her carefully and it struck her that this woman was about to lie to her. “I don’t remember. He broke into my house and the cops arrested him. I saw him sometime before that. He would have to have been stupid to come after me after he was arrested, because his bail would have been revoked immediately and he would have landed himself back in jail. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get to work.”
“Just one more thing. Do you have a key to his apartment? I’m hoping that I can find some clue into where he has gone, but unfortunately I can’t get in to his place.”
“I”m sorry, but I don’t. I’m sure you’ll understand why I would not want to keep anything of his. Like I said, I need to get to work.”
Julia took a step back and Lyssa opened her car door and got inside. She didn’t bother to look at Julia when she turned on the car, arranged herself behind the wheel and backed out of the driveway. The tail end of the car skidded slightly when she sped away and Julia’s eyes narrowed. Something strange was going on here.
Lyssa was lying about something, but why? Julia was positive that Kevin was harassing her, and the Kevin she knew would not have been able to resist coming back to see Lyssa when he got out on bail. So why would she lie and say that she hadn’t seen him since before he was arrested?
Julia shook her head and walked back to her car. She unlocked it and opened the door, and as she did the hair stood up on the back of her neck. She gave a quick glance around but there was no one in the quiet neighborhood. With a shake of her head she got in the car and locked her doors for good measure. She pulled her phone out of her purse. Her father hadn’t shared all the information with her and she wanted to know why. She was certain that if Kevin had gotten bail, the only way he could have done it would be if her father paid it for him.
Why didn’t you tell me Kevin had been arrested and sent to jail? I assume you bailed him out?
She sat as stared at her phone while she waited for him to reply.
Didn’t seem relevant.
“Yeah right, Dad.” With a sigh of disgust she threw her phone on the seat beside her and turned on the engine. Her father might not want to face it, but she had her doubts now that Kevin was legitimately missing. More than likely her irresponsible, crazy brother had skipped bail. The reason her father hadn’t told her that he'd been to jail and was out on bail was because there was no way that she would have gone on this stupid hunt if she knew.
She put the car in drive and pulled away from the tidy little house. Something wasn’t adding up. She was sure Lyssa was lying about something, but she didn’t know what. The Kevin she knew would not have been able to resist coming back here once he’d gotten out of jail. She didn’t know why Lyssa would find it necessary to lie to her, but she definitely knew more about Kevin’s disappearance than she let on. Was it worth pursuing or should she leave it alone?
Iszak raced to the door when there was a knock on it, and relief poured through him when he opened it to see Julia on the other side.
“Thank God you were home. It was only after I left that I realized I didn’t have a way to get back in here since I don’t have a key.” Julia walked past him, bringing the unique scent of her shampoo and cold air with her. He closed the door and she turned to him with a smile on her face. There was a warmth in it, and his heart rate slowed to a normal pace. She must have not heard anything that would raise her suspicions of him if she was looking at him like that.
“I have an extra key on the hook by the door you can use. You forgot to say goodbye.” He couldn’t hold himself back from her and he pulled her to him, bringing his mouth down on top of hers. She gave a happy sigh and put her arms around his neck. He kissed her deeply and thoroughly until he was satisfied for the moment.
She shrugged out of her coat and hung it next to his on the hook by the door. “Sorry for leaving you while you were sleeping. We had a long night last night and I wanted to get started on my search for Kevin.”
The smile dropped off her face, and he wondered what was the matter.
“Julia, what is it?”
“I called my boss, to see if I could get a few extra days off, and it turns out they are short staffed. He told me that if I don’t go back when I’m supposed to, I’ll be out of a job.” She bit her lip, and he could see the indecision on her face. He walked over to her and took her hands.
“How much more time do you have?”
“Two days.”
Two days? That wasn’t nearly enough time. He knew she should be happy that she would be forced to abandon her search for Kevin after such a short period of time. It played into his need to protect his brother, but surprisingly, he didn’t like the idea of her leaving so soon. He’d only just had a taste of what being intimate with her was like, and it only fed his appetite. Two days didn’t seem nearly long enough to sate him completely.
“Do you think you will be able to find him by then?”
“Honestly I don’t know. I have a feeling I know what happened, what seems the most likely but I’m not one hundred percent sure.” She took Iszak’s hand and walked into the living room. They sat on the sofa together, and she leaned her head against his shoulder, and he put his arm around her. “I talk to Kevin’s girlfriend, well, ex girlfriend as it turns out. She told me that Kevin was stalking her.”
So she had spoken to Lyssa. Iszak schooled his features so that he would look like he knew about none of this. Fortunately, with her head resting against him, she couldn’t see his face. “Does that seem like something your brother would do?”
He knew, of course, that her brother was capable of a lot more than stalking, but he wondered how well she knew her sibling.
“It’s something Kevin would do. It’s not the first time he’s done it. My brother is way too possessive and obsessive to make a good boyfriend for any woman. His ex, Lyssa, said that he went to jail and that she hasn’t seen him since. I’m sure my father bailed him out and in all likelihood he skipped town.”
There was a thread of doubt in her voice. It would be so much easier if she believed wholeheartedly that Kevin had left town after getting bail. It would eliminate the need for him to protect his brother, and he could focus all his attention on getting to know her because he wanted to spend time with her and not because he wanted to keep tabs on her investigation.
“Why do you sound doubtful?”
“There was something off about my conversation with her. I’m sure she was telling the truth about the stalking and about him going to jail, but I couldn't help but feel she was lying about not seeing him again after he was arrested.”
Iszak closed his eyes for a second. He needed to push her thoughts away from that direction, otherwise she’d start digging further into Lyssa’s involvement with her brother and that could spell disaster for Andor.
He reached for her, using his fingers to tilt her head up to look at him. Her eyes were deep and blue, and he lowered his head toward her. He kissed her softly on the lips, hoping that it would be enough, at least for a little while, to distract her mind away from thoughts of her brother.
She sighed against his lips and melted into him. She cupped her hand against his cheek, and he pulled his mouth away from hers.
“What was that for?” She ran her thumb over his lower lip, and he sucked the tip into his mouth. Her eyes flared to life.
“We won’t have much time together if you have to be back home in two days. Don’t you want to spend it doing something other than stewing over Kevin?”
“About that.” She bit her bottom lip for a second, as if she wanted to ask him something and wasn’t sure of his answer. “I was thinking that, maybe, I might want to try to find a job here. I know that we haven’t known each other for long, but I would like to have more time to get to know you. I’m sure I could find a waitressing job easily enough. I’d find my own place to live too. I wanted to know what you thought about maybe pursuing whatever this is between us and see if it will become something more than a short term fling.”
Hope rose inside him at her words, and he tamped it down. He wanted nothing more than to explore what Julia made him feel, but he had to be careful. He couldn’t forget what he was, and what her reaction to learning the truth about him might be. He must have hesitated too long, because the hopeful look on her face fell away and she shifted away from him.
“It was a silly idea. Forget I said anything.”
This was the last thing he wanted, to push her away when he was feeling so close to her.
“Look at me.” She glanced up at him and he pulled her onto his lap so that her legs were on either side of him, straddling him. He rubbed his hands up and down her thighs. “I want you to be sure this is something you want. Packing up and moving is a big step and I want to make sure it’s not something you’ll regret.”
“If you’re worried that I’m going to hold you responsible if things don’t work out, don’t be. I live in Lowell Falls because it is close to my father and my sister lives there. I hardly see Diana anymore and she’s been making noises lately about making a change. And I think I need to get away from my dad. This whole thing with Kevin has been a real eye opener for me. He expects that I’ll drop everything and be at his beck and call. I don’t have steady work because he requires me to be flexible. He needs to learn that he can’t expect me to put my life on hold for him. He's my father and I love him, but I need my own life too. Anyway, it’s just an idea. We don’t have to decide anything right now.”
She put her hands behind his head, and shifted closer to him. He put his arms around her, and she kissed him. She cuddled her pelvis close against him and the desire for her that was ever present flared to life. He deepened the kiss and held her tighter. God, he couldn’t get enough of her. No matter how many time he kissed her, touched her or made love to her, it was not enough. She created a hunger in him that he didn’t think would ever be fully satisfied, and that scared him. The more time he spent with her, the more certain he became that she was the one he was meant to be with. But how could he get a woman who’d been trained from birth to hate dragons to fall in love with him?
Her lips trailed across his stubble covered cheek and made their way over to his ear. Once she started nibbling on it, all thoughts of anything but being inside her were pushed out of his mind. He’d worry about tomorrow later, right now he wanted to be as close to her as possible. If he was going to take the chance of trusting her enough to reveal his nature, there was no guarantee that she would accept him. He was going to try to get his fill of her before then, just in case he ended up mateless by the full moon in January.
She ground against him. He gritted his teeth, trying to summon some kind of patience to make this encounter last longer than a few seconds. She felt so good, and now he knew how much pleasure there was to be had inside her body. It raised his level of excitement ten fold, and maybe that was why it took so long for him to notice the pounding on his door. It was Julia who noticed first and she pulled away from him.
He tightened his arms around her, and he waited, hoping that whoever was making that racket would go away.
“You’d better answer it. I don’t think they are going to stop.” She slid off his lap and straightened her sweater.
Whoever was at the door better make it quick because otherwise he was going to have to kill them. He strode to the door, unlocked the deadbolt and yanked it open, scowling at whoever dared interrupt him and the woman he was starting think to of as his.
“We need to talk. You need to start giving me some answers.” Andor stood on the other side of the door, and thankfully he was alone. If he’d had Lyssa with him, then the fire that Iszak was playing with would have exploded into an inferno once Julia put two and two together.
Iszak took a step back and as his brother walked by him, he prayed that his brother would not say anything that would incriminate them while Julia was still in the apartment. Fortunately, she wasn't exactly hiding and Iszak knew the moment that Andor spotted her. His eyebrows climbed to his forehead and he looked at Iszak with speculation on his face.
“Andor, I’d like you to meet Julia Robillard. Julia this is my brother, Andor.”
“It’s nice to meet you.” She came forward and held out her hand. Andor took it quickly, shook it and dropped it just as fast. If his brother recognized her family name, his face did not give it away.
“Likewise.”
Any hope that Andor would leave and come back another time was dashed when his brother gave him a hard look. It was apparent that Andor wasn’t going anywhere, but to give her credit, Julia appeared to understand that he needed to speak with his brother in private.
“I think I’m going to go out for a walk. I’ll see you later.” She walked toward the door and shrugged on her winter coat and pulled on her boots. She glanced over at his brother with a polite smile on her face. “It was nice meeting you, Andor.”
His brother said nothing, and she took the spare key off the hook. She opened the door and closed it behind her. As soon as she did, his brother turned to him with fire in his eyes.
“Are you out of your mind? How can you even think about bringing her here?” Andor exploded as he grabbed Iszak by the front of his shirt, his voice a low growl. Iszak stood straighter as he shook off his brother’s hold. He knew this was coming as soon as Andor heard Julia’s last name.
10
Julia hugged her coat closer to her as she thought about where she should go to give Iszak the privacy he needed to speak with his brother. Something was going on between them, and she wondered if it had something to do with her. She’d seen shock in Andor’s eyes for a brief second when she’d introduced herself, but as far as she knew, they didn’t know each other.
And maybe she was imagining things. Not everything revolved around her, and she was all too familiar with family drama. There might be something going on between Iszak and his brother that had festered for years. Her own relationship with Kevin proved that just because you were siblings with someone, it didn’t mean that you had to like or respect them.
She walked down the street, and saw a coffee shop in the middle of the block. She’d go there, have a hot drink, which would give Iszak time to speak privately with his brother. It would also give her time to sort out what she thought had happened to Kevin.
It was warm inside the cafe and there were only a few people inside. She ordered an overpriced cup of coffee, and sat at one of the tables in the corner, facing the door and undid her coat. Knowing what she did about Kevin and his lack of personal responsibility, in all likelihood he’d left town and skipped bail. It wouldn’t matter to him that his father would lose the money he’d posted, and whatever else he’d put up as collateral for Kevin’s guaranteed court appearance. Kevin was selfish, had always been so and it was as much their father’s fault as it was his.
Kevin could do no wrong in their father’s eyes, and it would never occur to Gerard that his precious son would screw him over for the bail money he’d posted. No, Gerard would believe that something more sinister was going on, that Kevin had gotten tangled up with dragons and they were responsible for his disappearance. It had to have occurred to her father that her brother wasn’t missing at all, that he’d deliberately left town without letting anyone know. It was why Gerard hadn’t told her that Kevin was out on bail in the first place, because she would have refused to come her looking for him if she’d known.
Julia took a sip of her coffee, watching the door out of habit. A large man with a mean face and a shaved head walked in, and he looked out of place in this upscale coffee shop. He looked at her, and quickly looked away as he stepped up to the counter. With a shake of her head, she turned her attention back to her coffee and her own business. Some random dude who looked more at home in a biker bar was not her problem right now.
