“How?” she asked.
“Followed your trail,” I answered.
“The same one that you followed of that murderer?” she asked softly.
“Yep,” I answered, reaching for the eggs.
By the time I got the bacon out of the frying pan, and all the eggs cooked, she was sitting at the bar.
“Your shirt is off,” she observed.
I looked down at my chest, and then up at her face.
“Would you look at that,” I said with as straight of a face as I could manage. “It is gone. Wow.”
She sighed.
“I don’t know what I did. But I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re not going to hurt me.”
It was a statement, not a question.
I didn’t bother to reply.
She sniffled, and I looked up sharply.
And to my horror, I saw the first tear slip down one cheek.
Another tear soon followed.
“You’re crying?” I asked in outrage.
I didn’t handle tears well.
There was something about them that had the power to undo me.
“You can ignore me,” she said. “It’s just hormones.”
“Hormones?” I asked.
“You know…hormones. It’s that time of the month. It just happens,” she said flippantly.
“So there’s no reason for the tears…you’re just doing it,” I observed.
She nodded.
“It happens. A lot. Sometimes I cry because I need to, like after I’ve seen a sad video on YouTube. Or sometimes I hear a song that I really like, and the beauty of it moves me to tears,” she explained.
“So you’re crying now, not because anything’s amiss, but because you’re a girl,” I said. “Do I have that correct?”
She shrugged, causing me to sigh.
“That means nothing to me. If you’re going to speak girl, you’re going to have to give me a cheat guide or something. I never had a single female in my life, besides my sister, and that was a very long time ago,” I told her.
She glared at me, the tears gone.
“You’re not very nice,” she observed.
I knew that.
I couldn’t help it, either.
“I was raised in an orphanage,” I said. “I have absolutely no tact. If you want hearts and flowers, you’re going to have trouble getting that from me.”
“Who says that I want that from you?” she challenged. “I’ve only known you for a very short period of time. Not even long enough to form a valid opinion of you or your character.”
I sighed.
“Did you look in a mirror yet?” I asked her.
She stiffened and squirmed.
“No,” she lied.
My brows rose.
“You didn’t?” I asked. “Not even a little bit?”
She was cute when she lied.
Her nose had a small upturn to it, meaning I knew exactly when she started to lie because a little crease would appear on the bridge of her nose as she concentrated on what to say.
“Fine,” she snarled. “What’d you do to me?”
I laughed.
“I have no fucking clue,” I said honestly. “Magic, I guess.”
She pursed her lips in disgust.
“Seriously?” she asked. “That’s all you’ve got? Magic?”
I shrugged.
“I don’t know what else to call it,” I told her.
“Prove it,” she challenged.
“I can’t,” I said.
“Of course you would say that. Because, why wouldn’t you?” she wondered. “If I was trying to lie about how you got a tattoo that I put there, I’d lie and say it was magic, too. Although I’d have a backup plan in case you didn’t fall for it.”
I snorted.
“Have you ever heard of dragon riders?” I asked her.
She nodded reluctantly, sliding down onto the ledge and hooking both of her arms through the ladder that led up to the top.
“Of course I have,” she answered once she was situated. “What about them?”
It wasn’t often that I found someone that didn’t know anything about them.
Then again, the majority of the people I came into contact with were the types who wanted to do us harm.
I was what you would call an enforcer.
The person who made sure that the dragon riders, as a whole, didn’t get into trouble in any way.
If something happened, I was dispatched to take care of it.
If there was a breach at the sanctuary, I was the first one to investigate it.
Which was also another reason why I was living on the outskirts of the sanctuary and not actually in the sanctuary.
I wanted to keep my ear to the ground, and I didn’t want to deal with the fucking rules and regulations that were required of me when I was living on Sanctuary land.
Such as watching the younglings.
I wasn’t often in the mood to deal with them. Not because I didn’t like them, per se, but because they made me wish I had those rose-colored glasses on that they did, when it came to this world.
Then there were the women who showed up whenever the fuck they felt like it. Such as Nikolai’s new woman.
She was a constant pain in my ass, and she brought Keifer’s woman along for the ride.
I didn’t like the fact that they paid so much attention to me. It felt wrong, like my heart hurt, and I didn’t want anything to do with that. When the heart became involved, things never worked out right.