Page 41 of Red Dragon’s Heart

“Which is pretty much all of them.”

“I know that now.”

He didn’t look at her. “Good for you. So when are you going to fix me?”

“As soon as I can.”

She didn’t know what she’d expected him to say to that, but she got nothing. Fine, then.

She picked up her sandwich plate and Coke and walked off. So much for making any kind of a connection with him.

But she could feel that hot gaze on her as she walked away to the lab.

Zakerek sat on the couch, staring down at his empty sandwich plate. He’d told himself he had the upper hand, but all she had to do was make him a sandwich and sit next to him for like three minutes, and now the game on TV had somehow turned into lacrosse and there was nothing on his plate but crumbs, and he hadn’t noticed any of that happening.

Madeleine Fox was a dangerous woman.

He kept trying to pretend he didn’t remember any part of what had happened between them last night, but the truth was he couldn’t forget it.

How she looked naked, the sounds she made when he made love to her, her hands and lips and hot welcoming core.

Her heat and her passion, her softness and surrender.

She was much more beautiful now than she had been in her ID picture. He liked that she was curvy and soft. He liked the earrings and the tattoo.

And her lips were still wildly kissable.

Want mate, rasped the monster.

She’s not your mate, for fuck’s sake.

But… that would make sense of the feelings, right? Maybe they weren’t his feelings at all—he was too smart to get the feels for a human woman. They were the monster’s feelings, and they’d go away when the monster was gone. After Maddie fixed him.

That would be much better, because he was not enjoying having feels. Zakerek of the Al-Maddeiri Clan didn’t feel things. He hated everything and annoyed everyone.

Because you couldn’t let your guard down. As soon as you did, as soon as you cared about things, they died or turned on you or were taken away.

Princess Diana dragged the felt mouse up over his leg and dropped it in his lap. Then she butted her little head against his arm.

“You either,” Zak said to her. He picked her up and held her so he could look in her furry face. “Don’t try to make me like you. I refuse. You’ll just rip a hole in my heart and run away laughing. And so will she.”

The kitten snuggled into his palm and purred.

Fuck.

There was no way he could let Maddie and her damn kittens make him all protective. Or full of wild desire. Or…

Love, said a tiny voice inside him.

Definitely not that. Love made you small and squishy and vulnerable, like one of those clams who lived for five hundred and seven years with its armor on, but wouldn’t last ten minutes out of its shell.

There were lessons to be learned from clams.

Chapter 19

Maddie lost track of time, as she so often did when she was in the lab, working on a thorny problem. Unfortunately, the thorniest part of this one was where to start.

Obviously, Eric had assigned another scientist to mess around with one of the compounds she’d come up with, and alter it to somehow create the monster Zak now carried around inside him.