Speaker 1: Dragon called a slow burned, sexy paranormal romance written by
Carl Lockhart and Cassie Alexander, read for you by Victoria
may Hi. This is Cassie Alexander, and welcome to chapter four.
Sleep did not restore Andy as a night shift nurse.
She considered herself a connoisseur of sleep, a sleep soainmoier.
She knew precisely the right drugs to take, the right
temperature to keep her room, the right weight of blinds
and blindfolds, all the better to help her rest. But
for the past week, everything in her dreams had been
betraying her. She kept running down long hallways, chased by
something she couldn't understand, and that was about enough. But
worse than that, she was painfully alone in her dreams.
There was no one coming to save her, only more
nightmares hunting her down. She got a glimpse of the
thing chasing her once. It looked like a skinless dog,
all glistening muscles and white bone. It was huge, like
Damien's wolf friends had been, only her skinless dream one
seemed endlessly cruel. Her dream self was smart enough to
realize that there was no true way she could ever
outrun it, that it had to be just fucking with her,
but it wouldn't stop, and she was still too scared
to turn around. She woke up before her alarm at
six pm, gasping for air. All of her penguin covered
cotton sheets kicked to the floor. It this wasn't like her.
She sat up in bed, panting like she'd run a marathon.
What the hell is wrong? Andy looked at herself in
the narrow, full length mirror balanced against her wall. All
the bruises from her wild night with Damien had faded,
which was good. She did not want to blame anything
remotely like that to her uncle. But there was still
the slightly darker welt beneath her left breast from where
a monster's unearthly blood had burned her, and she thought
that a might scar between that and the bruises she
had on the inside. She shook her head. It wasn't
every day you were almost killed repeatedly, witnessed the utter
destruction and then magical renewal of your workplace, and had
the best sex of your life before having to dump
the dragon responsible for it all before he could dump
you again. What it was was whiplash. And maybe all
of her crazy dreams were like an emotional concussion. She
got out of bed and stumbled into the bathroom. Maybe
she should try to take some time off and be
nicer to herself. After all, as a nurse, she could
make a very convincing sick call, and then she could
try and relax and eat too much ice cream watching
Netflix with Sammy. But she was too used to working nights,
and Sammy had a day the garage, which meant that
come three am, she'd be alone again, just like she
was every day or night rather and just like she
was in her dreams. Andy frowned and turned the shower on.
Andy talked herself through the rest of her mourning and
everyone else's evening time, until she emerged from her room
looking like someone who you might entrust with your loved
ones well being on a night shift, as long as
you didn't know that they thought that dragons were real
because they'd seen one hot date. Sammy teased from her
position on the couch. Her red curls were spraying every
which way, and she was kicked back with a bag
of chips. Watching yet another true crime documentary. Andy'd had
to tell her some of what had happened to her
last week, minus the monsters and bloodshed Samy had been
faintly horrified that they'd had sex inside of a Pegani,
and when she'd told Andy how expensive a car it was,
Andy'd been horrified too. And while Sammy didn't understand exactly
why Andy wouldn't keep seeing a billionaire who drove one
more enthused about the car than the man, of course,
she was always team Andy, no matter what what, no,
oh no. Andy spread her hands down the relatively nice
blouse she'd put on for dinner tonight. It wasn't the
dress her uncle had sent her to wear, but that
dress had gone home in Damien's car, which was just
as well. She was absolutely sure there'd be no saving
the silk after everything they'd done. Just my uncle, as
she said it. The door to the apartment rang, and
her stomach fluttered. Sammy bounced for the door before she
could move, frozen to the spot, and she was both
relieved and disappointed to see the man in a driver's
livery standing outside. Definitely not anyone else who might want
to take her somewhere in a fancy car. She followed
the much shorter, much rounder, and very much more human
man downstairs, and let him open the door up to
his car for her before sliding inside. It felt strange
to be driven somewhere again without an app involved. She
was sure her uncle's current accommodations would be nice. She'd
never known him to scrimp on himself, but she couldn't
help but feel the same hackles rise as she'd felt
being driven by Damien. Who got to live like this?
Who just sent people cars and dresses? And why? She
wanted to believe that her uncle was motivated by love
and Lord knew he'd supported her and Danny enough in
all sorts of ways through her childhood, but he was
like a bad cat. He never came when you called him,
so Andy had gotten used to not calling, but thinking
of calls. Her phone beaped. She pulled it out as
the driver swept onto the highway, and she saw Damien's
last name flash on the screen. Her traitor's heart skipped
a beat, and she thought about asking the driver to
go somewhere else, entirely to a castle where a dragon lived.
When she opened her phone and the message came through,
I need my coat back, Andy blinked, Of course, he'd
just messaged her a demand, not even a hey, or
how's it going? Or a yo. Damien could buy a
hundred million coats if he wanted them, so why on
earth would he need the specific one he'd given her,
and that she'd then bartered to Julian. She frowned at
the phone as her stomach churned. She had the familiar
feeling that she'd done something wrong, but because she couldn't
put her finger on precisely what it had been, she
swallowed her anxiety down and concentrated on being pissed at Damien.
Warm enough, Miss, the driver asked, looking back in the
rear view mirror, smiling at her with a gap toothed grin.
Andy sank back into the car, gripping onto the phone.
Yeah thanks, I'm fine, she said. She turned the phone
over and stared at his message. He didn't deserve a response,
but she was going to give him one back a
single word. No. Andy frowned deeply at the phone. Why
was every man in her life an asshole? She was
smart enough to know about lowest common denominators, but she'd
never gotten to pick her relatives, so that part, at
least wasn't her fault. But Damien had been a mistake,
Such a mistake, and his rude text to her only
proved it. Andy bit her lips and looked outside. He'd
looked so so anguished when she'd left him, like she
was truly hurting him a dragon, And she'd spent this
intervening week feeling bad about that, because if there was
something going on in her life that she possibly could
feel bad about, her subconscious was on it, going after
her with an internal microphone shouting. Remember that time when
at the least opportune moments. Now though after his text,
Andy glanced down at her phone again, why had she
even bothered? He clearly hadn't been worried about her in
the least