Page 38 of Dragon's Forbidden Boss

Gabe disappeared into the darkness as well, leaving them alone with the blinking lights of the detonator and enough explosives to take out a small building. Feeling the sweat beginning to pool between her shoulders, Stephanie reminded herself it was all perfectly harmless until they put in the last code, and then they still had five minutes to get out before it went off. They both knew the ruins like the back of their hands, they’d be out in under two minutes and safely away from the site before the explosion.

Five minutes felt like ten before the radio crackled to life. “I’ve got a solid connection out here,” he said. “We’re a go.”

His words seemed to echo through the cave, then the radio went dead. Cooper looked over at her and nodded. She bracedherself to run when he walked over to the keypad and began to punch in the last code, his hand trembling a little bit. The lights went through the same pattern as before, then the green light came on, the timer activated, and their time was up.

Cooper vaulted up from the steps, grabbed her hand, and turned toward the door to escape, but the doorway was filled with a dark shadow. “And here I’ve been worrying about how to get you two alone,” Sebastian said, stepping farther into the room, a gun in his hand. “Imagine my surprise when I got here and saw you waiting for me, just like a present from the universe.”

“Sebastian, we have to get out of here,” Cooper warned. “We set some explosives to close off the crypt. If we don’t get out of here, we’ll all be dead.”

Sebastian started laughing. “Do you really think I’m that stupid?” he finally asked, waving the gun at them. “That’s the oldest trick in the book, and I’m not falling for it. You’d never blow this place up.”

“He’s not lying to you, we really are blowing it up, look at the wires,” she said, feeling the seconds ticking by too fast. “We only had five minutes to get out, now it’s even less. You’re going to get us all killed.”

Sebastian glared at her, but she stared him down, then his eyes strayed to the steps down to the crypt. They widened when he saw the wires, explosives, and detonator, the seconds slowly ticking away on the display. A look of panic appeared on his face, and he turned to look over his shoulder at the door. The hand holding the gun slowly sank until it was pointing at the floor. Cooper chose that moment to jump on Sebastian, and Stephanie quickly backed away, watching them struggle, not sure how to help.

When the gun came skidding across the floor toward her a few seconds later, she grabbed it and pointed it at the two menstill locked in battle. “Stop or I’ll shoot,” she shouted. “I mean it, I know how to use this thing and I’m a good shot.”

Sebastian threw his hands up in the air and backed away from Cooper, his chest heaving, then glared at her, but Cooper was already reaching for her hand. “We have to get out of here,” he barked. “That thing is going to go off any second.”

They ran from the room, through the house, and out the front door, leaving Sebastian behind, the sound of the detonator ticking and their labored breath filled the silence. They were only halfway to the tunnel when the warning signal replaced the ticking, and they both froze for a second, panic making it hard to think. Cooper was the first one to take a deep breath as he looked around them, then up at the big hole in the ceiling of the cave that still hadn’t been repaired.

“There’s only one way out of here now,” he said, pointing up. “You’re going to have to trust me. I promise I’ll keep you safe.”

She understood what he meant, what he was asking of her. For a minute she was frightened, but then she looked into his eyes. “We have to hurry,” she said, her confidence returning. “I’ll be fine, I promise.”

Cooper nodded, then stepped back, and a second later the huge dragon was filling the small space. She would have liked to have taken a few minutes to study it, but there wasn’t time. When he dropped his head to the ground, she carefully climbed onto his back, then wrapped her arms around his neck and held on as tightly as she could when they shot into the air toward the opening above their heads.

CHAPTER 23

***COOPER***

Cooper pumped his powerful wings as hard as he could, but he knew that they weren’t going to make it out of the cave before the explosives detonated and caught them in the backblast. He knew the moment was on them when the alarm suddenly went silent and braced himself, aimed his head for the opening, hoping that Stephanie wasn’t thrown from his back. There was a delay of only a few seconds between the explosion and the wave of air that propelled them up and out of the cave, hitting with so much force it took his breath away for a second.

Before he could recover, they were plummeting toward the trees, the air rushing past him as they fell. Stephanie screamed from his back, and he flailed in the air trying to recover his balance, but it was too late; they hit the first branch with a sharp crack, then another and another as they crashed to the ground. On the way down, he managed to wrap his wings around Stephanie, cradling her to his chest, but each branch that bashed into the back of his head left him a little woozier.

He was barely conscious when he felt the cold ground beneath his back, but Stephanie was safe and sound, still cradled in his wings like a baby bird. Relief poured through him as theworld began to go dark, and he welcomed the break from the pain that was slowly creeping through him. The reprieve was short-lived, however, as he woke only a few minutes later to Stephanie crying over him, her face buried in the feathers of his chest.

“You can’t leave me, I love you too much, I can’t live without you, you’re everything to me,” she sobbed. “You promised me that we’d be together, you promised, you promised…”

It took a few more minutes for the worst of his wounds to heal, then he shut down his magic and slipped into his human form, gasping when the pain doubled. “I love you, too,” he managed to croak. “I always keep my promises.”

Stephanie stopped sobbing and sat up, tears streaming down her face. She looked down at him, then began to cry again. “I thought you were dead, I thought I’d lost you,” she said, but this time there was a smile on her face. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again. I can’t live without you. I love you so much. I just didn’t understand how much until now.”

“Then we’re even because you’re my entire world, Stephanie, and you always will be,” he said, grimacing as bone healed and tissue mended itself. “If you’ll give me a few minutes, I’ll show you just how much.”

She laughed, “Cooper, you’re hurt,” she said, shaking her head. “How can you think about that right now?”

“Sweetheart, I’ll be dead before I stop thinking about it,” he said, grinning at her. “Now help me up, we need to get out of here before someone comes, and then we’re going to talk about our future. I love you, Stephanie, and I can’t wait to begin our lives together.”

“I love you too,” she said, giving him a big kiss, then helping him to his feet. “You’re the greatest treasure I’ve ever found.”

They walked away from the site with Cooper leaning heavily on Stephanie. Gabe was waiting for them in the parking lot, andthey sped away, no one aware of what had happened inside the cave. No one, that is, but Sebastian, who was pacing restlessly around the crypt, circling back to the blocked stairs and his escape every few minutes. He refused to admit defeat, refused to acknowledge that one of the Sigmas had beaten him again; he’d find a way out or die trying, and when he finally emerged from his prison, he would get his revenge.

EPILOGUE

Malcolm jogged behind Walker toward the parking lot, the heavy backpack banging against a sensitive spot on his back, and he paused for just a second to rearrange it. When he looked up again, Walker was almost to the car they’d left parked on the very edge of the lot, and he cursed under his breath at his much more athletic friend. They were supposed to start together, but as usual, Walker was only aware of himself. Taking a deep breath, he gathered the last of his strength and started to sprint through the lot, but instead, he crashed into something soft and warm.

He instantly recognized the gasp to be female and threw his arms around her to keep them both from falling, but the weight of the backpack dragged them down anyway. They landed in the snow in a heap of arms and legs, the breath knocked out of them, Malcolm on top of the woman, staring down into her hazel eyes. A wave of attraction gave him a zap as he lay there and slowly became aware of the way she felt underneath him. Then another wave hit, making the creature inside him come to life.

Shocked by the onslaught of feelings, he quickly untangled himself and jumped to his feet, then held out his hand. “I’m sosorry, I didn’t mean to run into you,” he said. “Let me help you up.”

The woman, looking just as dazed as he felt, put her hand in his, and for a second, it felt like he’d been burned, but the heat quickly spread through the rest of his body. “You just came out of nowhere,” the woman mumbled, brushing the snow off her coat. “I didn’t see you. What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?”

It suddenly hit him that the woman was in one of his classes. “I hope you’re okay, but I have to go,” he said, desperate to get away. “Just pretend you didn’t see me.”