Free Breath of Love by Ophelia Bell Page A

his attention shifted entirely and she was in his arms before either could speak. The desperate kiss he gave her took her breath away, leaving her dazed and her heart pounding harder than it had a moment earlier.
    “Are you alright?” he asked. “Did he hurt you?”
    Hallie shook her head, “Not really, no. What are you going to do with him?”
    “Geva and I were just debating it, but the little shit won’t shut up.”
    Hallie would have hardly referred to David as “little” but next to the two dragons, he definitely didn’t measure up. The bastard had always been a talker, though, and didn’t seem to register how doomed he probably was at the moment. He directed his attention to her, in spite of the grip Geva had on his arms.
    “You’ve settled for this uptight pussy, Hallie? What happened? You were always a wild girl. That’s what I loved about you. A survivor. That sense of adventure is so goddamn sexy.” He turned his eyes to Kol’s, grinning as though he had a secret. “Did you know she wasn’t a city girl her whole life? Born in the wilderness, she told me. Out in the middle of BFE in Canada. Had to kill her own meat. But she decided she liked the finer things better.” Kol remained stoic, watching David. He already knew all of Hallie’s darkest secrets. There were no surprises. David’s agitation rose. He looked back at Hallie. “I can still give you that, baby. My family’s got ties—anything you want, you tell me and I’ll get it for you. This son-of-a-bitch is small potatoes compared to me.”
    Hallie had an answer on the tip of her tongue but before she could get it out, both dragons reacted to something the man had said. Geva jerked the man’s head back sharply, growling a harsh epithet into his ear while Kol stepped swiftly toward him, nailing him in the gut with a fist the size of a sledgehammer.
    David doubled over and collapsed to his knees, struggling to catch his breath. Kol squatted and gripped him by the hair, forcing his eyes up.
    “I’m watching you, La Pietra. I will know your every single fucking move for the rest of your natural life, and trust me, I will outlive you. If you come near Hallie or our family again, you will wish I had killed you today.”
    As he stood, he slipped a small, black card into the breast pocket of David’s jacket. Hallie knew what the card said. It was only a simple monogram on one side—the letter “M”—and on the backside simply “Magnus” followed by a phone number. She’d called the number once after Kol had the cards printed, curious where it led. It was the entry point to contact Kol himself, but was manned by a battleaxe of a receptionist. A female blue dragon who knew everything and wasn’t afraid to rip a caller a new asshole if they said the wrong thing. If a man like David couldn’t figure out who Kol was based on a single call to that number, he was a bigger idiot than she thought.
    They left him there, wheezing on the median, and climbed into Erika’s Jeep to drive home.
    ***
    “What the hell made you punch him?” Hallie asked at a stop light a few moments later. “I was sure you guys were making some other devious plan between you. Then all of a sudden it was fists.”
    Kol had barely had a chance to calm down after the ordeal. His senses had been heightened since before he’d received Erika’s frantic call. Sitting in the meeting with the East Coast Shadow and the new client had been a waste of time. Two hours into the meeting he’d had an itch in his gut. The same feeling he’d had when Erika’s team had breached the temple. An invasion of his domain. Except this feeling was decidedly unwelcome.
    Then the call had come, Erika’s voice frantic on the other end. Hallie had disappeared. The smirk of the human across the table had spurred him into action. With a quick instruction to his lower Shadow to deal with the human, he left to find her.
    “He played me, at first,” Kol admitted. “I’m sorry for that. Had I