Gambling on Her Dragon

by Anna Lowe

  His nostrils flared, catching a musky, cave scent. Crap — bears. The two thugs outside were bear shifters.

  Something scraped on the balcony, and he glanced back. It was like a goddamn tennis match, with the door on his right and the balcony on his left. The balcony where Kaya grabbed a canvas bag that looked awfully familiar as she pulled a chair up to the railing.

  The railing she climbed up on.

  Every nerve in his body screamed. Holy shit!

  He leaped to his feet and rushed toward the balcony.

  “Don’t jump!”

  He had no clue what floor they were on, but even a beat-up, outdated hotel like this had to be high enough to kill.

  Kaya, though, just leaned farther over the edge.

  “Stop!” he yelled, fighting past the curtains, tripping over the track of the sliding door.

  She teetered on the rail, eyeing the fall.

  “Don’t!” He scrambled to his feet, reaching out.

  She might have said something, but he couldn’t hear anything but the pounding of his heart.

  Everything slurred into slow motion. Her toes curled over the rail, right at his eye level. Her arms swept wide, and the bag dangled under one of them. The long locks of her hair played in the wind as if she were at a lakeside and not several stories up. Six stories, minimum, he decided, eyeing the space beyond the rails. No pool waiting to catch his lover, either, just a dirty back lot.

  His hamstrings screamed as he hurtled upward. His bare feet were cold on the tile floor. He stretched desperately, reaching past her fingers to grab at her wrist.

  The scent of open desert reached his nostrils, mocking his effort to cheat death.

  Her knees bent, straightened, and her feet left the rail. Airborne.

  Her fingers slipped past his. For one glorious, hope-filled instant, his hand was warm. The next, it was empty, and his heart slammed against his ribs.

  He crashed into the cold metal of the wrought iron railing and heaved halfway out, still reaching.

  “No!” he screamed from the bottom of his soul, like she wasn’t a perfect stranger but his closest, oldest friend.

  His own cry echoed in his ears as he watched her hurtle to certain death.

  She didn’t fall the way people in movies fell, though. Not stone-stiff, like she was already dead. Not clawing at the air, searching for some ephemeral grip. Not screeching or flailing one bit.

  Nope. She dove. The most graceful swan dive he’d ever seen. Arms wide, legs straight, body curved. She did it so casually, he nearly double-checked to see if there was a pool down there, after all.

  Then her arms spread wider, and he blinked a little, because it looked a lot more like a skydiver’s controlled free fall than a deathly drop. More like a glide, actually, with shoulders so broad they might have been extending to wings. Feet so tight, they might have been a tail.

  He gripped the railing tighter and stared. Shadows dappled over her body until he thought he was seeing things. Her arms looked unnaturally wide. Her fingers so long, he could make out each one of them.

  Kaya?

  He blinked as his death-bound lover swooped upward in a long, graceful arc. Watched as her skin gave way to glittering scales and her arms stretched into leathery wings. Her legs blurred into her body as a tail extended from her back with a long, graceful flick.

  Her tail snapped like a whip, her wings beat, and she shot up like an arrow.

  He gaped as the truth slowly registered. His mystery lover was a dragon shifter. A beautiful, petite dragon with scales tinted reddish-black.

  He brought his hand to his nose and sniffed, testing her scent. The shifter part was faint and heavily layered with the fragrance of sex and desire. Whatever weird drug he’d been under the influence of seemed to have intoxicated his nose enough that he hadn’t picked up the shifter part until now.

  And now was too late.

  She swung her neck north and the long body followed with an effortless beat of the wings. Her tail arced, her body rippled, and she flew out of sight behind a towering high-rise. She shot out the other side then rose against the orb of the nearly full moon with that bag clutched in her claw.

  Trey clung to the railing hard — so hard, he might as well have been swinging on the wrong side. He strained his eyes, but the night sky had already secreted her away. A second later, he slumped to his ass on the balcony.

  Lover…dragon…

  Dragon with a bag…

  Wait a minute. His bag? The bag he’d put his money in?

  He groaned and held his head in his hands — for all of two seconds until the door to the room crashed open and two figures burst inside. Human except for their fangs.

  The one on the left crouched into a wary attack pose. The one on the right grinned and strode forward with a cocky step.

  “Wolf,” the thug growled, slamming a fist into his own hand in a warm-up blow, “you’re going to regret ever coming to our town.”

  Chapter Three

  Kaya pulled an extra tight loop, trying to clear her head. She dipped a wing, fell into a barrel roll, and then climbed straight toward the moon. No matter what she tried, though, she was still tingling all over — and not from shifting.

  Damn it! She was still tingling from him. Which was really, really not what she’d had planned for the night.

  But crap, nothing had gone as planned. All she’d been after was a quick eighty thousand dollars. Sex had never been part of the plan. It was supposed to be a quick in-and-out job—

  She stopped the thought right there with a grimace. Bad word choice, because somehow she’d let the night turn into an entirely different kind of in-and-out. Not her going in and eventually coming out of the casino, thousands richer than she’d started. No — it had been Trey, sliding in and out of her body. Gripping her hands like he never wanted to let go. Not just exploring her body, but worshiping it. Looking into her eyes as if he was just as transfixed as she was by whatever magic it was that had sprung up between the two of them that night.

  She dove into another roll and used the chance to fan her face with her left wing, because just thinking about Cowboy Scrumptious had her overheating again.

  Not just a man. A wolf, the little voice at the back of her mind reminded her.

  A werewolf who looked just like the mystery man who starred in her lustiest fantasies. She’d always thought that face was a figment of her imagination, but now, she wasn’t so sure.

  She’d watched him from the moment he walked into the casino, because how could she not watch a man like that? A man who prowled more than he walked, like a lion on the savannah or a boxer stepping into a ring. A man whose aura reached out in front of him like a couple of bodyguards yelling, Clear the way! Clear the way!

  Not that he needed bodyguards, not with a build like that. People had unconsciously ducked away from those broad shoulders and powerful legs as if clearing space for a herd of bulls.

  A man with patience, brains, and a touch of endearing innocence. He’d circled the poker tables a couple of times — watching, waiting, quietly observing. When he finally decided on one, he slid into an empty chair like a bull rider climbing into the starting pen: wary. Confident. Ready for the ride of his life. Impossibly blue — peacock blue — eyes had studied the deck as if he had X-ray vision and could guess what was coming next. Not that he’d been counting cards or pulling any tricks, because he simply glanced once at his cards, made up his mind, and seemed to sit back and wait.

  Gimme what you got, fate. That’s what his body language said.

  Not, Watch out, sucker, I’ve got an ace up my sleeve.

  Just about the only trick he’d pulled was when he glanced up and met her gaze. Captured her gaze was more like it, even from twenty feet away, because she couldn’t drag it away after that. And hell, he couldn’t seem to, either. His bottom lip had swung open as if he’d never seen anything like her before.

  And she hadn’t even been in her dragon form.

  She�
�d been just Kaya. Kaya, the veterinarian’s assistant from Wyoming, with straight hair and small boobs and a tendency to frown when she was thinking.

  She rode an updraft on wide, steady wings, trying to rein in her racing pulse.

  So, big deal. She’d seen a good-looking man. A good-looking man with just enough of a lucky streak to become her target that night.

  But it wasn’t that simple, because she hadn’t been the only one watching Trey in the casino that night. The two bounty hunters had zeroed right in on him, too. She’d been warned about their type and had even seen them in action as she frequented the casino over the past couple of days. The big one had brushed right past her, reeking of bear. Not the pure, woodsy scent she’d caught coming off the handsome wolf shifter, but the pungent smell of a dank and dirty winter cave.

  She’d seen the two thugs shift their focus from a scrawnier guy to him. Dollar signs practically lit up in their eyes like spinning symbols in slot machines. They recruited for the fighting pits, and a wolf like Trey was the perfect candidate. He’d fight long and hard. He might even survive in the fight pits a couple of weeks, bringing thousands to the bookies the thugs had partnered with.

  The fighting pits were Vegas’ best-kept secret. Or one of Vegas’ many secrets, anyway. An arena in which bets weren’t won and lost with cards but with lives. Animal lives, shifter lives. The colosseums of ancient Rome had nothing on the fight pits, judging by what she’d caught from whispers and hushed tones.

  The big bounty hunter had muscled past her and taken up position on the right side of the table, watching Trey take his cards. The man sniffed, then nodded at someone across the room. Kaya followed the bounty hunter’s gaze to the opposite end of the table. Who was he signaling to?

  Probably not the anorexic doe shifter with big hair and fake boobs — she was too busy hanging over her sugar daddy, a balding human. Not the down-and-out werebear, lumbering toward the slot machines, nor the unicorn shifter who pranced by in a tuxedo that was a little too tight in the ass.

  No, the thug had nodded to a second bear shifter. A skinnier one in the brown suit that all the employees wore. He nodded back, disappeared, and came back two minutes later with a tray full of drinks. She’d bet money that one of them was spiked.

  “Whiskey, sir?”

  Hot Stuff nodded absently as he turned two cards in for two new ones and didn’t notice a thing. Within a couple of rounds, he’d drained the glass.

  Jesus. Hadn’t anyone warned this cowboy about Vegas? Whatever poker he’d learned must have been in a bunkhouse out on some ranch and not in a two-faced place like a casino that played by its own rules.

  The drug would take a while to work on his shifter metabolism, but it would kick in eventually. The thugs would wait until he could no longer see straight, then make their move, and he’d wake up in a dungeon five stories underground, ready to be cast into the pits.

  How could he be so naive?

  But she’d been no better, drowning in the universe of blue in his eyes. Like she’d been drugged, too. Drugged on his eyes, his scent, his soft touch. Oh, Lord, what had she done?

  She huffed her frustration into the night, and — whoa!

  A thin trickle of fire exploded from her mouth.

  Holy shit.

  She lost her rhythm momentarily and had to shake out her wings before she got them to flap in sync again. The fire had gone out of dragons generations ago. Nowadays, only the mightiest could summon up a good, old-fashioned, barn-burning inferno. The best Kaya had ever managed was little coughing flames that snuffed out almost before they started. Baby flames that tasted like ash and smelled of rotten egg — and that, only when she was really worked up.

  Her grandfather had been full of stories of old dragon ways. Fire isn’t kindled by greed or desire, she remembered him explaining as they flew side by side, years ago. Fire is kindled by love, and if you truly believe…

  She snorted. Sure. Love. She barely knew the man she’d slept with last night.

  The ridiculously attractive man with a voice that tickled something deep in her soul.

  She flew on toward the purplish-brown mountains in the distance, wondering why the hell she was so worked up.

  It was her sister. That’s what it was — anxiety for her sister, because it sure as hell couldn’t be the man. Definitely, definitely not the man.

  She banked around a bend in the first valley and dropped into a canyon. With one strong flap of her wings, she rose and wheeled hard to land on a ledge on the south side. The ledge where she’d set up a lair for the duration of her stay in Vegas, while she figured out what to do about her sister.

  Having the bag clutched between her claws meant she had to land one-footed, and she shifted so fast that when she came to rest, it was on human feet. She rolled her shoulders as her wings retreated beneath her skin. Then she cracked her neck a little, left then right. Flexing her fingers a couple of times, she closed her eyes, getting used to the sensation of breathing down a shorter windpipe again.

  Dawn was just breaking over the desert, and it was beautiful. Faint yellow and pink light filtered over the hills, working its way deeper into the valleys, inch by scrubby inch. An owl hooted somewhere over to the left, saying goodbye to the night.

  A beautiful day. So why was her stomach tied into knots?

  She sat on a rock, dumped out the contents of the bag, and started counting and recounting the bills.

  “Eighty-seven thousand… eighty-eight thousand…” She counted out loud, telling herself it was real. She had enough. More than enough, as it turned out. Ninety thousand, altogether.

  She gave a little fist pump and slid a hand into her back pocket, but it just bumped off her bare flesh.

  Her breath caught, and the little high of triumph still coursing through her veins suddenly turned to ice.

  Jesus, her clothes. Her jeans. Her phone…

  She’d left them all behind in the hotel room.

  Her blood slowed in her veins. She hadn’t been that careless, had she?

  Oh, God. Yes, she had. She’d only brought the money bag out to the balcony for a quick count while Trey was asleep. She’d planned — Truly! Honestly! — to take only what she needed and leave him the rest. There was no way she could have guessed that the thugs would show up just then and rouse Trey out of bed.

  Trey, in all his naked glory. Trey, blinking the sleep out of his eyes.

  Trey’s eyes going wide as he saw her getting ready to jump.

  Her heart thumped, replaying it all.

  He’d leaped her way, stretching like an Olympic athlete, reaching with all his might. Yelling in fear, like she’d never heard a man yell before. Not for himself, but for her.

  And what had she done?

  Kaya let her eyes slide shut in shame. She’d grabbed the money and flown the coop. Literally.

  For all that she tried gulping away the lump in her throat, it stayed stubbornly stuck.

  She shook her head and gave herself a stern lecture. The only thing that mattered was the money for her sister. Trey would have given her the money if she’d had a chance to explain why she needed it so badly, right? Especially if she explained what danger her sister was in.

  When she cleared her throat, the ashy taste of fire was still there. Damn it, Trey had won those thousands easily. He could win another couple of thousand just as easily, right?

  She had to get Hot Stuff out of her mind. She had to forget and move on, because the last thing she needed was a card-playing wolf in her life. What she needed was to concentrate and get on with her plan.

  A plan which called for her phone, an unlisted number, and a wad of cash.

  And crap, she was one for three, because the phone and the number were back in the hotel room, along with her clothes.

  She sat down on the rock so hard, it hurt. But hell, she deserved it for being that dumb.

  Tears welled up but she blinked them away because that wouldn’t help. What she needed was a plan. A new pl
an.

  She groaned and hung her head in her hands.

  A plan that meant she wasn’t through with Hot Stuff, after all.

  Chapter Four

  Trey looked left and right then hustled out the back door and into an alley where the temperature soared to a skin-scorching hundred degrees, even in the morning shade. He shouldered his backpack and checked the watch he’d just had time to grab after bouncing the two thugs off the wall in the hotel room and racing out the door.

  Seven a.m.

  Jesus, it was going to be a hell of a day. Following a hell of a night. How did an innocent detour to Vegas turn into…into…into whatever hornet’s nest it was he’d gotten himself tangled up in?

  He put his hat on — his lucky hat, a going-away present from his cousin Lana — and took off down the alley. Once he rounded the corner to Fremont Street, he jumped in the first cab to pass.

  “Where to, buddy?” The driver glanced at him in the rearview mirror. Once, not twice, which was good. No need for anyone to remember seeing him, just in case.

  His mind spun. Where to? What he really needed to do was get the hell out of town. Pronto.

  But before he could stop it, his wolf made him say something totally different. “A good breakfast place on the far side of town.”

  The driver flashed a crooked smile. “Lemme guess. Fun night with a pretty girl turns into a quick exit?”

  Trey sighed and flopped back against the seat. If only the guy knew how quick an exit it had been. The last hit of adrenaline was still washing through his veins, rapidly turning to a weary throb. He could still feel the brush of her fingers against his, the backwash of her wings…

  Jesus fucking Christ. Her wings.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t know dragons existed. But he’d never, ever seen one, much less slept with one, or woken up to a fistfight over one. His knuckles throbbed from the punch he’d thrown at one thug’s temple, and his shoulder still felt the lead weight of the second guy as he’d body checked him into the wall. The headache was back, too, along with the questions.