Only when I got back to my desk, did I even realize it was about time I should be going to lunch and I grabbed my purse and made my way out. When I got a look at myself in the mirrored wall around the elevator, I groaned. I swear I used to be cute as heck. I was petite and curvy, with long, wavy dark hair. I guess I still have that stuff but with too little sleep and no make-up to smooth over the rough edges of single motherhood, I was pretty sure I looked like death warmed over, my hair askew and my loose t-shirt and skinny jeans only seemed sloppy and not sleek and cool like they were supposed to be. I wished I at least had some tinted lip balm and some BB Cream. I checked my purse and found that I didn’t even have a hairbrush with me. I did, of course, have a small stuffed giraffe (one of Tyler’s comfort items that calms him when he’s having a fit) and a half a bag of gummy bears. Great.
The elevator doors slid open and I ignored the guy already inside, leaning in the corner, as I continued to paw around in my purse for anything useful. I had some hand lotion. Chapstick, untinted. That was about it.
I wrinkled my nose, smelling something familiar that I couldn’t place. What was it…?
I sighed heavily and when the doors slid closed again, I felt eyes on me. On principle, I refused to look. I hate it when guys stare.
“Long day?” The guy said.
“Mmm.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” the guy said. I rolled my eyes.
“Take that however you want to,” I muttered. I did find a pair of shades in my purse that I’d completely forgotten about and as I slipped them on I abruptly realized that the guy standing next to me was a dragon shifter. I hadn’t smelled another dragon shifter in so long, I’d actually half-forgotten the scent. It was nice actually. I was suddenly grateful the guy couldn’t see my eyes as I clutched my purse and silently inhaled the scent of young, male dragon. A bit musky, fiery, woodsy… I had to think he could smell me too and I almost regretted being rude. Almost. It wasn’t every day I met another dragon.
“You’re a coder?” He said.
His voice was sexy as hell too. I let my eyes slip shut, ignoring him as, I guess, a person and focussing on his scent and his voice.
“Yeah,” I said, sighing. “For now anyway.”
“Oh? Are you thinking of leaving?” He said.
“No,” I muttered. “I just mean, if the stock slips much more, there won’t be a company left to code for.” I laughed at that, thinking I was talking to another underling like me and when I turned my head, all prepared to smirk knowingly at a regular co-worker, I found myself looking into the eyes of Justin King.
“I didn’t know I had a dragon down in coding,” Justin said. He had such a smug look on his face too. His stupid, handsome face.
Justin King has shiny, chestnut colored hair that touches his shoulders and a warm complexion and deep brown eyes. He has a jawline that could cut glass and a wide mouth that looks made for kissing.
I still hated him though.
“I didn’t know Justin King was a dragon,” I said, blushing against my will.
He held a finger to his lips. “Shh. Don’t tell anyone.”
I gave him an incredulous look and wished the elevator would go faster. “Oh darn, I was just about to tell the world that Justin King is a dragon shifter. That would be a huge betrayal to our kind and everything.
Justin looked at me with his sharp eyes that didn’t miss much and I squirmed under his gaze. I might have hated him, but I still wished I looked more presentable.
“You’re not impressed with me,” Justin said quietly, still unabashedly staring.
“Should I be?” I said wryly. “We’re riding in an elevator? Did you do something exciting that I missed?”
Justin opened and closed his mouth like he was shocked or something and I noticed the ground floor mercifully coming. It was the first time I could remember taking the elevator with just one other person in the history of having worked at Koinage.
“That’s not what I meant,” Justin said. He licked his bottom lip, gazing at me thoughtfully and for a minute there I was sunk. Not that he probably knew it. Or I hoped not. But once you looked into his eyes, Justin did have some kind of charismatic presence. It was probably his dragon or something. I bet his dragon nature combined with a fairly charismatic human presence had brought him far in life. I know the dragon’s nature of hoarding gold sometimes makes their human side good at acquiring wealth. Though it had never really worked for me.
The elevator dinged and I sighed in relief. I didn’t say goodbye because I didn’t think I needed to. I just started striding through the lobby. I could still feel Justin’s eyes on me as I walked outside and I glanced back to see him standing on the sidewalk, still looking after me as if I were a puzzle he just couldn’t figure out.
For lunch, I went to my favorite gyro stand by the park and ate at a bench while listening to my favorite true crime podcast. But I wasn’t really paying attention. I couldn’t stop thinking about Justin King. Once I was out of the elevator, then I felt nervous. I’d been reading about his exploits since before I’d started at Koinage. I thought he was ridiculous but he was sort of fun to read about. As a lowly coder, I’d never really considered that I might ever meet him. He wasn’t even in his New York office that often until recently.
But now that I’d met him...I felt a little funny about it. He’d actually been human for a minute there. As human as a dragon shifter could be anyway.
That was another thing.
Justin King was a dragon. Just like me! I’d had no idea. I felt like it changed everything I knew about him. Shifters, in general, have a hard time living among humans, even the rich, privileged ones. Dragons more than most. We don’t run in packs. If you don’t have a family, it can be quite lonely. Justin King’s parents died when he was in high school from what I’d read. Or rather, he’d never known his dad and his mother had died. Now I wondered which one of them had been a dragon? Or was it both? Had he been lonely after that?
“I’m ridiculous,” I said aloud, my mouth still full of gyro. I swallowed and shook my head, annoyed at my sudden feelings of empathy toward Justin King.
Justin King didn’t need my empathy. I knew that money didn’t buy happiness, but I still figured money could buy you a life coach or somebody else to tell you everything would be okay. He didn’t need one of his coding grunts feeling sorry for him too.
Besides which, my mother was dead, but my father was still alive. But we hated each other. I was just as lonely as the loneliest kind of dragon myself. If anybody needed some sympathy, it was me.
After lunch, I made my way back up to work and kept my eyes peeled for Justin King, but I didn’t see him this time.
I was almost disappointed.
Chapter Three: Justin
At lunch, I made the mistake of going to a trendy sushi place that just opened up in a hotel that Joanie kept telling me to try. It was full of finance types all sneaking wary or pitying glanced in my direction. It annoyed the hell out of me the entire time I sat there, eating my tiger roll and catching up on voicemails. I should have gone with my first instinct and eaten a gyro in the park.
I’d been accused of being a snob before, but only by people who didn’t really know me and only saw the money. Before I was twenty-two I was a pauper. My parents had been poor. Once the proud owners of a considerable gold hoard, they were attacked by a dragon from England who’d stolen other hoards before. He killed them and left me an orphan with no hoard and no family. If I hadn’t been taken in by my friend, Robbie, a dragon shifter and now a movie star, I would have been on the streets. I lived at Robbie’s house for my last three years of high school before earning a scholarship to NYU, dropping out, and building Koinage. Now I had an incredible hoard; probably a hundred times the size of my parents’. I once tracked down the shifter who killed my parents. I was actually disappointed to find out he was already dead. I wanted to kill him myself.
Now it was just me, my gold, and my empire. Though it wa
sn’t as if I didn’t have friends. Robbie was still a buddy of mine. We got together about once a month with a few other dragons around our age to play poker and hang out. We call it Gold Wings. It’s our little club. There are six of us and nobody else is allowed in. We don’t get a chance to see each other too much beyond our once a month socializing as all of us are pretty busy types, but we know we’d be there for each other if needed. It’s a nice feeling to know that. I don’t think I’d have gotten so far in life if not for that bit of support from Gold Wings.
After lunch, I strolled back to my office and found myself thinking of that girl in the elevator.
There was something so striking about her. Maybe it was just because I hadn’t been that close to a female dragon shifter in years. We aren’t that common to begin with and we’re especially rare in Manhattan. She smelled good; sexy and warm. She had a sexy attitude about her to even being a little bit dishevelled and obviously annoyed. She had enormous brown eyes too with little flecks of gold in them. They positively sparkled, especially when she was being snarky with me and looked almost pissed for daring to talk to her. I wasn’t used to that. Most people want to kiss my ass. But to this girl, I was of no more concern than a buzzing fly.
I wondered what color her scales were, all the way back to my office. My guess was bronze. I bet they glowed beautifully when she breathed fire.
On a whim I asked my assistant, Rose, to give me any information she could find on an employee named Nicole. I had a hint of an idea in mind. It was probably crazy.
“Nicole...what’s the last name?” Rose blinked at me through her giant red reading glasses.
“She’s a coder,” I said shrugging, leaning on Rose’s desk. “Can’t be that hard to find. How many coders do we have?”
“Four hundred,” Rose said flatly.
Oh.
“Well…” I patted her on the shoulder. “Can’t be that many named Nicole. And they have picture IDs. She has black hair and brown eyes. Thanks in advance.”
Rose looked irritated and I went back to my office to get back into the swing of assuaging shareholders with cheerful emails. Joanie had already texted me about her proposal and I fidgeted with my phone, spinning in my chair and thinking about the best possible way to save my company.
I found myself closing my eyes and thinking of the scent of her again and hardly noticed any time had passed before Rose was knocking on my office door. I spun around waved at her through the glass wall for her to come in.
“Nicole Perkins,” Rose said, hovering in the doorway. “I just emailed you.”
She started to leave and I said, “How long has she worked here?”
“Three years. I just emailed you everything,” Rose said. “Can I ask why you’re interested in some coder?”
“I ran into her in the elevator,” I said shrugging. “She seemed interesting.
“Don’t get sued for sexual harassment!” Rose said.
I bristled at that and made a face. “I didn’t do anything! Jesus. She just seemed interesting.”
“Interesting,” Rose said. “Right. That’s what men always call women before the wedding bells.”
“Ha! Rose, I can assure you I’m not marrying her. I just ran into her in the elevator. She was rude to me too. Me! For no reason at all.”
“I doubt that,” Rose said, smirking.
“Get outta here.” I waved her away and she left, still smiling a little smugly. Rose was only the second assistant I’ve ever had. The first was promoted to an executive role. I’d tried to promote Rose and she said she liked her job, had plenty of money, and wasn’t going anywhere. I’d always appreciated that about Rose. She was loyal and she liked her job. People like her were rare at this level of corporate life.
I sat forward finally and opened up the attachments Rose had just sent me.
There wasn’t a ton, but Rose had gone the extra mile and pulled up some social media data to go with the employee information.
Nicole Perkins was twenty-six-years old and the mother of a four-year-old boy who she was raising in a small apartment on the Lower East Side. That was the first thing that stuck out at me and I read the sentence over and over, not quite believing it. I would never have pegged the abrasive woman in that elevator as a young mom. Not that I knew a lot of young moms. She just didn’t seem very...mommish.
Nicole was from Connecticut originally and her father was… I squinted at the name. I should’ve put two and two together but I would never have imagined… I picked up my desk phone and dialled Rose’s extension.
“Yes, Justin?” Rose said when she picked up.
“This can’t be right,” I said, reading it once more on the screen. “Nicole Perkins’ father is Donald Perkins?”
“Is that name supposed to mean something?” Rose said.
“Um…” I laughed at myself. Of course, there was little chance Rose would have heard of Donald Perkins. He was something of a real estate mogul and he came from very old money but he was also considered a venerable aristocrat among East Coast dragon shifters. Donald Perkins was retired and lived on a massive estate on Long Island. I was also sure that he’d never had children?
Nicole Perkins liked black and white screwball comedy films, true crime, taking her son to Central Park, and dragons. I smiled when I came up on the dragons. Not that she had “shifter” listed as an interest or trait on Facebook. But she was single.
“Very interesting,” I muttered. I thought of Rose telling me that men always called women interesting before making a move. Well, it definitely wasn’t like that. I’ve been with a lot of women and none of them have been so interesting, I just had to see them again. Or I guess I should say, they weren’t for me. There was nothing wrong with them per se.
I just hadn’t run into a female dragon shifter in so long. That was probably all it was. That’s what I told myself anyway.
What I really needed was to take flight tonight, and spread my wings. Then I needed to get laid and tell Joanie I was down with her plan to remake my image via a fake relationship.
That night I went home to my tower even farther uptown. I owned the top six floors of the Skelton Tower and I had a custom-made perch in a nook on the roof. It was difficult to see a dragon perching there if you didn’t know where to look and sitting still, I looked like a statue anyway. I made myself soba noodles for dinner and then took the elevator up to the roof late that night to perch and observe the city before taking flight.
The thing is, people see what they want to see and New Yorkers most of all. Even when something drastic happens in the air among dragon shifters, it’s put down to UFOs, talking about it for a few days, and then Manhattan finds something else to discuss. I had a lot more freedom to fly around very late at night, land in Central Park and relax in the grass than you might think. It felt good to stretch my wings. My coloring is mostly a rich, dark green with highlights of silver. I’m about as big as a small house, maybe a little taller. I perched and flew around and when I landed again on my roof, I did feel much more settled. Though it was too late to get to a decent bar and seek company for my bed. Instead, that night, I thought of that girl in the elevator and her warm scent. I thought of her sassy mouth and the way a lock of her hair might twist around her fingers and the way her body might feel pressed against mine.
It was two o’clock in the morning by the time I finally made my way down from the roof of my penthouse. I knew Joanie would still be awake because she always kept odd hours.
My penthouse was two floors and seven bedrooms. It’s modern and glassy and if it weren’t for my voice controls, I would not know how to work any of its appliances or electronics at all. One entire floor of my penthouse was just my hoard. Another two were merged into one giant floor where my dragon could walk around inside without worrying. The sixth floor I owned...I actually wasn’t doing anything with it, but being a dragon, I tended to splurge. We do that a lot.
“Anya,” I said, speaking to my voice control home system as I s
tripped my clothes off in the master bedroom. “Text Joanie.” I gazed out the window at the park. I had just been out flying but already I wanted to fly again. But even that wasn’t quite it. I wanted to fly with someone. The lights of Manhattan twinkled. For a city full of people, it could feel awfully lonely sometimes. Not that I ever let anyone know I felt that way. Not ever.
“Texting Joanie,” Anya said, in her somewhat creepy ethereal voice.
“Joanie...My answer is yes. But I have a girl in mind. I’ll tell you about her tomorrow.”
My text sent just as the water in my big glassed in shower was getting hot and I stepped in and sighed, leaning against the warm tiles. I closed my eyes and stepped under the hot stream and thought of that cute young woman. It wasn’t as if I thought anything would truly happen between us. I wasn’t about to make myself the dad to some little kid. That was hardly in the cards for me. But something told me she might be the right fit for this little PR shenanigan. Especially since she came from a family like the Perkins but was now solidly middle class. That was the best of both worlds. Though it did make me incredibly curious about what happened between her and her family. Had the child been born out of wedlock. Presumably yes, but that wasn’t usually as big a problem for shifters as it was for humans. And old families like that always wanted an heir. Nicole had a son. I couldn’t imagine he was unwanted.
Dragon's Fake Mate Page 2
