by Alisa Woods
There was a flash of gold in his eyes—this time, she knew she wasn’t seeing things.
“As you may realize,” he said, coolly, “the existence of dragon shifters is not common knowledge in the human population. As you are now a human with knowledge of our existence, I can’t release you until I’m certain you will keep this knowledge to yourself. This is a sacred trust—one I don’t take lightly. Especially not with women I’ve just met. No matter how beautiful. Or how obviously capable of taking care of themselves.”
A flush ran through her with the compliments—and then heat rushed to her face at being manipulated so easily. But even more importantly, the need to be gone from here was even more urgent. “I won’t tell anyone about you. I promise.”
“Promises aren’t sufficient.” His face settled into a hard look that made her shiver. This man… she could see him slaying demons. And enemies. And conquering anything and everything that he wished to have. There was a level of calm power in him that she had never truly encountered before. All the men—all the slimy, evil bastards who beat women, and that she had encountered in her work and in her life—had all been weak at their core. Full of bravado and posturing, but not this… this calm, cool undercurrent of raw power.
It was drawing her in more than she wanted to even think about.
She blinked and shook her head to try to free the fuzzy effect he had on her. “What can I do to assure you that I’ll keep your secret?” she asked, her lawyer side muscling its way through the lust fog he seemed to induce in her. “We can put it in writing if you wish.”
He gestured to the couch between them. “Please, won’t you sit down?” He stood with his hand outstretched toward the luxurious couch.
Good. Negotiations. This was something she understood. She gamely climbed over the back of the couch and settled in, giving him a cool look as he stood tall with his black, medieval gear and his large, hulking frame. A small smile played across his face and then disappeared. He eased to sitting next to her with a smooth, graceful power of movement that made her lady parts squeeze in response. God, how could he induce such a reaction in her just by sitting down? Or maybe it was the fact that he was close to her again, and that strange, overpowering sense of maleness sent her heart beating just a little faster.
He leaned forward and ducked his head. The amber of his eyes was haunting. “By our custom, I should keep you forever.” His smile ticked up a notch. “It wouldn’t be an unpleasant internment, I promise you. Dragons are very fond of their kept humans, especially the females, and I don’t hear complaints from the women about it.”
His words weren’t doing anything to settle down her heart. “I have no desire to be a kept human.”
“No. I would imagine not.” The smile gave even more power to the beauty of his face.
“All right. I’m glad we’re agreed on that.” She couldn’t help frowning. What was his asking price? There had to be something he wanted, and she certainly couldn’t offer him money. And she definitely wasn’t offering him her body, as tempting as that might be. “What do you want?” That was often the quickest way to get to an agreement—just come straight out and ask.
He nodded like he expected this from her. “I have a task in which I could use your assistance. If you help me, I can consider it a repayment of sorts for saving your life. Then I can accept your promises as sufficient, and you can return to your noble task of helping human females escape the monsters in their lives.”
This sounded entirely too reasonable. “What do you need help with?” She couldn’t begin to imagine what he would need from her.
“I need to find a mate.”
“A mate? As in…”
“As in someone to bond with and spawn a dragonling.”
“Riiight.” She’d heard of shifters taking mates before—it was some kind of lifelong bond between them. “I’m afraid I don’t know that many girl dragons. Assuming you’re into girl-type dragons?” What in the world was he asking with this?
His eyes widened a little, and then he laughed outright, a deep sonorous sound that sent her lady parts a-flutter. Then he stopped, the smile falling off his face, and his eyes blazing again. He leaned a little closer and stared into her eyes. “I am most definitely interested in females.”
Dear God in heaven… Her fingers twitched a little with the need to reach out and touch his gorgeous face.
She leaned back instead, clearing her throat. “Right. Glad we got that straight. But I still don’t understand how I’m supposed to find a lady dragon for you.”
He pulled back, but his stare was no less intense. “You misunderstand. I need to find a human female. Dragons are almost entirely born male. We need to mate with human females in order to reproduce our species. There are other… complications… but the important thing for you to know right now is that I am uninterested in forcing any female into mating with me. Not only is the idea itself loathsome, but it would be utterly beside the point. I need to spawn a dragonling, and that can only be accomplished with a female who has truly fallen in love with me.”
Her eyebrows hiked up. And her heart beat a little faster—maybe this was actually a way out. “In love? Are you serious?”
“Deadly serious.” And his face certainly seemed to have no humor in it. “I need to seduce someone, utterly and thoroughly, and I’m on a bit of a schedule.”
“Schedule?” Her mind was reeling with all this information.
“Dragons live a long time, Arabella Sharp. But not forever. I’m reaching the end of my natural lifespan at five hundred years.”
Five hundred years? Her mouth fell open, but no words came out.
“I’ll gain another five hundred if I mate and produce a dragonling. Which I can only do if I can convince a human female to fall love with me.”
Convince someone to fall in love with him? She frowned—he really meant this.
He leaned forward again, and another wave of that irrepressibly male scent washed over her. “I need a woman to love me, Arabella. I’m hoping you can help me find her. Unless, of course, you’re interested in the position?”
What? But he was drawing her in with those pale amber eyes. “Uh… No thanks.” Her lady parts threw a protest party in her pants.
“Could you never love a man like me? A dragon?”
“Sorry.” Strangely enough, it wasn’t the fact that he was a dragon that concerned her—it was that he was a man. And she had nothing but horror stories with those.
“Are you sure?” He leaned even closer and seemed to be staring into her soul. The gold was flashing in his eyes again. “You know, dragons are very hard to resist. Witches sell the sweat off my brow to give other men hard-ons.”
He was totally jerking her around. “You’re fucking with me now.”
“Not even close,” he deadpanned.
A bubble of laughter welled up inside her and worked its way out, ending in an ungracious snort. Then she reeled it in and looked at him, amazed. She was sitting next to a dragon prince, which should be the most amazing part about this whole encounter, but it wasn’t—it was the fact that he was making her laugh.
Lucian pulled back and gave her a soft smile. “It’s ridiculous. All of it is. Someday, maybe, I’ll tell you how dragons managed to get themselves in this sort of position. But for now, I truly do need your help. If I don’t accomplish this, well, the clock is ticking for me.”
The laughter died away inside her. Men lie. Men lie all the time about everything. And yet, for some reason, she felt like there was nothing but truth coming from this man.
Or she guessed, dragon. Was that the difference?
“It does seem like kind of a raw deal for you,” she said. “Whoever negotiated that contract—you need a better lawyer.”
He smiled in a way that lit her up inside. “I know. And it’s the kind of thing that really doesn’t work for someone like me.” His smile dimmed a little. “I’m a hard man to love, Arabella. You’re in no danger of falling in love with me, correct?” He
gestured to her with open hands, like this was obvious.
She almost felt bad about saying no. But not bad enough. “Right.”
“Then please help me. Help me understand what would make a human female fall in love with a beast like me. I’ll pay you for your time. You have a noble project, a grand enterprise that you’re engaged in with your practice in the human world. I would love to see you returned to it with all the funding you need to expand. To keep your lights on. To help people. I’m somewhat of a guardian myself, so I understand the desire to protect others. And as a lawyer, you can probably appreciate that the rules of the mating process are fairly binding. It’s not like I have another option. I have to find someone who will genuinely fall in love with me… or my time on the planet is pretty much over.”
She just stared at him for a moment. Yes, he was a dragon. But he was also a gorgeous man. An insanely masculine man. She couldn’t imagine it would be any problem at all to find someone to fall in love with him. And if that was all she needed to win her release, especially given the fact that he had saved her life… well, that seemed like something she could do. Or at least try.
“Sounds like we should get started right away.”
Lucian dove into the pool like he was running for his life.
The cool water washed his naked body clean of her scent—Arabella’s scent—and as he came up on the other side of the large, circular cistern of water, he shifted and lifted straight out. A waterfall rained from his golden wings as he pumped them, working hard to lift to the top of his pool room. Three stories of windows opened to the glittering green of the trees below his lair, then gently curved toward the center of the room. At the top was a round window in the shape of a clock, its stout and lazy hands slowly ticking away the minutes of his life. They rattled as he swept past and dove back toward the three-story-deep pool, plunging once again into the cool redemption of the water. The vigor of it swept away some of the lust heat induced just by being around Arabella. Talking to her. Peering into those emerald green eyes.
He had her safely locked away in the guest room of his lair, taking a shower and changing into clothes he had conjured for her. He left some food in the kitchen as well, for when she was done, but the mere fact that she was getting undressed somewhere in his lair, water washing down her naked body, with the soothing relaxation that must cause her… he had to do something to distract himself.
He had reached the bottom of the pool, swerving to miss the rocky floor dug deep into the mountain and using his wings to pull himself to a stop. He rested there for a moment—not breathing, trying to bring down his racing pulse, letting the coolness seep in through the hard shell of his scales. There was stillness and peace here. Nothing like the torment of what he was doing with her… to her… but that thought just kicked his heart rate up again. He could too easily see bringing her here, stripping her clothes, dripping fresh water across her taut nipples, and taking her, finally sating the burning inferno of lust inside him.
Leonidas was right—it had been too long.
Dragon libido was by nature intense. The drive to reproduce was stronger in his species than any other. The desire to possess, to claim, to seal a woman’s flesh with dragon fire so she could carry his young… it was a powerful drive. Enough to make a dragon willing to try and try and try again, till he managed to spawn a dragonling to take his place.
It was a cruel trick of nature. One that Lucian did everything to suppress, stowing it deep inside so he wouldn’t have to bear it, but now with Arabella in his lair… the urges were resurrecting their ugly heads again.
His frustration roared up from the depths of his being and spewed magical fire into the pool, boiling the water with his anger. Then he pushed off the bottom of the rock floor. Feeling sorry for himself—feeling all the agony and the ache again—this was the price of doing his duty. Better to get it over with as quickly as possible.
He burst out of the surface of the pool, slopping even more water onto the tiled decks, only to find his brother waiting for him.
Leonidas lifted an eyebrow and crossed his arms, his unbuttoned white dress shirt revealing the runes across his chest as well as the dragon tattoo that marked him as belonging to the House of Smoke. “So you brought someone home from the club after all. Well done! I didn’t think you had it in you.” The smirking approval on Leonidas’s face torqued him.
Lucian shifted back to human and dropped to the deck. “No.”
Both eyebrows went up. “No? I can smell her, Lucian. And the eggs she’s cooking.”
Leonidas whipped his attention from the towel he had conjured to dry off to glare at his brother. “Stay away from her, Leonidas.”
The growl in his voice was enough to tip his brother’s head down in a sign of deference, if only momentarily—it was the universal and reflexive sign of one male ceding territory to another. But when Leonidas looked up again, there was even more of a smile on his face. “Wouldn’t think of touching your treasure, brother. But she must be something special to get you hot enough that you need a cool bath.”
“She’s strong.” He returned his attention to wiping the water from his body. “She’ll make a suitable mate.”
“Mate?” Leonidas looked genuinely shocked. As well he should. “Really? You’ve already decided to claim her? Well, if she can withstand the shock of you whisking her away to your lair and your bed, then she must be mate material.”
Lucian snarled at him, tossed away the towel, and conjured some clothes—the dark hooded shirt, loose pants, and boots he had worn before, when he was with Arabella. They were the clothes of his history, his past, and the ones he wore in the lair simply because they reminded him who he really was. He was lying to Arabella about so much—somehow, revealing this small truth seemed important.
“I haven’t taken her to my bed,” he said, turning away from Leonidas to stride toward the door of the pool room.
His brother’s laughter trailed after him. “Have you forgotten entirely how to seduce a woman, my brother?”
Lucian’s back stiffened, and he stopped. Without facing his brother, he said, “You know, there was a time when a dragon’s lair was his own. When unwelcome dragons could be sure to feel the fire of my displeasure if they broached its walls unbidden.” He twisted back to glare at Leonidas. “Next time, knock.”
His brother just snorted. “A rousing fight would do you good. And I’d be happy to help you out with that. But you’ll have to rely on this girl to satisfy your other passions. If you still remember how.”
Lucian snarled. He knew his brother was just baiting him, but he’d be damned if it didn’t work. “Remembering is something I do well.”
The sneer on Leonidas’s face dropped away. “Take her to bed, Lucian. Get it over with.”
Tension rippled through his body. “She’s not the kind of woman that works for.”
Leonidas frowned and stepped toward him. “Every woman is the kind that dragon pheromones work for.” He narrowed his eyes. “Your heart isn’t ready for this.”
“And it never will be. But kindly fuck off. My heart is none of your concern.”
“Clearly, it is.” Leonidas’s expression opened, and Lucian couldn’t tell if he was genuinely concerned or just worried that Lucian might not fulfill the treaty. But that was the blackness in his heart speaking—he knew his brothers would each give their lives for him, and he for them. They were bonded to each other in a way few dragons were, not even his top lieutenants pledged to the House of Smoke. He and Leonidas and Leksander were born minutes apart, dragonlings of the same mother, forever bound together by DNA and childhood and family.
But fulfilling the treaty was his responsibility alone.
Lucian snarled and changed the subject. “There’s something else. I killed a demon—a half demon—last night while rescuing Arabella.”
Leonidas his face pinched in. “A demon? But that’s a violation—”
“—of the treaty. Yes, I’m well aware. The question is�
��what are the fae up to? Go find Leksander and drag him away from his obsession. Have him sweep the city, looking for any trace of demon. I need to know if there are more.”
Leonidas nodded. “Maybe this recent strife between the shifters and the humans has brought out some kind of latent demon seed. They feed on hatred—they need that kind of black sustenance, and hate has been floating in the air of Seattle like syrup of late.”
“Perhaps. But I don’t care. This is a fae responsibility. They’re supposed to keep this in check. I’ve already destroyed this one, but if there are more…”
“Leksander and I will do a thorough search,” his brother said, his tone serious, which soothed Lucian’s heart. They were united in this, at least. “I’ll report back as soon as we have something for you.”
Lucian tipped his head in acknowledgment—he was the eldest of three, if only by minutes, and generally the leader of all things related to the House of Smoke, now that the king and queen had reached their twilight years. Lucian was the crown prince for their House and not just responsible for fulfilling the requirements of the treaty. It was his responsibility to manage all things in the realms, a duty he didn’t take lightly. For many reasons and in many ways.
He turned his back on his brother to stride out of the room.
When he rounded the corner to the kitchen, he found Arabella finishing up the last of her breakfast. She was freshly showered, well fed, and gloriously beautiful. It struck him full force, heating his entire body.
“Good morning,” he mumbled. His breath was stolen by her fully-human aliveness—the shine in her green eyes, sparkling under her dark, thin-line eyebrows; the way the sun caught the reddish highlights in her hair; her fresh, full lips. In the soft glow of the morning light, the hint of freckles all over her face rose up through the creamy paleness of her skin. He couldn’t help letting his gaze drop down, wondering if the freckles extended underneath the white silk shirt he had conjured for her. She left the top two buttons undone, and the soft swell of her breasts hinted that yes the freckles were there as well. An ache in his mouth rose up, and he yearned to run his tongue across each delicate mark.
