by Ellis Leigh
“Tell Madeleine we’ve got an errand to run,” she said to Misty before turning my way and cocking her head at me—the breadth of her attitude on full display. “I have a feeling Coco’s dealing with bad-date fallout, and no man is worth a Chance woman’s tears.”
“If a male makes his woman cry, he’s no man,” I replied, giving her what I could only hope was a sincere smile. It didn’t appear to help my case at all. Oh sure, Ginger set her tray down and came around the counter toward me, but she didn’t look open or giving. In fact, she looked like a damned challenge. One I’d happily accept. “Good morning, Sparky.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I was hoping for a little something for breakfast. Perhaps a cinnamon muffin.”
Her adorable scowl made an appearance on those lips I longed to taste. “We don’t have cinnamon. How about chocolate?”
“I’m not a fan of chocolate. My tongue likes something with a bit more bite.” I grinned as her flush darkened her cheeks again. “How about one of those cupcakes? They look delicious.”
“It’s a bit early, don’t you think?”
“It’s never too early for me, Sparky. Not for anything.”
She rolled her eyes but couldn’t hide the barest hint of a smile that softened her already pretty face. Ginger moved as if to leave, as if to escape back behind the counter, but I couldn’t let her go. I grabbed her arm—gently, not forcing her to stay, but imploring—and waited for her to meet my stare again. Waited to look into the eyes of my fated mate. And when she did, I lost my breath.
The beauty and depth of her dark eyes—the glimpse of her soul those windows offered me—would be branded on my heart for eternity. Mine. All mine—I just had to win her.
“Yes?” she asked, seeming almost as breathless as I felt.
I couldn’t hold back another second. Couldn’t miss an opportunity. Dragon mating customs said she had to make the first move, but I could make sure we were at least in the same room when she decided to do something. And I could use any and all of my skills to get her there. “I’d like for the two of us to have dinner together.”
“Oh, you would?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I think you should learn to ask nicely.”
“I did.”
“No, you demanded.”
My spitfire tried to leave, to turn and pull away from me, but I held strong. Still not forcing the issue—something that could anger the dragon rulers if they found out and bring trouble raining down upon me. No, I didn’t force. I simply requested. Physically.
“Ginger,” I murmured, dropping my voice lower, teasing her with the power behind my inner dragon.
Her pupils dilated, and her jaw dropped a little, parting those soft, plush, pink lips of hers. “You’re not being nice.”
“Oh, I can be nice, my girl. I can be very, very nice.”
She shook her head a little, as if trying to clear her head. “I can’t… I don’t even know your name.”
“It’s Kingston, and I’ll do my best to charm you tonight so you’ll be screaming it later.”
Spell broken, she jerked back, a storm brewing behind her eyes. “You’re an asshole.”
“And deep down, you like me that way. Now, about dinner tonight—I’ll pick you up at five.”
“I don’t think—”
“Don’t forget you have to deliver the groom’s cake for the rehearsal dinner,” Misty—my intrepid little fox shifter who had apparently been hiding in a corner—said, completely derailing whatever argument Ginger might have had. Helpful fox, indeed.
Ginger didn’t seem to think the same if her little scowl was any indication. “I won’t.”
I couldn’t pass by an opening. “I’ll help you,” I said, smiling when Ginger’s surprised eyes met mine again. “Then we can go to dinner.”
Arms crossed, hip cocked, looking far too sexy in her fury, my mate said, “I don’t remember saying yes.”
“I never heard you say no, either. Dragons like specificity, love.” I tapped the tip of her nose and turned to leave, knowing my time was up. “See you tonight.”
She could have said no, could have told me to kiss off, could have done a hundred different things to make her displeasure at the idea of spending time with me known.
She did nothing but allow me to walk away.
I took that as a resounding yes to my offer.
Now, to get to the winning her over…for real, this time.
4
Ginger
You really should be making bread.”
I looked up at my youngest sister, frowning when I met Madeleine’s concerned stare. “Huh?”
She nodded toward the table where I’d been folding the cupcake batter together. Though folding was a bit of a stretch at that point. “You’re beating the hell out of that batter. You’d be better off making bread if you’re so worked up.”
“I’m not worked up.”
Her eyebrows practically jumped off her forehead. If eyebrows could move autonomously. And off the body part they grew out of. “So are we lying to ourselves, or simply too blinded to see what’s going on? Because I have to tell you, the timing is horrible.”
“Yeah. Horrible timing.” What with rehearsal dinner cookies and cakes due, my cupcakes for the parties before the wedding, and the actual wedding cake. The three of us were all equally slammed. But Coco…well, she’d been dealt the worst hand.
I flicked a glance at my other sister. The poor thing seemed to be in her own world, one filled with sadness and tears. One that existed in the arid desert that was heartbreak. Seeing the girl so shattered, so completely lost inside her own pain, ripped out my heart and tap-danced across it. Coco’s latest crush—a wolf shifter named Magnus—seemed to have gone off the rails. She’d been so happy just the day before, laughing and joking and excited for dinner out with her man. This morning, though, she’d failed to come to work, so we’d been forced to basically drag her out of bed and into the shop. And now? She was the Kinship Cove spokesperson for how depression hurts.
I wouldn’t follow in her footsteps.
No way, no how, no flipping chance. I wasn’t about to let anyone get that close to me, wasn’t going to open myself up for such pain. Not unless they were the right someone. And by right, I meant perfect—everything I could ever want. The dream guy I’d been chasing since I got my first Ken doll. Since I began planning weddings with my already suitably prepared—and gloriously independent—Barbies. Ken had been perfect, though. Mr. Right versus Mr. Right Now. I refused to settle for less.
“Welp, these ears are about as pointy as they’re going to ever be. I thought the cake was done before, but that little extra swirl of gray really does make it perfect. Right?” Madeleine stepped back from the groom’s cake—a ridiculously large three-dimensional wolf sitting and howling, because what else would a wolf shifter want?—and nodded once. “Yep, perfect. You’re delivering this tonight, remember?”
As if I could forget. Between Madeleine and Misty, they’d reminded me eight-hundred times already. I’d never forgotten to make a delivery before.
Except that one time with the cookies for an otter shifter’s baptism.
Oh, and the muffins for Jericho’s meeting with the mountain goat shifters.
And okay, the bagels for the alligator consortium had been a little late, but that really hadn’t been my fault.
Damn it, I was totally going to forget the cake.
“I won’t forget.”
Madeleine looked skeptical but didn’t say another word, instead sliding the cake onto one of the rolling carts we used for heavy or fragile items and wheeling it into the walk-in refrigerator. I was pretty sure there’d be bright-colored signs all over the kitchen by the end of the day, all with the same message in capital letters.
DON’T FORGET TO DELIVER THE CAKE.
I would not forget.
Hopefully.
Back to the cupcakes. I poured the overworked batter into a cu
pcake tin and set them in the oven to cook. I doubted they’d come out the right texture, but I had to try. As the best—albeit, only—bakery in town, we’d won the contract for all the desserts at the biggest wedding of the year. Madeleine had made the groom’s cake and was working away on a ridiculously huge wedding cake with more decorations than I’d ever seen, and Coco had been making her famous macaron cookies for days for the rehearsal dinner. Meanwhile, I was in charge of the desserts for the bachelor and bachelorette parties. What goes better with a night on the town than booze? Nothing. Hence why, as soon as I had my next batch of cupcakes in the oven, I grabbed a bag of pale green buttercream and began frosting my tequila-soaked cakes. Everyone liked a margarita, right?
Right.
My boozy cakes had gotten us a lot of attention when I’d started adding them to the rotation last year. From whiskey to vodka, margarita to cosmopolitan, I had a cupcake for whatever your favorite alcoholic beverage happened to be. Fiona, the bride in the upcoming wedding, had basically demanded dozens of the liquored-up cupcakes for her last night as a single woman, and how could I possibly refuse her? I liked the wolf shifter. I wouldn’t tell Coco that, seeing as how the woman was the mate of her ex-boyfriend, though that wasn’t Fiona’s fault. Fate was a tricky mistress—something I’d learned well growing up in Kinship Cove.
Thankfully, my friendship with Fiona had garnered me an invitation to the bachelorette shindig, which had somehow become one of the most-anticipated events in Kinship Cove history. I’d be out on the town tomorrow night with a gaggle of girls—not literally, they weren’t all geese shifters—and a hell of a lot of opportunity for trouble. It sounded perfect, exactly what I needed to unwind.
Unlike dinner with that man—Kingston.
The second his name crossed through my mind, the man himself appeared. He walked through the back entrance to the shop as if he owned the place, looking…
Okay, fine, he looked like sex on legs. All debonair and stylish with those ice-blue eyes locked on me and a sexy-as-fuck smirk on his face. I hated him. I also wanted to ride his face. Totally normal, right?
“I’m not ready to go yet,” I said, tearing my eyes away from him—damn, those dark jeans hugged him in all the right places—to work on my cupcakes.
“I’ll wait.”
Of course he would. “What if I said I didn’t want to go?”
“I’d wait longer until you came to your senses.”
“You’re arrogant.”
“It comes with the breed.”
That caught my attention. “The breed?”
“Dragon. I’m a shifter, Sparky.”
The man was a beast…quite literally. “You’re a dragon.”
“Yes.”
“A real dragon.”
The slow roll of his shoulder into a shrug only made him appear that much more refined somehow. “Last time I checked, yes.”
“Huh.”
“Just huh?”
It was my turn to shrug. “I’ve never met a dragon.”
But I knew about them—players, non-maters, they tended to stay isolated from other shifters and never really pair up. They also tended to take what they wanted no matter what it was—money, treasures, women. Thieves, pirates, and plunderers, the lot of them. At least, that’s what I’d been told. Thinking back over how he’d acted around me—about the blonde at the bar—he certainly seemed to fit the mold.
He also had a wicked smile that melted my panties right off my body. “You have met a dragon. Me.”
Smartass. “No. I mean, I’ve lived in shifter town all my life. I thought I’d met every kind of shifter out there. A dragon is new.”
“We’re rare.”
“How rare?”
“Rare enough that you’ve never met one.”
“Not helpful.”
“Not trying to be.”
I huffed, and he smirked. That was fine—two could play at this game. And by two, I meant me because he might as well raise the white flag. I’d win. Starting with a hit no guy wanted to take.
“Why are dragons so rare anyway? Are there…known issues with—” I motioned toward his little dragon “—the equipment?”
He looked ready to roast me with his flame breath…if he could actually do that. “No issues, no.”
“Oh, because I once met a cheetah shifter, and she went on and on about the male cheetah’s low sperm viability. It’s a thing for them.”
“I’m not a cheetah shifter.”
“Hmmm. Long gestational periods like elephants?”
“No, not elephant-like either.”
If his scowl got any deeper, his face might crack. Perfect.
I tapped my chin, pretending to think…or not pretending. I needed one more dig. I found life in general to be far more balanced in groups of threes. Either that or I really just wanted to see how low that scowl would hang out on his handsome face before he blew up. Could go either way.
“So, no erectile dysfunction—that you’ll admit to”—I shot him a wink—“and no excessively long gestational periods. I’ve seen you move, so you’re not simply too slow and sloth-like. Seriously, Kingston—why so rare?”
He huffed, sounding so long-suffering I almost felt sorry for him.
Nope, that was a lie. I wasn’t even close to that point yet.
“We don’t mate the same way as other shifters.”
“Oh, so…there’s positioning issues? What…do you just squirt the sperm at an egg or something? I’m pretty sure there was a—”
“Damn it, woman, no. We don’t squirt sperm.”
“Pity. That might be fun to watch.”
“I don’t know what I did to deserve such a creature,” he said, looking way more cross than he had been when he walked in. I was on a roll. “We have rules of engagement when it comes to these things, and we tend to find our partners very late in life, so we don’t reproduce as quickly as say…a rabbit shifter.”
Partners, not mates. And the whole rabbit thing…yeah. Hump like bunnies meant something completely different in Kinship Cove. No, wait, scratch that. It meant the same thing all over. Universal excessive-humping term. “No joke there. I went to high school with a girl—” I gaped at him, the perfect dig hitting me so hard I almost gasped. “Hey, is that why you’re so old?”
Kingston jerked as if I’d slapped him, and I had to bite back my smile. “Excuse me?”
“Well, I mean…you’ve got the gray hair going on. Not that it’s a bad thing—you’re rocking the silver fox look.”
“Silver. Fox. Look.”
The amount of disdain in his voice reached epic proportions. I was talking full-out Professor Snape on a bad day quantities. I considered that winning.
“Silver fox—older man, you know? You fit the part. I assumed you were trying to be a sugar daddy or something, what with the age difference between us.” I frowned, pulling my lips down hard, making sure to exaggerate the move. “You know, I might be too much for you. Maybe we shouldn’t go to dinner. I’d hate to keep you out too late.”
Kingston-of-the-bad-nicknames did not seem amused. “You think I’m too old to keep up with you.”
Not a question. Not a tough statement to answer, either. “Maybe.”
He stepped closer, crowding me. Taking up all the space in my world and filling my vision with only him. “Don’t push me, little girl.”
“Why not, old man?”
His hands landed on my hips, and I gasped, the rush of arousal that simple touch caused almost bringing me to my knees. I caught a glimpse of something dark and shiny as I practically fell into his grasp, but then we were airborne. I don’t know how he slipped through the doorway of the bakery, never saw him truly shift, but there was no denying the fact that I’d just been kidnapped by a dragon.
And I was pretty sure I liked it.
As I saw Kinship Cove from an entirely new angle—looking down on it—I tried to control the pounding rhythm of my heart. So high, so fast—Kingston flew us across town an
d toward the mountains. His claws rested curled against my stomach, long and sharp and dangerous-looking but tucked carefully away. I wasn’t scared, and he wasn’t trying to hurt me. I had a feeling he was likely trying to make a point, one I’d concede eventually because I didn’t want him to drop me. Seemed reasonable, right?
Kingston flew us all the way to a deep ledge about halfway up the ridge to the west of town. Forested on one side with an obvious path, it didn’t feel like the sort of place a serial killer would take their next victim. Lucky for me.
When Kingston set me down, he flew to the other side of the ledge, landing so very carefully. And then he waited—watching me. Letting me look him over. Taller than I’d expected—bigger, too—he stood in all his dragon glory. Black scales with a sort of iridescent quality to them that brought out blues, greens, and purples, huge blue eyes with football-shaped pupils, and wings. Big, leathery wings sprouting from behind his shoulders and sitting higher than his head.
Dragon.
Yep.
He was a dragon.
And I had no idea what to do with my attraction to him.
“Please shift back,” I whispered, shaking with the need to touch, the desire coursing through me. Something about having been touched by him, overpowered by his strength and speed, had lit a fire inside of me. And I wanted to watch it burn.
With a rush of air that felt soft against my skin and something close to the smell of ozone before a storm, Kingston swirled and shifted shapes, appearing in his human form within a second. Still watching me with those cold blue eyes.
And…dressed?
“Are dragons the only shifters who shift with their clothes intact?” Because I’d seen far too many naked shifters in human forms after they’d shifted and didn’t have spare clothes stashed somewhere. The streets of Kinship Cove were filled with bare asses on the regular.
“I believe so, yes. Our magic is much older than most other shifters, though. Why?” He cocked his head and stepped closer, looking far too arrogant to take seriously. “Were you looking forward to seeing me bare?”
