Dragon's Luck: Dragon Shifter Paranormal Romance (Shifter Agents Book 3)

by Lauren Esker

  "You're all right," he said, just to make sure.

  "I am now." She gave up on trying to set the bed to rights and lay down against him. There was some shuffling around as they got themselves arranged. Neither of them were used to sleeping with another person in the bed.

  "I apologize in advance if I puke in your hair."

  Jen laughed softly against his neck. "I'll deal. I'd move a trash can over, but I can't find anything in this mess. Do you want me to go see if I can find you some Dramamine or something?"

  "Don't bother. I just want to sleep."

  "Me too," she whispered, and slowly went limp against him, twitching in the grip of dreams.

  He followed her down, not long after.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Jen woke with a jerk from hazy, half-coherent dreams. She wanted to stay where she was, snuggled against Lucky with his arm over her—but she was desperately thirsty, and really had to pee.

  Carefully she peeled herself away from him and sat up. She ached like she'd been worked over with a baseball bat, and a cold spike of pain stabbed into her eye sockets every time she blinked. When she rested her hands in her lap, the fingertips quivered. Her arm jerked with a muscle twitch.

  What is this, withdrawals? Nice. Lucia coulda warned me.

  She didn't feel terrible, though, just unpleasant. She'd had worse hangovers in college.

  She padded naked into the bathroom, picking her way around fallen toiletry items on the floor. The shower curtain rod was down, and the floor showed signs of drying water stains. The adjacent carpet was still a little damp. Toilet water. Lovely.

  But the ship was no longer tossing around. Instead it was back to a gentle rocking she could barely feel.

  She used the toilet, found a plastic cup still sealed in its wrap (even if it had rolled behind the toilet), and drank several cupfuls before she felt a little less shaky and weird. Flicking on the cosmetic lights around the mirror, she examined her chest in the reflection. The only memento of her brush with death, other than flaking smears of dried blood, was a set of pale pink, mostly healed scars. They curved gently across her sternum from the midpoint to just below her right breast.

  Shifter healing was always fast, but this was impossible. She touched the scars lightly, with wonder.

  "Jen?"

  Lucky's arms closed around her from behind. He rested his chin on her shoulder. Healing claw marks from his fight with Angel showed purplish on his exposed skin.

  "It's really something, isn't it?" Jen traced the scars with her fingertips.

  "I was just thinking the same thing. You have an amazing rack."

  She kicked him in the shin with her bare heel. "I guess I left myself wide open for that one. Also, my rack is more of a half-rack, and I feel like ten miles of bad road."

  "It's a nice-looking road, though."

  This time she kicked harder, though still playfully. Had she wanted to break his hold, she could've done it effortlessly in a dozen ways. Instead she twisted around in his grasp so she could twine her arms around his neck. "If you're trying to butter me up for some specific purpose, all you have to do is ask."

  ***

  One orgasm later, feeling looser and more at peace with the world, she wandered into the lounge hand in hand with Lucky.

  A fresh sea breeze came in through broken windows, and outside the sky was as clear and blue as if the storm had never happened at all. The lounge was about half full of passengers, most of whom chose to keep a wary distance from the two of them.

  Jen tried hard not to think about what they'd seen, or hadn't seen, last night. Instead she gravitated toward the lunch buffet spread out on white-clothed tables, although closer inspection found that it was composed entirely of cold, easily portable items, sandwich makings and the like, hastily arranged on trays. Hungover-looking redcaps circulated to keep the coffee filled and the trays stocked. Jen felt a twinge of guilt at making them work after the night, and morning, they'd almost certainly had. The lounge had been cleaned up and the tables set to rights, so Lucia was keeping them hopping, which had to be a hardship if they felt as bad as she had when she first woke up.

  She told herself it wasn't any of her business, and poured a mug of coffee. Her stomach wasn't feeling up to much, but she took a roll and some cheese, and wandered over to the broken windows to look out.

  Here she got a shock. What she saw wasn't ocean.

  Jen stepped carefully over the shards of glass still clinging to their frames and took her coffee out onto the balcony. Across a stretch of azure water, a wide sandy beach dotted with fishing boats curved back toward a town composed of low buildings with brown or white roofs. Jen didn't see anything taller than two or three stories, and not very many of those. Behind that was a forest so green it seared the eyes, rising into a steep, loaf-shaped hill. The tops of several modern-looking hotel complexes peeked above the forest beyond the town, somewhere else along the beach where the tourists' view wasn't being contaminated by the actual people who lived there.

  Lucky came up beside her, carrying a cup of coffee and a multi-layered sandwich. "Where the heck are we?"

  "Nuanau," Roxy's voice said from behind them. "Little Pacific Island nation."

  Roxy strolled up to them with her hands in her pockets, shadowed by one of her goons. She looked unaffected by the night's ordeal, immaculate in a crisp cream-colored silk blouse, with every one of her close-cropped gray hairs in place. Her exhaustion was only visible up close, the shadows under her eyes artfully but inadequately concealed with makeup.

  "We limped into port this morning," she said. "Apparently it was the closest place to pull in for repairs. Even with the pumps running full tilt, the ship is barely this side of seaworthy."

  "Dude, we actually get a tropical vacation? Sweet." Jen stretched the hand holding the coffee cup toward the sunshine, then froze as the implications sank in. "Hey, wait. A town. That means phones and things."

  "The ship's communications are back up," Roxy said. "From what I hear."

  "Right? Right. That'd probably work."

  After Roxy, with a long searching look at the two of them, had wandered off again, Jen leaned closer to Lucky. "Fancy a trip to town a little later?"

  His expression was difficult to read. "You need to check in with your ... uh, your employers, don't you?"

  She nodded. "Lucia may know about me, but I still don't want to use the ship's phones or Internet for official business, and I doubt if she wants me to, either."

  "What are you planning to tell them about me?"

  Jen nudged his arm. The muscles were tense, and when she leaned against him, he didn't lean back against her. "I'm not. We'll talk about it on land, okay? Eat your sandwich."

  He relaxed slowly, but she still sensed the reserve in him.

  They'd never really trusted each other, she reminded herself. Nothing had truly changed.

  But he stayed with her, and came with her when she found a spot on a boat going over to the island. They weren't the only passengers who wanted to check out the town. Amid the press of people boarding the boat, Jen couldn't help looking for the handful she wanted to say goodbye to. She suspected she'd spent her last night on the Memphis, and she hadn't seen Lucia yet—or Marius, or Nguyet, both of whom she hoped to see one last time. She had even paused to knock on Marius's door, but had received no answer. In the end, she simply had to turn her back on the ship, tell herself she could come back to say goodbye (whether or not it was true), and keep moving forward.

  Or so she thought, until she got a look at the redcap piloting their boat. It was Lucia. She wore an ordinary redcap uniform with her hair tucked up under her hat, and none of the other passengers glanced twice at her.

  While the others debarked at the beach, Lucia pointed at Lucky and Jen, motioning them to stay behind.

  "So here we are," she said once they were alone, sitting on the boat's gunwale and swinging her leg idly. In the white glare of the sunshine, her eyes hidden by dark sunglasses,
she looked young and carefree. Jen could read her body language better than that, though. And there was also the small matter of the gun she wore openly at her hip.

  "You want to know what I'm going to tell my agency about you," Jen said.

  "If I thought you'd betray me, you would never have left the ship alive."

  Lucky stiffened. Jen tensed, too, but then she made herself laugh. "You could have tried."

  Lucia smiled. "If I wanted you dead, I need only have left you to die, but I chose to save you instead. Let's remember that. So ... Agent Jennifer Cho, Special Crimes Bureau, eh? Why are you really here?"

  Jen sat on the opposite gunwale; Lucky remained standing. Jen had already decided to go for honesty ... at least up to a point. "I came here to investigate Dragon's Tears. I wasn't sure where the trail would lead. All I knew was that the poker game was a link in the supply chain. I'm far outside my jurisdiction here, without backup or warrants. My handlers don't even know where I am."

  "Hmm." It was impossible to tell what Lucia was thinking. She glanced at Lucky. "Did you know about this beforehand?"

  He shook his head.

  "No, Lucky and I met for the first time on Roxy's gambling boat. I never intended to go this far. I never meant to pretend to be his girlfriend." Jen reached out and took Lucky's hand. His fingers remained stiff in hers. "I never meant for it to become true," she said gently, and slowly his hand relaxed and his fingers curled around hers.

  "Well, it seems we are at an impasse." Lucia tipped her head to the side, watching them—Jen, mostly—from beneath her dark glasses. "Allowing you to walk away without some form of guarantee seems unwise. I'd like to offer you a deal."

  "No," Jen said. Lucia's body language stilled, growing markedly less friendly. "Not the kind of deal you're thinking of. I'm sure paying me off would make you feel better, but I don't want your money."

  "Is there something else you want?" Lucia inquired, guardedly.

  "So the thing about Dragon's Tears is, it's not so bad, as drugs go," Jen said. "I had it last night ... heck, everyone on the ship did. And this morning, I'm okay; a little hung over, but nothing awful. And it's useful. Morphine is addictive and dangerous, but we use it all the time, because it's effective. The main problems with Dragon's Tears, as a drug, are the same problems with any illegal drug. Supply-chain problems, mostly."

  "I can assure you that Dragon's Tears is not going to be added to the roster of legal hospital pharmaceuticals anytime in the near future."

  "No," Jen agreed. "But I don't have that much invested in actually stopping your trade in it. I just want you to stop illicitly selling it in my jurisdiction. Maybe that's selfish; maybe it's naive. Maybe I'm just kicking the problem onto someone else's patch. But if you want me to name my price to leave you and your network out of my reports, that's it. That's what I want. Keep your problems off my turf, and I'll do my best to make sure the SCB won't bother you."

  There was a wicked hook to Lucia's smile. "It may shock you to learn this, but Seattle is not a major slice of our market. Done."

  "I don't mean Seattle. I mean the United States."

  The smile stiffened somewhat. "Ah. Well, my trade on the other side of the Pacific is more lucrative anyway."

  "For the record, it's not that I have a problem with the drug itself. Notice that I said illicitly. I know it's never going to be a legal drug, at least not with the current status of shifters and dragons. It's not like you can put the drug into actual clinical trials. But what you've done here, bottling shifter healing ability, it's something that scientists in the shifter community have been working on for a long time. It could really help a lot of people. If you want to work out some kind of deal to get it into circulation as a hospital drug, even if it's totally under the table, I don't mind at all. What I don't want is the violence and felony convictions and uncontrolled push toward addiction, everything that goes along with the drug only being available from the kind of people who sell illegal drugs. Actually, if I could have everything I want and a pony too, I wish you'd do that in all your markets. But I don't have a big enough carrot to offer, and the U.S. is the only part of the world where I have actual authority to do anything about it."

  "She's got a point, Lucia," Lucky said, speaking up for the first time. "I'll be the first to admit I'm an enormous hypocrite for pointing this out, but with your abilities, you could do a lot of good in the world."

  Lucia half-smiled. "What makes you think I don't already?"

  Neither of them had an answer for that.

  "In any case, last night cleaned out my personal reserve, so it'll be a moot point for a while. And maybe I want to sell the damn ship and do something else for a change. I'm not sure."

  "Er, about the ship," Jen said. "Not to change the subject, but we all revealed ourselves to a couple thousand people last night. My agency can—"

  "Your agency can stay out of my business," Lucia said. "As far as I'm concerned, everyone on board the ship was dosed with a hallucinogen last night. My people are making sure there will be no recordings of anything that happened, should anyone have had the opportunity to sneak equipment past my security staff. We are also taking measures to ensure that comparing notes will result in conflicting stories. We are very thorough, I can assure you."

  "Hmm. Well." Jen did a bit more mental editing to her already thoroughly bowdlerized incident report. "Uh, good, I guess. One less thing for us to worry about."

  "My ship. My cousin. My problem. But for the rest of it, your deal sounds fair enough. I accept." Lucia took a card from her pocket and held it out. "Business done. On to pleasure. I have a friend who runs a bed and breakfast on the island. If you want somewhere to stay that isn't the ship, I strongly recommend her place over the chain hotels."

  "Getting rid of us?" Lucky asked. Jen wondered when she'd learned his tells well enough to hear the subtle hurt beneath his flippant tone.

  "Merely suggesting you might enjoy yourselves more if you weren't under the watchful eye of Ms. Molina or my crew." She hopped down from the gunwale and hugged Lucky, who tensed, startled, before hugging her back. "The ship will be in port for however long it takes to get it safely seaworthy again. I, however, will not. I'm flying out tonight."

  "I'm sorry I won't be able to get to know you better," Jen said, and meant it.

  Lucia turned to her, and, to Jen's surprise, caught her in a hug as well. It was hard and brisk and more painful than pleasant. "You may yet have the chance. Don't let another fifteen years go by, Ambrose. I know I'm not an easy person to find, but if you look for Lux and let her know who's searching, it won't be difficult for you. And I assume I can track you down through Miss Cho here, provided you plan to stick around her."

  Lucky glanced at Jen, then looked away. "If possible," he said softly.

  The silence that followed was freighted with the weight of things unsaid. Lucia broke it, turning back to the boat's steering console. "Enjoy your vacation," she said. "And your lives."

  They jumped down to the shallow sea beside the beach, splashing ashore in shallow, warm water. Both waved as the boat drew away, dwindling against the brilliant, aqua sea until it jostled up against the sphinx's intact paw, tiny as a bug next to the cruise ship's vast bulk.

  "Well," Lucky said, looking at the card. "Let's go find this bed and breakfast first, and then see about some dinner."

  They walked together through the trampled sand, up the beach to a boardwalk and into the touristy part of the town. Lucky held her hand the whole way.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The woman who ran the B&B Lucia had recommended was a shifter. Jen never found out what she shifted into, although she got the shifter feeling from the owner, Tuva, and all five of her kids, who helped run the place and ranged in age from a girl in her early teens to a toddler. Jen thought they might be some sort of water shifter, from the way the kids ran in and out of the sea all the time, tracking water and sand into the house. But maybe that was just due to living on an island. In any cas
e, having shifter hosts meant they didn't have to be quite so careful.

  The B&B had a phone, but Jen opted to go walking until she found a place to exchange the small amount of her remaining SCB incidental funds for local dollars. She bought a cell phone off a vendor, with exorbitantly expensive long-distance minutes, and finally, at long last, was able to call the Seattle SCB.

  "Put me through to the duty agent, please," she told the desk. "Agent Ross, if he's available."

  A minute later, Jack Ross's familiar bass rumble came on the line. "Special Agent Ross speaking."

  "Jack, hey. Good to hear your voice." And it truly was. She didn't mind working without a net, but it was nice to feel the safety line snapping back into place.

  "Cho! Holy shit." There was a thunk on the other end: Jack's chair protesting as he sat abruptly upright from his usual 'doing paperwork, would rather be somewhere else' slouch. "Where are you? Are you all right?"

  "I sent you a message. Jeez. I assume you got it."

  "Right, because two sentences on the dry-cleaning answering machine and then a communications blackout won't cause anyone to worry at all. Avery's been having kittens, as you can imagine."

  Jen laughed. "That must be fun, on top of the puppies." Avery and his girlfriend were in the process of adopting four werewolf children.

  The joke didn't even get a groan. Great. She must be in trouble. Instead, Jack asked, "Have you talked to him yet?"

  "No, and there's a specific reason why I called you first, instead of him. I need you to stop Avery from rushing down here to find me. You have more pull with him than I do. Pretty sure I couldn't talk him out of something he's set on doing, and I know he'll want to do this. But you can. Especially," she added, "if you don't tell him where I am."

  "That won't be hard, since you haven't told me yet."