by Lauren Esker
For the time being, the existence of the Valeria and the general revelations about dragons were being kept on a hush-hush, need-to-know basis, even within the SCB. Where the dragons were concerned, Jen would have fought for that anyway. They'd managed to keep their existence a secret even from other shifters; it seemed like enough of a betrayal that she was exposing them to a few people. And it didn't hurt anyone if dragons weren't general knowledge in the shifter community. The Valeria ... she was a lot more conflicted about that.
"This is a sensitive investigation with international implications," Stiers told her. "And you're running point on it. For now, you'll be reporting directly to me and to Easton with anything you learn from your informant."
For now. She had the feeling that the case could be jerked out of her hands and revert to DC at any moment, depending on how things developed.
She'd been as open as possible with Stiers and Easton about Marius and the Valeria—unlike her careful truth-and-lies tightrope walk regarding the dragons—but even there, she kept Marius's real name to herself. That was the single little detail she was willing to hold back, in the interests of protecting her informant ... and, maybe, protecting the SCB from him; it gave her leverage to use against him if she needed it. She hadn't heard from him yet, and although she hadn't expected him to establish communications so early, she had to struggle to keep doubts from creeping in. The double-agent act worked both ways. While she was telling her bosses about the Valeria, he could be telling his about the SCB. It must be easier to decide to double-cross them while he was half a world away, perhaps less so when he was faced with the reality of betraying everything he'd known.
Sometimes you had to take a leap of faith.
But having a little something held back didn't hurt.
If they really are planning something big, we need you, Matteo. All of shifterkind needs you. Don't let us down.
Between debriefing and deferred casework from her unexpected week-and-a-half absence, she was too busy for the first few days to think about Lucky ... at least, to think about him too much. On the island, he'd told her he needed to take care of a few things and would come and see her in Seattle afterwards.
Their future was still a giant question mark that she tried not to dwell on. She'd lived her life with a devil-may-care, come-what-may attitude toward the future. There was no reason why Lucky's entrance into her life should change that. Actually, if anything, the less she worried about what the future would bring, the easier he'd be to deal with.
If he even decides to come back ...
It was like dating a cat. No, it was worse. She had close friends who were dating cat shifters. They weren't nearly this bad.
She told herself firmly that she was not going to sit around waiting for him to call. If it came to that, she'd jump into another field case and worry about Lucky when she got back.
It was only the gray Seattle weather getting her down, she told herself, a gloomy low-pressure system sitting on her heart the way the heavy gray clouds lay low across the city.
The knock at the door came as the whirlwind of meetings, debriefing, and towering stacks of paperwork had begun to die down. She was contemplating the relative merits of an evening spent watching Netflix, versus a night out on the town with a mental mandate to have fun dammit (she could drag along Casey McClaren, Jack's girlfriend; girl needed to learn how to lighten up), and at first she thought it would turn out to be Jack and Casey, or Jack and Avery, here to drag her out of her apartment.
Instead, Lucky stood in the hallway. Raindrops jeweled his hair and glistened on the shoulders of his ludicrous green jacket, a slightly heavier and more waterproof-looking version of the one that had been destroyed on the Memphis. He was holding a bouquet of tiger lilies.
"I thought about roses, but something flamboyant seemed more your style."
She kissed him hard on his rain-wet lips and dragged him through the door. "I don't remember the last time a guy brought me flowers," she marveled, taking them from him. "I'm not sure if I remember what to do with flowers. They go in water, right?"
"I think that's the tradition, yes."
He glanced around the apartment curiously. Jen had made an earnest stab at decorating nicely when she first got her own place—she still remembered how delighted and proud she'd been—but her good intentions had collapsed under her workaholic nature and the fact that she didn't actually enjoy interior decorating all that much. Still, the place wasn't a complete disaster, and she told her jumpy nerves—while stuffing the tiger lilies into an empty pickle jar—that if he really minded having newspaper and old takeout cartons on the coffee table, it was his problem and he could move them.
God, her stomach was fluttering like a schoolgirl with her first crush. Ridiculous.
"What's the weather doing out there?" she asked over her shoulder, while Lucky moseyed around the room, looking at pictures of her family and artwork on the walls from her sporadic attempts at Martha Stewart-ing up the place. "Sleet? Hail? Drizzle? Mizzle? I won't ask about sun, since that's out of the question."
"Can you tell I'm an out-of-towner because I don't know all the local words for rain?"
"You'll get a crash course, I'm afraid." She set the flowers on the coffee table, moved her laptop off the couch—goodbye Netflix—and flopped down. "It could have been worse, though. The weather might have been nice when you got here. It does that to lull you into a false sense of security and convince you to go outside without an umbrella."
"I can't help noticing the beach theme on the walls."
"Lies." Most of the artwork she had found to bedeck her apartment consisted of California-esque beach scenes, sun-drenched Greek islands, and the like. It beat looking out the window. "Are you going to play art critic, or come over here and greet me properly?"
A few rounds of proper greeting later, they were sprawled on the couch with his damp jacket dropped carelessly on the floor and Jen lying on top of him, while he petted her hair. "I missed you," he said quietly.
"Not enough to call, I noticed." She kissed him again to make sure he knew she wasn't mad. Well, not much anyway.
"Sorry. Like I said, I had a few things to do."
"Like what?"
Lucky sat up, lightly displacing her into his lap. "Things didn't quite go my way in the tournament, so I was pretty close to flat broke. Can't show a girl a good time with five bucks in my pocket, right?"
"So you went and found a poker game?"
"Basically." He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a fat roll of bills. "Think this'll buy us a nice time on the town for the next few days?"
"Good God, how much is that?"
"Only a few thousand." He pushed it into her hand.
Jen shook her head. She had to stop herself from petting the money; instead she tucked it back into his pocket. "Unbelievable. You were broke, so you found a poker game and picked up a few thousand dollars. Damn, boy."
"In my defense, that's not unusual in professional gambler circles. Of course ..." He flashed a grin. "Most gamblers run a higher risk of losing."
"Do at least try to make it sound like you're not breaking the law, for my sanity's sake."
"I'm not, though," he pointed out. "If you can point me to a law against manipulating probability to win at cards—"
"If they knew about you, they'd make a law just for you."
"Ooh. I'm barely legal." He kissed her again and leaned down to nibble at her neck. "So what do you say?" he asked between nibbles. "Take a few days off, show me Seattle? I'd love to tourist around this town with you. We can get a sweet hotel room, maybe jet down to Nevada and I can let you see what a winning streak feels like—"
"Lucky," she said, fending him off. She caught him by the shoulders and made him look at her. "Lucky, no. It can't be like this."
Confusion and hurt darkened his eyes. "Don't you want—"
"I do want. That's the problem." She sighed and kissed him lightly. "But we can't live our lives in fun little vacations. Come on,
don't make me be the grownup here. I only get a few weeks of vacation a year. What are you going to do the rest of the time, head off to Reno or Monaco and come see me for two weeks in the summer?"
"I don't know," he said seriously. "I hadn't thought that far ahead. I was just thinking we could take a few days and enjoy the town. I've never been to Seattle. I want to see it with you."
"I do too. With you, I mean. Even if Seattle in late winter isn't that much of a treat." She leaned forward and rested her head on his shoulder. "But ... I don't want to think that I'm just going to be your good-time girl, with you showing up for the fun but not for the hard times, you know?"
He stroked her hair for a while before he answered. "I've never had a relationship that lasted. I'm not sure how this works."
"I know," she murmured. "I'm not an expert either. Okay, no, let's be realistic—I'm terrible at long-term planning. I don't own a houseplant because it's too much responsibility. But the only way to stop being terrible at something is to work on it. If we can't plan for the whole future, can we maybe think more than three days ahead? Just a little?"
"Tell me what you want," he said softly into her hair.
"Let's meet halfway. I'll take a few days off and show you the town, maybe even go down to Vegas with you. I think that'd be a lot of fun. But when I come back and go back to work, I want to know that you're not going to drop me and go looking for someone else to have fun with."
"No one else is as fun as you."
She raised her head to look him in the face. "That's not an answer."
"Tell you what." He kissed her gently on the cheeks, on the nose, and finally on the lips. "Let's take those days and see this town. We can go up the Space Needle and, uh, whatever else there is to do in Seattle. I'm also hoping we'll spend a lot of time exploring the bedroom."
"You mean destroying the bedroom."
"Probably." He grinned and kissed her nose again. "But sometime in those two or three or six or however many days you have off, let's look at places to rent. See if we can find an apartment or a condo that makes me think, You know, Seattle is a nice place to live after all. Preferably somewhere with an actual view. And lots of wall space for your beach pictures, of course."
Her heart did that schoolgirl flip again. "That's a big step, isn't it? Getting a place together?"
"The advantage of being a terrible advance planner," Lucky said with a serious look, "is that there is no such thing as a hasty decision. All your decisions are hasty, rash, and probably stupid."
"Oddly enough you're actually selling me on it."
"Big rooms. High ceilings. Someplace spacious and light."
Jen moaned. "Stop it, you condo-tease." She kissed him deeply and let him go with a playful bite to the lips before concern began creeping in again. "But, if we do this, if we actually get a place, what next? Are you going to be a house-husband while I go to work? Or go out and find underground poker games and get me in trouble? I did tell my boss about the dragon thing, you should probably know that, but she's the only one who knows, and she doesn't know I'm dating one. I don't want either of us to get too wrapped up in something that's not going to work, if you end up getting bored or if I can't deal with the secrets."
"I don't know, Jen." He brushed a strand of hair from her cheek, then laid the back of his hand against her face. "It's all too big. I don't know how people manage to look at an entire lifetime and deal with that. I love you and I want to be with you forever, and that scares the hell out of me."
The sincerity in his voice, in his face, took her breath away. "Me too. I mean, I love you too." She'd thought it would be hard to say, but instead it was easy; it was only putting into words something that had already settled into her heart and bones.
"I'm not going anywhere, Jen. I promise you that. It's just ... can we take it a day at a time for a while?"
She curled her fingers around his hand and pressed it against her face. "We can do that. As the first in what I am sure will be a long line of hasty and rash decisions over the next few days, consider me on vacation as of now."
"I like the sound of that." He pulled her hand to his lips and kissed her fingertips. "So, care to show me your apartment?"
"You can literally see all of it from right here. Except the closet, I guess. Do you want me to show you the closet?"
"I was actually thinking more about the bedroom."
He was sucking on her fingers now. It was very distracting.
"Mmmm. My bed is a twin. Just to warn you."
"Man, you really don't have guys over often, do you?"
"So put a new bed on the list of stuff to buy with that wad of cash in your pocket." She wrapped an arm around his head and pulled him down to her lips.
The kiss turned hot and heavy. Jen scrambled higher in his lap, pushing him down onto the couch as she climbed him like a tree. Her foot lashed out and kicked over the vase of tiger lilies.
"My laptop!"
The laptop was rescued; the water was mopped up, and the vase was moved safely to the kitchen counter. "If we're going to be having regular sex, we may need to invest in a place with rubber furniture and a drain in the floor," Lucky remarked.
"One thing at a time, though. Wasn't that the plan?"
He caught her up, lifting her off the floor. "I like that plan."
After all, Jen thought as she twined her arms around his neck, what was forever but an endless series of tomorrows? What was a lifetime commitment but a different kind of wager? She was willing to put her money on that.
Author’s Note
Thank you for reading Dragon’s Luck! I would love to know what you thought about it; you can leave a review on my Amazon page or email me: [email protected]. You can also follow me on Facebook at laureneskerwriter.
If you’d like to be notified of my new releases, you can sign up for my mailing list by clicking this link: http://eepurl.com/btVi2X.
***
About the Author
Lauren Esker is the paranormal romance and romantic suspense pen name of Layla Lawlor, writer, graphic designer, and lifelong Alaskan. She lives with her husband and pets on the highway in a former gold-mining district, not far from Fairbanks, Alaska’s second-largest city. She also enjoys reading, hiking, gardening, and art. In the past she managed the layout department at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner (the local paper) and taught at the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival. She now writes full time. You can find her at laurenesker.com and laylalawlor.com.
***
Cover photo credits: © Can Stock Photo Inc. Cover design by Layla Lawlor.
Also by Lauren Esker
Handcuffed to the Bear – Shifter Agents #1. A bear-shifter ex-mercenary and a curvy lynx shifter searching for her best friend's killer are handcuffed together and hunted in the wilderness. They must learn to rely on each other before their pasts, and their pursuers, catch up with them! Full-length shifter romantic suspense novel.
Guard Wolf – Shifter Agents #2. Avery is a lone werewolf without a pack; Nicole is a social worker trying to put her life back together after a personal disaster. When he shows up on her doorstep with a box of orphaned werewolf puppies and danger in pursuit, can two lonely people find the family they've been missing in each other? Full-length shifter romantic suspense novel.
Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing - Can the big bad wolf and a sheep shifter have a happy ending? Curvy farm girl Julie Capshaw was always warned away from the wolf shifters next door, but Damon Wolfe is the motorcycle-riding, smoking hot alpha wolf of her dreams! This paranormal romance novel is a romantic comedy spiced with action and red-hot sex.
***
Keep reading for a special preview
Tiger in the Hot Zone
Shifter Agents #4
Coming in February 2017!
Punk-haired Peri Moreland, of the popular conspiracy blog Tell Me More!, has been a thorn in the side of the Shifter Crimes Bureau for years. In particular, Peri and her tell-all reporting are a headache for tiger
shifter Noah Easton, who runs the SCB's PR division ... otherwise known as their coverup department. It's Noah's job to make sure normal humans don't find out about shifters—especially humans such as Peri Moreland, his beautiful and oh-so-sneaky nemesis.
But this time, Peri has stumbled upon a story even the SCB doesn't know about. Half-shifted bodies, dead of a mysterious illness, have been turning up around town. Peri connects the clues and before you can say "conspiracy theory", she's on the radar of a bunch of very bad people ... and the SCB.
Noah hasn't done field work in years; ever since a disastrous assignment years ago, he refuses to go out in the field or even carry a gun. But now he's got Peri to look out for and a secret anti-shifter organization called the Valeria on his tail. They're out to kill anyone who gets in their way before their custom-engineered shifter plague can do its work. As the SCB's agents fall sick one by one, can two pariahs team up to save them all?
Chapter One
It was one of those nights when Peri Moreland was glad she'd put her running leg on.
She hadn't planned on being chased halfway across a closed junkyard by a Rottweiler, but sometimes these things happened. Especially to her.
"Nice doggie!" she gasped, slaloming wildly between a parked school bus with no windows and a stack of cars smashed into car sandwiches. Weren't there supposed to be procedures for this? In the movies, didn't action heroes tame guard dogs using steaks and kindness?
Even if she happened to have a steak stuffed in her backpack, which she didn't, this dog would probably consider it a nice appetizer for a Peri entree.
She skidded around the bus and her heart sank when she saw how far away the fence was. But there was a crane with a giant electromagnet behind the stack of smashed cars. The thing was enormous, a huge tracked base with a rotating cab on it, hopefully out of dog-leaping range. Peri changed direction on the fly and scrabbled up the crane's tracks on pure adrenaline, bouncing the carbon-fiber polymer "foot" of her running leg off the top of the track and bounding up the ladder into the crane's cab. She fumbled with the latch on the Plexiglass door, found it unsecured, and fell into the cab, slamming the door after her.
