“Who’s this guy?” Joey stepped around her and raised his chin and fisted his hands at his side.
“This is Alec Gerald, the owner of the casino,” Lucy explained.
“Well, I guess I don’t have to explain the broken door to anyone.” Joey’s words were cocky, but Lucy knew he must be thinking fast, trying to come up with an excuse for the room full of thieving paraphernalia.
Alec scanned the room slowly, then stepped to the table and picked up the schematic of the vault. For several long seconds, he picked up and discarded the other items on the table. The room was utterly quiet except for her rapid breathing and Joey’s shuffling feet.
Lucy chewed her lip. The costumes, the maps, the computer equipment—all spelled r-o-b-b-e-r-y. She winced when Alec jiggled the computer mouse and a live feed of the front of the exhibit appeared on the screen.
“It’s not what you think,” Lucy started, then stopped. It was exactly what he thought.
“You were going to steal from me?” Alec turned to face her, his face incredulous.
“I didn’t want to,” she said. “It was Gino. He blackmailed us into helping him.”
“You were going to steal from me, even after you knew about our bond?”
Lil cleared her throat. “I’ll just watch the hall, Jer’ol.” Lil exited the room without glancing at Lucy.
“I…” Lucy swallowed the lump in her throat. “I wasn’t actually going to take the jewels in the exhibit.”
Alec shook his head. “You.” He pointed at Joey. “You got her into this mess.”
“Who the fuck are you to point your finger at me?” Joey shouted, puffing up his chest and stepping toward Alec.
“No, Joey.” Lucy stepped between them.
“She told me you were holding her against her will, some drug shit, and dragons.”
“Did she?” Alec did not take his eyes off Joey.
“Leave my sister out of it. Go ahead and call the cops. You got nothing but a research project going on here. I was just studying your security, learning your best practices for consulting with other casinos.”
Alec stepped forward, light on his feet but full of heavy menace. “You don’t want to tempt me right now. I will tear you apart.”
Fear clutched Lucy’s heart. “No, no, no.”
She put one hand on Alec’s chest and the other on Joey’s. Under her fingers, Alec’s heartbeat was steady and slow. Joey’s, despite his bravado, thumped overtime and sweat sheened his forehead. He was bluffing.
“Please, Alec, can we just talk about this calmly?” she pleaded. Lucy saw a willingness to hear her side of the story in his eyes.
Alec stepped back. “Go ahead.”
Lucy looked at Joey, but he still looked like a rodeo bull in the chute, ready to buck at the buzzer. “Joey, please.”
Joey crossed his arms. “She’s not a part of this. Gino pulled her in to pay my debt. She didn’t want to do it, not any of it.” Joey held up his bandaged hand. “Gino convinced her to help out with a steak knife to the back of my hand.”
Alec nodded. “But Gino is dead. Why would you still be watching the exhibit?”
“I tried to tell him,” Lucy said. “But he didn’t believe me.”
“Gino is really dead?” Joey’s mouth opened, and then turned up at the corners. “All his rackets will be up for grabs.”
“Jo-ey.” Lucy’s residual hopes for him circled the drain and ran dry.
“Well, now that we have all that cleared up, we’ll just be on our way.” Joey was in a rush to get to Gino’s leavings.
“Lucy stays with me.” Alec’s words were final, his face a smooth wall of absoluteness.
“I don’t think so.” Joey put his arm around her waist and pulled her against him. “I’m not leaving her with some psycho who gave her drugs.”
Lucy struggled to get away from Joey, but his arm was a tight band around her stomach. “Joey, let me go.” She pinched his forearm, but Joey only held her tighter.
“Let her go.” Alec stepped forward, his eyes glaring over her head to Joey’s face. Joey lifted her off her feet and swung her to the side. The Padma sapphire dislodged from her pocket and fell to the ground at Alec’s feet with a thud that sounded deafening to Lucy’s horrified ears.
Lucy gasped and looked at Alec’s face. The blood drained from her head to her feet, weighting them like lodestones.
Alec stared at the stone and then at her. His eyes seemed to glow red, and he bared his teeth, before clamping his mouth shut. A muscle worked in and out at the side of his jaw.
Joey released her and picked up the orange stone. “Doesn’t look like a million-dollar stone to me.” He tossed it in the air, from hand to hand.
“Give it to me.” Lucy grabbed the Padma stone out of the air. The heat of the stone burned her fingers like hot sand. She gasped in surprise and handed it to Alec, dropping her gaze so she didn’t have to see his condemning face.
“Let me guess.” Alec took the stone without touching her hand. “Gino made you steal my sapphire, too?”
“No,” Lucy whispered, unable to form a word to acquit herself. She was guilty. Guilty of betraying him. Guilty as charged. The former gavel bang in her head now felt like a noose tightening at her throat.
“I would have given it to you if you had asked.” Alec rolled the rock between his fingers.
“I’m so sorry.” Shame worse than any she had ever known pulled her toward the ground. “I am so, so sorry.”
“You’re right.” Alec put the stone in his pocket. “You are sorry. A sorry, lying, thieving piece of human trash.” Alec turned on his heel and stomped into the hall.
Lucy followed behind.
“Put her brother in a cage and have someone get her ready for the ceremony tonight,” he said to the waiting guards in the hallway.
“Yes, Jer’ol,” Lil said.
“A cage?” Lucy reached for Alec’s arm, but he was too far away.
Alec glanced back at her. “You’ll attend the ceremony. If you behave, I’ll release you and your brother when the night is over. You have made your choice clear.”
Chapter Seventeen
Alec screamed in primal pain and ran and jumped from his balcony. How could the Fates have been so wrong about Lucy? How could he have been so wrong about Lucy?
He let himself fall in his human form, slowly, then faster and faster. Panic engulfed his human mind, but he did not flail or turn to his dragon form. The wind shrieked in his ears, but he kept his arms and legs rigid against the restless whip of gravity.
Alec! Leo yelled to him across their mental connection. Alec, change to your dragon!
Why should he? He was not immortal. It was possible to die. Maybe he would just keep falling. He would rather die than touch Lucy’s deceitful, lying human face again. Rage shot through his limbs. No, he would not give her the satisfaction of dying.
Halfway to the ground, he pushed his dragon wings to the surface of his skin and let his bestial nature flare. His black dragon swooped out of the free fall, racing to the heavens, away from the casino.
Alec, slow down, Leo called. Bloody talk to me.
You are my successor. See to things.
She is just a bloody woman. There will be another.
But they both knew it wasn’t true, not in time for him. Lucy had been his last chance to complete his bond and save his dragon.
Alec tucked his wings and surged upward. The air was less buoyant above the wispy clouds. His dragon beat his wings harder and heaved gusts of air into his lungs. The late afternoon sun warmed his back, a contrast to the chill and absolute silence of the heavens.
On the curved horizon, the moon waited for her chance to shine over the mating festivities, shimmery and pale.
Lonely and all alone.
You are behaving like a reckless bastard. Leo’s voice was loud and taunting in his mind.
In his black dragon form, Alec glanced over his right wing and roared a stream of fire. In the distance,
Leo’s dragon trailed after him, a spot of orange and yellow against the twilight. Alec’s blood surged over spiky rocks of adrenaline. Leo wanted to stop him, to try to reason with him, but he would have to catch him first.
A blood challenge to you, fire dragon. Alec’s words sounded maniacal to his human mind, but he didn’t care. He swooped toward the earth, and the desert floor raced by, brown and flat and dead.
…
Lucy sat on the corner of her bed chewing her lip and twisting her hands. Alec’s “You have made your choice” boomed in her head with painful aftershocks. He had been so angry and so hurt. She hadn’t believed him when he had said he wanted her forever. But when he’d caught her with the sapphire, he had acted like a man who had been hurt by the woman he loved.
The woman he meant to spend his life with. Forever.
Just like he had said.
The tension in her head built and she jerked to her feet and paced, back and forth, back and forth across the room. She pivoted by the curtains. “Plague, phantasm.” Her reflection in the mirror as she passed it was distraught, her eyes flighty and scared, her hair tangled in a mess of crystal extensions.
“Peace, perception, patrol.” Her brain registered the ridiculous litany. “Dammit. Dammit. Dammit.” She threw her hands out, not at all calmed. Her stomach twisted, and she recognized the ache.
Regret.
Lucy forced her body to stand still and she examined her conscience like a juvie judge, frowning over the file, looking for discrepancies. The painkillers had made her bold—truth—they had made her think she could do it, but the actual decision to act, to take the sapphire, that had been all her.
But it wasn’t like she’d done it for the money. She had been trying to save Joey, true.
Didn’t that make her somehow innocent, by way of noble intent?
No, it didn’t.
Lucy sat down on the hotel room bed hard, hating the gnawing pit of wrongness in her belly. Bad behavior was Joey’s purview. She was the good one, the one who always did the right thing, no matter what. Just not this time.
When it really mattered.
Alec had been serious about wanting a life with her. The knowledge was astounding.
Before Lil had locked her in the room, she had told her that Alec would only tolerate her presence for the ceremony, for the sake of the other dragons. Her mind flooded with images of Alec’s face when he had realized she had taken his sapphire, and the hurt she had seen there doubled inside her chest.
“How am I going to fix this?” Lucy mumbled, knowing that there was nothing she could do.
Alec would never forgive her. She wasn’t sure she could forgive herself.
It was the hardest truth of all.
Panic squeezed her chest from her head to her knees, tightening her vision with the kind of vessel narrowing that preceded a full-on anxiety attack. Pain exploded in her head, pushing the crevices of her brain to the edge of her skull.
One thing at a time.
Lucy forced a breath in and out. She would try to explain to Alec. She would get through the dragon ceremony. She would make sure Joey stayed out of trouble.
NO.
Her mind screamed the word, and suddenly she envisioned herself wandering in never-ending circles across a barren moonscape. Saving Joey was the X she sought above all other destinations. Lucy’s mouth gaped open, and she shook her head like an AA first-timer, denial in every shake. But her mind knew the truth. Joey was her shorter leg. Even when she believed she plodded a straight line, she veered in endless circles, for him.
Always coming back for him.
Always.
The knowledge hit her with crushing sadness. Joey should not be first in her life anymore. Whatever was between her and Alec should be first. Alec was true. He understood her. He would never betray her for a handful of jewels. He would shield her, save her, love her.
But would he ever trust her again?
There was a brief knock at the door before Jane entered, carrying an armload of vibrant red and orange clothing. “The Jer’ol asked me to get you dressed for the ceremony.”
Lucy stood, needing to vindicate herself to someone, even the stony looking assistant. “I wanted to save my brother, give him a new start.”
“I don’t care.” Jane gave her a level glare.
“But…” Lucy’s explanations died on her tongue.
“Take off your clothes, there’s not much time.” Jane spread out a silk cloth that resembled an Indian sari. The colors twined in an intricate and beautiful pattern. She set several pieces of diamond jewelry on the bed and crossed her arms.
Lucy ran her hand over the jewels. They throbbed with the tang of cold water, and she didn’t need her jeweler’s loupe to know that they were real diamonds.
“These are lovely.” Her mind jumbled over the gems and Alec. “Will I be able to talk to Alec before the ceremony?”
“No.” Jane said the word with such certainty that Lucy knew she was a no longer a guest in anyone’s eyes. She was a prisoner playing dress up. “You’re to act the part of his mate during the ceremony so that he is not seen as weak by the visiting families.”
“Why would he been seen as weak?” Lucy pulled off her clothing and folded it neatly on the bed.
“He’ll likely die because of you.” Jane said the words with such vehemence that Lucy paused. “Dead is pretty damn weak.”
“Dead?”
“Alec is very old. If the other families knew that he hadn’t found a real mate to save his dragon form, the ceremony would be nothing but blood challenge after blood challenge for the throne.”
“He would die?”
“Yes.” Jane seemed absolute. “Take off your underwear, too.”
Lucy’s skin went cold. “Could I have some privacy?”
“No.”
Lucy unfastened her bra and stepped out of her panties. She set them on the bedspread with a shaky hand. “I’m sorry, Jane. Truly sorry. I didn’t realize. I didn’t believe Alec.”
“You’ve ruined everything.” Jane picked up the sari cloth and snapped it in the air. She spread the fabric wide, and in three twisting moves, she wrapped the cloth around Lucy’s body and secured it at the shoulder with a garnet pin.
Lucy stood still.
Jane shook her head but said nothing, not giving an inch of forgiveness.
“Remember the grand opening?” Lucy tried to meet her eyes, but Jane looked over her shoulder. “When you told me that it’s useless to try to control others.”
Jane frowned. “Yes.”
“You were right. I thought I could save my brother, but in the end, he always does what he wants.”
Lucy sat on the bed and shook her head. She had wasted so much time trying to corral Joey. No matter what she did, he was going to buck at the buzzer. It was what he loved. And she was nothing more than a silly rodeo clown, racing around the dirt with props, trying to safeguard his joyride.
“Please tell Alec that I want to talk to him.” Lucy looked beseechingly at Jane.
“I don’t carry your messages.” Jane pointed at the bed. “Fix your hair and put on the rest of your jewelry. Someone will come for you when it’s time.” She slammed the door when she exited the room. The silence in her wake was broken only by Lucy’s rapid breathing.
Lucy’s bare feet sank into the plush carpet like quicksand. On the bed, the diamond jewelry clustered in a pile. Lucy picked the pieces up and nearly dropped them as an icy rush pulsed through her skin.
In front of the mirror, she set the jewels down and examined her face. Her strained features were at least familiar. She finger-combed her hair into order and used her rubber band to make a messy looking bun, and then put on the diamond headband. The pulse of the jewels spread down her neck, pleasant and warm, like the sure stroke of fingers coated with hot oil.
Curiously, she fastened the jeweled belt around her waist and put on the necklace and dangling earrings. The magical tendrils spread just under the surfa
ce of her skin with tingly projections, making her feel more aware, as if someone had just given her the right prescription glasses.
In the mirror, the silken material of the exotic sari hugged her hips and the jewels sparkled. The black surgical stitches in her shoulder marred the picture somewhat, but who hadn’t survived a little pain?
She could do this. She could convince Alec to at least listen to what had happened…listen to how she wound up acting the thieving fool.
The door opened. Alec stood in the door frame. “It’s time.” He wore a black tunic and pants, and his feet were bare. He face was a mask of inscrutableness, and he seemed to lean away from her, toward the hallway.
Lucy hurried to him. “Alec, please listen to me.” She reached out a hand to touch him, but he froze her with a withering stare.
“If you want your brother released, you’ll act like we are a happily mated pair.” He turned on his heel and strode toward the elevator.
Lucy caught up to him, jogging on her bare feet to keep pace. “How can I do that if you won’t even look at me?”
“You’re good at acting. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” Alec punched the elevator button and the doors slid open with a metal sigh. He stepped in and held the door while she followed.
“You said that you wanted me forever—”
“Not anymore.” Alec watched the lights for the changing floors.
Lucy stared at her painted silver toes. “Is it true that you’ll lose your dragon form and die without the mating bond?”
“You don’t need to play act when we’re alone.” The elevator clicked open and Alec stepped forward.
The roof patio was filled with human-formed dragons in exotic clothing, in the same style as hers and Alec’s. Above the courtyard, full-sized dragons flew in circles, like planes circling a runway. Some were brown and gray with colorful flourishes at their tails and eyes, others were vibrant hues of reds, blues, greens, and yellows. They flew toward each other in the air and then fell in a tangled mass before flying apart above the rooftop.
“Holy Mary, Joseph, and Peter…” Lucy huddled inside the elevator wall, and the cool intractableness of steel chilled her back. Her head spun and her heart pounded in her chest. This was more than theatrics. If she had had any lingering doubts about the beasts, they were gone now. This was for real.
Luck of the Dragon (Entangled Covet) Page 16
