Dragon Fever: Limited Edition Holiday Romance Boxset

by Serena Meadows

  “Um, don’t be scared,” he said, hesitant, unsure of what he should do. He’d never rescued a female before. Of any species. “I won’t hurt you.”

  “I know.”

  She straightened from her cowering pose and took a step closer to him. The male’s handprint flared bright red on her cheek, and her nose bled over her full lips. “What’s your name?”

  “Ronan.”

  “I’m Daryl.”

  He fumbled to find the right words humans used upon first meeting. “It is, ah, a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Likewise.” She smiled, and that simple baring of her teeth transformed her into a creature of beauty. He stared at that smile in wonder, momentarily forgetting his anger, his hurt and his exile. “Where did you come from? One second you weren’t there, and then you were.”

  I heard you scream, and I flew in. “I just, you know, heard you and came down from that way.”

  Ronan pointed behind him. Daryl nodded as though that was a perfectly acceptable explanation. “Well, thanks for helping me out. You probably shouldn’t have, cuz now you’ll be on Tank’s shit list.”

  “That’s his name? Tank?”

  “It’s a street name, no one knows his real name. He is, was, my dealer.”

  The word confused him. “Dealer?”

  Embarrassment rounded her shoulders, her face lowered, her hair cascading to hide her eyes. She fumbled for a cloth from her snug-fitting jeans and Ronan took a moment to appreciate her slender body and tight waist. She wiped the blood from her mouth and nose and spoke without looking at him.

  “You know, drugs. I’m trying to get clean, I don’t want this life anymore, but getting into the street is easier than getting out.”

  He hadn’t a clue as to what she meant, but Ronan didn’t want to express his ignorance. After all, he was supposed to live among these people from now on, become one of them. A human would know what she was talking about.

  “Oh. Well, um, all right.”

  His answer clearly confused her, for Daryl peeped up at him from beneath her locks. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  “How did you know?”

  “You have a very weird accent.” Daryl smiled to indicate she meant no insult. “It’s cool, I like listening to it. Where are you from?”

  “Way to the north, far away.”

  “So, you just blew into town?”

  “Flew,” then Ronan realized his mistake and tried to backtrack quickly. “Yes, I just got here.”

  “Do you have a place to stay yet?”

  “No.” Ronan stuck his hand in his pocket to make certain he hadn’t lost the cash he would need to get a new start in this human world. “Not yet.”

  “I have a place in an old hotel,” Daryl said, her skin flushing a bright pinkish hue. “It’s not great, but it’s cheap, and it’s clean. They have rooms you can rent.”

  Ronan smiled at her obvious shyness. “Will you take me there?”

  “Sure. This way.”

  Walking beside her down the alley and to the street on the left, Ronan wondered at how well suited he was to living among humans. Until he met Daryl, he had no clue how to find a place to stay, clothes, food, the works. “I appreciate you helping me,” he said.

  Daryl glanced up into his face, amazed. “You helped me, remember? Tank might’ve killed me.”

  “But I don’t know my way around in your city,” he replied. “I’d be lost.”

  “Oh, that’s nothing.” Daryl kicked a metal can out of her way. “New York is so big, anyone can get lost in it.”

  “You know your way around?”

  “Some of it. I know my neighborhood well, and some other places in town. When I came to New York, I wanted to be a star. You know the old cliché; kids come from all over to make it big on Broadway.”

  She laughed, and it was not from amusement. “Look at me now.”

  Again, most everything she told him went right over his head, and Ronan wished he did understand. I have so much to learn about humans and this place. Maybe she can teach me. Walking down the somewhat busy street with vehicles passing them by, other people out walking as they did, he gazed around the endlessly busy place. Don’t they ever stop? Don’t they ever breathe the air?

  “Where did you come from?”

  “A small town in Nebraska,” she replied. “I want out of New York, but I don’t want to go back there, either. There’s nothing there for me anymore.”

  “Where would you want to go?”

  She gazed up at him again and he saw her eyes were of the clearest blue. “You really want to know?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oregon.”

  Ronan almost asked where it was but he kept his mouth shut. Daryl continued as though his silence was expected. “I’ve never been there, but I’ve seen pictures of its huge forests and rivers, so clean and pure.”

  She waved her hand around them. “Not like this nasty place.”

  “So, what’s stopping you?”

  “Money.” Daryl chuckled. “The lack thereof. I have a job that pays the rent, but not much else. But now I’ve quit the drugs, maybe I can save a little.”

  Ronan kept his mouth shut about the money in his pocket as he’d learned about the humans and their greed for the green paper. He liked Daryl, but he was also wary about these people he realized he didn’t know enough about. The things they didn’t teach us in school.

  “So?” Daryl asked brightly. “What brought you here to our great and wonderful New York City?”

  I was exiled from my clan, my home, my friends. He couldn’t say that, however. “A fresh start,” he replied, suspecting it was a lame answer.

  “I suppose that’s a better reason than mine,” Daryl replied. “This is a place for opportunities, provided you don’t follow the wrong road that is.”

  “Like you did?”

  Daryl nodded, not looking up. “Yep. The hotel is over there.”

  She pointed toward a squat, ugly building on the same street they walked on, lights burning in many of the windows. “Home, ever be it so humble.”

  Ronan recognized the bitterness in her voice. “Do you wish me to leave you alone?”

  Startled, Daryl glanced up. “No. Sorry. It’s just that, I’m sorry, I don’t know you from Adam, and yet I’m trusting you when I can’t trust anyone else. I don’t know why.”

  “Because I stopped Tank?”

  “No. Had you been of a certain type, you could have stopped Tank, then turned me into your whore. But you didn’t. I’m not the trusting type, but there’s something about you that makes me feel I can.”

  I’m not human, and you sense it. Ronan smiled and shrugged. “I guess I’m just a nice guy.”

  He walked on, his hands in his pockets, Daryl hurrying to catch up. “Yeah, that has to be it. Say, you don’t have any luggage?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Did you lose it? Or did someone steal it?”

  Thinking she would understand someone stealing his things, property that he never had in the first place, better than anything, he agreed. “It was stolen.”

  “Ouch. That bites. Maybe tomorrow I can help you replace it. I know of some decent shops not far away.”

  “That would be nice.”

  “I have to work in the afternoon,” Daryl went on as they walked toward the hotel, “but I have the morning free.” She shrugged. “If you want.”

  Ronan smiled. “I want.”

  She laughed. “Cool. Now Hector is the night clerk, and he’s cranky. But he’s a good guy, even if he doesn’t seem like it. You need anything, he’ll get it for you. But watch out for Manny; he works days. He’ll smile in your face and steal behind your back. If you have cash, keep it with you cuz he will go through your room.”

  “Nice place you live in.”

  “I know. But at least I know what to expect.”

  Chapter Two

  Daryl had always considered herself too cool and too level headed to fall apar
t under a guy’s smile. Yet, here she was, giggling like a kid, feeling as giddy as a teenager with her first high school crush. Damn, this boy is hot. The top of her head reached only to the middle of his chest, yet he didn’t look down on her even when he did.

  She wondered what it would feel like to run her fingers through his shaggy, black hair that tumbled over his brow. Even in the dark and the street lights, the headlights of passing cars, she saw the brilliant green of his eyes. Recalling how Ronan grabbed Tank’s hand when he went for his gun and broke his arm as easily as he might a chicken bone, she shivered in a mixture of fear and pleasure.

  “Here we are,” she said as they walked into the lobby of the Saint George Hotel. “They only take cash, no cards.”

  “Cash is fine,” Ronan replied, gazing around at the dusty furnishings that were placed there somewhere around the turn of the century.

  Hector glanced up from the latest New York Times best-selling novel he was reading and smiled. Or what passed for a smile in Hector’s world. It was a mere pull of his lips and a glimpse of his brown teeth, his dark eyes taking Ronan in with suspicion.

  “Hector, this is my new friend, Ronan,” Daryl said. “He’s new in town and needs a place to stay.”

  Hector grunted and shoved a clipboard across the desk toward Ronan. “Fill that out. Twenty bucks a week, no cleaning, towels on demand, no cable. No noise, no dope, no hookers.”

  Curious as to what he wrote, Daryl tried not to appear so and pretended to look at the book Hector was reading while sliding her eyes toward the clipboard. But Ronan’s handwriting looked like chicken scratch and she read nothing. Even Hector frowned down at it.

  But he fetched a key and slid it toward Ronan. “Twenty bucks up front, man.”

  Ronan dug into his jeans pocket and fished out a twenty-dollar bill. He took the key, passing the money to Hector, and glanced at Daryl. She looked at the number and grinned. “Just down the hall from me.”

  Hector glowered as though it hadn’t been his intention to put them so close together. “Mind the rules now,” he ordered, jerking his thumb toward the printed list outside the desk. “Lest we throw your ass out.”

  Ronan nodded as though he expected nothing less. “I will.”

  Walking beside Ronan toward the stairs, Daryl half-turned and waggled her fingers over her shoulder at Hector. “Night, Hector.”

  “Be cool,” he replied.

  Daryl gestured toward the antique elevators. “Those haven’t worked for forty years. Or so I’m told.”

  He glanced at the heavy steel cages without much curiosity. In the lights of the lobby, she studied him more closely without seeming to, fascinated by his almost too good to be true good looks. He moved with a grace that Daryl had only read about in novels and never truly witnessed in a man.

  Forcing her tongue to stay still when it wanted to natter on about nonsensical things, Daryl climbed the steps feeling more self-conscious about herself than she had on the day of her first audition. Good-looking guys are a dime a dozen; why does this one feel different?

  She knew why. Because he had faced down Tank, snapped his arm, took his gun, all with the same calm as he might show while ordering dinner at a restaurant. “You weren’t at all scared, were you?”

  Ronan glanced at her as they reached the second floor where their rooms were. “Was I supposed to be?”

  Chuckling, Daryl swiped her hair over her shoulder. “You might be if you knew him, or his reputation. He’s not someone you want to mess with.”

  “I know his type,” Ronan said. “A bully who preys on the weak. A coward when faced with someone stronger.”

  “I suppose that describes him. That’s your room.”

  Ronan paused in front of the door, then slid the key in to open it. Like her own, the place smelled musty. It held a single bed with a plain coverlet, a dresser, a bathroom with a shower stall, and nothing else. She followed him in as he gazed around but hovered near the door.

  “Mine is two-eleven,” she told him, then wondered if she was getting in over her head with this guy. True, her gut said she could trust him, but what if her instincts were wrong? She’d met him a whole half-hour ago. Feeling nervous, Daryl scratched at her nearly healed track marks on her arm, forcing back the urge to head for the street and the nearest dealer.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked, completing his inspection of his room.

  “Yeah, a little.”

  Truth was that Daryl was famished. She hadn’t eaten since the day before as she had no money. Though she’d been clean for a week, all the money she had earned at the part-time job restocking shelves at a local market had gone to pay her rent for the last month. She wouldn’t get paid again until the end of the week.

  “You know of a place we can eat?” Ronan asked.

  Humiliated, yet hoping he had the money to pay for a meal for her as well, Daryl replied, her voice low, “I can’t afford to, you know, eat out.”

  He waved his hand. “Don’t worry about it. I can buy you food.”

  Relief squirmed through her as she tried to hide it, for now she wouldn’t be forced to dumpster dive for her dinner. “Okay, there’s a deli down the street,” she answered, smiling. “If that’s all right.”

  “You know what’s around here,” he told her, returning her smile.

  Her stomach chose to rumble at that moment, and clearly, Ronan heard it, for he grinned. “Let’s go.”

  He shut his door and locked it and gestured for her to accompany him back toward the stairs. “What kind of food does this deli have?” he asked.

  “You know, sandwiches, pizza, salads,” she said, anticipating her first decent meal in a long time. “They have a specialty club that’s to die for.”

  For a moment, puzzlement crossed his features, then vanished. “Okay,” was all he said.

  Accepting that he was someone who didn’t talk much, Daryl was still confused by his behavior. It almost seemed like he didn’t understand what she said half the time, as though she spoke a foreign language. “What’s your home like?” she asked as they walked down the stairs to the lobby.

  A brief flash of anger sparked in his eyes, and his brows lowered, his lips thinned. Daryl had a flash of an “uh, oh” moment and thought she had stepped across a line she didn’t know existed.

  “It’s nothing much,” he replied, relaxing. “Just a place where my people are.”

  “Okay. For a second there, you looked pretty mad.”

  Ronan shrugged. “At them. Not at you.”

  Hector glanced up from his book as they crossed the lobby to the front doors, then went back to his novel. On the street were cars and trucks driving by, hookers waving to the drivers as they stalked like panthers up and down the sidewalk.

  “What are they doing?” Ronan asked, jerking his chin toward them.

  “Turning tricks.”

  “Huh?” He stared down at her, his eyes wide.

  “You don’t have hookers where you’re from?” she asked, teasing.

  “No, what are they?”

  “Prostitutes,” Daryl answered, now as confused as he was. “They get paid to have sex with someone else.”

  He stopped, his hands jammed into his front pockets, staring from Daryl to the hookers and back again. “They get money for mating with—others?”

  “It’s just sex, not really mating.” Daryl glanced at the women on the street. “Half the time, they just give blowjobs for twenty bucks, or in exchange for a rock of cocaine.”

  She tried to not remember how many times she had done that to get a fix and felt her face blush furiously. “It’s the world’s oldest profession, and I figured there wasn’t a place on Earth that didn’t have that going on.”

  “Well, there is,” Ronan replied, walking on, his expression tight.

  “Your people must be exceptional, then,” Daryl said, matching his pace. “The guys don’t cheat on their wives? And vice versa?”

  “No,” he answered shortly. “When we mate—marr
y—it’s for life.”

  “That’s the way it’s supposed to work. But around here, it doesn’t.”

  “What Tank did is unforgivable among my people,” he went on, his eyes still on the scantily clad hookers. “A male does not strike a female.”

  “Damn. I think I’d like living among your people. I can’t tell you how many times a guy has hit me.”

  Daryl fell silent as they walked past the prostitutes, most of whom eyed Ronan up and down with speculation. No few called to him. “Hey, baby, want to party?” “Handsome, come here. Let me take you away from this place.” “Your woman ain’t nuthin’, baby; let me blow your mind.”

  Glancing up, Daryl felt a small jolt of shock when she saw how red his face had become. Smiling inwardly, she wondered how long he’d last in this neighborhood if he had such easily offended sensibilities. He cleared his throat, trying to scowl.

  “Where is this deli?”

  Daryl pointed. “Right there. Hey, don’t let them bug you. They have to try, or their pimps beat them.”

  That attempt at reassurance merely deepened his scowl. “I do not understand this place,” he muttered. “At all.”

  “You’ll get used to it.”

  He shook his head but didn’t answer. Entering the semi-busy deli, Daryl instantly scented the freshly baked bread, and her mouth watered. Standing in the short line to place their order, Daryl leaned toward him to point out some of the better items on the menu.

  “The pastrami and Swiss is excellent,” she said, gesturing. “But so is the Long Island Club.”

  “Why don’t you choose for me then?” he asked, smiling slightly.

  “All right. But what if your tastes don’t run alongside mine?”

  “I’ll risk it.”

  Thus, Daryl ordered two Long Island Clubs with chips and Cokes, then watched as Ronan paid with cash from his pocket. Her stomach in near pain from hunger, she guided him through the throng of customers to a table.