The room felt hot and clammy, and perspiration broke out on her forehead. Her heavy black hair pulled hard on its constraining bun, and her palms left wet handprints on the leather of her chair. Her mind raced with options, all of which came down to: run, or run!
If it were really the dragons of the Crescent Islands who were descending on Las Vegas, Darius would be exposed as her lover. His dragon mark on her hand would tell the truth of their bond. They would demand, and deserve, his death. Her stomach turned over, and the fish smell intensified, so she gagged and choked.
She stayed down until her breathing settled and her vision expanded. The white of Darius’s newest gift box on the corner of her desk came into focus. She sat back and picked it up. Her insides felt raw as if she’d been kicked from behind in the kidneys, a feeling she’d not had since escaping the Islands.
Her head ached like she’d been too long away from water. She imagined the ocean lapping gently at the surface, restorative and renewing. Her dragon, cowering for cover somewhere between her rib cage and heart, unfurled with a gentle, brave nudge.
Peace, she spoke to her inner beast. We’re safe.
She didn’t add “for now”.
She turned the box in her hands. It was light, and the slight clatter of metal inside reassured her it hadn’t once been alive. Still in a daze, she removed the blue ribbon and tucked the cherry blossom sprig between her stapler and tape dispenser. It looked out of place, drooping over the office accoutrements. The pink and white petals of the flower reflected in the surface of her pristine black desk, hazy and blurred.
Was she the flower, or the murky copy? The self-sufficient woman she’d become, or the past shadow she couldn’t avoid?
Li had never given her flowers. She seldom let herself think about the past, but now the walls she’d mortar-bricked around her memories came tumbling down.
They’d not had cherry blossoms on the Islands. Nothing grew on the rocky archipelago in the South China Sea. The inhospitableness of the place deterred would-be human inhabitants and made it a perfect hideout for dragons long thought to be dead.
She’d believed she and Li were destined mates. How could she have known any differently, she or any of the other women? They were isolated from the rest of the world, “for their safety.” They never questioned why so few children were born. It would have been like asking why the ocean was gray at the surface, but shone with a thousand blue lights beneath.
It just was.
They’d been betrothed from the cradle. Li was handsome and charismatic, loved by all in the Crescent Houses scattered throughout the barren island crevices. While she’d believed herself to be the luckiest of women to be paired with him, it was no secret that he was pitied.
Her lack of beauty was easy to quantify. She was small enough, but her skin was not the porcelain white favored by the elite Crescent Houses. It had a darker cast of yellow. “Peasant skin,” they’d whispered disapprovingly and forbade her to go outside and expose her skin to the sun.
Her eyes were also a disappointment with their eyelid fold, which did not open enough to be considered beautiful. The array of derogative adjectives they had for her seemed like comments on her character as well as her appearance: Unworthy, ugly, low born.
Run! The inner command surfaced with the long buried hurt. She could just fly away again, like she’d done before, with no destination or knowledge of what she would find on the other side of the ocean. The morning storm would carry her west, away from Vegas, toward the Pacific. It wasn’t too late to hide from them again.
She shook her head, knowing she couldn’t leave Darius with the fallout.
She had to tell him. Today.
Dialing Scott’s number on her cell, she headed upstairs. “Hey, it’s Mei,” she said when he answered.
“I can’t find your guy,” Scott said without preamble.
She’d figured, but hearing it made her heart gallop in her chest again. Every dragon on the planet was registered with the king, even those hostile to the throne. “Dissenters”, they were called. They didn’t attend mixer-type galas where they might meet their potential mates. They didn’t fall under the protection of the Kingdom—but they were registered.
“Could it be an alias?”
“I’m thinking it must be.” Scott sounded stymied. “Either way, the king needs to know so he can deal with it.”
“Wait.” The word was a gasp through the phone back to her ear. She thought fast. “Is Darius there?”
“No, he said he would be in late this morning,” Scott said.
“I’ll be right up.”
“I thought you said he wasn’t here,” Mei whispered, even though she knew it was too late. Darius was just as aware of her presence inside the surveillance center as she was of him at his desk in his office on the catwalk overlooking the analyst hub.
“He walked in right after I hung up with you.” Scott handed her a stack of papers.
She rifled through the research results on Quan, seeing traditional credit checks, NSA files, and printouts from records of the ancient dragon clans, with the family trees diagrammed backward in time. “So, basically you couldn’t find him anywhere?”
“Oh, there are a ton of Bo Quans out there,” Scott said. “Just not this one.”
“What do you mean?”
“I reverse checked the fax you got. It was computer generated, not a real fax. It just looks like one.” Scott’s face eased with a pleased-with-himself smile. “It came from a server that pinged around the world and stopped in Vietnam.”
“Why?” Hope filled her chest. If it was the Vietnamese, maybe it wasn’t Li at all.
Scott shrugged. “The Vietnamese ambassador disavows knowledge of any clandestine activity in his territory. It’s someone completely off the grid. Our on-the-ground intel checked it out overnight.
“You told Darius?”
“Of course.”
Dread filled her. The stairwell to Darius’s office seemed to lengthen, making the steps she knew she would have to traverse seemed too steep to climb. “Thanks,” she managed as her feet trudged upward.
What would she say to him?
What should she say to him? She peered through the wall of glass surrounding his office, aware that although he ignored her, he could sense that she stood just a few feet from him.
Darius’s private domain boasted a minimalist black decor and five computer screens. He sat in a large, executive-style chair, writing on a yellow note pad. The hum of his jewels, hidden in a wall safe, vibrated like champagne bubbles on her nose.
What kind of jewels would Darius treasure? As a Russian ice dragon, maybe diamonds. Her own secret stash was freshwater pearls in grays and blacks and pinks. Soft and lovely, smooth and warm to the touch.
She lifted a knuckle and tapped on the glass until he glanced up. He motioned her inside, and she stepped into his inner sanctum.
“Did you open your gifts?” He leaned back in his chair and smiled as if he deserved a medal.
She blinked several times. Gifts? In the turmoil over the fax she’d completely forgotten the dead fish.
His pleased expression shifted, and he thumped his feet down hard on the floor. “You didn’t open them, did you?”
“No.”
“Why not?” His furrowed brow was intense, like he was trying to discern the last word in a crossword puzzle.
“I’ve been a little preoccupied.”
He stared hard, communicating his displeasure with a lift of his dark brows. “What can I do for you?” His question was gruff, and she sensed his dragon, barely leashed under his human skin.
Mei sat across from him in a black chair without invitation. A gray tie coiled in a perfect circle on his desk, the edges perfectly aligned. She stared at the weave and symmetry of the fabric rather than the overwhelming feeling of being ensconced with him.
“I’ve never been in here.”
He frowned and open-palmed his hands toward the ceiling. “You want a
tour?” His voice was sarcastic, and he dropped his palms to his flat stomach, drawing her eyes. She knew what he looked like under the business suit. The images of him naked, strong, in their bed in Paris cascaded in rapid succesion, making it hard to breathe. The scent of him, the heat of him surrounded her and she looked at the tie as if it was a lifeline to sanity.
Silence stretched, becoming loud and distorted with numbing white noise, making him too close and too far at the same time. She raised her eyes to his, seeing him staring, waiting for her to speak.
The fax. She had to get answers on Bo Quan. “You’re angry with me.”
“I’m frustrated with you. There’s a difference. It’ll be six years in—”
“I know.” Immediately, the images she’d pushed aside crowded back in her mind and a tight ball of longing, edged out her current fear. He was supposed to have been a fling for her, an escape anthem, a declaration of independence. Then she’d woken to find his binding dragon mark on her hand and all her hopes for a new life had disappeared.
“I understand that things between us took you by surprise,” Darius said, drawing her attention to the present. “They took me by surprise, too. But like it or not, we’re mates, and I want you back in my bed.”
With their very lives at risk, his preoccupation with the carnal side of their relationship rubbed her the wrong way. “That’s all you care about? Sex?”
“Is there more?” His tone issued a challenge for her to wade right on into that quagmire.
What more indeed? Li hadn’t cared about anything but her ability to continue his line, and when she’d been unable to, he’d made no attempt to hide his interest in other women. “Mates are supposed to love each other, or at the very least like each other. We can’t stand each other.”
“I like you very much.”
“No, you don’t.” Mei laughed. “You want to strangle me most of the time.”
“That’s not true,” he said. “I’d never harm you.”
She held his gaze, caught by his certainty. He took note of her interest with an assessing side tilt of his head, and she dropped her gaze to the stack of papers in her hands. “Scott said you sent ground intel to investigate the fax I got?”
“Yes,” Darius answered, but she could tell his mind was still on their more personal conversation. “They found nothing. Very odd.”
She lifted her face, and for once did not try to mask her fear.
“What is it?” Darius leaned farther over the desk. “You’re upset.”
Upset was such a benign word for the raucous nightmare ruling her life that she laughed, brittle and tight. “Yes, I am upset.” She gathered the facts to filter them down to the essentials. “This group may present a threat.”
His eyes narrowed on her face, so she knew he looked beneath her façade. Studying every clue she gave away in her expression, in her body posture, in the tight clasp of her hands on the pages of research. He was trained to detect body language tells, and keeping the secrets from him no longer seemed possible. The words balled up on her tongue and fought with each other.
“I’m afraid,” she finally said.
He came around the desk near her, then backed off and sat on the edge, as if understanding not to push too hard when she’d only cracked open the door. “Of what?”
“There are things you don’t know,” she said. “Things about my past. Things I never wanted you to know. I wanted to protect you.”
He frowned as if she spoke gibberish. “I don’t need protection.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “You do.”
“Okay.” He reached for her free hand, and the warmth of his palm seeped into her ice-cold fingers. “Tell me.”
“You have to leave here before the gala.” She hadn’t intended to ask him that, but relief filled her at the thought of him being gone from the casino, out of harm’s way.
“Will you go with me?” he asked.
Yes! her dragon screamed.
“I can’t,” her human overrode.
“All right.” Darius settled back and crossed his arms as if looking at a data-coding problem on a whiteboard. “Here’s what I’ve got. Something about the bogus fax you got has you spooked, and you think I should leave without you.”
“Yes.” Put that way, she knew he wouldn’t go for it.
“You can see why that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense?”
“There are innocent people who might be hurt.”
Confusion twisted his features. “When did you get so damn altruistic?”
It stung. Mei sat up straighter in her chair, aware of every inch of height he had on her sitting perched on the desk like some damn condemning judge without all the facts.
Her lips trembled, so she tucked them tight between her teeth. When she was able, she forced words between them. “I care about a great many things. I care about you. That’s why I want you to leave here for a while.”
“Not going to happen.” He put his black-rimmed glasses on the desk and rubbed his eyes.
Scott knocked on the door and entered without waiting for an invitation. “Sorry to bother you.” His gaze hopped from Darius to her and back again. The interested look on his face told her that he saw the fact that they were in the same room together as progress.
Little did he know.
“The blackjack cheat is back,” Scott said. “You want me to send someone else?”
“No, they’ve missed him twice.” Darius stood and looked down at her. “I’ll be right back. Think of a better option while I’m gone.”
The air seemed to suck out of the room with his exit.
Did she have a better option? If Darius wouldn’t leave, and if Scott couldn’t find out anything more about Quan, what could she do but wait and see if it was them? If it was, she could plead her case, and that of the other women, to Alec in person. If she ran, she would be condemned for sure, but she’d be alive.
Do nothing? It wasn’t a good plan. It wasn’t a plan at all. The thought of inaction chaffed as tightly as the ropes.
Darius’s black glasses sat on the desk, and she picked them up. Dragons had perfect vision, but Darius wore the glasses because of the personal computer screen that ran across the lenses. They enabled him to keep track of the casino security at all times. Seeing the flashing red light that indicated the computer was active, Mei sat them down gently.
She picked up Darius’s gray tie and brought it to her nose. His spicy soap was on the silk fabric, and she let herself inhale and hold him in her lungs. She looped it around her own neck and efficiently tied a Windsor knot. She scooted the knot up until it touched the vee of her shirt.
She walked around his desk and sat in his chair, finding the leather still slightly warm from his body heat. Need clutched her with piercing sharpness and brought her dragon to alert awareness. The desire she felt for Darius after only one night in his bed made what she used to feel for Li seem small.
On the monitors in front of her, she watched Darius exit the elevator on the gaming floor and stride decisively to the blackjack tables. He approached a table of gambling humans and spoke to the pit boss. The humans sat straight on their stools, casting uncertain looks around the table.
Darius said nothing, just stared. After a moment, he widened his stance and crossed his arms over his chest, making his suit gather over his biceps and shoulder muscles. One of the humans shifted, clearly uncomfortable with his perusal, as the dealer dealt the next hand. The players signaled for additional cards, their hand gestures quick and nervous.
At the end of the hand, the humans stood together and left the gaming area. Mei knew that casino security would discreetly round them up and hold them for questioning. Darius hadn’t said a word; he hadn’t needed to.
When Darius turned on his heel to leave the floor, he staggered against the card table and steadied himself.
“What?” Her voice was loud in the quiet room.
He’d nearly fallen over for no reason. She replayed the scene in her
mind’s eye, seeing his knees buckle like no healthy dragon’s would. Was it a simple trip—or was his dragon really waning? Fear, compounded on fear, filled her as her possibilities pinched down to just one. She couldn’t leave him with the fall out and potential waning of his dragon.
She would have to stay.
Chapter Five
Darius pushed the two hundred pound barbell off his chest with an exhale that displaced sweat from around his mouth. He steadied the weight overhead, inhaled, and then lowered the bar before pushing it upward again. He was exercising in the Crown Jewel theatre troupe’s private weight room. It was a cavernous space, containing traditional weight sets, cardio equipment, and a complete trapeze set on the south side.
He preferred the troupe gym to the glossy private facility for dragons on the top floor of the casino. The smell of gymnastics chalk and well-used weights reminded him of his childhood with his parents in Russia. Plus, the troupe athletes left him alone, no chatting or inane questions. He didn’t like being fucked with when he was working out, and tonight, he thankfully had the place to himself.
The bar banged as he racked it and sat to add five pounds to either side. He shook his head, clearing the exertion spots from his vision, and then lay back to continue taking his frustrations out on the barbell.
Mei.
He didn’t count reps as he pushed the bar, just repeated her name in his head. His arms trembled on an overhead drive, and the ache in his chest muscles told him he wouldn’t reach his last week’s bench press weight of 325 pounds. Maybe not ever again.
Mei.
His time was running out. He was weakening, as Mei had guessed. He hadn’t wanted her to know—hadn’t wanted to see pity in her eyes. His dragon form would cannibalize his human form until there was nothing left for either but death.
Mei.
With the next thrust, his arms shook and his back bowed off the bench with effort. He groaned and forced the bar up, then lowered it. The burn through his chest was a welcome distraction to his frustration.
Dragon Her Back Page 3