Dazzled: Reckless Desires - final ARC

by J. K Harper

  Lacey's hiccuping cries dropped into the little silence that followed. Before Sebastian could answer, Ricardo added, "I was just coming to get you anyway, sir. There is someone at the door to see you." Casting a glance at Lacey, Ricardo looked back at Sebastian with a worried expression. "We tried to discourage him, but he is very insistent that he speak to you immediately. I truly believe he is someone," and by the slight emphasis on that word, Sebastian knew that Ricardo meant whoever it was at the door was another dragon shifter, "you must speak to."

  Another uncomfortable little silence held them, although by the way Maria's eyes snapped at him, he knew full well they'd both heard him yelling at Lacey. Maria obviously didn't agree with that. Well, she was like any mother would be, even to a child that never literally had been her own. She had been brought up to believe that no man should ever yell at a woman. She certainly wasn't willing to stand for Sebastian doing that.

  "I will see to it," he said, not even bothering to glance at Ms. Whitman again as he pocketed the hairpin and strode toward the door leading into the main house. "Keep an eye on her and don't let her leave," he threw over his shoulder at Ricardo, brushing past them. He ignored Maria's furious glare.

  Sebastian let rage and a sour, infuriatingly helpless pain drive his steps through the hacienda to the front door. Thoroughly on guard but also knowing he was so angry that if there was the slightest hint of any danger when he opened the door he would not hesitate to launch a deadly attack, he flung open the double doors of the outer courtyard with more force and perhaps a bit more dramatic flair than was strictly necessary. Yet he knew who would be there. An appearance of brute strength was necessary.

  Malcolm Kerberos, supercilious smile and knowing grin rolled into one plastered across his face, stood outside. "Well. I see you got my small token of affection."

  Gritting his jaw, clenching his fists at his side as he still battled his newly enraged dragon to keep from bursting forth through him so he could rend the bastard's face with his claws, Sebastian forced as much deadly quiet in his voice as he could. "You knew all along, didn't you. You knew I was looking for the missing pieces of my hoard."

  Malcolm's smile only widened, his entire expression one of such triumph that Sebastian longed to simply smash him across the face and be done with it. However, that wasn't quite how things worked in the shifter world. There were rules. Regulations. Constant one-upmanship for control, coupled with a dragon shifter's native tendency toward unrestrained outbursts, had millennia ago dictated an ironclad set of rules that bound them all. Sebastian could no more attack the man on his own doorstep than Malcolm could attack him right now, either.

  But if Malcolm attempted to enter Sebastian's house and do harm, then of course Sebastian could do everything he needed in order to protect himself and those within. Yet Malcolm was far too smart for that. In fact, his slippery, conniving ways had become far more clear to Sebastian in the past few minutes than he ever realized the other shifter was capable of.

  Forcing himself to count to ten while he took long, quiet breaths in through his nose and slowly exhaled them out his mouth, Sebastian managed his temper as best he could before he answered. "Very well. So you finally realized what I was searching for. What you didn't realize, however, was that the hairpin was the last piece of my hoard." He gave Malcolm a challenging look. "My powers will be coming back in full force. There is nothing you can do to stop that now."

  To his surprise, Malcolm laughed, waving off Sebastian's words as if they meant nothing. "You're right. Partially.” His oily voice made the words sound vile. “I had no real idea that you were searching for your hoard. Not until, of course, Melusine came to me and told me what was going on."

  Sebastian willed his face to stay extremely still at the name of his former, horribly double-crossing lover. The same sort of woman Lacey Whitman had turned out to be, he thought. Hideous pain stabbed him in his chest again at the realization of how he been duped once more by a woman.

  Never again.

  Forcing his impassivity, he sought to regain control of the conversation.

  "It was certainly a very clever tactic, using Ms. Whitman as your mule.” Sebastian kept his tone level as he spoke. “I can assure you she played her part very well. But you'll never be able to fool me again, Malcolm. Not by sending another woman my way."

  At Sebastian's words, however, Malcolm's eyebrows raised. The slow, mocking grin slid over his face again. "Really? Is that how it is." He studied Sebastian closely for long moments, fingers idly twisting a large golden sapphire ring on his right hand. Sebastian gave it a quick glance, knowing that it was likely one small piece of Malcolm's own hoard. "You have just given me some very intriguing information, Bernal. Do you realize that?"

  Sebastian frowned. "You're speaking in riddles. Spit it out."

  But Malcolm was already backing away from the house, shaking his head and making a little tsk-tsk sound. "Oh, Bernal. You disappoint me. Men's hearts are so easy to deceive, are they not? Especially the heart of a man who clearly has found his mate.” Malcolm's face was a study in sickening triumph. “The true treasure of a dragon. The only part of his treasure that truly matters to him."

  Malcolm's eyes flicked to the hacienda, a more calculating expression spreading across his face. Then he glanced back at Sebastian, whose blood suddenly ran cold at the ruthlessness he saw there.

  "Catch me if you can, Bernal,” Malcolm Kerberos hissed, his dragon already echoing through his voice. “Because I am indeed fleeing with more of your treasure."

  Quicker than breath, Malcolm shifted into his dragon. Large, scaly, his color a putrid purplish-green-black color that surely must reflect the ugliness of his own soul, Malcolm shot straight into the air with a powerful push off from his hind legs, his large wings unfurling and flapping loudly as he launched himself into the sky.

  He twisted and headed straight over the center of the hacienda.

  Directly toward the open placita in the middle, where Sebastian had just left Lacey.

  His mate. His utterly innocent mate. The mate who had been telling the truth when she said she did not know why he raged at her.

  A long moment of disbelieving shock, horror, and sick fury at himself held Sebastian motionless until his body caught up to his brain's sudden, frantic screaming. He pivoted on one foot and raced back into the hacienda, heedlessly charging down the hallways.

  “Lacey!” Her name tore out of his throat in a frantic cry as he careened down the hall. He had yelled at her so cruelly, accusing her of betraying him. Pain punched him in the gut as he ran. The hallways of his enormous home had never felt so ridiculously long before.

  A sudden, wrenching scream from ahead of him propelled him along faster, cursing the fact that he couldn't turn into his dragon in his own house, since he would be too large. He heard Maria's and Ricardo's cries as well. Then there was another long, terrified scream from Lacey that slowly grew more distant before it trailed off into the ether above the house.

  Malcolm had taken her.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Still shaking, Lacey didn't move from the chair as Sebastian stormed away from the courtyard. His words still slapped her, the feeling nearly as stunning as if she'd been physically assaulted. Muttering in an outraged tone, Maria bustled down the few steps and swept over to Lacey.

  "He's behaving like a big baboon, that one!” Maria said, speaking in Spanish so fast she seemed to hardly take a breath between words. “We could hear him yelling from the other side of the house. I don't know what he said to you and I don't care." Maria reached down to brush off Lacey's arms as if she were covered in something. "He had no cause to raise his voice to you. None."

  Still traumatized and confused, Lacey shook her head. "I didn't even know what he was talking about. One moment we were—I mean, we—”

  Maria nodded her head, a small smile on her face managing to break through her outrage. "Yes, chica. I know. He has true feelings for you. We know it. You are his—well."
Maria looked back at Ricardo, who still stood on the steps by the courtyard's entry way. “You are his,” she ended simply, her voice suddenly very tender.

  Lacey shook her head, feeling only slightly comforted by having the maternal older woman's hands still lightly holding her shoulders. "I don't think so.” Still dazed, she babbled. “He took a hairpin out of my hair, it was a gift from someone I don't even know. Then he just started screaming that I had betrayed him. Something about someone named Malcolm? And he asked me how I much was paid off in order to—to betray him."

  Maria looked across the courtyard again at Ricardo. Concern flickered over both their faces. Lacey stared from one to the other, suddenly feeling chilled again. "What? What is it?"

  Very slowly, Maria asked, looking at her again, "A hairpin? What kind of a hairpin? Tell us what it looks like."

  Haltingly, still befuddled by the ricochet of emotions slamming around her body, Lacey gave a brief description of the hairpin. Both Ricardo and Maria turned pale, Maria's eyes widening with something that also looked like hope as she exchanged yet another mysterious glance with Ricardo.

  "You said someone gave it to you? When was this? Who was it?" Maria asked gently, kneeling down beside Lacey, holding her hands and gently massaging them as if to encourage her to talk more.

  Lacey shrugged helplessly. "That's the thing. I have no idea. The dealer I often work with, an antiquities dealer, he brought it to me the other day. He said it was a gift for me from one of his clients. Sebastian found it in my hair. That's when he began yelling about how I betrayed him.” She shivered again at the memory of his sudden, towering rage. A rage lined with some sort of agonized pain. “That I knew all along about his treasure. What on earth was he talking about? What is going on?"

  As Maria drew breath to answer, the sudden sound of enormous wings flapping in the dark skittered around the courtyard. A huge breeze sprang up, toppling over luminarias, sweeping the remains of the dessert and wine onto the ground to break against the flagstones, making Lacey's hair and dress swirl around her. Maria screamed as Ricardo yelled, both of them looking up into the sky with terror.

  Wild-eyed, heart threatening to leap out of her chest, Lacey followed their gazes and looked up.

  A dragon hovered overhead, flapping its wings in the open space above the placita.

  A dragon. Like the creature of myth. The beast of legend.

  A freaking dragon.

  A real, live, giant-headed, glowing eyes, clawed feet, long-tailed, scaled dragon was in the air above them.

  A for-real, actual dragon was hovering in the sky above her head.

  And he was brutally ugly, and terrifying.

  Lacey stopped breathing, her mind splintering in at least seventeen different directions as the mouth of the creature opened in an angry bellow, followed by a blast of actual flame. She vaguely heard a shout from somewhere inside the house, heard Maria and Ricardo screaming at the winged beast in the sky above her, but she couldn't really pay attention to any of it.

  Slowly, the dragon was lowering itself through the air. Its giant claws reached for her, though she was still so frozen in place she literally couldn't move. Enormous feet with deadly claws curved around her, scooping her up, curling closed over her, and then lifted her into the air.

  Lacey's voice finally caught up to her shrieking mind. She screamed, loudly, over and over again, as utter shock and terror engulfed everything in her body.

  Then with a whooshing rush, the enormous creature flapped its wings again as it yanked her up into the air. The earth fell away beneath her, the hacienda suddenly spinning away and becoming small.

  So terrorized was she that she barely heard the horrified screams of Ricardo and Maria. Or the long, heartrending yell that she knew was Sebastian's voice.

  A scream that spiraled up from the ground as she yanked away through the air: "Lacey!"

  ~~~

  All the confused thoughts of the last several moments fell away from Sebastian's mind, replaced by a singular focus.

  His mate had just been taken by Malcolm.

  He had to save her.

  Ignoring Maria's and Ricardo's horrified cries, Sebastian shifted into his dragon shape so quickly, taking off into the air with such a monumental thrust of his hind legs and whoosh of his wings, he knew he must've knocked them both to the ground. Sending a mental apology, he opened his mouth to loose an immense roar as he streaked through the air after the other dragon who just had stolen his mate.

  His true treasure. The only treasure he finally, truly understood was what he wanted, needed, and should never once have doubted.

  Malcolm Kerberos had played him for a fool, just as Melusine had years ago. Even though he didn't know all the pieces, Malcolm clearly had orchestrated this like a chess master.

  The irrational thought that this also wasn't quite the way Sebastian had envisioned Lacey discovering the truth about his dual life as a dragon shifter raced through his head. But there was no use worrying about that now.

  First, he had to get her back.

  Streaking into the warm, dark air of the late spring night, Sebastian zeroed in on his target. Although no human nor any modern equipments could sense the two dragons zipping through the sky, Sebastian had no problems whatsoever keeping Malcolm in his sights. Malcolm might be crafty, and very quick to take advantage of an unexpected situation, but he was no match for a dragon as large and strong as Sebastian.

  Or a dragon whose mate's life was being threatened.

  Within a scant mile, Sebastian caught up. Unsure of what Malcolm would do, but knowing that he wouldn't want to harm Lacey because she was the key to still controlling Sebastian, Sebastian turned in a double-barreled roll. He slammed his shoulder into Malcolm's hindquarters, throwing the other dragon off his trajectory and sending him likewise tumbling through the air.

  Lacey's renewed, terrified screams from where she was locked in the cage of Malcolm's grip pierced more daggers into Sebastian's heart. Sheer desperation made him dive at Malcolm again, knocking into him from the other side.

  Again, and again.

  Malcolm kept flying. As he bobbled and wove, he occasionally turned his head to roar flame out at Sebastian. Sebastian roared back at him, although since Malcolm was a fire dragon, his flame was far more potent that Sebastian's. But Sebastian had the advantage of being larger and stronger, since he was a classic dragon.

  He was also fueled by desperation.

  Suddenly, Malcolm banked hard to the left. He dove down toward the ground, pulling up at the last second to shoot straight up back in the air. Lacey's screams abated. Sebastian's heart seized as he wondered if she had fainted, or even worse, at the looping, abrupt aerial acrobatics.

  Having to sharply adjust his own course, he lost some time, but quickly caught up again. Reaching forward with his head, he clamped onto Malcolm's tail with the sharp teeth. Malcolm's shriek rent the air. He twisted around to glare at Sebastian.

  Desperation lent a surge of strength that Sebastian could never have found otherwise. Gathering every last bit of his reserves, he bellowed a gout of flame so enormous it blasted hm backward as it left his mouth, tumbling him head over heels so that he couldn't see if it struck his target.

  But although he couldn't see, he could hear. The high-pitched, petrifying shriek of agony told him his aim had been true. The flame had caught Malcolm in the face, exactly as Sebastian had hoped.

  He righted his spiraling fall through the air, swooping up just in time to see Malcolm's charred body falling like a stone to the ground.

  Also just in time to see a small shape, golden hair flashing in the dark, tumbling out of Malcolm's dying grasp.

  Limp, seemingly boneless, Lacey's body plummeted straight toward the earth.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Loosing a frantic bellow of horror, Sebastian banked and dove after Lacey's falling shape, his heart beating so fast with his fear that he was half afraid it would implode inside his body.

  About
fifty feet from the earth, he got close enough to thrust his own front feet beneath her, claws open, so she could land with a thump in the safety of his grasp.

  Terrified, Sebastian beat his wings on the back draft to gently lower himself to earth, somewhere on the vast sprawl of his estate. Carefully, he lowered his front legs to the ground, gently opening his claws to set her down. She lolled on the ground, unmoving.

  Sebastian bellowed again, the panicked boom of his denial shaking the grasses and small trees.

  Lacey's head moved from side to side. Her hands twitched. Sebastian felt a colossal burst of relief.

  Blinking her eyes open, Lacey stared at the sky for a long moment before carefully pushing herself up onto her hands, shoving tangled strands of her blonde hair away from her eyes. She looked up to find Sebastian staring at her. Going utterly motionless in the way he recognized all prey animals doing, fear exploded again across her face.

  Right. He was still in his dragon shape.

  Cursing at himself, Sebastian sharply thought of his human self, shifting back in an instant. As he appeared in front of her on two legs, Lacey's mouth unhinged, her eyes going so big in her face he could hardly see anything but her eyeballs.

  "Lacey! Are you hurt? Did he hurt you?" Sebastian rushed toward her, dropping to the ground at her side.

  Lacey flinched back from him, still staring at him with wide eyes. "You were—did I just see—I'm crazy, aren't I," she whispered, voice stricken.

  In the distance, Sebastian caught the sound of an engine. Glancing up, he saw headlights probably a few miles away. Ricardo and Maria, who, unlike normal humans, would have been able to see and hear the dragons clearly. They were coming this way. Relief washed through him.

  "You're not crazy. Lacey, I'm so sorry. I never meant for you to find out this way. This isn't exactly what I wanted to have happen when I had you come down here," he finished ruefully.