The Dragon From Paris_A Sexy Dragon Romance

by JJ Jones

  Was it more of whatever that shit they had shot him up with? Was it the strange cuffs they had around his wrists, the ones with the blinking lights they kept on him even when he was in his cell? Those lights lined the ceiling of his cell, too. Something kind of like fluorescent lights, but lights that made him feel weak, like all of the dragon blood inside of him had been drained and now he was only human.

  To be honest, he wasn’t sure how it was that he was as coherent as he was at the moment. He didn’t exactly have the best view, but from what he could see the rest of the people being held in this prison were walking zombies, when they were even awake at all. If he had to guess, he would say that the cuffs, the lights, the serum they injected them with, all of it was to keep them subdued. It made sense. Having a prison populated entirely of shifters was a dangerous thing.

  It would be impossibly easy for the inmates to take over the asylum, so of course the people running the place would need to keep them in check. It was exactly what he would have done, had the roles been reversed. These were military minds he was dealing with. That was how they operated, with very few mistakes or slip-ups to take advantage of.

  This was going to be almost impossible to get out of. He could see that now. His last bit of hope was the loyalty he still felt for his fellow SEALs. He had to believe that this was all just a mistake. He had to. It was the only way that any of his life could still make sense. It was getting harder and harder as each moment passed, though. With every night terror, every scream and moan, it was getting harder for him to believe that everything going on here wasn’t just evil.

  “They’re coming for you, boy. This is the last one, the one don’t nobody come back from.”

  It was that same raspy voice from the cell next door. It felt like the voice of doomsday itself, ringing out the sound of his demise. He should have felt panic but all he felt was numb. Too numb to even speak.

  “May God have mercy on your soul,” that haunting voice whispered, “if you’re still inclined to believe in that sort of thing.”

  Now he could hear the footsteps coming down the long hallway outside of his cell, hollow, menacing footsteps to punctuate the warning Chase had just received. Each step made it clearer that this was meant for him. They were coming for him, it was undeniable. Finally, there was a man standing before him in a military uniform, a bundle of baggy clothes in his massive hands.

  Chase stood without having to be asked, towered over the man who had presumably come to take him to his doom. The man looked at him like he was dirt, like he had no fear at all. These people really believed that there was no potential danger left in the shifters they were holding. That much was beyond clear. Chase had to wonder to himself if they were right.

  Had the part of him that made him the most unique been stripped away and him too drugged up to even know until now? But there wasn’t time to think on that, either, because here was the guard, opening the door and throwing the awful suit in his direction with a cocky sneer on his face.

  “Here. Put that shit on, will ya? It’s time to go.”

  “Go where?”

  “Trial. You’re gonna have your verdict read.”

  “My verdict? But I haven’t stood trial yet.”

  “Ha! I bet that’s what you think, isn’t it? You don’t remember a damn thing. But not remembering a thing doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. You stood trial, all right. And now it’s time to hear the verdict. Now put that shit on. I’ll not be the reason we keep the judge waiting.”

  “I can’t put the suit on with the cuffs, now can I?”

  The guard looked torn, unsure of what he should do. It was clear to Chase that the cuffs were not supposed to come off. Not ever. But this man was in a hurry, didn’t want to be late for the all-important judge, and so against his better judgement, he removed those cuffs and let Chase put on the change of clothes.

  The moment they came off, Chase felt all of the vitality of the man he was born to be returning to him. He felt the dragon blood come rushing through his blood so forcefully he almost fell over. Never again would he take that part of himself for granted again.

  He knew now that to deny that was to deny the very heart of who he was. That guard had made a mistake. It wouldn’t matter if he got the cuffs back on his ward. There was no way he could be sapped of all of his strength again.

  “What the hell are you doing, jacking off? What’s taking you so long?”

  “Sorry, sorry. I guess I’m just not feeling so hot. Been feeling pretty off, pretty weak these days.”

  “Ha! I bet. I bet you have. Now let’s go. Time to meet your maker, son. It’s judgment day.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Aubrey? Are you listening to me, Aubrey? I can tell when you don’t, you know. And you would think you could spare the time, seeing as you haven’t answered my calls in almost two weeks. I thought you were dead! I was one more phone call away from calling the cops and having them show up at your door. Maybe you would have answered them. You’d answer the cops, I bet. You keep that in mind, too. Don’t think I won’t do it either. I will. You just bet I will.”

  Good lord, it was like Aubrey was doomed to this kind of rambling conversation-lecture hybrid every time she got into her car. Idly, she wondered to herself whether her mother had ever considered the fact that it was conversations like this that made her not want to answer the phone.

  She supposed she could tell her, but god only knew what kind of fire would rain down on her. No, it was one of those things that was better left unsaid. Sometimes the things you didn’t say in a relationship were just as important as the things you did.

  That was something Aubrey believed more and more with each passing day. Still, being young and every bit as feisty as her mother, Aubrey couldn’t keep herself completely quiet.

  “Mom, this is DC. There is no way the cops would show up at my door just because you called them up and told them I wasn’t picking up the phone.”

  “Is that right? Well, that’s good to know. I guess I’ll just have to be showing up myself then, won’t I?”

  “I’ll do better, OK? Promise.”

  “Good, that’s good. Now, let’s talk about you coming home.”

  This. Scratch her former statement, this was why she hadn’t wanted to talk to her mom. She’d told her in a very brief conversation that her and Brent were done and knew right away where her mom was going to go with it. She had been waiting for this for two years, after all. Aubrey thought again about how much she wished she had left out the little detail about finding Brent in bed with another woman, but she couldn’t take it back. Her well-intentioned but incredibly aggravating mother was prepared to use it to her advantage, not realizing that she couldn’t do that sort of thing with her daughter.

  Who knew, maybe she was just too used to playing her relationships with people like games of chess instead of just nurturing them like well-adjusted people did. Either way, she was playing a game, even if she was the only one playing it. So the two of them had been caught in this holding pattern ever since Aubrey had made the mistake of giving her mother ammunition.

  And now, now was when she was going to have to tell her loving mother that she didn’t plan on coming back to Texas. It wasn’t something she had been exactly looking forward to, not by any stretch of the imagination.

  “Mom-”

  “Don’t you ‘mom’ me, OK? You need to be home, with people who love you. You need to be with people who can look out for what’s best for you when you’re too stubborn to do it yourself. Now you tell me, if that’s not your mother, then who is it? That’s what I’d like to know.”

  “I’m not going back to Texas, Mom. I know you mean well, I’m just not going to do it.”

  “Really. Then you’ve gone ahead and made up your mind then.”

  Uh oh. Aubrey knew that tone much better than she would like to. That was the tone her mom used when she was prepared to dig her heels in on something, to wage world war three, if need be. She was royally
pissed off, and it was going to be up to Aubrey to get out of this conversation with their relationship at least mostly intact.

  The only problem was that she was tired of being the one who had to act like the grown up. In some ways, it felt like she had been parenting her mom her entire life. But this was her heartbreak, not her mother’s. She was the one who got to decide how to handle it no matter how badly her mom wanted to confiscate the whole matter.

  “I have, Mom. Yes. I’ve made up my mind. It’s nothing personal, OK? It’s not that I don’t appreciate you wanting to take care of me because I do. But I’ve been promoted at work, I think I told you that, and it’s important to me. Can you understand that? It means a lot to me and it also means I can’t drop everything and come home. I’m OK out here. I just need you to be OK with me being here, too.”

  For a moment, all she got in return was silence. Typical. Here she was apologizing for being cheated on and having to go through the rather arduous process of decoupling. Here she was apologizing for being good enough at her job to get promoted over people more than twice her age. It felt ludicrous to even be having this conversation, but she was doing it anyway because she loved her mom. It just would have been nice if her mom could have met her halfway.

  “You know what I think, baby girl?”

  “No, I really don’t, Mom.”

  “I think you’ve got too much of your father in you. That’s what I think.”

  Aubrey immediately felt her throat go thick with tears she refused to shed. Her mother might as well have slapped her across the face, with a comment like that. They both knew what her opinion of her father was.

  Saying what she had just said was the nastiest insult Adeline Conner could think of. It was meant to sting, to make her feel small. It had worked, too, but Aubrey wasn’t going to let her break her down. She had things to do, things she had worked hard to accomplish. There wasn’t a chance in hell that she was going to let her mom’s fears of being alone get in the way of that. There was nothing wrong with her living her own life! Especially when she was finally getting good at it for a change.

  “I’ve gotta go now, OK? I love you, Mom, but I can’t do this right now. I’ve gotta go. I have a meeting that’s too important for me to miss.”

  “Sure, OK. Go to your meeting. But you think about what I said, you hear me? You keep putting yourself before everyone else around you and you’re gonna die one sad, lonely girl. Mark my words. You’re gonna be a lonely girl.”

  No I love you too, nothing like that. Aubrey hung up the phone knowing she wouldn’t hear anything like that for a long time. Her mom felt slighted and when she felt that way, she could hold a grudge for a long, long time.

  But Aubrey hadn’t been lying. She honestly didn’t have time to hash this whole thing out. If she was late to this meeting, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that Conrad would never throw another opportunity like this her way again. She wasn’t going to throw the entire future of her career away because her mom had hurt her feelings (and make no mistake, her mom had hurt her feelings badly). She was stronger than that.

  “Jesus, Conner, I was starting to think you might not show. Was this a mistake? Me letting you have this? Because if I was, do me a favor and tell me right now. Believe me, it’ll save us both a whole hell of a lot of trouble if you do.”

  “No!” she said quickly, instantly embarrassed by how loud her voice had come out but unable to take that back, either. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to yell. It’s just that I feel very passionate about this. No, you didn’t make a mistake. I want this and I’m grateful to you for taking a chance on me. I’m sorry that I was late. It won’t happen again.”

  “It better not. The man we’re going to see, well, he doesn’t appreciate being kept waiting. You think I’m bad, you haven’t seen anything.”

  “Is he here?”

  “Yes, he’s here. Of course he’s here.”

  “So he already hates me then?”

  Mr. Conrad must have been able to see how nervous she was because his face softened ever so slightly, like maybe he was taking pity on her.

  “No, he doesn’t hate you. Fortunately for you, I’m a master bullshitter and I had some other people for him to meet. He doesn’t know the meeting has been delayed, at least not that I can tell. You’re in the clear.”

  “Awesome. Thank you so, so much. Like I said-”

  “Won’t happen again. I know, I heard you. Now let’s go.”

  “Wait!”

  “Seriously?” he said with a face that was quickly returning to exasperated. “Wait for what? Do you just want him to realize that you’re a mess today? Because he can easily veto you being on this project. The whole thing is his baby. He gets final say.”

  “No, I just wanted to know his name, that’s all.”

  “Sorry, I can’t tell you that.”

  “Wait, what? You can’t tell me his name?”

  “Apparently, that has been determined to be classified. Seems it’s potentially too dangerous.”

  “Well, then what does he want us to call him?”

  “Commander. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  “All right. Commander it is, I guess.”

  Shit. Maybe she was making a mistake here, after all. She was pretty sure that after the whole Brent fiasco the last thing she needed in her life was another egotistical man with a god complex. But there wasn’t exactly a good way to back out at this point, not without making Conrad look seriously bad, and she wouldn’t be able to forgive herself if she did that.

  So she would move forward with this top secret project, whatever it revealed itself to be, she would work with the “commander” and she would do her job so well that nobody would be able to deny her value ever again. Not even her mother.

  “Good, then let’s go.”

  Conrad was walking faster and faster and Aubrey realized with a start that he was afraid. That was new. She had seen him many different things, but genuinely afraid wasn’t one of them. He still hadn’t told her much about the details of this thing, so maybe that was it?

  Or maybe it was the commander. Maybe he was truly that formidable a man, imposing enough to make even a man like Mr. Conrad frightened. While that definitely gave Aubrey a whole new level of reservations over what she was getting herself entangled with, but it still didn’t stop her. She followed Conrad willingly enough through a series of doors she hadn’t ever been through before.

  She was almost completely certain that she would never be able to find her way back out again on her own, and she wondered if that was what they had in mind during the designing phase. To make things even more disorienting, it felt like they were moving down at a fairly rapid rate. At this point they had to be underground, and still moving down steadily.

  She hadn’t even known this part of the building existed. She still wasn’t sure it existed, and she was in it. It seemed like something one would encounter in a dream or a movie, not in real life. But unless she was very much mistaken, this was still her life and if the increasing nerves evident in Conrad were any indication, they had almost reached their intended destination.

  “Ready?”

  “Are you?”

  Conrad gave her a look that was meant to be stern but merely served to make her smile, then led her through one last door. Aubrey wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, but it wasn’t this. There was no long table lined with a huge team of people who had all been assembled for one purpose they were all about to discover together. There was just her, Conrad, a scientist who managed to look frightened and pompous all at the same time, and the man she assumed could only be the Commander.

  That was how she was thinking of him now, as the Commander with a capital c. He was definitely an impressive looking man, she had to admit to that. He was tall and, although clearly in his late fifties to early sixties (it was so hard to tell people’s ages these days!), unbelievably strong. She could actually see the muscles popping out of his dress shirt, something that couldn’t
be said for many men only half his age.

  He had deep, mysterious eyes that were actually rather beautiful and were framed by the smallest laugh lines. Those laugh lines would make most people look friendly, but the Commander was in no way smiling at the moment. He looked very serious and, if she was reading him correctly, very angry. But angry at who? Had he realized that Conrad had been stalling for her, that the two of them had been wasting his valuable time?

  Or was it something else? Perhaps it was related to whatever they were bringing her in to do. If that was the case, far from making her want to walk away, Aubrey was keen on learning as much as she could in as little time as possible. Which was good, because it looked like he was in a hurry to get started.

  “Right. Let’s get started then, shall we? Your name is?”