It was only when Mr. Fuckable had ordered the drinks and turned her way, drumming his fingers on the surface next to him, that Ashlyn’s eyes met his for the first time. The most intriguing shade of green-grey, they were mysterious, kind, keenly intelligent, and filled with humour. All at the same time. Great. So his eyes were deep, complicated, sexy and gorgeous, just like the rest of him. And now, oh, damn, they were staring straight into hers.
A slow, delicious smile spread across the man’s lips as he imprisoned her in his gaze, his eyes slightly narrowing as though to size her up. Despite the unrelenting stare, he didn’t seem sleazy or lecherous like some men who hang around in bars. There was more to his expression than a desire for sex; something far deeper lurked beneath his incredible surface, and Ashlyn ached to know what it was.
Blood rushed to every part of her body and she tensed, frozen in place by indecision. A deer blinded by headlights, her whole world inching along in ultra-slow motion as she tried to sort out her next move. Should she look away? Yes, probably. Mr. Fuckable wasn’t blind; he knew she was examining him. But hell, he was examining her too. And the strangest sensation was hitting her; something told her that he knew everything she was feeling, everything she was thinking. The guy was invading her insides with his thoughts, with his everything, though she couldn’t begin to explain how. He was delving into her depths to explore her with more than just his eyes, invisibly stroking his fingers over every nerve, testing to see what aroused her.
And she liked having him in there. Far too much.
You want to know what turns me on? she thought. You do, you sexy bastard.
Well, one thing was certain. Whoever he was, he was far more dangerous than most men. And so, so much more more desirable than any man she’d ever met. He was something special. Beyond human.
The bartender leaned forward and said a few words to his patron, and for a moment Mr. Fuckable’s attention was drawn away from Ashlyn's stunned face.
Oh, thank God. She stared down at the fingers that were still grasping her glass. They were trembling now, but she managed to draw the damned thing to her lips to take a final swig. A moment later she’d set it down and was all but sprinting towards the door, free of the blond god's spell, if only for a merciful few seconds. She needed to get away from him, and fast.
The only other choice would be to walk up to the bar, strip him naked and lick every inch of his body. Right there, right then. In front of the whole damned world.
* * *
“Here you go,” the bartender’s voice shot out, rudely interrupting Aegis’s moment of perfect erotic daydreaming, which had far more to do with his lips on the beauty's nipples than he would ever have admitted. He'd seen inside her, if only for a split-second. He knew that she wanted him just as he wanted her. Knew that she was fighting off her own desire, and that it was winning the fight. If he was going to make a move, he'd have to do it soon.
Shite, he muttered as he turned to face the slow-witted bastard behind the bar, who had noisily dropped the three steins in front of him. Aegis nodded a surly thank-you and withdrew his wallet from his pocket, handing over payment as quickly as he could. But by the time he managed to look back towards the woman’s table, she was gone.
He spun around, searching her out only to see the pub's front door clicking shut. The object of his desire was on the other side, already making her way down the street, away from him.
Shite. Shite. Shite. The beautiful thief is taking that glorious scent, and my hard-on, with her.
It felt like the worst thing that had ever happened. He'd lost the beautiful goddess who was meant to spend the night naked underneath him. Whose name he had yet to learn. Whose thighs he had yet to stroke with the tip of his tongue. He could still go after her, couldn't he?
Anyone else would've told him that he was mad for even considering it, but he had no time to worry about others' opinions. Hurriedly he carried the beers over to the men’s table and all but dumped them in Minach’s and Lumen’s laps.
“I need to…” he began, his eyes locked on the closed door that had so cruelly shut behind the fantasy woman.
“Let's see. You’re finding yourself at a loss for words,” Minach said, smirking as his friend nodded in response. “And you feel compelled to desert us in order to follow a woman you’ve never met, despite the fact that it’s nighttime and it would be somewhat creepy and definitely quite stalker-ish of you.”
Another nod. “Yes, everything you said—I can’t explain it…she...I can't...we...a...” Words tumbled out of Aegis's mouth like he was spitting out spoonfuls of alphabet soup.
“You sure about this, mate?” Lumen asked. The question was sincere. “Pursuing a woman at night isn’t generally considered the most attractive behaviour.”
“I know, I know. But something tells me I need to see where she goes. I need to find out who she is,” he replied, taking a long swig from one of the pints and wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist. "It's important."
“So go then,” Lumen said. “We’ll talk tomorrow; we all have some issues to discuss. Guild affairs. Some alarming information has come to light, as you know...”
Aegis nodded his head as he threw on the jacket he’d draped over the back of his chair. “Yes, tomorrow,” he mumbled without so much as looking his Alpha in the eye. “Forgive me—if she gets away, I’m going to have to hang myself, and then I won't be of much use to the Guild or anyone else.”
“Well, stop standing here like a slack-jawed imbecile. Go get her, Casanova,” Minach bellowed far too loudly. Aegis turned to leave without another word. He was immune to the other shifter’s insults by now and had no time or patience to come up with a retaliatory comment.
When Aegis had left, Minach turned to Lumen and said, “Smooth with the ladies, isn’t he?"
His Alpha shook his head and laughed. “He’s an absolute plonker at times. A loveable one, but a plonker nonetheless. Still, I can’t help but think there’s someone out there for him. Maybe it is the mysterious lady with the intoxicating scent, though it's entirely possible that she’s going to tell him to sod right off within the next few minutes. He may be a handsome fellow, but women don't take kindly to pursuit under the cover of night. Particularly when the pursuer smells like a feckin' distillery.”
“Right. Well, here’s hoping her turn-ons include the combined smell of beer and testosterone...and Dragon shifter, of course,” Minach replied, clinking his pint glass against his friend’s in a rare moment of sincerity. “Here’s to Aegis. May he get his cock sucked in an epic way tonight.”
“To Aegis and his blue balls.”
Fleeing the Scene
Ashlyn speed-walked away from the pub, distancing herself as quickly as she could before finally slinking around a corner and pressing her back to a white stone wall. Her heart was still pounding impossibly fast, jack-hammering against her insides. And in spite of the cool air now surrounding her, a line of perspiration had begun to glisten on her brow. “What just happened?” she muttered as she wiped her forehead, trying hard to calm her trembling extremities. Her whole body was shaking as though she’d just had a violent orgasm.
And yet no one had so much as touched her.
Okay, who the hell was that man? And how had he sent her into such a ridiculous state of erotic confusion without saying a single word?
It didn't matter, she reminded herself. Didn't matter who he was, what he did, how skilled his lips might be. Didn't matter that he was unlike anything she'd ever seen. None of it mattered. Because she'd never see him again.
When she’d caught her breath she began to walk once more, her pace rapidly accelerating with her determination to escape his dangerous allure. The farther from him she could pull herself, the less she would want him, right? The only cure for this bizarre, sudden obsession had to be distance. And it had better work, because if it didn’t, she'd never experience dry panties again.
Her rental flat wasn’t far, maybe six blocks away. She’d walk
ed this route a few times since coming to London and was beginning to get to know the city relatively well. Apparently she'd made a wise move in opting to stay in the West End; recent newspaper articles had warned residents to stay out of London's eastern neighbourhoods. They said that some violent serial killer was on the loose, some psychopath who liked to rip throats out for sport. Reports had told the public to steer clear of the docks and a few other areas where bodies had washed up near the Thames River.
The murderer didn't seem to target tourists, and hopefully things would stay that way. The guy seemed to have a taste for vagrants and their ilk. In all likelihood he was going after victims who had no family to report their disappearance.
So it was a good thing no one in the city knew that Ashlyn had lost her last family member a year ago, when her adoptive father had passed away.
Anyhow, she wasn’t terribly concerned about her own safety. She’d studied self defence back at home in the United States, including martial arts, archery and knife-throwing. It was her parents who’d noticed early on that she was impressively coordinated, and they’d sent her for karate lessons when she’d shown an interest in the sport. But somewhere along the way, a love of all things sharp and pointy had evolved, and now she was adept with all sorts of weapons. Not the most ladylike pursuit, maybe, but it generally made her feel secure. She’d packed a few of her knives in her checked luggage and now had one of her daggers tucked into a sheath in one of her knee-high leather boots.
Just in case.
Ironic, she thought, that the biggest threat she’d encountered since her arrival in England was a guy who made her sex throb with desire. And he was unlikely to follow her anywhere, let alone home. A man like that probably had a whole harem of women waiting for him at his place. A cache of females aching to get him naked and do all sorts of unsavoury and quasi-illegal things to him. As for Ashlyn, she was already beginning to wonder if she’d just imagined Mr. Fuckable now that she was free of whatever spell he’d cast over her mind and body. Maybe his attractiveness had been nothing more than an optical illusion. A slightly tipsy brain convincing her that he was insanely hot. Beer goggles, wasn't that what people called them? Well, wine goggles. Damn, that was some seriously impressive wine.
In an effort to convince herself that Mr. Fuckable had been nothing more than a trick of her mind she looked around, assessing her vision to try and prove that the wine had indeed screwed with her head. But much to her aggravation her eyes were working perfectly, as always. She’d had great eyesight for as long as she could remember, not to mention a keen nose and hearing that was far beyond acute. Her mother used to refer to her as “the blond bloodhound,” because she could sniff out anything, could see in the dark even when no one around her could.
Her senses were all magnificent, really, though sometimes it was a curse to smell every damn thing in the world. Dirty socks and outhouses were particularly repugnant, though thankfully she wasn’t around either with any great frequency. Her hearing was also a bit of a curse. No one liked to register the sticky-wet sound of lips smacking as others ate, or to eavesdrop accidentally on private, sometimes disturbing conversations. But there it was; her ears were dainty satellite dishes, picking up almost every damn thing in the world.
So when the footsteps started up behind her, her keen ears picked them up immediately. Somebody had begun to keep pace perfectly with her, their soles falling on the concrete almost in exact synchronicity with her own. The pace was deliberate, calculated, and her follower’s shoes were hard-soled. And from the sound of it, those soles belonged to a man.
Her heart leapt inside her chest, eliciting a brief smile. Could it possibly be that Mr. Fuckable was tailing her to ask her out?
No. He didn’t move like that. He walked like a cat, his footfalls soft and smooth. And besides, he’d been wearing rubber-soled shoes. These ones sounded hard as oak, with the distinct, terrifying percussiveness of an authority figure stomping down a hallway to yell at someone. There was an implicit threat in the tak-tak-tak sound, and Ashlyn didn’t like anything about it.
Bah. Just ignore it, she told herself. It would have been all too easy, after reading one too many news articles, to believe that a boogeyman was out to kill her. But in all likelihood this was just some businessman wanting to get home after a long day. Ashlyn cursed herself for reading the papers and allowing dire thoughts to unleash themselves in her mind. Chill out, woman. If you slow down he’ll pass, and you won’t have to think about him anymore.
To test her theory she slowed her pace for a moment, pretending to examine the façade of a stone row house. But to her disappointment the footsteps decelerated just as hers had done. Whoever the jackass was, he had no intention of moving past her. Ashlyn sniffed the air, noting that the wind had shifted and a slight breeze was now coming at her from behind. For the briefest moment she dared to hope that her nose would pick up Mr. Fuckable’s glorious scent, and that she’d be proven wrong about his rubber soled shoes.
But as soon as she inhaled, her heart sank. Whoever was back there, he wasn’t the golden god. She’d smelled him in the pub, knew his scent intimately by now. And this man’s aroma was odd—masculine, yes, but also strangely sweet. Intriguing and disturbing at the same time, like he was wearing too much cologne, trying to mask some unpleasant odour and conceal his true nature. Something about the smell forced her to shift gears, picking up her pace another notch.
Instinct was telling her that she'd be wise to run from the entity who seemed suddenly more predator than innocent pedestrian. But as she accelerated, so did her pursuer.
“Shit,” she muttered, her heart slamming in violent strokes against her chest. Damn, she was stupid. A young woman alone at night in the big city must look like such an easy target. Maybe the serial killer had run out of victims in the east end and moved west. And she’d generously set herself up as easy bait for a hungry, depraved jackal who liked to tear at human flesh. No doubt he planned to turn her body into ground beef.
Think, Ashlyn. Be smart. If she stopped again she could reach down for the dagger in her boot and spin around to threaten him. But then what? Was she really going to stab someone on the streets of London? What was the penalty for an American who killed a British citizen, anyhow? Probably beheading or hanging from the Tower of London, or something. At the very least, every paper in the States would publish articles about the stabby young American woman who’d killed some guy just for smelling weird and walking at exactly the same speed as she did. It was fairly easy to discern what the likely consequences would be.
Just get back to the flat and lock the door behind you.
Her right hand clutched the bottom of her satchel, feeling for her most valued possession. It was there of course, sunk to the bottom of the heavy bag. As her fingers grasped its cylindrical form its presence empowered her, if only for a moment. Keep going, it seemed to say. Get away from him, and keep me safe at all costs. She increased her pace to a jog, grateful to be wearing sensible, flat-soled boots.
Behind her the footsteps still echoed, rushing to keep up in a brazen pursuit. Fucker wasn't even trying to hide his presence.
Take a trip to England, Ashlyn muttered, trying to convince herself that there was humour to be found in this situation. It’ll be fun. No one will hunt you down at night and kill you, oh no. That would neeeeever happen.
As her eyes darted back and forth she wondered why the street was so quiet, so empty. It occurred to her that she hadn't seen a soul since leaving the pub. For God's sake, why had she chosen to stay in such a damned quiet neighbourhood? But it didn’t matter. She’d be safe soon, her building was close now, only a hundred or so feet away. All she needed was to dart up the stairs, key in the security code and then she’d run in, slam the door and be free of her pursuer. He’d move on to look for someone else, or maybe he’d just piss off and go home.
Of course, there was also a very real possibility that he would break the door down and kill her.
* * *
Aegis’s keen nose had picked up the woman’s scent as soon as he left the pub. He’d turned to follow her trail, considering sprinting after her. But the rational bits of his mind had forced him to apply the brakes. The other shifters had been right; it was beyond creepy to follow a woman around London’s streets at night. And the last thing he wanted was to terrify the blond sex goddess. If he did so, he may as well say good-bye to her and his erection forever.
So he forced himself to stroll slowly, casually, with no plan whatsoever in his mind. Maybe he should just find out where she lived. After that his goal would be simple: he’d just come back night after night to watch her and eventually he’d figure out where she liked to go, what she liked to do.
Um, yeah, that’s a terrible idea. Aegis, you are a creepy weirdo.
Okay, screw that plan. Maybe he could just wander along and hope that she stopped at a little shop on the way home to pick up a late-night snack. Then he could run into her "accidentally" when he went in to buy some whiskey. A lot of whiskey. So much whiskey.
All the whiskey.
Much better. She wouldn’t think I’m a stalker then. Just a raging alcoholic.
Why not some chocolate? A bag of crisps?
Yes. A junk-food-eating glutton is marginally more appealing to the ladies than a boozehound or a rapey creeper.
He was still trying to determine the best course of action when his eyes picked up her lone silhouette a long way ahead. She was walking quickly, as though she couldn't distance herself from the pub fast enough. All the more reason not to get too close and freak her out, he told himself. Stay back. Stay cool.
He slowed his pace, even stopping at one point to pretend to tie his shoelace. No way was he going to let her think he was in a rush to pursue her.
Dragon's Lover: Part One Page 2