Dragon's Luck: Dragon Shifter Paranormal Romance (Shifter Agents Book 3)

by Lauren Esker

  Yes, and we've invented electric lights in the intervening century, so we don't have to strain our eyes anymore. Get with the times, boys.

  The darkness was useful for her purposes, though. She was crouched near the base of a lighting fixture. The hanging dark-green shade, sweeping slowly back and forth with the rolling of the yacht's hull, shielded the light so it wouldn't hurt her eyes, but anyone looking up would have to look into the lamp's glare. She could see without being seen.

  All around the card room, gamblers were dropping out of the game as they used up all their chips. Discreet but well-muscled guards with suspicious bulges under their jackets escorted them out of the card room into the lounge next door. There were about a third as many people in the room as there had been when Jen's initial exploration of the boat had led her here.

  Everyone was on the boat for a mob-sponsored poker tournament. Word on the street was that the winner would be paid in a supply of the drug, which might give her a chance to figure out where it was coming from.

  And therefore she got to spend the night watching Lucado gamble—that is, watching the gamblers at work.

  The yacht had no passenger manifest, so beyond the name of the owner—one Roxy Molina, with ties to organized crime—they didn't know the names of anyone on board. She'd picked up some names by now from listening to the gamblers talk to each other, but Lucky was obviously not his real first name. At least, for his sake, she hoped not. What she wouldn't give right now for a phone and a connection to the SCB's database. Her sticky gecko fingers itched to pull up some files and find his birth certificate, his real first name, his criminal record, and his shifter type, if known.

  Most shifters reflected their animal type in some way. He wasn't anything bulky or large, she thought; he had a sinuous grace that made her think of ... well, herself, and her relatives. It seemed likely that he was a reptile of some kind. Maybe something like a ferret or otter. Some people might look at him and think "cat", but she knew a few cat shifters, and he didn't have their predatory alertness. His lazy grace was pure lizard.

  Maybe he's a dragon, she thought whimsically. I just need to get close enough to smell him ...

  Truth be told, she'd love to be close enough to smell him. It was going to be a real shame if she had to arrest him.

  ***

  Lucky lost another hand. He was playing badly tonight, for him, misreading tells and making poor decisions. It was all because he was distracted by that elusive tug of someone like himself nearby.

  Frustrated with himself and worried by his fast-dwindling pile of chips, he pushed the cards on the next shuffle, and gave himself a good hand. He didn't want to do that too much, but in this case it paid off better than he'd hoped; having established himself in the minds of the other players as an unskilled newbie, he managed to clean out most of them in a single round.

  "Good game, fellas," he said, scooping the chips toward himself.

  The one remaining player who hadn't gone bust eyed Lucky warily and chewed on his cigarette. "Ringer," he remarked.

  "Beginner's luck," Lucky countered pleasantly.

  "Kid, if this is your first time playing poker, I'll dip my pack of Marlboros in hot sauce and have it for dinner."

  Lucky smiled as he shuffled the cards and considered whether to tweak the deal or not.

  He wasn't sure what made him look up at just the right time. His abilities didn't work on himself, not in that way. While he shuffled he kept his eyes moving around the room, partly to keep the motion of the boat from getting to him and partly to see what the other players were up to. And this time, he caught the slightest flicker of movement in the shadows above the lamp.

  Is that where you're hiding? Up there, on the ceiling?

  He reached up mentally, and pushed.

  ***

  Jen had been incautious. She would admit to that much. She was curious if Lucado was cheating or not. He'd just knocked four players out of the game in a single hand, and while she hadn't seen him touch the cards—he hadn't even dealt that hand—she found it a trifle suspicious that the cards had gone his way in such a drastic fashion. From the disgruntled looks on the faces of the players leaving the table, she could tell she wasn't the only one.

  So she scuttled onto the lampshade to get a better look at the way he dealt the next hand. Not that it mattered for her assignment; she was just killing time until someone won the tournament and she got to move on to the interesting part. Hanging out on the ceiling and watching a drop-dead-sexy gambler demonstrate card tricks was a lot better than some stakeouts she'd been on.

  And then her foot slipped.

  That never happened. Not since she was a baby gecko, playing on sun-warmed walls with her brothers in the California sunshine. Oh, maybe if conditions were really bad—icy or wet, say, which was frustratingly common in all this damned Pacific Northwest humidity. But the lampshade was dry and rough enough to provide plenty of traction for her sticky gecko foot pads.

  And yet, her foot slipped anyway. Her leading foot, just as she trusted her weight to it, head down on the sloped part of the lampshade. She missed her step entirely, lost her purchase on the lampshade's taut fabric, and fell.

  She was more startled than scared. A fall of a few feet wouldn't hurt a gecko at all. But there was no time to react. She tumbled through the air and splashed with a cold shock into Lucado's drink.

  This was, beyond a doubt, the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to her on a case.

  It got worse an instant later, when Lucado slapped his drink coaster over the top of the glass and everything dimmed. Jen floundered in an inch and a half of whiskey, coughing and spluttering. She was about five inches long including the tail, so she could get her head out of the alcohol by standing up, but she could feel herself getting slightly buzzed as she absorbed it through her skin, not to mention what she'd accidentally swallowed. It didn't take much to get drunk when you weighed a couple of ounces. Thank heaven I'm not a salamander; with their porous skin, I'd probably already be dead of alcohol poisoning.

  "What the hell's that?" she heard the other gambler ask, muffled by the sides of the glass.

  "Beats me," Lucado drawled. "Somebody's exotic pet, I guess. You gonna play or make love to those cards?"

  She tried climbing onto the ice-cube island to get out of the whiskey. As well as making her increasingly drunk, the cold liquid was draining the heat out of her body and she could feel herself getting clumsy and sluggish. Her feet skidded off the wet, slick ice, unable to secure a purchase.

  She managed at last to climb the inside of the glass and cling, upside-down, to the underside of the coaster. Getting out of the booze helped slow her slide into drunkenness, but she was still breathing the fumes. Everything spun gently around her. Her lidless eyes stung, and she flicked out her tongue to lick them. It didn't help.

  I need to get out of here!

  She pressed her hind feet against the side of the glass and pushed with her front ones, then made an effort to squirm out between the coaster and the rim of the glass. But she couldn't lift the coaster at all. Lucado must have his hand pressed to the top of it.

  "Awww, hell," she heard the other gambler say.

  "Better luck next time, buddy." There was a rattling sound—Lucado scraping his chips in, one-handed.

  Her glass prison moved. Startled, and increasingly disoriented from the combination of intoxication and cold, she fell back into the sloshing whiskey. Lucado was standing now, and the glass swayed in time with his footsteps as he carried it with him.

  "Gonna hit the john and get a bite to eat," he told someone at the door.

  Oh, no, no, no! What is he going to do with me? She thrashed around, knocking ice cubes against the sides of the glass with her tail.

  "Hey, settle down in there," Lucado murmured.

  If I shift, I'll smash my way out—And then she would be naked in the hallway. It still seemed like a better idea than letting Lucado flush her down a toilet or whatever he ha
d in mind. She had a feeling her judgment, never terribly reliable, was being compromised by the alcohol. Somehow knowing that didn't make planning any easier.

  There was the sound of a door being closed, and the glass clinked down on a hard surface. Her prison brightened as Lucado took the coaster away. She hadn't expected to be set free, but she wasted no time erupting over the side. She scuttled frantically away, leaving a wet trail of whiskey behind her.

  "Hold on there." A big hand appeared in front of her and scooped her up. The world tilted wildly. Oh God, she was really drunk. For a minute she didn't know up from down; then everything stabilized and she was looking at Lucado's face. His enormous face. Calm, amused brown-green eyes looked back at her; she could see the glimmer of her reflection in them.

  "You're not just a lizard, right? Can you understand me?"

  She scrambled over the side of his hand and was in free-fall again, before hitting the floor with a jarring thump. Wait ... this wasn't a restroom. This was a cramped one-person cabin, just big enough for a bed molded into the wall, a tiny table, and a chair bolted to the floor. She scuttled for the side of the bed rising like a cliff in front of her, hoping to find somewhere to hide.

  Again the hand scooped her up effortlessly. "Sorry about the booze. I better get that off you, huh?"

  He trapped her gently in a prison made of his cupped hands, one on top of the other. She writhed and poked her nose and feet through the gaps between his fingers, making him laugh. "That tickles. No, you can't leave yet. Will it hurt you to take a bath?"

  She was plunged under a narrow stream of warm water. Slippery now, she twisted out of his hand and plopped into the sink. Every attempt to scuttle up the side was met with Lucado intercepting her and sticking her under the stream of water again. When he judged her clean enough, he patted her dry with a hand towel and left her on the edge of the sink.

  She peered nervously over the edge. Lucado loomed between her and the exit, and he was ... taking his shirt off?

  "See, I'm like you." He folded the shirt and laid it aside. Now he was taking off his pants. Dammit, she wished she wasn't a lizard right now. "Either that," he went on, folding each item in turn, "or I'm talking to a lizard like it can understand me. Regardless, I guess there's no harm in doing this."

  He shifted, collapsing to the floor as his human form vanished.

  Oh right. Shifter. The water had helped clear her head a little, but she was still more than slightly drunk.

  Placing her foot pads with care, she scuttled down the side of the sink to get a closer look at what Lucado had turned into. Avery's caution about gecko-eating shifters ran through her mind, but it looked like he was some kind of lizard, and she wanted to get a better look.

  He was some kind of lizard, all right, but she didn't recognize the species. Whatever he was, he seemed to be about a foot long, narrow and trim with a long tail. His base color was green, with shimmering gold highlights, and he was patterned delicately in black: a long black stripe down his back, black stripes and mottling on his sides. His eyes were green, a more vivid shade than the brownish-green of his human eyes, veined thinly with gold. Above each eye, there was a stubby little protrusion like a horn. She'd heard of horned lizards, but she hadn't seen one who looked like that before.

  Lucado raised his head and flicked out his tongue inquisitively. I showed you mine, now show me yours.

  Jen heaved a small gecko sigh. Her secret was out anyway; he could tell she was a shifter just from being near her. And if she stayed lizard-shaped, he'd probably put her in some kind of lidded container and leave her here, while the tournament went on without her.

  Damn.

  She shifted.

  She'd never shifted while drunk before. There was always an instant of disorientation that accompanied the change in her size and the difference in her human senses, but this time it was so acute the whole room swam and she ended up sitting on her backside on the floor.

  Her very naked backside.

  .... right. Blame the alcohol, but she'd temporarily forgotten she was going to shift back naked in a stranger's room.

  None of this was going in her case report.

  Chapter Three

  The pretty little red and green dragonet vanished in an instant, to be replaced by a human who looked enormous to Lucky. He'd made himself tiny so as not to scare her, since it was possible that, like Lucia, her base shape was also small. Now that she'd shifted, he shifted back quickly before he could lose the advantage.

  Oh. Oh. His mystery shifter was very pretty.

  She sat on the bathroom floor blinking dazedly at him. She was Asian, with a small pointed face and a light spray of freckles across her nose. Tousled dark hair fell in a curtain over her cheeks and half-hid her eyes.

  He kept his gaze firmly on her face. Peripherally he could tell she had a trim, athletic body. Despite her small size, she didn't look easily breakable.

  "What's the matter?" she demanded, sitting up straighter. "You act like you never saw a gecko turn into a girl before." She pushed her hair out of her eyes. Dark eyes, very intense. "What kind of lizard are you? I've never seen one of those before."

  She ... thought he was a lizard. Oh. He hadn't expected the disappointment to be as crushing as it was. He'd really thought she might be ... but no, there might not even be any others of his kind except for Lucia and Angel, if they still lived.

  "Why don't we talk about why you're spying on me?" He covered it with a lifetime's practice, sliding a friendly mask into place, and stood up, holding out his hand to her. She ignored the offered assistance and scrambled up by clinging to the sink, swaying a bit.

  "I wasn't spying."

  "No? Do you spend a lot of your time clinging to ceilings, then?"

  She held up a hand and wiggled her fingers. "Sticky gecko feet, what else am I supposed to—whoa."

  The floor came up as the yacht hit a sudden swell and she swayed the wrong way, stumbling into the wall. Without really thinking about it, Lucky stepped forward and caught her. She seemed to be having more than the usual amount of trouble with her sea legs.

  "Are you ... drunk?"

  She looked up at him, blinking, and it seemed they both realized at the same time that they were a) naked, and b) holding onto each other. She made an effort to push him off. He slung a firm arm around her instead, trying not to think too much about all the naked female anatomy currently pressed against his equally naked body. He could feel the moment when she gave up and decided to go with it. She could probably have gotten away if she'd tried; slight though she was, he felt the wiry strength in her body. Instead, she let him help her to the bed, where he deposited her onto the edge.

  "I was swimming in your glass," she snapped, holding her head. "Of course I'm drunk. Oh my God. Do you have a bathrobe or something?"

  "Tell me where you left your clothes and I'll get them." He went for his own clothing. Setting a good example and all that.

  There was a pause, which might just be his mystery guest pulling her scattered thoughts together, before she said, "I don't have any."

  "You ... what?" He looked up from buttoning his shirt.

  "I was a gecko! Geckos can't exactly carry backpacks."

  "You came on board as a gecko?" And then, suddenly, it all made sense. "You were using your changed form to sneak into the tournament without paying the entry fee, weren't you?"

  She looked, for just a moment, oddly relieved. "Yes," she said. "Yes, that's what I was doing. Good plan, right? Except for you."

  "Yeah, maybe, but what were you planning on doing at the next stage of the tournament?"

  "Next stage?" she asked, giving him a puzzled look.

  "Yeah, when the winner of this bout moves on to the semifinals in whatever secret location where they're holding the next round. Are you going to spend the next week hiding under furniture and living off pretzel crumbs, trying not to get stepped on or fall into any more drinks?"

  She had looked increasingly dismayed throug
hout this speech. "You mean it keeps going?"

  "Well ... yeah? We're not going back to the Seattle docks before they drop off the winner wherever the next part of this whole thing is."

  "Great." She grabbed his bedspread, pulled it over her, and flopped onto her back, staring up at the ceiling.

  Shrugging into his green jacket, Lucky came over to look down at her—stretched out rigidly in his bed, dark hair spread around her on the pillow. "Are you falling asleep in my bed?"

  "No," she said. Her eyes were open, staring upward. "I just realized I may have made a tactical error."

  Lucky laughed. "I'll say."

  She shifted her stare from the ceiling to glare at him with, he felt, unwarranted animosity for a drunk woman who was currently hiding under his bedspread. "So, let's say I enter into the tournament at this stage—"

  "After coming on board without paying? Not likely, sister."

  "Hmm, probably not. Besides, I suck at poker." Her gaze sharpened, losing some of the drunken haze, even though she was still flat on her back. Lucky wondered how much of her drunkenness was exaggerated to keep him off guard.

  "You, on the other hand ..." she said. "You expect to go on to the next round, right?"

  "I'm planning to, yes. Me, and me alone. Because that's how this whole thing works."

  "We could be partners," she wheedled. "Or ... look, all you have to do is carry me along in your pocket. It won't be hard."

  "No, and no. I don't do partners, and I'm not about to risk my place in the tournament by helping you. Sorry."

  "I know your secret, though," she pointed out.

  A sharp frisson of alarm shot through him. "And I know yours. Do you think they'll believe either one of us if we tell them the other person turns into a lizard? I, on the other hand, can easily have you thrown off this pleasure cruise by pointing you out to security."