My Dragon Lover

by Alisa Woods

  A small smirk flashes across his face then disappears when he glances at the man next to me. I twist to give him a glare, so he knows I don’t trust him either. None of them. His rock-hard expression seems directed at Niko, but it’s probably a horrible mistake to be in a damn Uber with either of them going God-knows-where.

  With a straight face, Niko says, “Fair enough. But we’re going to need you to put on a blindfold, regardless.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I can’t have you knowing where the safehouse is.”

  “The safehouse you want me to go to? To hide in?” My face scrunches up. What kind of fool does he think I am? “You want me to basically let you kidnap me.”

  He sighs. “It’s for your protection and ours. If you, even inadvertently, tell people where you are, the Vardigah might find you. Honestly, we’re not at all sure how they found Grace. And until we figure that out, we need to keep security as tight as possible. Think of it like witness protection.” He digs into his jeans pocket and pulls out a black silk mask that looks like it belongs in a kinky pajama party. “Please. Just put it on long enough for us to get there and get inside.”

  “You have got to be kidding me.” I ignore his mask and stare forward at the Uber driver. He’s a nervous-looking Indian man who probably didn’t sign up for this shit either. I check my phone. Still no message back from Grace. I have only Niko’s word that she’s okay. But those Vardigah in the alleyway were no joke. Unless that was all staged. I just don’t know anymore. I feel like I’m losing my damn mind, and that’s way too close to how I felt in that cell. I still don’t know how they did half their tricks. The torture was some kind of mind-fuckery, which made it even harder to keep everything straight. And to not lose hope. I would have been gone without Grace and Daisy to figuratively hold onto—they were the voices in the next-door cells that kept me sane. The Vardigah’s mind probe was an electric rod or maybe a magnetic thing that somehow got inside my head and made it feel like my mind was melting. I’ve never been so scared in all my life. Not of the pain. Not of the creeps in their stupid costumes. Afraid of losing my mind. It’s the only thing I’ve ever had—the only thing that’s gotten me where I am—and I can not afford to lose that. And right now, Grace is tangled up with these dragon-fantasy guys, sucked back in by her hot boyfriend. Theo has her tucked away somewhere, and Niko’s my only connection right now because she’s not answering her texts.

  Again. Fuck, Grace, why aren’t you picking up?

  I pull in a breath and blow it out. Sometimes, you do what you have to do. I snatch the mask from Niko’s hands. “Fuck you for making me do this.” I work on putting it on, and I manage to get it over my eyes, so now I can’t see, but it requires tying in the back, and fuck me, but my hands are shaking. And my hair is big, a natural afro style I’ve been wearing ever since the Massive Flameout with my ex. Which makes it difficult to navigate getting the mask on. Without a word, the guy next to me takes the strings and ties them, not too tight, but snugly fitting, so the eye mask stays in place.

  “Thank you,” Niko says, probably to me, although I can’t see anything anymore, so who knows. “We’re almost there.”

  Now I wish I’d paid attention to where we were going. Toward Midtown, I think? Although I suppose that’s the point—they don’t want me to know. The Uber rolls to a stop. I hear traffic outside, but nothing to differentiate it from any other street in the city. Niko takes my hand and urges me out of the car. This is crazy. I’m wearing my office heels. I’m going to break my damn neck. They seem to figure that out quick because I’ve got one on each arm now, gently guiding me forward, telling me when to step up over the threshold of some door. They’re both like rocks under my arms. The muscles on these guys are Olympic level. My kickboxing prowess might be awesome in the gym, but my momentary fantasy of fighting them off in the gallery was pure delusion. They’re gentle, too—I’ll give them that. I’m like a delicate package they’re afraid they will break, judging by the way we nudge forward, one baby step at a time. I think we get in an elevator, a guess that’s confirmed when the floor sways under me. I clutch for a second at their arms, but I’m not that unsteady. Just kind of freaked. When we step out of the elevator, everything is dead quiet. I didn’t notice it so much before—the sounds of the street were still apparent on the first floor—but whatever floor we’re on now must be way above the traffic. We step through one more door, and suddenly, they release me.

  “You can take it off now.” The voice is gruff. Must be the other guy, not Niko.

  I fumble at the strings in back, but it’s not like I’m the one who tied them in the first place. He moves behind me and takes over, one long pull that loosens the entire thing until it falls away. I don’t know what I expect, but a crisp, modern, luxury apartment isn’t it. The décor is very European, all clean lines and white-and-gray with natural woods. No windows, though, which is odd, given how upscale it is—probably as expensive as Grace’s apartment only without the view. The two of us are standing in a great room with a towering ceiling, abstract art on the walls, and a small grouping of couches and chairs that look like a formal party of furniture.

  Wait… “Where’s Niko?” This place is big, but I don’t remember hearing the door open again. I stop gawking at the apartment and turn to the guy whose name I still don’t know. “And who the fuck are you?”

  “My name is Ree.” It’s like I pulled some kind of admission out of him that he doesn’t want to make. And that intense stare is back. What the hell? And where did Niko skip off to, leaving me all along with this dude who’s sexy as hell but looks like he doesn’t want to be here any more than I do.

  “Just ‘Ree’? What kind of name is that?”

  But my needling just makes him step closer in an intentional, fluid kind of way. Like he’s stalking up to me, prepared for the fight, and supremely confident he’ll be the victor. It sends a shiver down my spine—not fear but a cousin to that heat from before.

  “My name is Vrakgar Alarie Beaumont Cendrillion.”

  I lean back. “Really.” He has an accent under all that gruffness, but it’s so subtle, I can’t tell what it is. He’s 100% serious about that ridiculous name.

  “Yes.” He’s staring into my eyes like he wants to drill the meaning of that into me. I sense that invisible force field again, the one holding him back.

  “Okay, whatever.” I wave off his intensity because Jesus, that’s more than I need right now. “Where the hell is Niko?” There’s a hallway at the far end, leading away from the main room, but he couldn’t have snuck off there so fast. One of two doors at the close end must be where we came in. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, Niko,” I call out as I head toward the doors. He’s got to be close by, he was holding me up ten seconds ago. “But I’m not hiding out in some apartment with tall, dark, and oddly-named here all night.” As I reach the door, Ree is suddenly at my side.

  “Niko’s gone.” Ree places his hand on the door like he’s going to stop me from opening it.

  I give him a pinched, unimpressed look. Then I step over to the other door and pull it open—there’s an elaborate gourmet kitchen on the other side, but no Niko.

  “He can’t be gone.” But my heart rate is kicking up a notch. What’s going on here? “He was just here.” I return to the door Ree is physically blocking me from opening. I fold my arms and give him my best I’m from accounting, don’t mess with me stare. “You gonna open that door before Niko escapes down the elevator, or do I need to remove your hand involuntarily?” It’s a threat I can’t back up, but maybe a bluff is all I need.

  A flash of something like genuine fear crosses his face, but I can’t believe it’s real. I talk a good game, and I could take on someone who wasn’t so incredibly solid and well-muscled, but there’s nothing Ree-the-Vrakgar or whatever could possibly fear from me.

  He slowly slides his hand off the door and steps back.

  “I’m glad we understand each other,” I say and pull op
en the door.

  Then I stand there, in the threshold, stunned.

  On the other side is a massive hall—at least twenty feet wide and a hundred feet long. It’s made of giant blocks of stone, the kind you quarry and haul in and use to build castles, not apartments in the middle of the city. There’s no elevator to be seen. But what’s got my mouth dropped open and my heart trying to leap out of my chest are the windows.

  Tall, skinny windows of leaded glass that let in the rosy light of the pre-dawn sun.

  It’s not morning. It’s almost eleven o’clock at night. In New York City. Which this is definitely not.

  The floor seems to sway under me. “What the hell?” I breathe and whirl on Ree. “Where the fuck are we?”

  Two

  Ree

  Bringing her here was a mistake.

  The halls are filled with ghosts—memories I excised from my mind long ago. Only now, with Jayda standing on the stone pavers of my ancestral home, they’ve suddenly returned. Why did I instinctively bring her here? I could have picked any of the dozen apartments I keep around the world. This place is a scar, long grown over but still marring my soul, and I’m going to split it wide open again? What the fuck, Alarie? Did Jayda’s beauty and presence just render you senseless? Or was it all the blood rushing to your cock that stopped the rational thought in your head?

  “Where the fuck are we?” she demands.

  “France.” A vast, horrible mistake, I’ve already decided.

  “What?” Her eyes are wide and angry. Power ripples off her and, curse me, I want to drag her back into the apartment and fuck my way out of this. But she’s already turned away and stumbled into the south hall that looks out over the Dordogne River. “We are not in fucking France!” She yells it, defiant, into the empty hall, her hands fisted at her side. Her entire body is strung tight, and everything about her makes me clench with need. The strong curve of her calves. The deep brown of her skin. The trim waist above flared hips. Her tailored suit hugging her body makes me want to set it free in every possible way. I’ve felt that way all along—while I was rescuing her, unconscious, from the Vardigah, and all during my surveillance, tracking her movements, watching her from the shadows, making sure she was safe—but now, my fingers have brushed the cloud of her curls, and their softness has set off a rumble of desire that’s wrecking me. I knew it would be bad. I sensed it the instant the witch connected us in that verdant meadow in the Irish countryside. I’ve been avoiding contact precisely because I knew my need for her would be insatiable—I would be a prisoner to it. I might survive giving into that, but I’ve been in enough life-and-death situations to know when something can destroy you. When it has the power to tear apart everything you’ve carefully patched together. Jayda terrifies me, and there are few things on this earth which can do that.

  Yet here I am, alone with her.

  She’s ready to flay me and toss me in the river. Well, not me, specifically. Any dragon within reach would do, I suspect. She wants nothing to do with us—she’s made that clear—and she’d want even less to do with me, specifically, if she knew who I was. Or almost anything about me.

  Jayda turns her anger to me, a finger pointed in accusation. “You drugged me. Again. I… somehow…” The heat of it wavers, her eyelids fluttering. She looks unsteady.

  The urge to touch her is overwhelming. I sweep in and grab hold of her accusatory arm, giving her an anchor in a world that has to seem mad.

  She shoves me away.

  “It’s disorienting.” I can hear the tightness in my own voice. The need. “The teleportation fucks with your head.” There’s no sense trying to hide it now. I’d hoped to avoid this, certainly not reveal how we got here five seconds after we arrived, but a woman like her finds the truth with unerring speed. She needs the truth. I understand and respect that, given how many people lie to themselves all day long. “The blindfold was for you, not us.”

  “No.” Her brow is scrunched up, her cheeks ashen, like she might be sick. “No more of your games.”

  I shrug. The reality of magic is the one truth she’s still denying. That’s her choice. I’m not here to change her mind—my job is to protect her body. “The jet lag is killer, even when the transport is instantaneous. It’s still night in New York. You should go to bed.” I wrestle actively with the part of me that wants to seduce her into it. I could wear down her resistance with an orgasm. Gain her compliance with three. Lose myself in the heat of her body. I have to shut my mouth to keep the watering from becoming drool.

  That way lies danger, Alerie. Don’t be a fool.

  She just blinks. Once. Twice. Then she fumbles her phone out of her pocket and stares at it. “It’s five in the morning.” She shakes her head, then pivots on those heels that make her legs even longer, and strides to the closest window in the long line of them down the hall. Bracing both hands against the stone surrounding the glass, she stares out, eyes agog. I can see her chest rise and fall, her breath audible as I come up behind her.

  The countryside is quiet in the early morning, the river slow and curved. The stone bridge stands silent across the water. Even the ducks are lazy in their float. It’s why I come here, when the ghosts aren’t roaming the halls—the pace is slow, the estate large, and I can retreat from the world a while. There’s no place anywhere that is home, not any longer, but this comes closest.

  “Or we could take a walk.” I’m not sure I could stay out of her bed at this point. The garden is probably safer.

  Jayda gives me a side-eye glare, then stabs at her phone. She taps something in and waits, but she’s not getting the response she wants. Her groan of frustration goes straight to my cock. I grab hold of her wrist, which makes her eyes fly wide. I want to pin her to the rough stone wall, but I restrain myself, even though her skin is as alluringly soft as her hair. Instead, I simply point to the phone. “It’s late in New York. Six hours time difference. No one’s going to answer until the morning.”

  She wrenches her wrist from my hold, but I see the dilation of her eyes. The parting of her lips. She feels it. This connection or bond or whatever the fuck it is that we have as soul mates. Or maybe it’s simply lust. I know the impact my body’s presence can have—I use that effect often enough—and Jayda may be my undoing, but she’s not immune to the call of the bedroom.

  God help me. I will have her. Even if it destroys me. Knowing that won’t stop me. A shiver runs through me, and I can’t decide if it’s fear or lust. But it distracts me enough that Jayda’s backed away before I realize it.

  “You did not teleport me to France,” she insists from her space several feet away.

  “No, I didn’t. Niko did. He’s the mated dragon, and only mated dragons can teleport. Like the Vardigah can. But you already knew that.” I dip my head to peer into her eyes, which are still wide and slightly frantic. I know she remembers the torture—will she admit that nothing about that is explainable with physics as she knows it?

  Her fear settles into seething. “I don’t know how you did it. I don’t know what…” She gestures at my estate all around us. “…what the fuck all this is. Or what trick you used to get me here. But I’m not staying. I’m not hiding out here, wherever this is. I’ve got a job. I can’t go running around, playing your fantasy games—”

  “It’s Sunday morning, here in France. Saturday evening in New York. Surely, your job can wait until Monday.”

  This sparks even more fire in her eyes. “I don’t expect you to understand—”

  “This is for your protection.” This argument, at least, is very familiar.

  The fire builds to an inferno. “From what? The other assholes running around, playing games? How do I know that wasn’t all faked? All some giant trick! Just to get me here and… and…” I hear the fear under the anger. The confusion and panic. That’s familiar, too.

  I hold out my hand. “Give me your phone.”

  “What?”

  “Your phone… please.”

  I can pra
ctically hear her heart thumping. The indecision wars on her face. I wait. If she can’t trust me with this, I’ll have to seriously re-think my approach.

  Slowly, hesitantly, she places her phone in my outstretched palm. I quickly pull up my website, the one I use for clients. Then I return it to her.

  “I’m your protection detail.” Private security. Mercenary. Special forces. I’ve done them all over the last hundred and ninety years of my adult life. Cendrillion Security, Your Personal Solution to Global Security, blares from my website on her phone. I’ve spent the last decade making money by keeping rich assholes alive and safe. Or just their wives and daughters. Women who are their soft underbelly—women who rarely want private security intruding into their lives. Talking them into accepting protection is part of the job. I fuck them, too, but only the ones who aren’t as monstrous as their husbands or fathers. Or if they’re pretty enough for me to forget.

  I have standards. Not many, but some.

  Jayda’s hunched up shoulders soften. She respects competence, as do I, and my resumé is fairly convincing of that. She looks up from the phone, measuring me anew with those intelligent brown eyes. “You’ve really done all these things?”

  A smile tugs at my lips. “Which part don’t you believe?”

  She frowns at the phone and reads from it. “Ultra-high net worth individual, close security detail, Pinkerton, UK Division.” She looks up. “Who were you guarding?”

  “I can’t say.” I smirk. “But you’ve likely seen him if you watch movies at all.”

  She narrows her eyes. “And you worked for NATO’s Ambassador in Kabul?”

  “That was slightly more dangerous.”

  She lowers her phone. “This could all be made up, too.”

  I shrug. “Believe what you like. But I have the skills to keep you safe, Jayda. I’ve literally done this for a living my entire life. You don’t have to believe anything else to know that I’m capable of protecting you and will disable, disarm, and if necessary kill anyone—anything—that tries to harm you.” The only real danger to her is the Vardigah, and I would love to get my talons on one of them. Or ten of the bastards. I’m not foolish enough to wish they’d make an attempt—I don’t want Jayda in that kind of situation or even witness to it—but I wouldn’t be sorry if I found myself doing violence to Vardigah. Not with all they’ve done.