Dragon Heart Page 6

  And she was oh so sure Drake was doing that to her. Did he intend to take her to some secluded place and do what? She wasn’t a plaything for him or Dimitri. If he took her for a fool, then he’d be the fool.

  With Drake’s precision hearing, he’d zone in on her heartbeat unless she did something so ungodly attention-grabbing that she rocked his whole boat. “What do you think about anal?” she asked suddenly.

  Drake choked all right. He tried to keep from coughing, but his face turned seventeen shades of red and his glowing eyes turned bloodshot.

  Bingo! Now when he heard her heartbeat it would be entwined with his own, ramped up and attributed to explicable nerves, and his choking episode. As if on cue his formidable dick was back to standing straight at attention.

  “Are you okay?” She came forward and clapped him on the back—his muscles rippled like moving speed bumps under her fingers. She fought to blank her mind just in case he was reading her thoughts.

  “Here. Take this,” he said, then suddenly seemed to notice her get-up. “Hold on. How much tequila have you had to drink?”

  “This isn’t the alcohol talking,” she murmured, holding his gaze. “But I had a cocktail. This one’s for you. Drink up, cowboy! We’ll do a finger of tequila afterward, and maybe you’ll answer my question concerning decadent sex.”

  She swung around, giving him a money shot of her derriere. She’d changed into a black thong, black lace garters, heels, and with one of the scarves he’d used to bind her wrists tied in her hair. He was burning a hole in her ass cheeks right this moment … on that she was sure. His macho, over-the-top dragon desire was ready to launch and just the thought of him taking possession of her sent a swarm of goose bumps over her skin.

  Yet he told his buddy on the phone she was “no big deal.” Funny—when she’d said it, it made perfect sense, but to hear him talk about what they had as casual made her want to rake her nails down his back. Hard.

  She got that he wasn’t sold on her, that he just enjoyed taking her body for a test drive. She wasn’t a dragon and therefore he’d never fully mate and claim her. Never in a gazillion years. But if she offered her ass on a silver platter, no doubt Mr. O’Connor would acquiesce on his way out the door. Her rational mind was fine with the idea of hard, dirty, and yeah, casual—but her leopardess nature silently snarled as if caught in a snare. Something foreign shifted in her feline mind, but no way was she about to be ruled by carnal instinct. Stamp a big fat “no” on that one!

  All she needed was distance and time away from one alpha dragon who made her toes curl. Then her feline self would simmer the hell down. She wasn’t going to sidestep one old geezer for a younger virile version who happened to make her heart thump—loud and way too fast. She needed to walk away with her sanity intact. Not teeter on the edge of some ludicrous infatuation with a dragon.

  Shay bit her lip. How soon would her life settle down? Being on her own was going to be an altogether novel experience. If she got going.

  She peered over to Drake’s reflection in her bedroom mirror, praying he’d focus on her and down the drink. It contained a little sleeping powder her maid had given her last week, to help her sleep when she’d tossed and turned at night. It would come in handy now.

  “If you don’t finish that drink, I’ll be forced to make another batch and that’ll take time.” She turned, bit the center of her lip provocatively, and watched as Drake tossed back the drink.

  His eyes flashed over the rim, then he grinned as he set the glass down and was over across the room, pressing her up against the wall before she could blink. “Now, what where you saying about … anal?” he asked.

  • • •

  Drake slept next to her, his arm thrown possessively over her waist. At first, she remained still, gazing out the terrace doors, searching for the moon, and noted its position in the sky. From what she’d learned over the years in shifting, running, and using her leopardess senses when in feline form, the hour had to be near to eleven. In Lisbon, a city of nightlife found in bars, clubs, restaurants, and shows of all kinds, she’d easily hail a taxi. She had to keep her mind busy, think about the steps required to put her plan in play. If she began to contemplate the man next to her—how he made her feel—she’d be on a helicopter and flying up the coast tomorrow into impassible mountains with sheer drops, Drake had assured her. That was God-knew-where exactly in Navarre and there wasn’t a departure date from his castle. That wasn’t going to happen. No way.

  She lifted Drake’s large hand, strong and dark, and heavy in sleep. She laced her fingers over his, and for just a second, she allowed herself to absorb the shape of his fingers that had touched her intimately. The first man to do so. She’d remember him forever. Her chest squeezed, squeezed so tightly she felt a piercing deep inside. Setting his hand down next to his face on the pillow, she slowly curled upward all the while watching to see if he stirred.

  The sleeping powder must have worked. Hard to believe. He was after all a dragon and these shifters were prone to be insusceptible to many medicines, spells, and incantations.

  Luckily, not this time. She dressed quickly, picked up her satchel, and stood at the doorway of the bedroom, staring at Drake’s sleeping form. For a solitary second, her chest heaved and her heart was torn. Shay, no rethinking! He’d hold you back. Now, buck up. Time to split.

  Under the cover of darkness, she slipped out the basement door. She walked out the service entrance to the wrought-iron gate. A few streets over were busier at night with traffic, which would increase her odds of catching a cab to the airport. She’d take the first flight available to get back to the States. She didn’t care as long as she headed west, across the Atlantic.

  Skittering over the sidewalk, she power-walked in the shadows for two streets, and when she rounded the corner, she held up her hand to shield her eyes from the glaring bright lights. She waved her arm at an approaching taxi. The cab rushed by without breaking speed. She repeated waving her arm and again, a second cab flew by. Damn. She planted her feet wide when another bright yellow cab came barreling down the street. But this time, she stuck her fingers into her mouth, releasing an ear-splitting whistle. Well all-righty. The cab slowed and stopped right in front of her.

  “Aonde você vai?” the driver yelled.

  Oh jeez, she needed to do more than stare at the man and sprinted to the taxi. This was the first time she’d hailed a cab. Normally, she just rang a servant and a private car took her where she wanted to go.

  “The airport … aeroporto,” she hollered back when a car behind the cab began honking.

  “Belas.” He nodded, waving her inside.

  “Awesome,” she said, then scrunched her brows. “Incríveis?”

  From watching movies, she vaguely knew that when he threw the meter handle down, he’d accepted her as his next fare. She opened the door and climbed into the cramped back seat of the Prius. He picked up his cell and spoke in rapid slices, writing on a clipboard. He smiled at her from the rearview mirror.

  “Do you have flight leaving in a little while?” He spoke in English. “You look like you’re in a hurry.”

  “No. Well. Not like I’m late or anything.” Could she sound any more unsure of herself? She inhaled and smiled. “Your English is good.”

  “I went to school in New Jersey.”

  “And now?”

  “Now, I need to eat,” he replied and laughed. “I’m an exchange student. University of Lisbon.”

  “What are you studying?”

  “Architecture.”

  “I graduated from Duke. Accounting. Business.” The excitement she’d held onto through the summer didn’t inspire her as she spoke. Her insides twisted as they drove away from the villa. Away from Drake. Oh God, what had she done leaving him? She glanced out the window, unsure if she wanted to tell the cabbie to turn around or if she should suck it up and stick to her plan. A little while longer and she’d be free. Wasn’t that what she’d worked for?

  What m
attered in the end?

  CHAPTER 4

  Five months later.

  Shay tugged back on the handle, holding a frosty mug under the tap, and half-watched the stream of beer filling the glass, until the amber liquid changed into pure foam. The bubbles overran the rim and spilled over her fingers. “Son of a beach ball!” She dumped the foam and set the mug in the sink, then wiped her hands on a bar towel.

  “We’re tapped out,” she called out … to no one. “Dammit,” she muttered to herself. Where is Solomon?

  “Want me to change out the keg?” Damien asked. He was one of her regulars at Mony Mony, the bar where she’d worked for months. The werewolf came in every night. He didn’t say much other than a greeting and to order a microbrew—whatever beer she recommended. But boy could he tip. Every buck she earned went to purchase supplies on a forever growing shopping list.

  “Nope,” she huffed, her brows drawn tight. “That’s not your job.”

  “Psst.” Mara, another bar regular, used finger signals to remind Shay to make eye contact and smile. Mara was a behavior coach for supernaturals and when Shay agreed to accept some advice, she’d gotten an earful that now meant nightly helpful pointers. Relating to others openly came hard for Shay. Especially since she felt numb, as though her leopardess self were caged. Even after months of being on the run, her natural reaction was to close down, box in her emotions, and silently stare at the world around her.

  Hard to believe she’d gotten a top-notch university business education. What a waste.

  Shay nodded, and tacked on, “Damien, sit tight. If anyone comes in, tell ’em I’ll be right back.” She plastered on a smile directed at him then cast a snarky glance toward Mara who returned an equally snarky thumbs up.

  She unscrewed the tap connectors. When would Solomon bite the bullet and invest in modern metal beer kegs instead of these old-fashioned casks? Walking around the counter with the empty wooden barrel, she headed for the kitchen and walk-in refrigerator unit. Before she could get more than five steps from the counter, the front door opened, admitting the swirling wind inward, carrying bits of dried leaves, dust, and a heart-stopping scent.

  Shay’s leopard senses pricked then changed to a full-on-alert as her hair stood on end. Her nostrils flared, the skin tightened over her body—her claws under her fingertips threatened to pierce through her skin.

  This overreaction had to be her imagination.

  A sensory mirage.

  No way in hell had he found her.

  The moonlight backlit and outlined the man who stepped through the doorway. No mistaking the spiraling smoke that swirled around his head. He sure wasn’t smoking a cigar, but he was smokin’ all right.

  Dragon. Fire.

  Serpent. Smoke.

  She remembered all too well the depth of Drake’s nuclear fusion heat.

  The purposefully dim lighting cast shadows along the room of the small hole-in-the-wall bar, assisting the regulars’ desire for anonymity. Inside a few tables were scattered alongside a postage-stamp stage and equally small dance floor. It was too late to backtrack and reach for the pistol under the counter. The carved oak bar took up a great part of the space, curving and covering two walls in an L-shape, and she seriously doubted, in human form, she could clear the bar in the time he could clear the door. Besides there were customers seated at the bar.

  Mony Mony was the place the locals from Harmony came to hang. Although not far from New Orleans, Harmony remained off the grid—a haven for supernaturals who didn’t want the crowds coming through like it was bake-day in one of the Amish parishes. The paranormals around Harmony sucked at putting up with an ounce of crap from human tourists who lacked the gray cells to keep from snapping photographs or the sense to refrain from asking asinine questions.

  Down here in Harmony, the code was shut your piehole. No trash talk. No finger pointing. And especially, no snitching.

  So how in the heck had he found her?

  She dropped the cask and it thudded to the floor as she studied his shadowy silhouette filling the doorway.

  “Hello, Shay.” Drake’s low masculine voice cut through her thoughts with steel blade ferocity. “It’s been awhile.”

  Holy goddess! She backed up a step, her knees suddenly weak, and her brain a malfunctioning sieve, unable to piece together how … why the man who’d turned her life upside down had found her.

  “What the hell do you want?” she snarled, her leopardess on the verge of shifting.

  “Kitten, that’s no way to welcome an old … friend,” Drake said, coming through the doorway dressed in motorcycle leathers. Same dragon bronzed skin. Still built like a Mack truck.

  But it was his green eyes that held her captive once their gazes connected—more like locked. She fought against the unmistakable and very familiar tug on her body, a simultaneous thunderbolt and hooking that dove deep into her awareness. With a word … a look … now Drake had found her and her tenuous inner sanctum. The secret place within herself she’d kept locked. Untouched. Untapped. Ever since she last saw him five months ago.

  She glanced away, refusing to give him the power to wipe her mind. Her regular patrons had turned around. Damien was off his seat, his silver eyes glowing red and his canines already visible. Two others, Carl and Keegen—twin Viking vampires—stood as well … tense, silent, and sneering, weighing the emotional tension as only vampires could. She flailed her arm when they bared their fangs.

  “Jesus. Joseph. And Mary! Guys, sit down,” she scoffed. “This isn’t your concern.”

  “What do you want Níðhöggr?” Keegan snapped, staring at Drake. His fangs caught his bottom lip and he grimaced, reaching up and wiping a dribble of blood off his chin.

  “Not here to hurt the little lady,” Drake returned. “So no one needs to worry.”

  “We’ll be the judge of that drage shadown,” Carl said, his icy arctic eyes narrowed and he hissed a vampire warning.

  Drake only sneered at the Viking brothers. “Lindworm, wyrm, snake. Best you got? For the record it’s Herensuge or Drac. Don’t try to insult me, boys. I’d hate to knock those precious fangs down your Swedish throats by accident.”

  Shay curled her thumb and index finger between her lips and blew a shrill whistle. “Geez. All of you. Fold it and hold it. This isn’t some preternatural pissing match.”

  The vampire brothers muttered something about mouthy bartenders, but they took their seats, unlike Damien. “What’s going on, Shay?” he asked, still standing.

  “No big deal.” She shook her head. “Really not a thing. This is less than nothing. Now, I really need you to tend the bar until I get back. I’ll text Solomon. He was—”

  “Don’t get your drawers knotted, I’m here.” Solomon appeared, rubbing his arm over his face. He was a grizzly shifter with a hankering for sweets and in denial over his recently diagnosed type 2 diabetes.

  “Were you eating honey, Solomon Breaux?” she asked incredulously. “I swear I’ll call up Trish and let her know.” Trish was Sol’s wife and the Harmony shifter doctor who treated the residents for general medical stuff—cuts, sickness, vaccinations.

  “Looks like you got your own issues to deal with … wouldn’t you say?” Solomon cocked his head toward Drake. “Who’s your friend?”

  “Nobody.” Shay’s whole body trembled from unspent energy. Either she shifted and kicked the shit out of someone or she needed to get outside and walk off this desire to roar. “I’ll have this dealt with lickety-split. Give me a minute.”

  Solomon cut a glance toward Drake, then paused his focus, flicking his eyes up and down over their unwelcome visitor. “That’s a whole lot of nobody.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she bit out.

  “Maybe it’s not you I’m worried about,” Solomon snorted, then lifted the empty cask. “Take all the time you need. In fact, your shift is done and none of us are going anywhere soon.”

  Should she warn them to refrain from coming into contact with him and looking into D
rake’s eyes? That wasn’t necessary. Only she’d been stupid enough to give him the power to mind-bend her to his will. No matter how far she ran, her inability to stop thinking about him ad infinitum was all the evidence she needed that he’d employed some dragon mind-warp to her brain. And to think, she’d been dumb enough to trust him.

  Still, it had spurred her to act on her refusal to marry Dimitri Necrodemas. Not that she’d thrown it into her parents’ faces—but they knew she’d been touched. All leopards could ferret out scents—lucky for her Drake’s dragon scent was so difficult to identify, but she couldn’t believe no one put two and two together.

  By giving away her virginity, she’d tainted herself, at least in the eyes of a man of Necrodemas’s status. Shut the door on any marriage proposals with her act of rebellion—and she was glad. Except for one minor detail. It wasn’t an act and she’d ended up in Drake’s bed. For days. Little did she understand what it meant to be fucked mindless by a dragon who’d decided, without telling her, that she was his.

  But it was Necrodemas who’d made the ultimate stink with his emails and threatening calls to her parents. Accused her of being a tramp and trying to rook him into marriage. What a fucking farce. Who would believe some old alpha leopard who’d been chosen for her by her parents to unite the shifter regions would end up causing such a rift? This was the freaking United States, not a village in the foothills of the Himalayas.