Kiss of a Dragon (Fallen Immortals 1) - Paranormal Fairytale Romance (10 page)

His eyes blazed a little. “A lover?”

Damn him.
“Like that’s any of your business.”

He leaned forward a little. “I need to know everything about you, Arabella. To know if I can trust you with our secret.”

“Still none of your business.” Her agitation was making her legs jumpy. And her body flushed again with his nearness, betraying her.
God,
she needed to work—something, anything, to distract from his insane hotness. But her thoughts strayed like the little traitors they were to the fancy downtown hotel that Lucian would soon be sharing with this woman he didn’t know. When an image of Lucian laying her—
Arabella
—back on an enormous high-class white-pillow-covered bed invaded her mind, she forcefully closed her eyes to ward it off. And went back to pounding her hand into her fist. And biting her lip—hard.

Those thoughts were
not
welcome. Lucian would be banging someone today, and it would
not
be her. Not today or the next day. Or the day after that. This was a simple fact. And this rendezvous with Sandra
needed
to happen. So Arabella could get back her freedom and get on with her life.

She felt the heat of his hand a moment before it landed on her cheek. Her eyes jerked open, but she didn’t pull away. His touch was gentle… and red hot. It was just the backs of his fingers lightly brushing her cheek as he tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, but it trailed a hot line across her skin.

“I’m sorry,” he said, quietly. He pulled his hand back.

She steeled herself from following after it.

“Your lovers are your business,” he said, but his gaze was intense again. “I shouldn’t pry. I’m just worried that…” He stopped, frowning and dropping his gaze again.

“Worried about what?”
 She couldn’t help being drawn in by him. What was wrong with her?

He looked up again, held her gaze for a moment, then rolled up the cuff of his starched white dress shirt. She’d seen him naked before—for a split second that replayed in her mind again and again—and she’d noticed a lot of tattoos. A couple on his chest, his shoulder, and up and down his arms. Even a few that edged up on his neck. But she hadn’t had a good look at any of them. Now he was baring his sexy, muscular forearm and holding it out for her inspection.

They looked like some kind of ancient writing. “What do they mean?” She couldn’t help reaching out to touch one set of symbols with her fingertip. His skin was hot, almost like he had a fever, and the tattoos twitched under her touch. She jerked her hand back and looked up at him. “They’re magic, aren’t they?”

He let out a low breath, and his eyes were slightly hooded. Like her touch on the tattoo had done something to him. Her face heated at that thought, and she couldn’t decide if that was bad or good.

She held her breath, waiting.

He pulled in some air and seemed to recover. “They’re very…
sensitive.”

Oh,
Jesus.
She swallowed.

“They’re called runes, and they’re part of my fae ancestry.” His voice was less breathy and more normal again. “My great-grandmother ten generations ago was the Fae Queen of the Summer Court. She mated with a dragon, and every generation in the House of Smoke from then on has had some variation of fae magic in their blood. And that magic lets me sense things…
taste them.”
The smooth, honeyed tone of his voice made that sound insanely erotic.

The quivers in her stomach stepped up to a full jitter riot. “What kinds of things?”

“A wide range.” Then he dropped his voice and nailed her with that hot pale-amber stare. “Among other things, I can taste a person’s experiences. A sense of who they are. Their history.” He arched an eyebrow, just slightly. “Especially their sexual experiences, both good and bad.”

Oh shit.
“Well, that’s not weird at all.” What did he know about her? The idea that he had
tasted
her in some magical sense was sending shivers up and down her body. Even worse, not all of them were bad.

He smiled a little, but it was pained. “You have a dark history with men.”

Every muscle in her body stiffened. “Yeah, so? A lot of women do. You should see the stories that come through my office. Men are assholes.”

He nodded. “I tasted that from the first moment I met you.”

“In the alley?” But some of the tension drained to her feet. He wasn’t…
judging
her.

“Yes. And I have to admit, it was more than a little arousing to see you give back to that demon what he deserved.” The smile on his face was going to kill her. Just absolutely
kill
her. And
arousing?
Why did he have to say things like that?

Her lady parts were aflame. “Maybe you should have Sandra beat up some guy before you take her to bed.”

His eyes widened a little… then he laughed. A short, clear laugh, but it shook the tattoos on his arm. Or maybe they just moved around on their own, fading and then rising from below his skin. He dipped his head and peered at her, humor and intensity mixed in his eyes. “She might think that a little odd.”

“Just a little.” God, was it hot in here? She needed air. Her gaze darted away from him and his sexy, humor-filled face, searching out the window.

They were close to her office.

Thank God.

She was in desperate need of distraction, and her clients were just the ticket. Besides, they were getting restless. One was trying to get a restraining order in place. Another was stuck between halfway houses and needed a referral. A third simply needed to talk again—Arabella didn’t know if her client planned to finally file that divorce decree to get away from her abusive husband, but if she did, Arabella needed to be there to hook her up with all the right services to get her through to the other side in one piece.
Safe.
Her clients truly needed her—and she needed a distraction from her dilemma with this ridiculously hot dragon shifter in search of a mate.

“Looks like we’re here!” she said brightly, easing away from Lucian on the bench seat as the limo pulled up to the curb. “But hey, you better not linger with this car in this neighborhood. Especially at night. You’ll get jacked in no time.”

“I doubt that very much.” The smooth confidence in his voice made her wonder if he would go all dragon-crazy on someone if they tried to take his fancy car.

Before she could ask, their dragon driver—Lucian had introduced him as Cinaed—had opened the door for her. She scrambled out and reflexively glanced around. Her office was, of necessity, in a pretty downtrodden part of Seattle. She couldn’t afford the rent in the nicer business districts, and she knew better than to set up shop where the downtown shifter gangs had staked out their territory, so that left the small strip where the junkies hid out in the alleys, and the businesses had mostly fled. Rent was cheap. She had iron bars on the windows and a roll down lock-up on the door, plus a broken security camera perched above it, just to frighten away the ones who had some sense. It wasn’t much to look at, but the low rent kept her in business—her clients didn’t have much either.

Cinaed looked like he was on high-alert as he held the door for Lucian. “I don’t care for the looks of this, my liege,” he said quietly.

My liege?
It spun her head how these dragon shifters talked.

Lucian pulled in a breath. “No demons, at least none that I can scent at the moment.” He looked Cinaed full in the face. “You’re not to leave her side, even for an instant.”

“Understood.” Cinaed closed the door of the limo. He was dressed in business clothes—a starched white shirt, skinny black tie, and tailored pants—but his hair was long, falling past his shoulders, and the scruff on his face was halfway between five o’clock shadow and sexy beard-in-the-making. And with that vaguely-Irish accent and deep green eyes, he looked more like a rakish Highlander than a Seattle dot-com-er. Were all dragon shifters drop-dead gorgeous? Lucian’s brother, Leonidas, was the same way—intensely masculine and sexual—but he’d just pestered her for questions about her background, where she came from and what she did for work. Her body didn’t react to either of them the way it lost its senses whenever Lucian was around.

“Are you seriously going to leave the car here unattended?” she asked Lucian and Cinaed, who were both eyeing the peeling paint and chipped cinderblock of her office entrance. Truthfully, the harsh light of the streetlamp hid most of the flaws—it looked worse during the day. It used to be a shoe-shine place, a million years ago when this part of Seattle wasn’t a vacant lot with more junkies and boarded-up businesses per square foot than any other part of the city.

“It’ll be fine.” Cinead stalked toward her office, going ahead of her like he was making sure it was safe. He took a position by the door, still glancing down the sidewalk as if someone might leap out of the alley and attack them. Although it hadn’t been far from here that she
had
been attacked and dragged into an alley, so she supposed his concern was warranted.

Lucian waved his hand at the limo and whispered something under his breath.

The car disappeared.

Arabella stared hard at the spot, but there was absolutely nothing there. “That’s… a really good trick.” She glanced around the street, but there was no one to notice that Lucian had just pulled a Houdini with his stretch limo.

He took her by the elbow, his hand hot on her skin, and urged her toward the door. “I’m more concerned about you being on the street. Shall we go inside?”

“Don’t you have a date to get to?” she asked, but she strode toward the door. She knocked because along with losing her phone the night of the attack, she’d also dropped her bag with her keys, wallet, and the few items she carried when she went to work. All of that must have ID’d her at the scene when the police had arrived. “You don’t want to be late,” she said, although Lucian didn’t seem in any hurry.

“Once I know you’re secure, I’ll leave Cinaed to watch over you.” He stopped his scanning of the street to settle his gaze more softly on her. “I won’t be gone too long.”

“Don’t tell
her
that,” Arabella said, wrinkling up her forehead.

That brought a smile to his face just as the door opened. She had called ahead so Rachel would meet them there and open up the place. 

“Hey, girl!” Rachel stepped back from the door to let her in. “Did you kick that virus’s—” She stopped to gape at Cinaed leading the way into the office, scanning the cramped front room with its ratty couch and battered metal receptionist desk. The door that led to Arabella’s office was slightly ajar, showing the desk with their sole computer, another ancient sofa, and a scuffed wooden chair that served as her counseling room for meeting with clients.

Cinaed was scowling, but he quickly checked out the place, looking for lurking demons probably. Lucian’s face was likewise showing his contempt for her humble office as he closed the front door behind him. Sure, it wasn’t a luxurious dragon castle in the sky, but come on… she did mostly pro-bono work for the abused. What did he expect?

Rachel’s mouth was hanging open. “Holy hell,” she breathed. Then she dropped her voice. “I thought you were fighting the flu, not winning the man lottery.” It was spoken in a whisper-hiss to Arabella, but it wasn’t like the place was big enough that the men wouldn’t also hear.

“They’re my bodyguards, Rach,” she hissed back. The last thing she needed was Rachel lusting after dragon-shifters. That was not a conversation she wanted to have. “I told you about them on the phone.”

“Yeah, but
day-um,
girl.” She couldn’t be any more obvious.

Cinaed threw a smirk to Lucian, but his expression was unchanged. He glanced back at the front door and ran a hand along the broken-and-repaired door frame around it. The hinges were shiny compared to the dull gleam of the metal trim—they’d had an irate ex-boyfriend kick it in six months ago. Yeah, it looked like shit, but it was twice as secure now.

Lucian’s judgmental look was getting under her skin. “It may not look like much, but it keeps out the riff-raff.” She folded her arms and challenged him with a lift of her chin.

But he just tipped his head to her and spoke to Cinaed. “I’m a little concerned.”

The man looked affronted. “The only one to worry is the one who dares enter without my blessing.”

Lucian smiled a little. “Don’t leave us a mess, Cinaed.”

Cinaed rolled his eyes, but then his gaze landed on Rachel, who seemed to stop breathing because of it. He pulled in a breath of his own and let it out slow. “I’ll do my best to stay out of trouble’s way.”

Oh no.
Was Lucian’s right-hand-man putting the moves on her friend? Arabella unlocked her arms and was about to stride over to break up whatever spell Cinaed was casting on Rachel, but Lucian stepped in front of her, blocking her path.

He dipped his head to whisper in her ear, and that fixed her in her spot faster than almost anything on the planet could. “I’ll make arrangements to forward some funds to your account right away.”

What?
She pulled back to look at him. “But we haven’t finished…” She didn’t really want to talk about their little
agreement
in front of Rachel, not that her friend was paying any attention—she’d already fallen down the rabbit hole of staring into Cinaed’s green eyes.

“Call it an advance,” he said quietly, just for the two of them. “You need better security for the work you do here.”

She couldn’t argue with that. In fact, she’d already mentally earmarked Lucian’s money-promise for a close-circuit camera and a security alarm system. Assuming she could get any kind of private security company to come to this part of town.

The soft look Lucian was giving her, combined with the promise of support… her skin was heating again, but it wasn’t anger or irritation. “Thanks.” She swallowed down the awkwardness. “You better get going.”

There was a pinch of disappointment in his eyes, which made her cringe. She didn’t want to appear ungrateful. He leaned back and spoke louder, for Cinaed’s benefit. “I’ll return soon.”

That seemed to break the spell of whatever staring contest he and Rachel were engaged in.
Thank God.