Among all the kinds of serpents, there is none comparable to the dragon.

– Edward Topsell, 1658

Moscow, Russia – Three months later

Charlotte MacQueen tugged the sweetheart neckline of her red satin cocktail dress up a few more centimeters. Despite the fancy but thick winter coat she wore, her exposed skin had drawn the cabdriver’s eyes and made her shift restlessly until he’d had to focus back on his driving. But then, she’d know her dress would have this effect. She was practically falling out of the damn thing, but she had a hunch this would be one of the few times having full breasts would be an advantage instead of a hindrance.

She’d spent most of her life hiding her curvy figure behind draping sweaters and lab coats. It was silly, but she’d never felt comfortable in sexy clothes.

Charlotte wasn’t sure if it was how the slide of satin felt on her skin or the way every masculine eye fixed on the high cut of her dress or the lowered neckline, but tonight she was trying hard to ignore how exposed she felt because she was pulling a Mata Hari. She was going behind enemy lines—or rather, into dragon territory—to seduce a seriously dangerous dragon shifter.

Before tonight, she would have thought the idea of her chasing down a man who could shift into a dragon was impossible. Not because she didn’t think they were real, mind you. She’d grown up her entire life knowing the truth about things that went bump in the night. Vampires, dragons, werewolves, shifters—all of it. Until now, she’d been kept safe by her overprotective older brothers, but she was done with that. She wanted to do something meaningful with her life, and tonight that meant quite literally walking into the mouth of the dragon’s den.

If my brothers figure out I’m here, they’d probably try to send me to some convent like it was the middle ages. The thought almost made Charlotte smile, despite the dangerous situation. Her brothers, Damien and Jason, were the experts at this sort of thing—well, not the seduction part, but the infiltration. They would know exactly how to handle something like a dragon shifter. But she’d never been a part of that secret supernatural hunter lifestyle. Until tonight.

If I bring home a Russian dragon, they’ll have to admit I’m not just their kid sister anymore. Maybe then they’ll let me join the Brotherhood instead of shutting me out.

But if she were being honest with herself, coming all the way to Moscow hadn’t just been about proving her brothers wrong. It had been about seeing the man from the files she’d gotten from the Brotherhood of the Blood Moon’s headquarters. The man she couldn’t get out of her head. The man she planned to capture.

Her target was Rurik Barinov, youngest of the three remaining dragons in the Russian Imperial bloodline who controlled the western half of Russia. Pulling out her cell phone, she scanned the pictures she had of him, probably for the hundredth time. She’d been lucky enough to snap some shots of the surveillance photos they had of him on file.

He was gorgeous in a dangerous sort of way, with a strong jaw, bright green eyes, and wavy dark hair that was a little too long, making him look a bit like a pirate from those swoon-worthy romance novels she’d devoured as a teenager. Charlotte hadn’t known men could look like that in real life, and she’d already had some seriously dirty thoughts about what he was like in bed. He’d been her first choice out of the three brothers to try to capture.

Rurik tended to wear leather jackets, jeans, and biker boots, and there was a long scar down one side of his face, which only made him look that much more dangerous. Her sexy biker dragon was too much of everything, and she had to admit getting close to him tonight was going to be one heck of a thrill. God, there has to be something wrong with me. He’s not my sexy biker. He’s my target. But she couldn’t deny the fact that the idea of getting up close and personal with Rurik turned her on.

Keep your cool and focus on the mission. It was the tenth time she had to remind herself of that tonight.

This mission was strictly recon, though. She needed to get into Rurik’s club, survey the scene, locate and observe him. Nothing more. She’d read the notes on the Brotherhood’s dragon monitoring. They really just tried to keep an eye on the dragons’ activities and not interfere but a few months ago two dragons had fought in a nightclub and a mortal woman had died. There were rumors of a coming dragon war between two families in Moscow and Damien and the other hunters were desperate to figure out how to stop the war. And it all came down to Rurik.

He’d been the dragon at the nightclub who’d survived by killing the other dragon from the rival family which had brought the dragon shifters in Russia to the brink of war. Damien had made a note in the file that if they could bring in Rurik, they could question him, determine whether the Brotherhood would have to intervene or not to prevent human casualties.

So far no one had been able to get close to Rurik, he never let any female agents get close enough to lure him to a location where he could be trapped, like a room with pure iron bars hidden in the walls. And bringing him by force would only result in danger to the agents and possibly innocent humans.

That’s why I’m here alone. Rurik won’t see me coming.

She grinned a little. She wore a light perfume she’d concocted that contained a bit of enhanced human pheromones. If it worked, she could catch his interest and then she’d go with him, rather than try to lure him off somewhere. And once she had him alone, she’d use her secret weapon to incapacitate him long enough to call in the Brotherhood to help her transport him to secure facility where he could be questioned safely.

The cabdriver hit the brakes as a car ahead of them swerved into their lane. Charlotte winced as she jerked forward and collided with the back seat of the cab.

“Sorry!” the driver muttered in heavily accented English. Then he flashed an obscene gesture at the driver ahead of them. At this rate, it would take them forever to reach the club where Rurik was supposed to be tonight.

Charlotte slid back in her seat and tried to still her jittery nerves. She would have been back in her little lab in Detroit, safe and sound, instead of here dragon hunting if it hadn’t been for her friend Meg.

Meg Stratford, a hunter for the Brotherhood, had called her secretly to analyze a serum Meg had found in London. Charlotte had unraveled the chemical composition in a matter of days. The product she’d synthesized based off the sample Meg had given her should be able to mute a dragon’s shifting abilities. It essentially made them human for a period of time depending on the dose, but it wasn’t permanent. She’d made samples that would last around twenty-four hours on an average sized shifter.

But the drug was potentially dangerous. Not in terms of directly harming the shifters, but because of how easily it could be misused. In the wrong hands it would threaten the balance that existed between the various supernatural factions. Even certain members of the Brotherhood, known for their overzealous nature, couldn’t be trusted with it. Meg had sworn her to secrecy, even from her own brothers.

A stab of guilt cut through Charlotte. She’d told Meg she needed more information on dragons to help her solve the mystery of the serum, but that wasn’t true. The real reason she needed to know everything about dragons was because she planned to catch one to prove she was a worthy hunter just like her brothers, but didn’t want to get herself killed in the process.

She’d created a batch of the dragon-dampening serum for herself, and had the vials tucked away safely in her hotel mini-fridge to use when she was ready. She went over the list of what she knew about dragons in her head as the taxi drove toward Rurik’s nightclub, The Lair.

1. Dragons could grow old—really old, like thousands of years—but for most of their lives they resembled men and women in their mid-thirties.

2. There were more than a dozen breeds, including Russian Imperials and Nordic ice dragons. Rivalries were common between many of them.

3. Dragons could breathe fire as well as control it.

4. They had protective thick hides with scales, and those scales were often used in magical spells.

5. Dragons could shift between their human and dragon forms in seconds.

6. They were completely obsessed with jewels.

7. They were sensitive to pure iron and could be contained and unable to shift if trapped in iron cells. They could also be injured while in dragon form while weapons of iron. In human form any weapon could hurt them but their healing rates were fast enough that only iron weapons could do lasting damage.

Charlotte studied the Moscow nightlife nervously as the taxicab came to a stop in front of The Lair nightclub. Being out of America for the first time in her life, she definitely wasn’t used to the cultural differences. On the flight over she’d listened to some Russian language podcasts, trying to learn some phrases, but it gave her a headache. It didn’t help that Russian was a notoriously difficult language, requiring a greater range of vocabulary just to reach a basic understanding. Luckily, the majority of the hotel staff and taxi drivers spoke English, something she was incredibly grateful for. However, once she stepped foot into that nightclub, she was positive it was going to be all Russian. The driver had warned her that this was a Russian-only nightclub, off the beaten path from where tourists would go.

“Here is okay?” the driver asked.

“Yes, thank you.” She slipped him a few hundred rubles and then got out of the cab. There were several men lingering at the entrance of the club, one of whom whistled when he caught sight of her.

She clutched her cell, which contained emergency number for the Brotherhood office in Saint Petersburg, hoping she wouldn’t have to use it. Please don’t let this be a bad idea. If things went poorly, she’d have to face her brothers and listen to them tell her “I told you so” about staying in Michigan, where life was safe but boring.

One of the men by the door said something to her in Russian, but she didn’t understand him. She smiled but kept her head down as she brushed past them. One of the men slapped her ass as she passed by. She tensed and almost tripped.

Just stay cool, her inner voice warned her. She might not be a hunter like her brothers, but she’d taken enough self-defense classes to know how to take care of herself. If this guy wasn’t careful, she’d kick in the balls so hard they’d snap up into his throat. But she couldn’t afford to make a scene. She needed to stay calm and not call attention to herself.

Ignoring the harsh laughter of the men outside, she slipped into the dark club interior. The energetic techno dance music enveloped her, and the bass pounded so hard against the walls that she could feel it shake as she skirted the club’s interior. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, even with the flashing white lights and pulsing strobes. Fog filled the bottom of the club, hiding a clear view of the dance floor. Everywhere people were dancing, drinking, and laughing. It was a hedonistic gathering where pleasures ruled the night.

Charlotte clutched her slender purse and headed for the bar. A dark-haired man with an intricate neck tattoo of a wolf howling was flipping bottles and pouring drinks. He took one look at her and retrieved a large rounded glass, then poured a dark red wine in it. He slid it across the slick wood surface of the bar to her. He chuckled when she caught the glass, which glided smoothly into her waiting hand. Then she took a sip.

Wow. The red was soft and dark with a hint of oak and…cherry? Yes, cherry. She smiled at the man, who gave a roguish wink before he turned to see to his other customers. A bartender who guessed your style of drink…that was certainly interesting. A guy like that would kill in tips in America. She studied his wolf tattoo more closely. Was he a shifter? She’d heard from Meg over the years all sorts of things about shifters. Tribal tattoos were pretty popular among the wolves and the odds that a wolf shifter was working in a dragon shifter owned bar? Pretty high odds.

She watched the dancers on the floor for a while, scanning the room until she found what she was looking for. A back door. It probably led to some offices. That might be where she could find Rurik. But she had no plans to barge in there and look. She would stay here and wait. Hopefully, he would come out soon so she could start her reconnaissance.

The files she’d studied assured her that he always stuck close to Moscow and rarely went to his second residence, which was somewhere south in the country. She took another sip of her wine and looked back to the dancers. She froze. Three of the men from outside the club stood in front of her, watching her with wicked grins. The man who had slapped her ass was talking to her again in Russian.

“I’m sorry—I don’t speak very much Russian,” she told him in the best Russian she could manage and tried to turn back to the bar. One of them grabbed her from behind and dragged away from her seat.

“Let go of me!” She swung her purse, smacking him in the face. The heavy gold clasps thunked as they made contact with the man’s nose. He cursed, clutching his face as he waved his other hand at his friends, who rushed her.

Oh shit! She dropped into a fighting stance, praying she wouldn’t break an ankle in her low heels when she tried to roundhouse whoever made the first move on her. A man swung a meaty balled fist at her head, and she pulled herself back an instant before he would have clocked her. She countered, the man was too close for a roundhouse, but not a solid knee to the breadbasket. He dropped with a gasp, and Charlotte backed away, waiting for the next. But there were too many of them, and she doubted they’d oblige her by coming one at a time after that.

A deep bellowing shout thundered through the room, and sent the men scrambling away like rats.

Panting, she held her purse, which dangled on its chain from one of her hands. She then felt someone’s eyes upon her, a gaze as tangible as a caress along her skin, making her shiver. She looked around for whoever had scared the men off. Her heart thumped in a panicked beat against her ribs when she saw who had rescued her, standing behind her.

Rurik Barinov. He looked dangerous and sexy in jeans and a black T-shirt and especially those biker boots. If she was being honest with herself, those boots played quite a role in her fantasies whenever she thought of him. Which was a really bad thing considering he was supposed to be her target, not the star of her most sensual daydreams.

“Are you all right?” he asked. His accent, a deep, rumbling, slightly growling tone, did funny things to her insides. For a second she couldn’t speak—her brain had short-circuited.

“I…”

Rurik gently grasped her by the elbow. That got a reaction from her, as her first instinct was to pull back. But his response to this surprised her; he looked at her and said, “Please,” while holding out his hand. Something about his voice disarmed her, and she allowed herself to be led away. He took her into a dark, quiet alcove where the acoustics of the room couldn’t reach them. He pressed her back against the wall and cupped her chin, lifting her face. His eyes, a beautiful green, swept over her from head to toe. She shivered as his thumb caressed her bottom lip.

“You’re not hurt?” he asked.

She managed a nod.

He tilted his head, still studying her in that intense manner. “American?”

“Y—yes.”

“You shouldn’t come to a club like this alone. It is too dangerous for a flower such as you.” He let go of her face, but he leaned in a few inches, inhaling deeply before he murmured something to himself in Russian.

“I’m not that delicate,” she replied stiffly. Sure, she wasn’t a kick-ass supernatural hunter like her brothers, but she wasn’t totally helpless.

His lips curved into a crooked grin that made a storm of butterflies come to life in her stomach. “It is true. Some flowers have thorns, and you certainly showed yours.” The dim lights and the way he stood half in shadow exposed the thin scar that swept down his face across his cheek. It had a distinctive slashing shape to it. Was it from another dragon’s claw? She had to admit she was fascinated. The Brotherhood files on the Barinov dragons were slim. She wished she knew more about him, and she had a feeling she was about to.

“Yet I think you are more delicate than you realize, little one.” He reached up to brush the back of his fingers over her cheek. She shivered as a wave of arousal buzzed through her at his touch. She opened her mouth, even though she had no idea what she was going to say, but he placed a finger over her lips.

“Why don’t you leave your purse with my bartender and come dance with me?” He was already tugging her away from the wall before she could argue. He slid her purse off her shoulder and tossed it at the tattooed man, who caught it in one hand and tucked it beneath the bar.

“Hey—”

“Shhh.” Rurik pulled her against him as music wrapped around them, pulsing and thumping. His hands curled around her hips, the tips of his fingers just riding the edge of her ass as they began to dance. He moved smoothly with a rolling gait and the slide of his feet. She’d always been a terrible dancer, but with his hands and body guiding hers, he made it seem so easy. It was almost surreal, to be here with him, the lights of the club spinning around them and music pouring into her soul.

Is this real? Maybe I’m just dreaming about him again.

It wouldn’t have been the first time since she’d seen his face in those files that she’d woken up in the dead of night, her heart racing and her body hungry for the touch of this man…this dragon.

Her plan to capture him was still on track. If anything, this could work to her advantage. But she could relax, enjoy herself for a few songs, couldn’t she? Dancing was one of the few ways a man and a woman could speak to each other without words. Well, that and kissing. But she couldn’t let him kiss her, not after she’d heard Meg’s lecture about dragon pheromones. As a biochemist, she was well aware of the drugging influences of pheromones in some animals. She did not want to come under the influence of anything she couldn’t control, biological or chemical. Part of her worried that he might have already exerted some kind of subtle influence over her. There were rumors that dragons could compel humans with a form of hypnotism.

“You are enjoying yourself?” he asked in her ear.

His hands drifted lower, cupping her ass. A new flash of arousal hit her, and she couldn’t help but moan when he pressed closer to her. She was too aware of him, of his undeniable sexuality. At times like this it sucked being a virgin. She felt like a live volcano ready to blow whenever she got too close to someone with raw sexual chemistry like Rurik.

“Yes, this is fun!” she shouted over the music.

What the hell, right? Life is too short not to enjoy this….

She spun in his arms, grinding her backside against him. She watched the dancers around them. The club was modeled to resemble a cave, but it also had a hint of a dungeon about it. There were even cages with women dancing inside them. Iron-barred honest-to-God cages. For a second she pictured herself in one of those cages, Rurik outside of the bars, hungry to reach her, and yet knowing he had caught her. It was… Holy hell, it was so hot just to think about it.

“Want to give it a try?” Rurik’s hand slid up her body from behind, not quite cupping her breast, but coming close.

“Try what?”

“The dancing cages. I can see that you’re tempted.”

She tried to shake her head, not wanting him to know she’d been way too turned on at the idea of him putting her in a cage. “No…”

He chuckled, his lips feathering against her ear. “Yes, you are.”

She ducked her head, hair falling in front of her face, trying to hide from him. But he brushed it back, tucking it behind her ear and over her shoulder.

“Come.” He led her toward one of the cages where a blonde girl was shaking to a type of dance rhythm that Charlotte would never be able to copy. He opened the cage door and jerked his head. The girl left immediately.

Rurik pushed her toward the cage. “Get in, little one.” She stumbled, caught herself on the bars, and turned to face him as he closed the cage door. Then he leaned against the bar doors, his arm muscles flexing. He had trapped her in the cage.

“Now, dance for me, sweetheart.” Rurik’s green eyes met hers, and she seemed to spiral into them. Every worry, every self-conscious thought she’d ever had seemed to fade into the back of her mind.

“Dance for me. Show me your heart’s desire.” The words were his, but he hadn’t spoken. It was as though she’d heard the words in her head. An irresistible compulsion to do exactly what he said came over her, almost as though she was drunk—only on words instead of alcohol.

Charlotte rolled her hips, feeling the beat of the music and letting it run through her blood like a current. She moved, spun, leaned against the bars and threw her head back, sending her hair in a cascade as she gave in to the wild part of herself. A part she’d always denied, ignored, or repressed.

All the while he watched, satisfied, the dragon with dark brown hair and emerald eyes. The green of his eyes was pure like uncut gemstones. His lips were parted, and his hands were white-knuckled on the bars. Was he restraining himself? Holding himself back? That only made Charlotte bolder, wilder. Dimly, she was aware that she was being very reckless, but she couldn’t seem to stop.

I’m playing with fire. She just prayed she wouldn’t get burned.