Earlier That Day

Liam had enjoyed a leisurely breakfast at The Rise and Grind, his favorite hole-in-the-wall coffee shop and café. He’d been deep in the New York Times when Jerry plopped down on the other side of the table and poured himself a coffee.

“Thanks, again, man.” Jerry ladled enough sugar and cream into his mug to obliterate any benefit from the coffee. Inches shorter than Liam, he might have clocked in at five feet nine with a slight paunch. His fair hair was thinning, but he had a set of earnest blue eyes. Eyes that never changed, no matter how much of a line of bullshit Jerry was pumping out.

Liam laid the paper aside and glanced at his new breakfast mate. Jerry had clearly showered and changed. Still-damp brown hair had been carefully arranged over his bald spot, and circles ringed his blue eyes.

“No worries.” Liam grinned. “All’s well that ends well, eh?”

“Since when do you quote Shakespeare?” Jerry arched a brow.

“I do whatever fits, mate, and that line was perfect. You look beat. How come you’re not home catching up on sleep?”

A middle-aged blonde waitress sidled close. “Breakfast, hon?” she asked Jerry. “After what you went through, it’s on the house.”

“Thanks, but I grabbed something at home.”

“Well just holler if you change your mind.” She trotted back through the swinging door into the kitchen.

“You never did answer me,” Liam pressed.

“You mean why didn’t I pitch face down on my bed and stay there?” At Liam’s nod, he went on. “There’s that dance tomorrow night. The women assigned a bunch of crap for me to do.” He rolled his eyes. “You know how important these shindigs are to the gals. I had a bunch of spade work to roll out today, or I would have stayed home.”

Liam culled through his memory and came up with a vague recollection of a barn dance that had been rescheduled. Originally slated for Halloween Eve, something had happened that forced a change of plans. He refilled his cup from the pot sitting on the table and slugged back half of it. It wasn’t all that hot anymore, but it was black and bitter, exactly the way he liked it.

“How come they moved it from Halloween again?” he asked.

“A bunch of the gals had conflicts with driving their kids to out-of-town football games. No one wanted to miss the fall dance, so they moved it to a better weekend.” He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Personally, I hate parties. Seems to give every single gal in town ideas.”

Liam smirked. “Nothing wrong with that.”

“No, not so long as they’d be satisfied with a roll in the hay, but every one I hook up with starts angling for a ring. They know I’m married, but that doesn’t stop them.”

“I get it.” Liam made a clucking sound, hoping to convey male solidarity. He’d love to mine for every salacious detail. Apparently, Jerry slept around. Did his wife know? Even better, did she join in?

Since it wasn’t any of his business, and he didn’t really want a man-to-man conversation with any human, let alone Jerry, he grinned and said, “Valentine’s Day is right around the corner. Have you considered leaving town? Perhaps a trip to South America or Australia. At least its summer down under.”

Jerry slapped a hand down on the table. “Why’d you have to go and remind me. V-Day is the absolute worst. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to create a holiday that revolved around Cupid?”

Liam had known Cupid personally, and he couldn’t have agreed more, but that wasn’t a tidbit he could drop on Jerry. Gathering the New York Times, he said, “I’ll be shoving off. Didn’t get any sleep last night, right along with you.”

Jerry grinned. “I haven’t forgotten. Hell, I’ll never, never forget what you did for me. That check I promised should be on the floor of that little room you call an office.” He narrowed his eyes. “Say, lots of decent business rentals in Stillwater. You’ve got some spare cash now, so maybe—?”

“No. Only reason I keep anything in town is so I’ll have a place to meet clients.”

Ever the real estate developer, Jerry kept right on talking. “But you could have a nicer place. One where you could justify raising your rates.”

Liam stood. “The American way, eh? Bigger and better.”

“Abso-fucking-lutely.” Jerry stood and fist-bumped Liam. A cagey expression flitted across his features.

Aw crap. He wants something.

Liam raised an eyebrow. “I know that look. What now?”

“Go ahead, you can tell me,” Jerry purred. “What’d they rope you into for tomorrow night’s festivities?”

Liam took a step back. Of all the things to come out of Jerry’s overactive mouth, he’d never have anticipated this one. “Er. Nothing.”

The cagey expression edged farther into presumptuous territory. “Well, now. We can’t have that. Misery loves company. You can help me set up for the band and get the food tables in order.”

“Hold it right there, I’m scarcely a cook.” Liam inhaled briskly. “You’re better off tagging someone else. I’m happiest hanging off a rocky crag. Social events aren’t exactly my forte.”

“But, don’t you see?” Jerry gripped Liam’s upper arms “The women will go ape-shit over you since you don’t come to dances.”

“Which means they’ll leave you alone. Hey, mate, take your hands off me.”

Jerry’s eyes pinched at the corners. Goddammit, he’d hurt the man’s feelings. Liam hastily added, “I’ve got a piss pot of sore muscles from last night.”

Jerry jumped back as if he’d been bitten. “Of course. Sorry. That was thoughtless of me.” He angled his head, staring straight at Liam. “How about the dance? You could run home, clean up, take a few ibuprofen for those sore spots, and generally take it easy. If you met me back here around five tomorrow afternoon, I’d sure appreciate it.”

Liam shuffled through excuses, but all of them sounded lame. Aisha probably wouldn’t be there since she rarely left her stable of prime Arabians untended. She was the main one he wanted to avoid—at least until that senseless charm of hers ran its course.

Dancing was something that appealed to humans, although for the life of him, he’d never been able to figure out why. It wasn’t much more than foreplay, so why not dive into the real thing and quit pretending it was anything else?

A corner of his mouth twitched downward. Jerry slugged him in the arm, and then said, “Whoops. Sorry. I’m sorry. Forgot how sore you are. How about tomorrow?”

He stopped shy of tacking a please onto the end of his sentence, but Liam picked up on his desperation. What the bloody fucking hell had the good ladies of Stillwater done to spook Jerry, beyond making a grab for his dick?

He opened his mouth to ask but shut it with a clack. He didn’t really want all the nitty-gritty details. Because it was the only way he was going to exit the café anytime soon, he said, “Fine. You wore me down. Five o’clock, where?”

The community building at the end of Main Street. We’ll be using it and the barn. And no need to worry about cooking. The gals have that base covered. We’ll mainly be doing the heavy lifting, moving the tables and chairs into formation. And the bandstand.”

Liam slapped some money on the table and strode out of Rise and Grind with Jerry’s thanks following him. His first stop was his office. As soon as he unlocked the door, a white envelope came into view. Liam scooped it up and looked inside. Sure enough, it contained a check for five grand made out to Liam with a note telling him to fill in his last name because Jerry wasn’t sure how to spell it.

He folded the envelope and tucked it into a pocket before settling in at his desk. The office had a perpetually musty smell, so he left the door open. Going through his email and adding a few photos to social media didn’t take long, but when he glanced at the clock in the corner of his screen, it was almost one in the afternoon.

Time to get moving. Not that he had anywhere particular to go but spending too much time boxed in with humans always made him feel antsy, uncomfortable, like he couldn’t quite get a straight breath into him. Deep within, the dragon was restless. His ill-advised leap into pure, unbridled wantonness the other day had gotten the dragon going. It wanted to fuck too.

He’d gone over and over the fact there weren’t any other dragons here, but his bondmate didn’t care. It’s parting shot had been something like, “Then at least find a woman. We should not be reduced to servicing ourselves.”

While Liam privately agreed with him, women came with too many goddamned strings. He shut down his computer and got to his feet, pushing his desk chair back into its customary spot. Nothing more to do here, so he locked up and set off at a brisk pace.

He’d left the old Chevy beneath a grove of alder trees at the far end of town. He’d hidden it on purpose, in case that pesky witch showed up again, thinking to leave him a little gift—like a hex basket or a more potent love charm. It would be an easy-enough matter to sequester something like that in the rat’s nest inside his car.

He really should clean it out. The floorboards were deep in fast food wrappers, obsolete climbing gear, and automotive tools. Whenever he needed something, it took forever to find it, which was why he kept his climbing gear du jour in the pickup bed. Liam cast subtle magic, hunting for Aisha. When her distinctive energy didn’t ping back at him, he picked up his pace.

He balled one hand into a fist and slapped it into his other palm. Shit. He couldn’t go the next few years avoiding her. If he knew anything about witches, they were tenacious little bitches. Even if the current spell frittered to nothing, the next one would have more oomph behind it.

He frowned. Did her horses have something to do with her magic? What would happen if he snuck up there one night and freed them? Would they leave? Or were they linked to her? Or to the land?

He blew out a frustrated breath. He had a lot of questions, and zero answers. The dragons had a phenomenal resource library that covered everything anyone would ever want to know about other varieties of magic-wielders, but it was on Xara. Not a location he could pop in and out of.

“Not a place I can return to at all without a mate,” he muttered, bringing his other problem front and center.

Ten years was a long time, but if he didn’t alter any of his patterns, he’d be just as mateless then as he was now. He reached the pickup, got in, and fired the engine, thinking about Aisha as he nosed the truck toward home. She might want him, but from the feel of the charm, it was only for sex.

A slow smile spread over his face. If he did invite her to his bed, she’d be so blown away by how great he was, she’d never want to leave. She already carried magic, so revealing what he was shouldn’t give her a heart attack, like it might if she were human.

Yeah, but what then? Making love with him was a quantum world away from the ritual that would turn her into a dragon shifter so both of them could return to Xara. He gripped the wheel harder. This was the same problem he always ran up against. A woman might be taken with him, but no woman was ever taken enough to do anything beyond blanch when he floated the idea of leaving Earth behind.

The few who’d stayed around long enough for him to get that far had developed that special look in their eyes mothers reserve for the mentally deficient—or the mad. He’d had to wipe their memories of everything about him because he couldn’t risk one of them telling anyone what he truly was.

Humans would think he had a few screws loose, but other magic wielders would know the truth, and they’d hound him until they discovered the location of his hoard. They’d end up in a pitched battle, and it wouldn’t be pretty. Part of the covenant among their kind stated no unnecessary killing—unless a hoard was threatened.

Except for vampires, of course. They were always fair game.

Whether a supernatural judge would view protecting his hoard as justification for murder remained to be seen. Maybe if the judge was another dragon shifter, but probably not if they were something else.

He turned down the long, rutted lane leading to his mining cabin, his mind full. He’d just gotten out of the car, determined to clean up the cab’s interior, when a jolt of sexual energy blasted him in the groin. It had Aisha’s feel all over it.

He snorted, blowing smoke and fire out of his mouth. He’d been right about one thing: she wasn’t about to give up. Desire curled around the base of his spine and gripped him, sending tendrils lower. His cock shot to attention. Hot, distended, throbbing with need.

He ground his teeth and splayed his hands over the truck hood. “I will not do this,” he said, repeating the words. His cock jerked where it curved against his belly, hard as it ever got. Ignoring the siren call of sex, the urgency to drive himself hard and fast into a woman, he walked to the passenger side and dragged the door open.

The slimy, sneaky bitch had found his truck after all. She’d hidden a charm somewhere in the heaps of trash, but he’d find it, and when he did, she’d be in for a hell of a surprise. All he needed was something of hers, and he could cast a little mischief of his own.

Liam dragged handfuls of everything from paper to crescent wrenches out of his truck, chucking everything in a pile on the ground. He’d sort things later. For now, he had to locate the offending bit of witchcraft. When he crouched to reach behind the seat back, it stretched his pants across his erection. He was panting, arousal spilling through him.

He had almost everything out from behind the seat but for a set of ascenders. He’d been missing them for months. Damn. His house might be neat, but he ran a sloppy ship in some ways. When he angled his body half into the space behind the seat, his cock slithered up and down against the doorframe.

Liam realized what he’d done, but it was too late. Semen juddered from him as he lay half in and half out of the truck. It took the edge off his arousal, but he was totally disgusted with himself. He hadn’t come in his pants since he was a gawky adolescent, fielding perpetual erections that never truly went away.

Sucking air like a bellows, he backed away from his truck. At least he had everything out of it. A dollop of semen slithered down one leg. He drove a fist into a nearby tree and hurried into the house to change. He could pick up the mess in the driveway once he didn’t stink of sweat and lust. Worry nagged. Had his orgasm given her something to latch onto? A way to inveigle her way into his mind and torment him until he broke down and fucked her?

He’d gone to a lot of trouble to sequester himself behind a magic barrier before bringing himself off a couple of days back. This climax caught him bare-assed. Not much he could do about it, though, since it had already happened.

It was only much later—after he’d cleaned up and changed—he realized he hadn’t found Aisha’s love charm. Hadn’t found anything that shouldn’t be in his truck except a mouse nest. He shook his head as he straightened the rest of the debris that had been cluttering his truck cab. She must command some hella powerful magic to have this effect on him without a physical object to anchor her spell.

His stomach rumbled, and he went back inside and set about grabbing items from the fridge. He draped a raw steak across a frying pan, cooking it just long enough to remove the chill. Next came a box of scalloped potatoes. He tossed everything into a bowl, added milk and butter, and nuked it. He could have accomplished much the same effect breathing on it, but this was faster.

The loaf of bread was hard as a rock, so he cut slices and wrapped them in a damp towel to rehydrate. They’d be good to go once his steak and potatoes were done. He dropped into a nearby chair and tried to come up with an excuse for welching on Jerry tomorrow night.

Last thing he felt like doing was socializing, particularly if Aisha could commandeer his libido from miles away and turn him into a pile of sex-driven mush. He still didn’t understand how she’d made him come, and the lack of control freaked him worse than anything he’d run into since Grigori exiled him from Xara.

He’d just snatched his steak off the stove and checked on the potatoes—they weren’t quite done, but he’d eat them the way they were rather than waiting—when his phone blatted its ringtone.

Loud and obnoxious, the trumpeting elephant guaranteed he’d always hear the device. After a longing glance at his meal, he snatched up the phone and tapped Accept. “Liam here.”

Last call he’d taken, he’d ended up on that SAR mission. No matter what whoever was calling wanted, he was going to eat his dinner first.

“Of course, it’s you,” a deep, female voice crooned.

Liam sat straighter. He knew that voice but couldn’t quite place it. “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage—” he began.

“Just the way I like it,” the woman went on. “I’m Victoria Colewright, and we need to talk.”

Understanding crashed over him until he wanted to retreat to his cave and curl up on his hoard. “Aye, I recall who you are,” he stammered.

“Damn good thing.”

Before she could say anything more, he blurted, “You’re Aisha’s kinswoman.”

“Brilliant deduction. Are you going to blither on all night, or are you ready to listen?”

He bristled. No one talked to him like that. Not even a witch he’d lusted over eighty years ago. He’d been newly arrived on Earth and bolder, but she’d never taken him up on his seduction schemes.

A long-drawn sigh rattled through the cellular line. “Don’t get your scales ruffled, dragon. This won’t take long, and then you can tuck into that man-food you’re calling dinner. Tsk. Tsk. Not a vegetable in sight.”

He jumped to his feet, scattering magic in a circle. Where the fuck was she? She had to be close if she knew what he was about to eat. Nothing witchy was anywhere nearby, though. The evidence of how powerful she was brought him up short. No one should have magic like that—other than dragon shifters.

“Ready to listen?” She was almost purring.

“Yes.” He ground out the word.

“Good.” The purr was gone, replaced by a tone sharp as any razor. “My granddaughter was stupid. Do not react to her spell. When she cast it, she had no idea what you are, but she knows now. Are we quite clear about that?”

“Yeah. I guess so. Why’s it so important to you? If you’re the grandmother who used to live on the horse ranch, you’re supposed to be dead.”

“Oh please. I thought even you were smarter than that. Stay away from Aisha.”

Liam was recovering fast. “And if I don’t?” he countered, still nonplussed at being dressed-down by a not-exactly-dead witch.

“You don’t want to test me, young man. I’m as tough an adversary as you’re likely to meet. Besides, you’ve been gone from Xara so long, you’ve grown soft.”

“Why you self-righteous old bat.” He shook a fist at the air.

“Now, now. Stick and stones, youngster. Sticks and stones.”

Witch presence vanished as quickly as it had shown up. Too keyed up to eat, he stared at his cooling food.

“Eat!” his dragon roared to the accompaniment of smoke and flames.

“Fuck all of you,” Liam snarled and stormed out into the yard. He was no one’s patsy. No one’s. Not Aisha’s. Not Victoria’s. And certainly not his bondmate’s.

He’d eat when he was good and ready, and not a moment sooner. And he might not stay out of Aisha’s path, either. Maybe she was exactly the mate he’d been hunting all these years. Handy she knew he was a dragon shifter. It would save a whole lot of explanations.