CHAPTER ONE

Last Hurrah

Brooke

I figure since this is my last night of freedom, I may as well do something wild, sexy, and utterly unwise.

Okay, I suppose it’s not fair to call this my last night of freedom but tomorrow afternoon, I’ll board a plane to be whisked away to some huge estate in Europe. From what I can see online, Red Aerie is centuries old. I mean, the place is beautiful but it’s very isolated. I imagine for the next few years, I’ll probably never be more than five miles from the place.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be making four times the starting salary if I’d taken a job as an associate at Wilkins, Brookmeyer, and Forte. All my expenses will be paid as well. The estate provides meals, lodging, all utilities, and just about any necessity imaginable. It provides plenty of luxuries as well. I should be able to bank at least eighty percent of my earnings, and that means by the time my four-year contract is over, I’ll have two million in the bank.

But I want to go wild because it all feels a little bit like I’ll be some kind of cloistered nun.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing about the job that suggests they want to keep me hidden away from the world. The place itself is hidden away from the world. On the other hand, there are something like four-hundred people living there, all of them servants to one man, Aiden Vipera.

I’ve done a lot of research on Aiden Vipera. Actually, I’ve only managed to accomplish research on the Vipera family. They’re richer than sin, and they own pieces of just about every major company in the world. They’re extraordinarily reclusive, though, using agents to be their public faces. In fact, I managed to find an image of Oswald Vipera, Aiden’s grandfather, but none of his parents at all. He has a cousin named Sara, and she must be the black sheep of the family because there are three, count’em three, pictures of her online.

I’m going to be one of the public faces, sort of. I’m going to be a personal legal advisor to Aiden. I won’t necessarily have to draft contracts, but I’ll review them, and I’ll interpret anything the various law firms that work for him might send him. In some ways, it kind of feels like I’ll be a legal babysitter for a spoiled rich man. Well, it’s not the plan I had for my life, but it’s hard to argue with close to six hundred thousand dollars a year, right?

But that all starts tomorrow night. I’ve spent what seems like forever preparing for my career. I’m twenty-four years old, pretty young to have a law degree from an ivy league school. The fact that I have one, though, should make it clear that from the time I was sixteen, I’ve essentially had no damned social life at all.

Anyway, I guess that’s all just a sort of explanation so you don’t think too poorly of me when I tell you the whole point of me sitting in the hotel lounge right now is that I intend to find a reasonably attractive man to screw me silly tonight. I don’t do one-night stands ordinarily, but I also don’t ordinarily find myself in New York City preparing to head to the airport to leave the country to spend four years having even less of a social life than I’ve had for the last several years. I mean, I had a friend in college, a nice guy. We had no romantic interest in each other, but we still hooked up every month or so because we needed a human connection just to survive. That guy was my second sexual partner, the first my high school prom date.

And now, I want a third before I go four years without any at all.

So, judge me if you will, but that’s why I’m sipping a cocktail and waiting for someone to show interest.

As it turns out, I’m the first one to show interest. Well, maybe not the first one to show interest, but the first one to be interested.

The man who walks into the bar looks head and shoulders above every other man in the place. I don’t mean that he’s taller than everyone else, although at six-foot-three or -four, he’s definitely among the tallest.

I mean that while the men here all look like men, this man looks like a god.

He has jet-black hair that betrays not a speck of gray although judging by the rest of his appearance, he’s in his early forties. He’s clean-shaven, which allows a clear view of his chiseled jaw and sculpted features. Speaking of sculpted, his body looks like it’s cut from marble, a fact that’s clear even though he covers it with a three-piece suit.

It’s his eyes that capture me, though. Gray and piercing, they seem to stare through my soul, and the calm self-assurance in his gaze contributes to the general air of command he exhibits.

He’s beautiful. He’s breathtaking. He’s perfect.

And he’s heading my way.

Thank God.

I put on my best smile and turn to him in a way that allows me to display the generous cleavage that my dress shows. He reaches me and I can see the desire in his eyes when he smiles and says, “Good evening. I’m Tan. May I buy you a drink?”

His voice is rich and deep and mellifluous, and a shiver runs through me that’s so powerful, I worry he might actually see it.

I don’t worry too much, though. After all, I want him to know that I want to sleep with him.

“Good evening to you,” I reply. “I’m Dana, and yes. Also, is Tan a real name, or are you just pointing out your perfectly-bronzed skin tone?”

He chuckles, and it should tell you how attractive he is that the sound of his laughter causes my pussy to twitch with need. “It’s a real name, I’m afraid,” he says. “I’m told that it’s based on an ancient Chinese name that means magnificent. My parents had a flair for the dramatic.”

“Well,” I say, looking him up and down, “at least it fits.”

His smile widens, and the fact that I can tell he knows already that he’s going to screw me later makes him seem even more attractive.

What can I say? I’m a sucker for confidence.

“Would you like to join me at my booth?” he asks.

“Of course,” I reply.

I lift my hand, and when he takes it, a jolt of electricity shoots through my body. I gasp softly and color, and I don’t mind at all that the man who will be inside me in a few short hours sees it.

***

Aiden

“I start a new job tomorrow,” she says. “Well, day after. I catch my flight tomorrow.”

We sit at the booth overlooking the skyline. The bar is a very high-end and exclusive establishment and each drink on the menu costs three figures. Some cost even more.

Dana is dressed well, and her outfit is quality, but not so extravagant as to suggest that she can afford to drink here. I assume this new job is a very good one.

Not that it matters that her clothing isn’t a top-shelf designer. She is still easily the most attractive woman in the room. Hell, she’s the most attractive woman I’ve ever seen in my life.

“I’m flying home tomorrow,” I reply, “so I guess it’s the last night in town for both of us.”

She smiles and says, “Why, whatever shall we do to occupy our time?”

It isn’t wise for me to do this. I feel the calling with this one. What you know of dragons is, for the most part, incorrect. However, there are some things about dragons you’re likely right about. Our relationship with human women, for example, isn’t accurately portrayed in folklore, but the spirit of the relationship is. When we fall in love with a human woman, we obsess over them. Sometimes to our eternal happiness. More often to our destruction.

But I can’t resist the allure of this woman. I say, “Well, maybe I’ll have to come up with something.”

“Why don’t you buy me another drink so I’ll be more likely to let you influence me against my better judgment,” she says. I like how she spars with me. Forget about the whole virgin thing. The idea that dragons only want virgins is a construct of moralizers in the Middle Ages intended to make the idea of a dragon more horrific. I guess if a giant, evil beast kills a good-hearted, beautiful woman who has actually had a penis inside of her, it’s not as bad as a giant evil beast killing a vacant, self-serving, horrible woman who just so happens to be untouched when it comes to sex.

Anyway, we don’t eat human women. We don’t eat human men either. We don’t eat people at all unless in the middle of battle. I don’t want to offend you, but you just don’t taste very good. Mostly, we eat what humans eat. You have any idea how many steers I need to eat to support my dragon form? Better to hunt, get a steer, shift back to human, and eat that way. The fullness transfers during the shift, one of the many benefits of shifting that we still don’t fully understand. “Do you want anything to eat?” I ask, “or might that dull the effects of the second drink?”

There’s something important about dragons, though, when it comes to human women. We call it the calling. See, there are some women who are ideal for producing dragon offspring. It’s the curse of dragons, I suppose, that two dragons can’t produce a baby. It takes a human. For centuries, this meant Dragon couples would capture a young woman for whom the calling was strong. Sometimes, it meant pretending to be human and seducing a young woman. Female dragons can get pregnant, only they need a male human, and the offspring is always human, not a dragon.

Anyway, the point of all this is I feel the calling with this girl. It’s a powerful urge that’s hard to resist. It’s a good thing I’m flying out tomorrow because otherwise, I might be in real trouble. If we were in the same proximity for any length of time, I would have no choice but to pursue this girl. It’s just the way of things. It’s probably how dragons survived as a species for millennia.

As I said earlier, though, it’s also been the downfall of many of my kind. As you might imagine, the majority of society doesn’t take kindly to the idea of a dragon whisking a young woman away from her home and impregnating her with a child who will also become a dragon. One aspect of the old legends concerning dragons that has far too much basis in truth is the common depiction of the knight slaying the dragon. We’re not immortal. We can be slain.

Granted, the killing usually takes place when the dragon is asleep and in human form. I suppose with modern aircraft and weaponry it wouldn’t be too monumental a task to kill a dragon these days, but back when the most dangerous weapon people had was a spear, killing a hundred-plus-foot-long fire-breathing dinosaur wasn’t exactly a walk in the park. Not that dragons are dinosaurs, but you get what I mean.

Still, enough dragons fell that way that we eventually decided it would be best to hide our true forms from humans and interact with them only in human form. Over the centuries, that has compounded our already reclusive tendencies so that now we spend very little time at all outside of our homes—another coincidentally accurate piece of the traditional mythos.

But we still feel the calling, and we still are powerless to resist it. I tell myself that I’m wrong, that what I’m feeling is nothing more than the simple sexual desire for an attractive woman, but even now I know I’m lying to myself.

I order her crab cakes and a lobster for myself. We continue to flirt and laugh as we eat, and judging by the flush in her cheeks and the way her fingers travel absently up and down the stem of her wineglass, the food does nothing to dull the effects of the second drink.

Not that the drink has anything to do with it. I can tell that she would want me just as desperately sober.

That’s another effect of the calling. When a dragon is called to mate with a human woman, that woman is just as irresistibly drawn to the dragon.

It could just be that she’s attracted to me. I, like most dragons, have a very desirable human form.

I tell myself that’s all that it is, but later, in my room, she kisses me like she’s known me for centuries and not like a lover she’s met for the first time tonight.

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