Dating A Dragon (The Mating Game Book 2) (3 page)

The waiter set down a bowl of bread in front of her and she began tearing into it. It was warm and delicious.

“So, tell me about yourself,” he said.

“Well, I work for an event planning company,” she said around a mouthful. “Or I did – I just quit, because in all honesty, I was going to leave town and go underground rather than be forced to mate with someone awful.”

“But now that you’ve met my charming self, you’re reconsidering?” He favored her with a roguish grin. “I don’t snore or hog the bed covers. I’m really considered quite the catch, actually.”

Just then, a waitress walked up with a bowl of soup – and tripped and spilled it on Cadence, splattering it down her shirt.

Orion leaped to his feet, eyes blazing with anger.

“That’s it,” he growled. “I demand to see your manager right now. I’ll see you fired!”

Cadence jumped to her feet as well, a sick feeling in her stomach.

“Excuse me, I’m just going to go blot this off,” she said. She grabbed her purse and hurried to the bathroom without looking back.

Cadence stomped out of the back of the restaurant, stripped off her shirt, and tossed it into the dumpster. She was wearing a tank top underneath. That was okay – she enjoyed the chill in the air.

What she didn’t enjoy was the death of her hopes.

She walked to the front of the restaurant. For once, there was a cab when she needed one; not only that, but it zipped right over to pick her up.

She climbed in, regret and anxiety swirling inside her. She was back to square one. She wasn’t even going to accept Daisy’s charity, or get her involved; she was just going to pack up and leave town tonight. Vanish.

For a brief moment there, she’d thought she’d found the answer to her problems. Orion was handsome, and sexy, and charming. At least that was a good start. But then he’d flipped out and snapped at the waitress, and that was an enormous no-no in Cadence’s book. Cadence had been a bartender and waitress, and so had her mother; if there was one thing that was an absolute dealbreaker to Cadence, it was being rude to service personnel. It was not only unacceptable, it showed a personality defect that Cadence would not live with. People who were rude to wait staff were bullies in general. She hated bullies.

Well, that explained why Maude had never told her about this guy. Because he was like a chocolate-coated horse turd. Looked sweet and delicious, but below the surface, he was a big ol’ pile of poop.

She gave the cab driver her home address, and he answered with a surly grunt and began driving. Great. A crabby cabbie. Her afternoon was continuing to go well.

After a couple of minutes, the cab driver took a left turn. Wrong direction. Even better. She had a cabbie who had no idea where he was going.

“Excuse me,” she said with a touch of impatience. “You’re going the wrong way.”

“I know where I’m going.”

“No, you don’t. You’re headed in the opposite direction from my house. You need to turn around.”

He ignored her and kept driving. “You need to turn around,” she repeated more loudly, a sharp jolt of alarm running through her. They did criminal background checks on cab drivers, didn’t they? The cab was a Blue Valley Taxicab; she’d taken them dozens of times before.

“All right, stop the car,” she said with alarm. Instead, he pressed a button and her doors locked. She pulled frantically on the handle. It didn’t budge. She tried rolling the window down; it was stuck.

The car sped up.

“Stop the damn car!” she screamed. “Let me out right now!” He ignored her.

She grabbed her cell phone from her purse, and as he did, she saw him reach forward and push a button on the dashboard. When she punched 9-1-1 into her cell phone, nothing happened. There were no signal bars, even though she usually got perfect reception everywhere in Cedar Park.

So, he had some kind of cell phone blocker in the cab.

This couldn’t be a coincidence. This was far too sophisticated a setup; it must be one of the ice dragons trying to kidnap her.

She closed her eyes and willed herself to shift, desperately trying to summon her wolf, but it was gone. Loneliness filled her; her wolf had been a part of her once – a fierce, wild sister who’d given outlet to her most passionate emotions. She’d never feel her again.

She blinked back tears, closed her eyes again, and tried to summon up her dragon. What would her dragon look like? She didn’t even know. She pictured her cousin Maude in her dragon form, with her beautiful white scales edged in turquoise blue. Maude had sent her pictures. That long tail with the spade-shaped tip, almost like a heart, that great diamond-shaped head with its eyes glowing blue… She imagined enormous wings unfurling, a ridged tail lashing…

She felt something faint stirring inside her. It was there, but buried too deep.

The cab driver drove even faster.

* * * * *

Orion scowled, keeping his eyes on the road as he talked to his brother.

“She ditched me,” he complained. “Is there something wrong with all the women in Cedar Park? I mean, it’s not a full moon. But they’ve all gone crazy.”

He heard his brother’s snort of scorn.

“Seriously, Nikolai. I know it can’t be me.”

“Of course not.” Nikolai’s tone was smug and condescending. Orion felt anger raging through him, and his cell phone case started to glow red. This was why he used fireproof cell phone cases.

He struggled to keep his fire contained.

“I am your Dominus!” he roared furiously.

Nikolai’s tone remained calm. “And I am your brother. I know how you behave sometimes. Do you want things to work out with this woman, or not?”

Orion did, in fact, want things to work out with the woman. It wasn’t just because she was pretty or sexy. He had his pick of women like that. It wasn’t even that she was funny and challenged him and didn’t fall down slobbering at the thought of his wealth.

It went even deeper than that – he felt a pull towards her, an attraction that he’d never experienced before. There was an urgency to it; he needed to be close to this woman. To win her heart.

“Yes,” he ground out. “But don’t think I won’t whup your tail when I get back.”

“Ready when you are,” his brother said, far too cheerfully. Jerk. Someone needed his scales singed.

But in the meantime, his brother might actually have something to offer in terms of advice when it came to sealing the deal with a woman. Nikolai was happily married. Granted, he was married to a human. Since Nikolai wasn’t the Dominus, he was not obligated to somehow come up with dragon heirs. He’d married for love, their children were human, and Nikolai doted on them to a ridiculous degree. A real gold tiara studded with fire opals, for a two year old? Even Nikolai’s wife had laughed at that.

With love.

Orion suddenly realized that he wanted that love too, and maybe, if he could figure out what he’d done wrong with Cadence, he could have it. That and children. Dragonlings.

“Tell me what I did wrong,” he said. He described everything he’d said and done from the minute Cadence and Daisy had walked into the restaurant.

A few minutes later, after his brother had given him a thorough dressing down, he had to reluctantly admit that he might have come across as a little bit rude. A tad arrogant.

He quickly dialed the cab company that, according to one of the waiters, had picked up Cadence.

They had alarming news. They had no cabs in that area of town. None. They swore on their lives – which he threatened, if they were lying.

Someone had been waiting for Cadence. Someone had taken her from him.

Someone was going to burn.

He pulled over to the side of the road, parked, and scrambled out of the car.

He let his rage fuel his shift, roaring through his body. His suit exploded off him, shoes flying through the air as he sank down onto his mighty haunches. Scales flowed over his body like thick armor.

Power rushed through him, and his enormous wings unfurled.

He flapped his wings and took to the air, soaring low over the city, watchful for power lines and helicopters.

He flew in the direction in which the waiter had pointed.

Soon he spotted it – a yellow cab speeding dangerously fast down a country road. The road was hemmed in by trees; there were no houses in sight.

Fortunately, Orion was a supremely accomplished flyer. He maneuvered ahead of the cab and settled down into the road, blocking its path. The cab screeched to a halt and then began reversing. Really? Had the cab driver not noticed that he could fly?

Moron.

However, Orion didn’t feel like playing games – chasing after the car again until the driver realized he was trapped. He had no idea what was going on with Cadence in there; was she alone? Was she being abused? He needed to get her out as soon as possible.

He directed a low, carefully controlled stream of fire at the tires and melted them, and the car jerked and froze in place, glued to the road.

He stalked towards the car and bashed his mighty head against the driver’s side. The door caved in; the window exploded inwards.

The driver let out a scream of terror, and a moment later, he scrambled out the front passenger door and fell to the ground. He leaped to his feet, stumbling back.

Orion reached out and clawed open the rear passenger door, and Cadence stumbled out. She took a few steps back, looking around in bewilderment.

Then the driver reached into his jacket, pulled out a gun, and started firing at Orion. The bullets bounced harmlessly off him, but some of the ricochets splatted in the dirt dangerously close to Cadence. Orion responded with a blast that fried the man to a blackened, crispy statue that stood upright for a moment and then fell to the ground with a thud.

Orion quickly shifted back into human form and stood there naked in the chill spring evening.

Then he saw the look on Cadence’s face. It was dismay.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, baffled. Hadn’t she wanted to be saved?

“You’re a fire dragon,” Cadence said. “That’s why my cousin didn’t know anything about you. It didn’t even occur to her to look at your clan.”

He stared at her, his heart sinking.

“You mean…oh, crud.”

She nodded unhappily. Then she closed her eyes and blew out a breath, and the air in front of her went frosty. Ice crystals formed and drifted down to the ground.

She knelt down over a puddle on the ground and blew on it. A very thin skin of ice formed.

She stood up again and sighed. “Yep, ice dragon. Weak, wimpy, ice dragon who can barely make a snowflake.”

Well. It made perfect sense that he’d never heard of her, then. Of course the registry wouldn’t have listed her as a potential match for him. Ice dragons and fire dragons didn’t mate. Not that they couldn’t, it just wasn’t done. The last time an ice dragon and a fire dragon had got together, it had ignited a war between their two clans, and large parts of Italy had burned down. Of course, that had been five hundred years ago, but dragons had long memories.

She was all wrong for him.

So why did she feel so desperately, urgently right?

“You…you saw my eyes go red back the restaurant,” he protested. “Only fire dragons do that. Ice dragons’ eyes go blue.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t grow up with dragons, remember?” she said. “I grew up with humans and wolf shifters.”

“Ah. I see.” What to do, what to do? He should fly her back to her place and resume his search for an appropriate mother for his young. He should never see her again.

Yep. That was what he should do.

He stood there, staring at her lean body, her wild tousled hair, the delightful freckles standing out on her pale skin. He admired the curve of her small breasts and the sexy bump in her nose, and imagined another dragon claiming her.

Hot rage shot through him, and before he could stop himself, he let out a small jet of flame from his nostrils. It flared red and yellow before it vanished.

Cadence didn’t notice. She was staring off at the city skyline, standing out in sharp relief against the setting sun. After a long, long moment, she looked back at him. “How did you find me here?” she asked, her voice distant and sad.

“I was trying to find you. The waiter told me you’d left in a cab. I called the cab company, and they insisted they hadn’t sent a cab to your area, so I went out looking for you.”

“Well, thank you for that.” She looked at the dead man’s burned body and shuddered. “I can’t imagine what would have happened if you hadn’t come.”

“Anyway,” he said. “I wanted to tell you the reason I reacted that way to the waitress. She didn’t just wander by and spill that soup by accident. She’d been hitting on me all afternoon – even followed me into the men’s room.”

“She did
not
.” Cadence’s eyes flashed angrily and went reptilian for the briefest moment – blue, with vertical black slits for pupils.

Was she jealous? And why did he like the idea so much?

“Oh yes she did. Offered to show me a good time right there in the bathroom stall, if I could see my way to leaving a very generous tip. I threw her out, and she came by my table and dropped a napkin with her number on it on my lap. When she approached you, I saw her deliberately spill the soup on you.”

“Then your reaction was completely understandable,” she said. “I appreciate you letting me know. It was just that between the way you treated Daisy when I first got to the restaurant and the way you reacted with the waitress, I assumed you were…well, a rich, condescending jerk. Not my type.”

He nodded. “I can see where I gave that impression. I really did think that Daisy was your employee. You haven’t been around dragon clans, so our ways are going to take some getting used to. The Dominus and his family are dragon royalty, and there is a certain formality maintained between us and our servants. It’s not meant to be rude, it’s simply tradition.”

“I understand. Not that it matters, I guess, because of the whole fire and ice thing. Damn it.”

“I know,” he sighed. “This is probably a very girlish thing for me to say, but I was already picking out names for our dragonlings.”

“Whoa.” She held up her hands. “You’re not at all afraid of commitment, are you?”

He flashed her a rueful smile. “After having spent approximately a hundred years waiting for the right woman…no, I am not.”

She glanced at the crispy dead guy and sighed.

“You know, you probably shouldn’t have fried him like that.”

He let out a snort of contempt. “What, you mean I should have just said naughty, naughty as he was shooting at me, and then let him go with a good scolding? After he kidnapped you?”

“Good God, no. I just meant we have no chance to interrogate him now. I’d like to know who went to so much trouble to abduct me.”

Orion’s lip curled in an approving smile.

She had a warrior’s spirit. He really, really liked her.

Wasn’t it possible that fire and ice could meet – and mate?

“So, who was your father, anyway?” he asked.

She made a face. “Geoffrey Chatham.”

Of course. That was just how his night was going. “Geoffrey Chatham. Well, that is even more awkward, if possible.”

“Why?”

“A hundred years ago, he killed my father.”

Her jaw dropped. “Oh. Could this get any worse?”

He considered. “Nope. Probably not. I don’t see how.”

“I don’t know much about what happened back then. Maude told me a little bit about it, although I haven’t caught up on my dragon clan history yet.”

“I certainly don’t hold it against you personally,” Orion said. “There was a contested silver mine whose ownership wasn’t clear. Half a dozen dragons, including my uncle and my father and dragons from other clans, chose to battle over it. My father was very strong, but after battling several other dragons, he was weakened.”

She fixed him with a narrow-eyed scowl. “Wait a minute. Maude did tell me about you, she just didn’t mention your clan by name. You’re the ones who are responsible for our family being nicknamed the Cheat-hams?”

He scowled. “Deservedly. Your father didn’t dare take on my father until my father was already weak.”

She put her hands on her hips. “You know, that’s an awfully convenient—”

“Quiet!” he snapped at her.

“Excuse you?” she said indignantly. Feisty. Strong. Unafraid of anything, even him.

Unfortunately, he’d snapped at her for a reason. Far off in the distance, he saw a massive form, pale against the deepening night-blue of the sky, flapping its wings and heading their way. Ice dragon. Coming for her.

“Incoming,” he said. “I need to get you out of here.”

“You still want to help me?” Cadence asked, surprised.

It surprised him too. He could just let this dragon take her. She was an ice dragon, and a Chatham; what was she to him?

Everything
, his treacherous dragon whispered.
She is everything. She is ours.

Of course, if he took her back to his castle, it would be a major insult to the Chathams. Like extending the big middle claw at them and shoving it in their face.

“Help keep you from the ice dragons?” He grinned fiercely. “Why not? I don’t hold a grudge against you, but the same doesn’t go for your clan. This will be like spitting fire in their faces. Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “I’m going to shift, you’re going to climb on my back, and you’re going to throw your arms around my neck and hold on for dear life. Unless you can fly?”

She snorted. “I can’t even get scaly. I fail at dragon.”

He called to his beast and let its power flow through him, overtaking him. His wings sprang from his back and his skin melted away, giving way to scales. His claws curved, biting holes in the asphalt. He flattened out on the ground so she could climb on top of him.

She scrambled onto his back and clung to his neck. He relished the sensation of her body pressed against his, her strong arms hugging him.

He flapped his wings and rose into the sky, carefully. She was between his wings, a comforting warm weight, and he was very careful to stay horizontal as he flew. He headed back towards the city.

The other dragon was very close now, and it sent a blast of frost their way. He flew lower and just barely managed to avoid it, but he couldn’t dive or maneuver effectively with Cadence on his back. He felt the sudden chill in the air as he beat his wings faster, desperate to get Cadence to the city. To safety.

The dragon was close behind him. He rose, wheeled around, and sent a blast of fire at it, scorching the air. It reared back, and he smelled burning flesh; he’d caught the tendrils that draped beardlike beneath the dragons’ chin.

The dragon responded with another blast of frost that caught one of his wings, searing it with biting cold. Instantly his wing stiffened and icicles formed, dripping off the edge.

Gritting his teeth against the pain, he struggled to stay aloft. He was more than a match for the dragon, but he couldn’t risk throwing Cadence off.

Instead, he flew as fast as he could, with each flap of his left wing sending searing pain through his body. He flooded the wing with a wave of heat from deep inside himself, and the ice melted off and turned to steam, but the damage to his flesh had already been done.

The dragon stayed right on his tail, and he flew lower, in case it made him fall. He felt Cadence’s arms gripping him like iron, and he risked dodging, flying higher and then lower and maneuvering as much as he dared.

Cars were beneath them now, honking their horns and scattering in panic to either side of the road. The ice dragon sent another arctic blast his way, and it caught his tail, sending an ache right up his spine. Frost formed on the road and the cars, and several of them skidded out, slamming into each other.

Orion cursed to himself. People feared dragons enough as it was; forcing a battle like this was sheer idiocy.

As soon as he got back to the city, he landed in the police station parking lot. Cadence tumbled off him, and he shifted back into human form and stood there naked, his arm and his butt pulsing with agony. He rubbed his arm, scowling. He’d heal, but it would take a few days before the ache was gone completely.

The ice dragon shot off into the sky, wings flapping madly, and let out one last mighty blast that sent snow swirling down on them.

A police officer stormed up, furious. He slipped on a puddle of ice and barely caught himself by grabbing a light pole.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he roared. “How dare you fight in a human zone? If you’d crashed, you could have killed dozens of people.”

To say nothing of himself and Cadence, Orion thought. But, fair enough, he understood the human’s anger.

“I was attacked,” he said, rubbing his arm, which throbbed and pulsed. It was blackened and blistered, but he could see the healing starting already. “I did not start it, and as soon as we were approaching the city, I did not fire back at him. I can assure you that this will be reported to the Dragon Elders immediately.”

“Damn straight it will,” the man snapped at him.

Orion glanced over at Cadence, who was swaying where she stood and gingerly patting her frazzled hair. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“Whoo. Let’s go on that ride again!” She managed a smile, but looked as if she were about to puke.

Orion leaned in closer to her. “Listen. As you know, dragons are as rich as hell and have endless resources. They’ll keep coming after you. You won’t be safe going back to your house. You should come home with me.”

“Are you sure? It looks like that would be an open call for the ice dragons to declare war.”

“Let them,” Orion said with a fierce grin. “Next time I meet them, you’ll be safely in my castle and they’ll be scaly shish-kabob.”