DragonGames (6 page)

When they reached the rope, Tielo freed her
arm and she felt the loss of his touch. Pierce opened the velvet gate, guiding
her to a seat directly across from the dealer’s chair.

Immediately Jubal sat to her left, with
Hakon taking the other side an instant before Roque, with his pirate looks,
reached the chair. Once again she caught a flash at the corner of her eye. This
time when she looked, she saw a small haze of smoke, as though it’d accompanied
Roque’s fiery protest.

Amusement crowded out more of her
trepidation. She was tempted to say
nice trick
, but knew it would ruin
the moment and draw them out of their role-playing.

Tielo sat to Pierce’s left. Too visible.
Too distracting. The only way she stood a chance of staying in the game, much
less winning, would be to ignore him.

When the others had taken their seats,
Pierce said, “Gentlemen, are we in agreement, each coin represents one thousand
dollars?”

Around the table came murmured acceptance
as racks containing gold were presented by men who were either playing the role
of dragon servants or were trusted club employees. Lyra wasn’t sure which, only
that she thought her heart might just stop when the maître d’ bent down,
casually asking her, “Do you have a preference?”

He held a tray in front of her containing
sample coins. Canadian Maple Leaf, South African Kruggerrand, United States
Buffalo and Eagle. China Panda, Australian Kangaroo and Lunar, as well as a
couple she didn’t recognize.

Her hand trembled as she picked up the
Maple Leaf. These weren’t the small-issue versions, but the coins containing a
troy ounce. Their real worth would fluctuate based on market factors, but there
was a modern-day gold rush taking place, and right now, the coin she held was
worth upwards of sixteen or seventeen hundred dollars.

“The American coins,” she said in little
more than a soft croak. Then, because she’d always loved the black-and-white
bears, she added, “And the Pandas.”

The maître d’ straightened after she’d
placed the Maple Leaf back on the tray. He motioned to someone and a moment
later, several glittering towers of gold coins stood on green felt in front of
her.

The sight of them made her lightheaded. The
thought of using them, gambling them away, twisted her stomach in a knot. What
was she doing here?

Pierce caught her eye and winked. “It’s all
pretend money as far as you’re concerned. Enjoy this chance to bring a bunch of
dragons to their knees.”

Chapter Four

If only it were all pretend, Lyra thought.
Her stake alone would help the Ochoa family get back into a home rather than
having eight people living in a motel room. It would help keep their restaurant
going.

But to win everything at the table… That
could mean reclaiming their house and covering all the medical bills. It might
even mean setting up a fund to help the families of other students.

She wiped damp palms against her dress and
tried to assume a poker face. It’d been a lot easier sitting in front of the
computer screen. There she could be coolly rational and completely logical.
There she could tell herself it was all about the intersection of mathematics
and human behavior with a little luck and psychology thrown in.

Her dreams of doing something big,
something really good for a family she’d come to care deeply about, seemed like
high aspirations. Alone in her apartment, she might have feared she’d catch
gambling fever because of her genetics, but here, she felt creeping terror that
the stacks and stacks of gold coins might fill her with a raw, covetous desire
that would push into her everyday life and leave her discontent.

“A reminder, gentleman,” Pierce said,
picking up the cards after having shuffled them. “In the event you crash and
burn, either at the hands of your competition or those belonging to Lyra, you
must leave the game,
unless
our beautiful guest finds the thought of
your absence too distressing. In that case, you may buy in for a second time
with another one-hundred-coin stake. Blinds are five and ten.”

Lyra looked down then, forcing herself to
count the Eagles, Pandas and Buffalo in front of her. One hundred coins, not
worth the one hundred thousand dollars stated in the invitation, but more like
one hundred and sixty or seventy thousand. What kind of men rounded downward so
easily?

Pierce dealt the first two cards, called
“hole cards” in Texas Hold’em. With barely a glance, she
folded when play reached her rather than place the minimum bet. She couldn’t
concentrate. She couldn’t bring herself to pick up the required ante, ten gold
coins, worth roughly sixteen thousand dollars, and casually put that much money
into play.

It didn’t deter the men. They bet big,
aggressively, as if the competition wasn’t for the gold, but to knock their
opponents out and force them to leave the table.

Tielo folded when the betting reached him.
His expression was carefully blank, a true poker face. Still, insidious heat
crept into her, building with the looks sent her way by the other men,
including the one Roque gave her as he pulled the great pile of chips toward
him after revealing he had a straight.

“You inspire me to win, beautiful Lyra,” he
told her, gaining baleful glances from several men and another flash of
supposed fire with accompanying smoke from Jubal at her left.

Their acting relaxed her, but not enough to
enter the next hand. She folded, offering Jubal a smile when it was his turn to
bet. He doubled the number of coins he’d picked up.

The play moved to Odion, then Cael, then
Takeo. She considered their names, as well as those of the other dragons at the
table. Zephyr, Soren and Jubal. Roque, Hakon, and Tielo. Surely they weren’t
real?

“So you’re all dragons,” she said, deciding
that getting to know them better, talking, might make it easier for her to
pretend the Pandas and Eagles and Buffalo stacked in front of her were just
chips. “Is your color significant?”

“Only in that the combination of
silver-and-gold denotes superiority when it comes to males,” the dark-skinned
Takeo said, causing Pierce to snort.

She shook her head, amused. “Let me guess,
under occupation, you all list
treasure hunting
.”

They smiled and laughed. “Too true,” Zephyr
said. “And nothing is more treasured than a mate.”

The play reached Soren after Tielo folded
for a second time and Zephyr increased the size of the bet.

“My mate will lack for nothing,” Soren
said, staying in the game with a slide of coins.

Cael, who sat directly across from him,
nodded in agreement. “And mine won’t work outside of the house.”

Soren’s smile held a sharp edge. “I can see
how keeping you happy would be work enough. Though my mate, my wife, won’t need
to busy herself away from home either.”

It was said with such seriousness that Lyra
didn’t think either man was simply role-playing. In fact, she got the distinct
impression they might actually consider this courtship conversation, and
believe staying at home to tend to their needs would appeal to her.

“That attitude is a bit archaic in this day
and age,” she said, directing the comment with a glance to Soren at her right
and then Cael to her left.

The latter shrugged. “I can afford to keep
a female in luxury.”

“And all her attention on you,” Soren said.
“Where it belongs.”

It was Odion who claimed the pot after
flop, turn card and river were on the table, forming the communal pool the
players used in place of, or in concert with, their two hole cards in order to
create the best five-card hand.

The dealer button moved to the spot in
front of Soren, though it was Pierce who shuffled and dealt, sending her a
smile of encouragement when she looked at her hole cards and saw the ace of
hearts.

Pretend they’re just gold-colored chips
, she told herself, using the admonishment to draw enough strength
to separate ten Eagles from her stack and remain in the game.

“Tell us about yourself,” Jubal said,
leaning toward her after also putting chips in. He was close enough that his
rich auburn hair brushed across her arm like fine silk. “What do you do for a
living?”

“I teach.”

“Children?” Roque asked, interest gleaming
in pirate-dark eyes. It was hard not to think about what Aislinn had said, to
believe these men, who could have their pick of women, were looking for that
special one.

She fought the urge to check for Tielo’s
reaction. She couldn’t risk the distraction when she’d finally found the
courage to part with what amounted to a quarter of her yearly salary.

“I teach third grade.”

Jubal moved closer, the feel his body heat
causing her stomach to do a little flip. There was no denying she felt
attracted to him, but it was Tielo’s touch she craved.

“So you love children,” Jubal said.

She laughed at that. “Most days. It’s also
very nice to be in the company of adults.”

The round of betting ended. Pierce dealt
the three-card flop—two of diamonds, king of clubs, nine of clubs. Combining
the five, she had a pair of twos with an ace high. She matched the bet to stay
in the game when her turn came.

“Have you given any thought to how many
children you’d like to have?” Roque asked, and all the men except Pierce and
Hakon went completely still, as if her answer was of the utmost importance.

Fools!
Tielo
thought. So ready to give up their freedom and take on the ball and chain of
mate and offspring.

Not him. And yet he caught himself leaning
forward, as if he might miss her reply.

“Two is a good number.” The softness of her
smile led him to believe she thought of specific children.

“It’s a start,” Jubal said, an irritating
purr of approval in his voice, as though he already imagined her swelling with
his children.

Tielo swallowed flame rather than exhale
it, though two small tendrils of smoke escaped. Not that she noticed. She’d
made a point of looking everywhere but at him.

“A start?” she asked.

He gritted his teeth, hating the smile in
her voice and the teasing humor directed at Jubal. Couldn’t she tell the male
wasn’t right for her?

“How many children do you see yourself
fathering?”

Tielo’s cock throbbed like some unruly
student with hand raised, shouting,
pick me, pick me
.

“Ten.”

Her laugh had the others leaning farther
forward, as though she were inviting them to her lips. Didn’t she understand
she was feeding their fantasies and encouraging them to claim her by fair or
foul?

Tielo tamped his aggravation. So be it. She
created her own fate.

“Ten?” she said, not allowing the subject
to drop as she should. “I take it you haven’t considered how that could put a
serious dampener on your sex life?”

Despite himself, Tielo’s growl of protest
at the prospect of any hindrance to pleasure joined those of the others. Around
him the betting became fast, furious, the conversation spurring dragon
competitiveness.

Jubal won the hand, claiming all of Soren’s
coins as well as Cael’s. He leaned close to Lyra and it was nearly impossible
for Tielo not to react with extreme prejudice to the sight of Jubal’s hair
stroking her skin as he put his arm along the back of her chair. Violation!

Tielo was of accord with Odion, whose
furious eyes bored into Jubal, not that Jubal noticed. Nostrils flaring and
lips tightening, Tielo sent a blistering glance in Pierce’s direction but his
partner had apparently developed table blindness.

Jubal murmured in her ear, “Deny them. They
are not right for you.”

She appeared momentarily confused, until
Cael sent a charming smile her way, saying, “Talk of children momentarily
separated me from my wits. I would very much like to rejoin the game.”

Lyra glanced at all the coins in front of
the others, then at her own barely dented stack before saying no to Cael. She
gave Soren the same answer when he too asked to be allowed back into the game.

Good riddance
, Tielo thought. They weren’t right for her with their primitive,
unenlightened views about what it meant to have a mate.

The dealer button moved to Roque, forcing
Lyra to put coins at risk in what was called the big blind. Something changed
because of it, her play became more confident and her scent mirrored it. She
grew bolder round by round, hand by hand, and especially when she started
winning.

Her beauty was breathtaking when she
finally sent her first player from the table, Zephyr, who was more interested
in acquiring and cultivating exotic orchids than mastering poker. Orchids! What
kind of a dragon preferred to spend all his time with his snout buried in a
flower?

Tielo’s gaze snapped back to Lyra, caught
and held there by the fantasy of being between her thighs, face inches away
from the slick, soft petals of her woman’s flesh. Thoughts interrupted by
Jubal’s leaning in to murmur, “Soon it will be just the two of us.”

Roque laughed. “I beg to differ. And Tielo
might have something to say as well. Am I the only one to wonder at his
shockingly conservative play so far? The only conclusion I can draw is that he
does in fact want a mate.”

“Think what you will,” Tielo said,
aggravated. He sent a second blistering look at Pierce, who should have put a
stop to Jubal’s behavior well before now.

Didn’t the fey see that even now a strand
of auburn hair clung to her dress, curling against her breast like a dragon’s
tongue? If not for the covenants, and the fact she was human, one of the males
at the table would have already sent a blast of fire to eradicate it and reduce
the dress to smoldering ash in the process.

The image of her sitting naked among the
glitter of gold had him swallowing his own fiery breath. Enough! He’d learned
what he needed to in order to further refine his scheme and the rules when it
came to potential mates.

When the betting reached him, he pushed one
of his towers in, refusing to react to Hakon’s show of mirth or respond to the
knowing glance directed at him by Roque. Let them think what they would.

Play resumed. Faster, more furious, as if
by his actions he’d unleashed a maelstrom. Or perhaps the others had also
noticed the strand of Jubal’s hair left on Lyra’s clothing like a preliminary
to marking her with teeth and scent.

“What do you enjoy in your spare time,
Lyra?” Takeo asked several hands later in a bid to draw her attention, a
mistake, given his very short stack of chips.

“I love going to the beach.”

“As does Tielo,” Pierce said. “He plays
volleyball.”

She sent a glance his way. “Is he any
good?”

Tielo allowed himself the barest imagining
of her watching him play, clapping and shouting encouragement, or better yet,
joining him in the sand for the first of any number of different dragon games.

“Better to be on his team than playing
against him. He’d tell you that himself. What he wouldn’t so readily reveal is
that he has quite a collection of kites, all designed with ocean breezes in
mind.”

That brought snorts and chuckles at his
expense. It was only Lyra’s smile that turned the look he sent Pierce into a
promise of payback instead of future incineration.

“Let me guess, they’re all dragons?” she
asked.

“Mostly dragons,” Tielo growled, unable to
stop himself from sounding very much like one who had been poked and agitated.

Hakon picked up a coin, lazily walking it
through his fingers, his attention on Pierce as he said, “Next you’ll be
regaling us with the tale of how Tielo once left a fortune in pearls and gold
bars behind, and because of it, a poor village was able to pay for a visiting
doctor to treat their ills, and a herd of livestock so hunger would be a thing
of distant memory for their children.”

By the Great Shared Ancestor, evacuating
the magical artifacts had been far more important! Hakon would have done the
same. And besides, gold in that form was heavy and awkward to deal with, and
loose pearls were like pennies in trouser pockets, annoying and distracting.

He’d had enough of this. First Pierce
trying to bring about his downfall, and now one of the dragon princes trying to
polish him up and turn him into a tempting bauble for Lyra.