It just wouldn’t be her.
She’d already learned her lesson about hot men and how they lied. Hotness was no guarantee of anything, least of all that a man was a decent person. The kind that wouldn’t hurt you. Her body might lust after him, but her body was the most stupid part about her. And every single time she’d given some good-looking hunk of masculine meat a chance with her heart, he’d simply torn it to shreds. And the bruising hadn’t ended there.
Lucian stopped at the door on the second level of his apartment in the sky. “Is this shifter dating service on the phone? Or the computer?” he asked as he slid open the door.
Inside was a room with more of the high-end touches she’d seen below—understated elegant white decor, lush green plants in steel vases, and a wall-sized TV screen—but the centerpiece was a giant, circular bed with an equally large mirror on the ceiling above it.
She swallowed and stared at the bed. “WildLove is an app you can access on your phone. Or on a tablet.” This clearly was Lucian’s bedroom, although it was bigger than her dingy apartment on the down-on-your-luck side of Seattle. Which was all she could afford on her practically non-existent salary, doing the work that she did.
“I have a tablet in here.” He strode into the room, moving with a strong, masculine power that, when juxtaposed next to the bed, was making her a little weak in the knees. Weak in the knees? Jesus Christ. He was just a man. Well, not just a man—he was a dragon shifter man of unholy hotness—but merely being in a bedroom with him shouldn’t be sending her into convulsions of wanton desire. Of course, being near the bed wasn’t really required for that, either—she felt the same way anytime he was near.
Cursing her body’s reaction to him, but with a forced smile on her face, she managed to move out of the doorway and into the room. She hung back from the bed and watched him as he dug through a modern, steel-trimmed dresser and came up with a tablet. He motioned for her to come sit next to him. On that bed? Oh, for fuck’s sake.
She bit her lip and told her lady parts not to get excited about this. Nothing was happening here. In fact, the only women getting lucky with Lucian Smoke were going to be the ones they found on the WildLove app.
Arabella settled next to him, and for the love of God, he leaned into her. She froze for a moment, wondering what he was doing, but he had simply braced his hand against the bed behind her so he could lean over and hold the tablet in front of her. He wasn’t making a pass at her, not that she wanted him to. Okay, maybe she wanted him to, but that was just her hormones talking. Any woman would be affected by the overwhelming hotness of this man.
“All right, you’re going to have to step me through this,” he said, voice soft with his nearness. He gave her a small, sheepish smile. “It’s been a while for me. And I’ve never approached a female, without being face-to-face.”
She nodded and tried to pretend the fact that she could feel the soft exhale of his breath nearly touching her skin wasn’t affecting her. “Well, it’s not like I’ve done a lot of this, either. But I know how it works. I’ve had to get some of my clients’ profiles purged after their boyfriend started stalking them and hacking their accounts.”
Lucian’s pale amber eyes darkened, and a flash of gold showed. “You’ve encountered a lot of monsters, haven’t you? The kind that wear human skin.”
She startled a little, a chill flowing through her. What did he know about her? Then she realized… “Yeah, like that guy in the alley. I see a lot of assholes in my line of work. There are so many men who just want sex. Or they want to own a woman. Control her. Even to the point of force. At worst, they’d rather kill her than let someone else have her. Or let her escape.”
Lucian nodded, the dark glower of his eyes not for her. “There are dragons who are no better than beasts. And men who are no better than dragons. I’ve been tempted on more than one occasion to dip my talons in their blood.”
Jesus Lord... the way he talked sometimes. It sent a shiver through her. But she understood the sentiment completely. “Seriously, fuck those guys. I’m glad we agree on that. Because whoever this woman is—the one I’m going to help you find for a mate—I want to know you’re going to treat her right. I need to know this, Lucian. You need to promise me that I’m not just turning over someone in my place that you’re going to do some fucked up kind of shit with. Am I clear?” She wasn’t sure how much she could believe whatever he was going to say. Men lied. They lied all the time, especially to women. Especially to get what they wanted. But at least she could state her intentions up front. She would do what was necessary to get out of this situation and get back to her life, but she wasn’t going to sell out another woman to do it.