Kiss of a Dragon(26)

“I doubt that very much.” The smooth confidence in his voice made her wonder if he would go all dragon-crazy on someone if they tried to take his fancy car.

Before she could ask, their dragon driver—Lucian had introduced him as Cinaed—had opened the door for her. She scrambled out and reflexively glanced around. Her office was, of necessity, in a pretty downtrodden part of Seattle. She couldn’t afford the rent in the nicer business districts, and she knew better than to set up shop where the downtown shifter gangs had staked out their territory, so that left the small strip where the junkies hid out in the alleys, and the businesses had mostly fled. Rent was cheap. She had iron bars on the windows and a roll down lock-up on the door, plus a broken security camera perched above it, just to frighten away the ones who had some sense. It wasn’t much to look at, but the low rent kept her in business—her clients didn’t have much either.

Cinaed looked like he was on high-alert as he held the door for Lucian. “I don’t care for the looks of this, my liege,” he said quietly.

My liege? It spun her head how these dragon shifters talked.

Lucian pulled in a breath. “No demons, at least none that I can scent at the moment.” He looked Cinaed full in the face. “You’re not to leave her side, even for an instant.”

“Understood.” Cinaed closed the door of the limo. He was dressed in business clothes—a starched white shirt, skinny black tie, and tailored pants—but his hair was long, falling past his shoulders, and the scruff on his face was halfway between five o’clock shadow and sexy beard-in-the-making. And with that vaguely-Irish accent and deep green eyes, he looked more like a rakish Highlander than a Seattle dot-com-er. Were all dragon shifters drop-dead gorgeous? Lucian’s brother, Leonidas, was the same way—intensely masculine and sexual—but he’d just pestered her for questions about her background, where she came from and what she did for work. Her body didn’t react to either of them the way it lost its senses whenever Lucian was around.

“Are you seriously going to leave the car here unattended?” she asked Lucian and Cinaed, who were both eyeing the peeling paint and chipped cinderblock of her office entrance. Truthfully, the harsh light of the streetlamp hid most of the flaws—it looked worse during the day. It used to be a shoe-shine place, a million years ago when this part of Seattle wasn’t a vacant lot with more junkies and boarded-up businesses per square foot than any other part of the city.

“It’ll be fine.” Cinead stalked toward her office, going ahead of her like he was making sure it was safe. He took a position by the door, still glancing down the sidewalk as if someone might leap out of the alley and attack them. Although it hadn’t been far from here that she had been attacked and dragged into an alley, so she supposed his concern was warranted.

Lucian waved his hand at the limo and whispered something under his breath.

The car disappeared.

Arabella stared hard at the spot, but there was absolutely nothing there. “That’s… a really good trick.” She glanced around the street, but there was no one to notice that Lucian had just pulled a Houdini with his stretch limo.

He took her by the elbow, his hand hot on her skin, and urged her toward the door. “I’m more concerned about you being on the street. Shall we go inside?”

“Don’t you have a date to get to?” she asked, but she strode toward the door. She knocked because along with losing her phone the night of the attack, she’d also dropped her bag with her keys, wallet, and the few items she carried when she went to work. All of that must have ID’d her at the scene when the police had arrived. “You don’t want to be late,” she said, although Lucian didn’t seem in any hurry.

“Once I know you’re secure, I’ll leave Cinaed to watch over you.” He stopped his scanning of the street to settle his gaze more softly on her. “I won’t be gone too long.”

“Don’t tell her that,” Arabella said, wrinkling up her forehead.

That brought a smile to his face just as the door opened. She had called ahead so Rachel would meet them there and open up the place.

“Hey, girl!” Rachel stepped back from the door to let her in. “Did you kick that virus’s—” She stopped to gape at Cinaed leading the way into the office, scanning the cramped front room with its ratty couch and battered metal receptionist desk. The door that led to Arabella’s office was slightly ajar, showing the desk with their sole computer, another ancient sofa, and a scuffed wooden chair that served as her counseling room for meeting with clients.