“You can’t possibly know that,” I protested, trying to appeal to him, but he ignored me, and just kept pushing me along a dark hallway until Guillaume called out that the safe was in the room to the left.
“I know you are a competent Charmer,” Constantine said calmly, his amber-brown eyes so bright they almost seemed to glow with an inner light.
Dragon fire, I said to myself, shivering slightly. I’d only seen dragon fire once, when the dragon I’d been dating became aroused, and the experience had not been a positive one. Absently, I rubbed my hand, which still bore the scar of a burn. “I appreciate that you’re so confident, but I just don’t think—”
“Do not think about what you will be doing,” Constantine said, opening the door to the left and with a hand on my back, escorted me inside. “Just do it.”
“You sound like a horrible mutation of Yoda,” I grumbled, but my gaze went instantly to the massive black metal safe lurking in a corner of the office. “And you’re misguided if you think I’m going to be able to Charm a curse without first getting a good look at it.”
Guillaume hurried forward, attempting to block the safe by inserting his body between us and it. “One moment, please! The Venediger said nothing about you attempting to break the curse while you are on the grounds of Goety and Theurgy, nothing at all. No indeed, she did not.”
“What harm can it do?” I said, about to point out that breaking a curse didn’t affect the environment. Before I could do so, Constantine took my hand and strolled forward until he had Guillaume pinned against the safe.
“Bee assures me that the ring will be secure so long as it is within the confines of this club. Therefore, she will use it here. Open the safe.”
“The Venediger has rules, many rules, very strict rules about magic being performed at G&T—” Guillaume squeaked, squishing himself tighter against the safe.
“Open the safe.” Constantine’s eyes lit brighter. I jerked to the side when I noticed the ring of fire around his feet, fire that spread outward, licking the tips of Guillaume’s toes.
The little man shrieked and tried to stamp it out.
“I dislike repeating myself,” Constantine said, his eyes now shining like sunlight through amber. “Open it or suffer my wrath.”
“The Venediger—”
“OPEN IT!” Constantine roared, making both Guillaume and me jump.
He opened it. He complained the entire time that he was going to have to report us to the Venediger, and then we’d know what real trouble was, but neither Constantine nor I paid him much attention. Constantine was staring intently at the safe, and I… well, I was staring at Constantine. I knew from previous experience just how bossy and dominant dragons could be, but Constantine was different from the other dragons I’d met. He was forceful, but it was a comforting sort of forceful. Protective, almost.
In a fanciful sort of way, it made me feel cherished. And definitely aware of him as a man.
I shook away the sudden smutty thoughts that followed that revelation, and focused on the situation in front of me. Inside the safe was a collection of small boxes, the usual legal-looking documents, a pale metal sword, two long gold chains, a couple of pretty crystals, and a small green-stone statue that bore a strong resemblance to a fertility figure.
“That is it?” Constantine asked when Guillaume handed me a small onyx box. I opened it to reveal a ring of pale sand-colored horn chased in gold. “It is… uninspiring.”
“I admit it’s a bit anticlimactic,” I agreed, putting the ring on the palm of my hand. “But appearances are often deceiving, and all that. I’m still surprised that Aoife let me have the ring after making such a big deal about it.”
“The dragon mate said that the ring may not let you use it, indeed, it may not, and if it does not, then I am to return the ring to the safe, so you will let me know what transpires. The onus of its preservation is upon you, indeed it is, and thus I wash my hands of it.”
Constantine’s nose twitched, and I remembered from my time with the dragon boyfriend how gold had struck him like a powerful aphrodisiac.
“The gold is of a good quality. Very pure and pleasant.” Constantine plucked the ring off my palm, squinted at it for a few seconds, and then before I could warn him, stuck it on his index finger.
“Wait!” I cried, grabbing at his hand at the same time that Guillaume, with a moan, dropped to his knees and covered his head. “Don’t do that!”
“Why not?” Constantine waggled his fingers at me. “Did you fear I would become all powerful and destroy you? If so, I remind you that I risked not just the success of this mission but my own personal well-being by returning to save you from Asmodeus.”
I held out my hand for the ring, nervous about it being out of my protection. “I should hope you wouldn’t become a raving lunatic with it.”
“Please,” Guillaume moaned, peeking through his fingers at us. “Take it from here. The Venediger will have my head if anything more happens to the club.”
We both ignored him. “The ring itself isn’t evil,” I continued, addressing Constantine. “But it can heighten existing or even latent powers.”
“I am a dragon. I do not need my power heightened,” he said simply, plucking the ring off and dropping it back onto my waiting hand. “Such things seldom have an effect on dragonkin.”
“That was a fascinating peek into the makeup of dragons, but not really pertinent at the moment.” I closed my fingers around the ring. “Now, if you don’t mind me examining you, I can get a better idea of just how the curse is made.”
Guillaume moaned again, and clutched his head, making his hair stand out in spiky clumps. “I’m a dead man, I am indeed, dead as dead can be when the Venediger discovers that I’ve allowed you to perform your ceremony here. I will be a former Guillaume, nothing but a memory of Guilluame.”
“Do not be such a drama llama,” Constantine told him, and was about to leave the office when I stopped him with a puzzled look.
“What?” he asked.
“Drama llama? I think you mean drama queen.”
“The phrase as I spoke it is correct,” he said loftily. It was then that I noticed his eyes weren’t truly amber, but were more amber with brown, gold, and black flecks dashed around the irises. His lashes were darker and thicker than he had any right to, the sort of lashes most women would kill for. But it was the tiny spray of lines radiating from the outer edges of his eyes that made a little ball of warmth glow deep in my belly.
I’d never seen a dragon with laugh lines before. It was strangely appealing, and very sexy. “I think you’ll find I’m right, and the phrase is drama queen.”
“Just because you are mortal and raised in this time does not mean I am completely clueless,” he argued. “I am quite conversant with Internet memes and social phrases. I Twatter. I read the Wikipodium. I am as hip as they come.”
“All right, Guillaume, we’ll leave your mistress’s precious office, so you can stop wringing your hands and moaning.”
“Just like a drama llama,” Constantine added without looking at me, heading for the door.
I tsked and shook my head at his back, but said nothing until we reentered the main room of the club.
Six
“Now you will break the curse,” Constantine announced. “Do you need anything special for it? Do you need to inscribe a circle? Draw wards? Call the quarters?”
“No, all I need to do is hold the ring, the talisman that you stole, and unmake the curse. But I do need to examine it first.”
“How long will that take?” he asked, frowning slightly.
I gave a one-shouldered shrug. “As long as it needs. Normally I’d like a few days, but since you’re being Rushy McRusherton about the whole thing, I’ll try to pick out the best unmaking path as I go along.” I glanced around, then took him by the wrist and pulled him away from the windows, into the darkest part of the room. I gestured to the floor, and sat on my knees, my hands on my thighs, as I tried to clear my mind.
“Why are you taking me here?” he asked, sitting down with his feet flat on the floor, and knees bent. Beside us, the dark mahogany wood of the bar, shaped like a U, hid us from the sunlight streaming in from the bank of windows.
“Because the bar blocks the light.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to be where you can see?”
“Not in this case.” I shook out my hands, closing my eyes for a few seconds while I attuned myself with the part of my brain that was so very good at unraveling knots and mazes. “Since the curse is bound to all dragons, the pattern of it will be visible on your body. Faint, but visible, and oddly enough, the darker our surroundings, the easier it’ll be for me to see. Okay, I think I’m ready.”
He watched with interest as I opened my eyes and leaned forward onto my hands, my gaze focused on his shirt. “What is it you seek to find?”
“A curse,” I said absently, my eyes narrowing to try to catch the glimmer of the curse that I knew must show on him if I looked at it just right, “can take many shapes, but they all resemble Celtic knots, some more intricate than others, but that’s what they remind me of. Drat.”
I sat back, rubbing my lower lip as I thought.
“What is drat?” He looked down at himself. “I do not see any stains or other markings, although the wrinkles are due to you forcing me into the portal—”
“I’m not dratting your shirt. I’m dratting the fact that I can’t see the curse shining through the material. Um. This is going to sound a bit crazy—”
“I will take it off,” he said quickly, pulling his shirt off over his head, a suitably wicked glint to his eyes.
I blinked for a moment at the sight of his chest, all glorious with soft, golden hair, swells of pectorals that suddenly made my mouth feel dry, on down to the thick layers of muscles that lay just beneath soft, satiny skin.
“Can you see it now?”
“Hrm?”
“Perhaps you need to be closer to see.” His voice was almost a purr.
I shivered a little, and swallowed a couple of times, telling myself to stop being so silly. I’d seen bare-chested men before, even handsome bare-chested men. There was no reason to find my mind wandering down a path where I got to touch all that chest with my fingers and lips and even my own naked chest… “What?”
“You’ll be able to see better if you are closer,” he repeated, and this time I got caught up in the heat simmering in the depths of his eyes. That and his voice, which hummed inside me, making me feel warm and needy.
And then I realized that I was guilty of ogling the man, outright ogling him (accompanied by the almost overwhelming desire to lick and touch and taste), and I had to remind myself that I was a professional Charmer, and he was a cursed man, and just because he was so sexy he could drive a saint to distraction, it didn’t mean I had to give in.
“Sorry, was just, uh, communing with my inner self. That’s what we Charmers do when we see a chest. Er… curse. Yes, curse. So. Let’s take a look at yours.”
“I thought that’s what you were already doing,” he said, his golden brown eyebrows arching in a way that I found highly seductive. “Where is this curse? I cannot see anything.”
“Not everyone can.” I gave myself another mental reprimand at finding eyebrows alluring, and leaned forward again to try to find the pattern of the curse on his torso. At first I saw nothing but his delectable chest, but out of the corner of my eye, a little black curve flashed into being for a moment before fading away. I scooted forward, and squinted again. “I thought I saw one of the twisted edges… no, it’s gone now.”
Constantine rubbed a hand down his chest, and at first I thought he was deliberately attempting to arouse me, but his eyes had lost their simmering heat look, and were now filled with genuine curiosity. “What does the curse look like? Why can’t I see it if I am one of the dragons cursed by it?”
“Like I said, not everyone can see curses, not even those affected by it.” I clicked my tongue against my teeth in frustration. Every time I thought I had a glimpse of the curse, it faded to nothing. “I hate to ask this—I assure you that I do so in the strictest professional sense—but would you mind if I got closer?”
The corners of his mouth curled in a way that sent a little zing of pleasure through me. “I invited you to do so twice.”
“You did?”
“Yes. Just a few minutes ago.” The heat was back in his eyes, making me feel like I was sitting in the full sun on the middle of the equator. At noon.
“Oh. I… uh… must have missed that.” I cleared my throat, which was strangely tight. “My interest is purely professional, I assure you.”
His smile grew and he moved his legs so they formed a V, then gestured at his chest. “Many women have sought to touch me and tease me, but none have ever done so professionally.” He thought for a moment. “Well, there was a harlot in Alsace, but that was in the year 1430, and she refused remuneration the following morning.”
“No one likes a braggart,” I said, a bit breathless despite the fact that I had sternly told myself to ignore the lovely, warm, slightly spicy scent that seemed to drift up from his bare chest. Nor would I look at his eyes. Or his shoulders. Or even, heaven help me, the thighs on either side. Feeling as if my clothing was suddenly several sizes too small, I knee-walked forward until I was between his legs, my nose now a scant inch away from his gloriously naked upper parts.
“I do not need to brag. My past speaks for itself.” He took a deep breath, causing his chest to rise and bump against my nose. For a second, I thought seriously of turning my head slightly and licking the pert little nipple that resided in the soft golden-brown hair. Instead, I tipped my head back and glared at him. “Stop that. And don’t deny you did it on purpose, because I know you did. Just sit there and let me try to find this curse.”
“Where does it start?” he asked, his breath ruffling my hair.
I ordered myself to stop thinking of him as a desirable (if annoying as hell) male, and to focus on the curse. “I’m not sure. The start isn’t as important as the end. I have to unravel it, you see. Ah. There it is.”
“Where?”
I placed a finger on his right side, below his last rib. “That’s where it curls over onto itself, completing the pattern. If I trace it back to the origin point, then I will have a good idea of how it’s made, and how I can best unmake it.”
“Interesting. I’ve never been cursed before. Damned, yes. Accused of many crimes, absolutely. Suffered untold torments, of course. But never cursed.”
I tried to follow the ethereal black pattern as it danced in and out of my view, but it was impossible without some way of marking where I was. “I’m sorry, I’m going to have to touch you.” I gave him a long, cool look. “It is purely in the interests of identifying the curse, and not because you hold an intense sexual attraction that no woman can refuse, as I see you are about to suggest.”
“You see incorrectly,” he said simply, watching with interest as I placed my fingertip back on the end of the curse. “I was going to suggest that you get naked so that we both could enjoy ourselves.”
I pinched the skin on his side. “Not going to happen, dragon boy.”
“Dragon man.”
“Just remember I’m a professional, and don’t get any bright ideas. And stop doing that thing with your eyebrows. It’s not affecting me in the least.”
“What thing with my eyebrows?”
“Arching them in a way that makes me want to—never mind. Just stop it. Oh, where’s the talisman you said you got out?”
He reached for his jacket and extracted a small onyx box, handing it to me.
“No, I can’t touch it. Its power has to flow through the curse. Just set it on your stomach, so one corner is touching the curse.”
He glanced down at himself, looked thoughtful for a moment, then laid back, his hands pillowing the back of his head, and the box covering his belly button. “You may proceed.”
“I
am not at all moved by you lying here in front of me,” I said primly, and started at the end of the curse again. It swirled up and across his chest, forming an elaborate pattern of swoops and double-back loops, all of which I trailed with my finger. My fingertip grew warmer as I did so, but I assumed it was friction until the curse, tired of weaving back and forth on Constantine’s chest, swung up to his collarbone, then curlicued along his neck.
I was deep in the curse, on the left side of his neck, my nose almost brushing his hair when my finger suddenly burst into flames.
I stared at it in horror for a moment before I realized that the fire wasn’t burning my skin. It was warm, yes, but warm in a way that I’d never felt before, a heat that left me yearning for more. “Oh! I appear to be on fire. But it doesn’t seem to be burning me.”
One of his eyebrows rose. “It is dragon fire.”
“It can’t be. Dragon fire hurts when it touches you. Or rather, it hurts mortal beings like me.”
“Mine doesn’t.”
My gaze met his, and instantly I felt as if I were about to fall into an amber pool. He took my hand and tipped my finger into his mouth, swirling his tongue around it in a way that should have been disgusting and gross, but in truth was the complete opposite.
“Stop it,” I said, reluctantly pulling my finger from his mouth.
“I was merely showing you it was indeed dragon fire, and not of a mundane origin.”
“Mundane as in mortal?” I shook my head. “I knew that much. I’ve never had my finger suddenly burst into normal everyday flames.” Covertly, I rubbed my finger on my pants. It wasn’t that I wanted to get rid of the sensation of it being in his mouth, but I felt like I had to regain control of the situation. “Regardless, I don’t know how that happened, but I apologize. I was almost to the end of the curse, too.”
He crossed one ankle over the other and watched me from half-closed eyes. “You will start over, then?”
I moved restlessly, irritated at myself for being so easily distracted from what was important. “I think since I was so close to the end, I’ll just take a chance that the pattern doesn’t do anything odd right before it gets to the starting point.” I hesitated a moment, frowning at the small black box. “I really would like to have longer to examine the curse. I wouldn’t want anything to… happen.”