Dazzled: Reckless Desires - final ARC (2 page)

Stop it,
she commanded herself as she shifted the car into second gear while balancing her macchiato in the hand that rested on the steering wheel. Just thinking about him brought a irrepressible tingle to her body.

“Maybe,” was all she said out loud, though. Gabi snorted at that.

Lacey sighed to herself but didn't respond. For crying out loud, her panties were a little damp as it was, just thinking about the man. If she didn't change the subject now, she wouldn't be able to focus for the rest of the very long day she had planned at the museum that was her home away from home. The museum that of course bore the name of the very person she really needed to stop thinking about in such a totally carnal way: Sebastian Antonio Bernal, world's sexiest, playboy-iest, darkest, most unavailable man, who headlined her dirtiest dreams every single night.

The world fell away as Sebastian Bernal spread his coal black dragon wings and took flight. Beneath him, the sparkling bright lights of the city rapidly fell away as he beat his wings on the downdraft and headed south toward Los Angeles.

As he rose higher and higher, eager to get above the trapped scents of smog and fuel and all the other mingled smells of the bustling metropolitan city, he reflexively tightened his claws around the heavy object he held in them. It almost but not quite threatened to spill from his firm grasp.

He held a priceless treasure. It invigorated him more than almost anything in the world to once again have a piece of his own family's secret legacy. As a dragon shifter, this was what he lived for. As a man, this was what kept him intellectually stimulated and satisfied.

As a dragon whose personally priceless gold hoard had been diminished since before his own birth, it literally saved him.

His wings still beat steadily as he finally rose high enough in the sky to take deep breaths that weren't tainted with the nasty, toxic fumes that seem to encircle the entire globe. Sebastian's heart still raced with leftover adrenaline from having made another expensive deal on the shady black market of the underground shifter world.

"I'm letting you have that at a steal, Bernal," the mocking, oily voice echoed in his head. Sebastian's teeth tightly gnashed together with the anger that also still fueled him. "That's a sweet item I've had in my possession for about fifty years now. The only reason I'm letting you get away with it is because I know you're the only one of us who could afford what it's worth. That, and you're good at bargaining."

That statement had been the only truthful thing the other shifter, a low-life, if also rich and powerful, dragon named Malcolm Kerberos, had said all evening. Most dragon shifters were quite well-off. The old tales about dragons liking to hoard their gold were true. Even so, Sebastian Bernal stood out not only in the dragon shifter world but the entire planet. The Bernal empire was a household name, and Sebastian's net worth was known worldwide.

That brought out not only the shady crooks who wanted to shake him down for as many pennies as they could rattle out of his pockets for their pathetic trinkets, but also the big-time dealers like Malcolm, whose hoarded stolen treasures were worth more than even the slimy son-of-a-bitch knew.

Sebastian's enormous wealth also brought out a fair amount of female gold diggers. Letting the tiniest bit of irritated flame trickle out from a corner of his mouth at the ugly memories, Sebastian shook his head once to clear it. The thieving female shifter who'd managed to worm her way into his affections was an enormous, thoroughly regrettable mistake of his past. Thinking of her now would only enrage him.

The gold diggers didn't matter. Once badly burned, a thousand times shy. He was never letting another woman get close to him again. As for the shady dealers in antiquities black market? Well. Sebastian had his own way of dealing with them. Pretending to be shady himself, at least in the shifter world, had retrieved him many of the utterly priceless treasures that were worth far more than he had ever paid for them.

But Sebastian Bernal was too smart to let anyone know just how important the item he now held in his massive claws was to him. All the dealers in the booming black-market trade that stretched across all corners of the globe might know that Sebastian Bernal had money, and that he was just as willing to acquire interesting artifacts as the rest of them.

But not a single one of them knew the true provenance of the specific artifacts for which he searched with relentless intensity: family heirlooms that had been stolen from his ancestral estate over one hundred years ago. They were priceless in more ways than one, and Sebastian didn't dare let any shifter know the truth about them. Not even his curator at the Californio Rancho, the small but popular side wing at the world-class Bernal Center that was his pride and joy, knew how personally important these objects were to him.

Especially
not that particular curator. Sebastian rumbled deep inside just at the thought of her. Layers of glowing golden hair that she tightly bound up every single day. Insanely luscious curves that she kept well hidden beneath appropriately professional, if occasionally somewhat dowdy, attire that befitted an up-and-coming young museum curator. Blue eyes that snapped with intelligence and often trembled on the edge of laughter. Those stunning eyes often lit brightly with her passion for the exact same artifacts that Sebastian held most dear to his heart: the legacies of his own Californio background, a mostly long-dead history that existed today in the same former glory and wealth in only one family in the entire state.

The dragon shifter Bernal family.

To which Sebastian was the sole heir.

Naturally, no one outside the shifter world knew the Bernals were from an ancient line of shifters, hailing originally from Europe before their move across an ocean centuries ago. No, the human world simply thought the Bernal family had been the only one to ride out the vibrant past and epic downfall of the lavish wealth and holdings of the the golden state's Californio culture that slowly collapsed over a hundred years before. The Bernals had continued on with all their riches because of the one secret weapon no humans would ever know: they could shift into dragons, walk among the populace as human, and enjoy long, literally very rich lives.

Lacey Whitman appreciated Sebastian's Californio past nearly as much as he did, and it wasn't even her own past. For that alone, he'd be somewhat intrigued by the woman. Throw in her stunning curves, brilliant mind, and an indefinable something he couldn't quite decipher, and he was being driven half crazy by her.

The rumbling boom of a passing jet made Sebastian tighten his ear flaps more closely to his head as he soared on, the land beneath him now punctuated by larger dark patches as he flew southward, away from San Francisco towards the ceaseless lights of Los Angeles. The magical abilities of dragons to cloak themselves when flying had made sure that when the world turned modern, shifters in their dragon forms not only could not be seen by the naked eye, they also could not be picked up by radar and other modern marvels.

Being a dragon shifter was a damned good life.

Alone with his thoughts for the several hours it took him to fly over the somewhat dim heartland of the state, Sebastian was almost startled when the enormous glow of brightness over the L.A. basin appeared in the distance, so lost had he been in his own thoughts. Feeling utterly refreshed by the flight, he soared and swooped in a few playful patterns, basking in the strong feel of his wings and the powerful dragon body whose shape he took as often as he could.

He zoomed down closer to the earth as he soared over the bulge of the Grapevine, the unending stream of lights going up and down the interstate below him making him snort as usual at that exceedingly slow mode of transport. Surging close to the ocean, he spared a glance out over its darkness, idly wondering if any of the water dragons were out and about in the late night, cavorting in the waves. Sebastian himself was a classic dragon, which meant that while he could breathe fire, he could also swim quite well. But in general, he found swimming in the ocean distasteful. It didn't call to him nearly as much as it did water dragons, and he couldn't stay down in the depths for nearly as long as they could.

Turning his gaze back over the city, he banked down hard toward the gleaming white buildings of the Bernal Center, which came into view as he approached. They remained guarded with their special, and very expensive, dark sky-friendly lights every single night of the year. Sebastian's personal crowning jewel of the Bernal Center housed several hundred million dollars worth of priceless antiquities, art, and traveling displays. Their security was of utmost importance to him and the board.

Soaring down to his private landing spot—not that anyone else knew that it was a landing spot—on top of the building that housed his personal office, he touched down with much lighter grace than anyone would suppose from seeing such an enormous creature. It was actually a bit tricky this time, as he held the object in his front claws and couldn't use them for balancing as he usually did. Yet it was a simple enough matter to use his back legs and massive tail to calibrate his nearly soundless landing.

Smiling to himself, Sebastian carefully released the huge gold treasure to the ground, stepped back, and thought of his human form in vivid detail. He pictured himself in the power suit he'd worn to the meeting with Malcolm, calling up his humanity with an ease born of long practice. In half a heartbeat, Sebastian stood on two legs, clothed in the suit and skin of a man.

He strode to the door that led inside the building, entered his private code, and swung the door open on silent hinges. Intending only to retrieve one necessary item from his office before flying farther south to the sanctuary of his family's ancestral, private hacienda, he strode with deliberate steps down the quiet hallway. A faint sound, however, caught his hearing, which was still highly attuned due to the recent change from his much more sensitive dragon self. Halting, he flicked a glance at the security cameras, then back down the hallway.

Someone unexpected was in the building. It wasn't an intruder. That was impossible. He paid an exorbitant sum for round-the-clock security at the Bernal Center. No one, not even another dragon shifter, could get in unnoticed. No, somebody who belonged here was working very late. Sebastian had left San Francisco at 10p.m., and it was now well past two in the morning.

A-ha.

With a sudden grin pulling up one side of his mouth, he knew exactly who was down the hallway. A certain gorgeous, utterly brilliant curator that he'd been more than lucky to snag for the Center her first year out of grad school.

Well, now. This should be interesting. The irresistible call of the chase he'd felt since the very moment he'd met the woman he knew was here now, working very late, prompted him to change direction to head toward the Californio Rancho wing instead.

He was about to startle the very luscious, very challenging, utterly absorbing Lacey Whitman.

Lacey swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, willing away the fatigue. She had a new exhibit opening this weekend. An exhibit she'd been named lead curator on, which meant it was a Really Big Deal. Everything had to look perfect. She definitely was clawing her way up the ladder, just as she'd said to Gabi. In her case, clawing meant setting up fantastic exhibits that resonated with the viewers. That gave them a sense of connection to people long gone, people who had the same dreams and desires and longings as anyone alive today.

Taking a deep breath, she plunged back into it. What was sleep, anyway, when she was riding the fast-moving comet of her career?

She made one more tiny adjustment to the far corner of the exhibit she been fussing with for the past twenty minutes, then stepped back to examine it with a critical eye. No, she still had the lighting just a bit wrong. Or maybe it was that she had forgotten to add something else that needed to be in there? Yes, something was missing. A small, almost inconsequential piece that nevertheless would bring it all together. A tiny thing that was key.

She had no idea what it was.

Perhaps she just needed a broader view. It was a large exhibit, taking up half of the Californio Rancho room in the Sepulveda Gallery. She took another step back, then one more—and smacked directly into something hard, hot, and unyielding.

"Oh!" Starting forward as if she'd touched a live wire, Lacey spun around. "Oh," she said again, this time her voice much lower. Nearly a whisper, but for the little catch in her throat as she stared at the one person she didn't want to see in the middle of the night.

Sebastian Bernal stood there, dressed in a suit that fit him like a glove, his face freshly shaven, power screaming out from every pore. Power, and that crazy-hot sex appeal that drove her wild every time she was near him.

Lacey swallowed. No matter how many times she saw him, no matter what she said to Gabi, this man had this effect on her. The effect of making her forget pretty much everything in the world, even to the point of forgetting what her own name was.

The low rumble of his voice shimmied through her very bones, igniting something warm deep inside her. "Working late again? Ms. Whitman," Sebastian added, pinning her with the look that always seemed to promise a long, luscious night of worshipping her body. Well, in her dreams, at least.

He never called her by her first name. Even though she'd asked him to do that many times, given his status as her superior several times over.

She didn't want him to call her by her first name just because she wanted to hear what it would sound like on his lips, of course. Definitely not. Nope.

Swallowing again because her throat suddenly seemed ridiculously dry, she said, "Of course I am, Mr. Bernal. This exhibit is very important, and it opens in just a few days. And for the last time,” she added without thinking, “you can call me Lacey. Especially when no one else is around. Oh!"