Dragon Her Back (Entangled Covet) (4 page)

“Okay.” He reached for her free hand, and the warmth of his palm seeped into her ice-cold fingers. “Tell me.”

“You have to leave here before the gala.” She hadn’t intended to ask him that, but relief filled her at the thought of him being gone from the casino, out of harm’s way.

“Will you go with me?” he asked.

Yes!
her dragon screamed.

“I can’t,” her human overrode.

“All right.” Darius settled back and crossed his arms as if looking at a data-coding problem on a whiteboard. “Here’s what I’ve got. Something about the bogus fax you got has you spooked, and you think I should leave without you.”

“Yes.” Put that way, she knew he wouldn’t go for it.

“You can see why that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense?”

“There are innocent people who might be hurt.”

Confusion twisted his features. “When did you get so damn altruistic?”

It stung. Mei sat up straighter in her chair, aware of every inch of height he had on her sitting perched on the desk like some damn condemning judge without all the facts.

Her lips trembled, so she tucked them tight between her teeth. When she was able, she forced words between them. “I care about a great many things. I care about you. That’s why I want you to leave here for a while.”

“Not going to happen.” He put his black-rimmed glasses on the desk and rubbed his eyes.

Scott knocked on the door and entered without waiting for an invitation. “Sorry to bother you.” His gaze hopped from Darius to her and back again. The interested look on his face told her that he saw the fact that they were in the same room together as progress.

Little did he know.

“The blackjack cheat is back,” Scott said. “You want me to send someone else?”

“No, they’ve missed him twice.” Darius stood and looked down at her. “I’ll be right back. Think of a better option while I’m gone.”

The air seemed to suck out of the room with his exit.

Did she have a better option? If Darius wouldn’t leave, and if Scott couldn’t find out anything more about Quan, what could she do but wait and see if it was them? If it was, she could plead her case, and that of the other women, to Alec in person. If she ran, she would be condemned for sure, but she’d be alive.

Do nothing? It wasn’t a good plan. It wasn’t a plan at all. The thought of inaction chaffed as tightly as the ropes.

Darius’s black glasses sat on the desk, and she picked them up. Dragons had perfect vision, but Darius wore the glasses because of the personal computer screen that ran across the lenses. They enabled him to keep track of the casino security at all times. Seeing the flashing red light that indicated the computer was active, Mei sat them down gently.

She picked up Darius’s gray tie and brought it to her nose. His spicy soap was on the silk fabric, and she let herself inhale and hold him in her lungs. She looped it around her own neck and efficiently tied a Windsor knot. She scooted the knot up until it touched the vee of her shirt.

She walked around his desk and sat in his chair, finding the leather still slightly warm from his body heat. Need clutched her with piercing sharpness and brought her dragon to alert awareness. The desire she felt for Darius after only one night in his bed made what she used to feel for Li seem small.

On the monitors in front of her, she watched Darius exit the elevator on the gaming floor and stride decisively to the blackjack tables. He approached a table of gambling humans and spoke to the pit boss. The humans sat straight on their stools, casting uncertain looks around the table.

Darius said nothing, just stared. After a moment, he widened his stance and crossed his arms over his chest, making his suit gather over his biceps and shoulder muscles. One of the humans shifted, clearly uncomfortable with his perusal, as the dealer dealt the next hand. The players signaled for additional cards, their hand gestures quick and nervous.

At the end of the hand, the humans stood together and left the gaming area. Mei knew that casino security would discreetly round them up and hold them for questioning. Darius hadn’t said a word; he hadn’t needed to.

When Darius turned on his heel to leave the floor, he staggered against the card table and steadied himself.

“What?” Her voice was loud in the quiet room.

He’d nearly fallen over for no reason. She replayed the scene in her mind’s eye, seeing his knees buckle like no healthy dragon’s would. Was it a simple trip—or was his dragon really waning? Fear, compounded on fear, filled her as her possibilities pinched down to just one. She couldn’t leave him with the fall out and potential waning of his dragon.

She would have to stay.

Chapter Five

Darius pushed the two hundred pound barbell off his chest with an exhale that displaced sweat from around his mouth. He steadied the weight overhead, inhaled, and then lowered the bar before pushing it upward again. He was exercising in the Crown Jewel theatre troupe’s private weight room. It was a cavernous space, containing traditional weight sets, cardio equipment, and a complete trapeze set on the south side.

He preferred the troupe gym to the glossy private facility for dragons on the top floor of the casino. The smell of gymnastics chalk and well-used weights reminded him of his childhood with his parents in Russia. Plus, the troupe athletes left him alone, no chatting or inane questions. He didn’t like being fucked with when he was working out, and tonight, he thankfully had the place to himself.

The bar banged as he racked it and sat to add five pounds to either side. He shook his head, clearing the exertion spots from his vision, and then lay back to continue taking his frustrations out on the barbell.

Mei.

He didn’t count reps as he pushed the bar, just repeated her name in his head. His arms trembled on an overhead drive, and the ache in his chest muscles told him he wouldn’t reach his last week’s bench press weight of 325 pounds. Maybe not ever again.

Mei.

His time was running out. He was weakening, as Mei had guessed. He hadn’t wanted her to know—hadn’t wanted to see pity in her eyes. His dragon form would cannibalize his human form until there was nothing left for either but death.

Mei.

With the next thrust, his arms shook and his back bowed off the bench with effort. He groaned and forced the bar up, then lowered it. The burn through his chest was a welcome distraction to his frustration.

The length of the death spiral was unique to each dragon. Some waned over years, some over weeks. One thing was certain—without the completion of his mating bond with Mei, he would lose his dragon form forever. Sweat broke out on his brow. More than from simple exertion, this was the sweat of pain. He pushed through, making his muscles strain, trying to strengthen that which he knew was dying.

His next breath dislodged sweat from his face, which he ignored. It really pissed him off how indecisive she made him. He was never indecisive, always choosing action over inaction, so that his father had frequently chastised him, calling him a bull in a china shop.

He’d rather be a bull than a steer any day. But she’d held his balls in her hands since the first time they had touched each other in Paris. The barbell hit his chest hard, and he grunted at the contact and pushed it away.

Mei.

The door of the weight room sighed open and closed.

He knew it was her without turning his head. His dragon uncoiled and snarled inside him, and the sudden rush made him bobble the bar. The unbalanced weight dove toward his right side before he straightened it.

He didn’t want to discuss his waning dragon with her and see her oh-so-sorry face. Fresh adrenaline surged through his body, and his gut clenched. Laying his spine flat against the bench, he pressed the barbell, and it surged upward, almost leaving his grip with the force of the propulsion.

“Hey,” Mei said from the open doorway, seeming hesitant to cross the threshold.

He leveraged the bar up and down, faster and faster.

“I opened your gifts.”

Fuck.
Even though it was what he wanted, it made him feel even more quarrelsome, like she’d finally gotten around to throwing him a few scraps of her precious attention, and he was supposed to pant like a street mutt. With an extra loud grunt, he lowered the bar to the cradle and sat up, wiping sweat away with a rag from his bare chest and face.

Mei’s steps were tentative as she crossed to him, her high heels sinking in the matted floor precariously. She stopped more than an arm’s length away.

Smart woman.

Her scent surrounded him in a cloud of seemingly super-oxygenated air. It was the smell after a rainstorm, with the hint of salty ocean breeze at its core. She frowned, her red-painted bottom lip caught under her white teeth. He saw pity on her face, knew she was feeling sorry for him.

His surliness boiled over to major pissed-offness. “I want my tie back.”

Her hesitant lip chewing stopped in a millisecond and changed to narrow-eyed annoyance. He liked it a whole lot better than false concern.

Rising, he turned his back on her and went to the pull-up bar between the weights and the gymnastics equipment. He jumped to grab the metal rod, his weary muscles renewed to Superman-level strength with her eyes watching him.

Mei followed him to the bar, the only indication of her shifting mood the loud, top of the palate sigh that he heard as he yanked himself above the bar in strict military pull-ups.

Below him, the top of her shining black hair was twisted into a tight bun, holding his latest gift: handmade gold and onyx chopsticks he’d ordered from a collector in his bid to soften his approach and win her over. His patience for all that fucking gentility evaporated with each pitying look she cast his way.

He lowered his torso below the bar, letting his gaze sweep over her as he rose. Admiring her red-painted toes peeking through the front of her shoes, and her narrow ankles, to the swell of her hips under her work skirt, to her touchable breasts and down again. He’d always considered himself a leg and ass man until he met Mei. But he loved everything about her delicate stature. It made him want to cherish her, hold her, and protect her.

His cock stirred to attention despite his continued effort to leverage himself over the bar.
Fuck.
How could so much trouble be contained in such a tiny package?

If someone had told him when he was leaving Moscow to follow Alec and bring peace to the dragon kingdom, that one small woman would tie him up in knots, he would have laughed. Literally. Laughed for days, and he would have bet good Stoli vodka they were wrong.

“I just wanted to say thank you for the gifts.” She gestured a hand at her head.

“You’re welcome.” He huffed the words over the bar.

“We didn’t get to finish talking last night.”

She hadn’t been waiting for him when he’d returned to his office—no surprise there. Darius dismounted and padded to the trapeze to finish up on the rings. Mei’s gaze followed him, and by the slight tapping of her fingers against her thigh, he could tell she didn’t like being ignored.
Good. Let her see how it feels for once.

She put her hands on her hips as if she were getting ready for a presentation. He didn’t want a lecture, so he untied a rope and lowered one of the trapeze swings to her sitting height.

“Come on.” He swung the bar seat in her direction. “Sit while I finish up, then I’ll listen to whatever is on your mind.” He walked to the rings and chalked his hands, leaving her to make up her own damn mind.

He focused on the rings above him and ran through the routine in his mind. When he was ready, he jumped and grabbed the ivory rings in his hands. His overtaxed muscles stretched out, and he let himself swing back and forth. “Did you know that my family was in the Russian Circus?”

“No.” Her voice held an edge of curiosity, and she came to sit on the swing below him. She kicked off her black high heel shoes and rocked gently on her bare toes.

“You’ve never seen a more beautiful trapeze performance than my parents’. They were effortless, always knowing where the other one was in the air. It was magical.”

“Because they were bonded.” Her voice was tight again.

He swung his lower body in a controlled arc and pushed himself into a straight-armed position. “That, and they were good.” Holding her gaze, he lowered his body into an iron cross.

“Are you showing off?” Her tone was teasing, and her speculative gaze up and down his body sent tiny tingles of awareness shooting through him that had nothing to do with exertion.

“Are you impressed?”

“No.” But she continued watching him, her lips parted in admiration. “Why do you push yourself like this?”

“You wouldn’t know anything about
that
, would you?”

She frowned and dropped her eyes to her floor, seeming fascinated by her left foot anchoring her movements. The weight of his body pulled at his shoulders, and his chest and arms burned with fire. His controlled breathing broke the quiet of the room.

Now was when the effort mattered, he reminded himself. The whole workout before had led to this. Could he mentally prevail when his body was ready to quit? Tremors started at his core and vibrated up his arms, threatening to dislodge him. Sweat pooled on him, ran off the tip of his nose, and splattered to the mat below.

“I saw you fall in the casino,” Mei said, breaking his concentration.

Now is what matters.
Darius forced her words away and lowered himself even more until his whole body shook, right down to his curled toes. This move had gained him a spot with his parents’ circus, a move no normal human could do. That was before he had discovered he liked the challenge of technological gymnastics better.

Mei twirled to face him on the swing. “Why didn’t you tell me before that you were sick?”

“I don’t want your pity,” he grunted out.

“So it’s true, then.” She resumed rocking with her face in profile to him. “I wasn’t sure.”

Now is what matters.
Darius forced his body to stillness, and his mind to equanimity.

“I’d really like for you to go away for the weekend and return after the gala.”

This again. Her continued insistence on him leaving puzzled him. He closed his eyes against the distracting conundrum, but in the dark void of his mind, he replayed her words, seeing the importance of them in the upturned tilt of her chin and her straightforward stare. Even without looking at her, he knew she waited nervously for him to respond.

“Not without you,” he grunted out.

“Okay.” Her voice was cheerful, upbeat. “I’ll go with you.”

His eyes snapped open to see her smiling extra wide as if she’d agreed to something she’d long wanted to do.

Liar, liar.

Darius nearly broke his posture, and he quickly refocused. Taking one last breath, he pulled his knees to his chest, held them there, and reverse flipped in the air, executing three perfect backward somersaults before dropping to the floor with hardly a sound.

“Wow.” Mei’s mouth hung open, and she stared at him, stunned to stillness.

Every muscle fiber, from his forearms to his chest, screamed with pain, but his entire focus was on her.
Why was she lying to him?

He eyed her on the swing with what must have been a predatory look, because she glanced at the door. “When do you want to leave?” he said with forced nonchalance. He toweled himself off, picked up his water bottle, and drank deeply.

“How about tonight?” she said too quickly, and then resumed her swaying.

“Tonight?” He set down the water bottle on a ledge. Her face said
why not
, but her tense grip on the swing ropes said it was a ploy. He reached toward her with his dragon senses, but unlike other mated pairs, he’d never been able to separate her truths from her lies. All her words felt equally veiled to him, as if nothing she said were true.

“Why not?” Her cheerful reply mimicked her facial expression and would have tipped him off that something else was off, even if her quick agreement hadn’t.

“It seems rather quick.” He walked to her and grabbed the ropes above her hands before she could react, effectively caging her between his arms. Her forced smile fled, and her flighty gaze avoided his. “I’m ready to go,” she said. False cheer stretched her brow into a Kewpie doll approximation of the Mei he knew. When he said nothing, she frowned at his scrutiny and backed away from him with her heels to the limit of the swing arc.

“Okay,” he smiled pretending he hadn’t noticed her retreat.

She stared at him from the tethered distance of three feet way, her face a melee of concern and false bravado.

“Let me guess.” he asked. “What romantic weekend destination would please you?” He tilted his head sideways as if trying to come up with the answer, and then shook his head. “I’ve no fucking clue, because I don’t know a damn thing about you and why you keep lying to me.”

“I am not lying,” she said with too much force and not enough contractions. “You’re the security analyst extraordinaire. I’m sure you already know everything important about me.”

This was familiar territory, Mei winding up for the offensive attack.

“There are tens of thousands of Mei Chen’s in China,” he said. “I’ve looked at all of them. None of them are you.”

“It’s a common name.” She lifted her heart-shaped face, staring defiantly at him.

“Yes. Too common.” Darius yanked the ropes toward him.

She bobbled and rebalanced herself by dropping her hands from the ropes. She didn’t seem to know what to do with them, and she twisted her thumbs over each other in front of her. “The king has no problem with my name.”

If she thought bringing up the king would deter him, she was mistaken. He wasn’t backing off for anything or anyone in the world.

Not this time.

He wanted to know what was really going on with her. Why she evaded and lied to him. Why she wanted to get him away from the casino so badly she was willing to—pretend at least—that she would go with him.

She must have seen the resolve in his eyes. She pushed hard against his chest, and then pulled back sharply when he didn’t budge. “This is ridiculous.”

The brand of her touch blazed through his still aching muscles and tunneled straight to his groin. “On the contrary.” Satisfaction at cornering his quarry filled him with anticipation. “I think we’re just getting somewhere.”