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“Would you like to join me at my booth?” he asks.
“Of course,” I reply.
I lift my hand, and when he takes it, a jolt of electricity shoots through my body. I gasp softly and color, and I don’t mind at all that the man who will be inside me in a few short hours sees it.
* * *
Aiden
“I start a new job tomorrow,” she says. “Well, day after. I catch my flight tomorrow.”
We sit at the booth overlooking the skyline. The bar is a very high-end and exclusive establishment and each drink on the menu costs three figures. Some cost even more.
Dana is dressed well, and her outfit is quality, but not so extravagant as to suggest that she can afford to drink here. I assume this new job is averygood one.
Not that it matters that her clothing isn’t top-shelf designer. She is still easily the most attractive woman in the room. Hell, she’s the most attractive woman I’ve ever seen in my life.
“I’m flying home tomorrow,” I reply, “so I guess it’s the last night in town for both of us.”
She smiles and says, “Why, whatever shall we do to occupy our time?”
It isn’t wise for me to do this. I feel the calling with this one. What you know of dragons is, for the most part, incorrect. However, there are some things about dragons you’re likely right about. Our relationship with human women, for example, isn’t accurately portrayed in folklore, but the spirit of the relationship is. When we fall in love with a human woman, we obsess over them. Sometimes to our eternal happiness. More often to our destruction.
But I can’t resist the allure of this woman. I say, “Well, maybe I’ll have to come up with something.”
“Why don’t you buy me another drink so I’ll be more likely to let you influence me against my better judgment,” she says. I like how she spars with me. Forget about the whole virgin thing. The idea that dragons only want virgins is a construct of moralizers in the Middle Ages intended to make the idea of a dragon more horrific. I guess if a giant, evil beast kills a good-hearted, beautiful woman who has actually had a penis inside of her, it’s not as bad as a giant evil beast killing a vacant, self-serving, horrible woman who just so happens to be untouched when it comes to sex.
Anyway, we don’t eat human women. We don’t eat human men either. We don’t eat people at all unless in the middle of battle. I don’t want to offend you, but you just don’t taste very good. Mostly, we eat what humans eat. You have any idea how many steers I need to eat to support my dragon form? Better to hunt, get a steer, shift back to human, and eat that way. The fullness transfers during the shift, one of the many benefits of shifting that we still don’t fully understand. “Do you want anything to eat?” I ask, “or might that dull the effects of the second drink?”
There’s something important about dragons, though, when it comes to human women. We call it the calling. See, there are some women who are ideal for producing dragon offspring. It’s the curse of dragons, I suppose, that two dragons can’t produce a baby. It takes a human. For centuries, this meant Dragon couples would capture a young woman for whom the calling was strong. Sometimes, it meant pretending to be human and seducing a young woman. Female dragons can get pregnant, only they need a male human, and the offspring is always human, not dragon.
Anyway, the point of all this is I feel the calling with this girl. It’s a powerful urge that’s hard to resist. It’s a good thing I’m flying out tomorrow because otherwise, I might be in real trouble. If we were in the same proximity for any length of time, I would have no choice but to pursue this girl. It’s just the way of things. It’s probably how dragons survived as a species for millennia.
Like I say earlier, though, it’s also been the downfall of many of my kind. As you might imagine, the majority of society doesn’t take kindly to the idea of a dragon whisking a young woman away from her home and impregnating her with a child who will also become a dragon. One aspect of the old legends concerning dragons that has far too much basis in truth is the common depiction of the knight slaying the dragon. We’re not immortal. We can be slain.
Granted, the killing usually takes place when the dragon is asleep and in human form. I suppose with modern aircraft and weaponry it wouldn’t be too monumental a task to kill a dragon these days, but back when the most dangerous weapon people had was a spear, killing a hundred-plus-foot-long fire breathing dinosaur wasn’t exactly a walk in the park. Not that dragons are dinosaurs, but you get what I mean.
Still, enough dragons fell that way that we eventually decided it would be best to hide our true forms from humans and interact with them only in human form. Over the centuries, that has compounded are already reclusive tendencies so that now we spend very little time at all outside of our homes—another coincidentally accurate piece of the traditional mythos.
But we still feel the calling, and we still are powerless to resist it. I tell myself that I’m wrong, that what I’m feeling is nothing more than simple sexual desire for an attractive woman, but even now I know I’m lying to myself.
I order her crab cakes and a lobster for myself. We continue to flirt and laugh as we eat, and judging by the flush in her cheeks and the way her fingers travel absently up and down the stem of her wineglass, the food does nothing to dull the effects of the second drink.
Not that the drink has anything to do with it. I can tell that she would want me just as desperately sober.
That’s another effect of the calling. When a dragon is called to mate with a human woman, that woman is just as irresistibly drawn to the dragon.
It could just be that she’s attracted to me. I, like most dragons, have a very desirable human form.
I tell myself that’s all that is, but later, in my room, she kisses me like she’s known me for centuries and not like a lover she’s met for the first time tonight.
ChapterTwo
Wild
Brooke
In some ways, I feel like I’m cheating. I’m not talking about infidelity but just that this man is so damned incredible. I mean, he’s refined and very professional, but he has the physique of an absolute god of a man. Don’t get me wrong. I’m attractive. I’m not down on my appearance at all. In fact, one of the things that really frustrated me about my complete lack of a social life in school was that I know that I have the kind of a body men like. I could certainly have enjoyed a great deal of action, but I just couldn’t.
