Dragon's Passion (The Dragon Realm #4) Read online

  He glanced up at her from the road in genuine surprise. “What’s that?”

  His confusion at her question had her suddenly bursting out in laughter. “I meant as a car repairman, Idris. Not as a prostitute.”

  Now he was chuckling, too. And his eyes were on her face like a bright, bright light. “Wow, a question like that really had me doing some arithmetic in my head there,” he said, a light smile on his face for just a moment.

  “Arithmetic?” she asked, still chuckling and wiping makeup out from under her eyes.

  “Yeah, I’m thinking I’m probably worth a flat rate of a hundo and then maybe 80 for each additional hour. Something like that.”

  Isla chuffed out a surprised, delighted laugh. “Oh, yeah? How many hours were you trying to calculate?”

  He pulled up to a stop sign and gave her a cocky little smile. “For you? Gotta be at least four. Probably more like five.”

  Isla knew they were just joking with one another. But her stomach flipped anyways. Four or five hours with this man at her disposal? In another life, there’s no way she would have turned down an offer like that. But she was living this life. This anonymous life in Chestershire. And he wasn’t really offering, he was joking.

  “Sounds optimistic,” she responded, giving him a quick smile but pulling her eyes back to the road. “It’s on the left here.” She pointed down the road to the small one bedroom that she was renting.

  He pulled smoothly up to the curb. “I think I have an extra fan belt in my garage. So the part’s free. And don’t worry about the labor. It won’t take me more than a few minutes before work to fix it.”

  Immediately, Isla’s back went up. She was instantly suspicious. “Nothing’s free.” She studied him for a second, one hand on the door handle of his truck. “And I’m not gonna be paying you in anything other than money.”

  Idris’s face went sober as a stone. “You think I’ve protected you from horny dudes every night for the last year just so that I could turn around and try to extort some sort of sexual favor from you?”

  It was the longest sentence she’d heard from him and it almost made her feel the smallest. She was being an asshole.

  “Look, Idris. I’m not trying to be a jerk. I just… I don’t have the luxury of giving the benefit of the doubt to a strange man. Or accepting favors that are gonna have to get cashed in at some point.”

  He was half in the shadow on the other side of the truck. Isla couldn’t believe that she’d ever thought of him as just some big meathead. He looked dignified and powerful and something else she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

  He considered her for a minute. “Fair enough. I’ll watch then.”

  “What?” she asked, confused.

  “I don’t want your money. But tomorrow night, after I fix your car, instead of being security during your set, I’m going to watch you. And you’ll dance for me.”

  Something was stealing the breath out of Isla’s chest and she wasn’t quite sure what it was. Fear? Surprise? Excitement? Anticipation? All of the above?

  She shrugged, falsely casual. “I’d rather just throw you some cash. But have it your way.” She jumped out of the car. “Thanks for the ride.”

  And then she was sucking down that crisp Rocky Mountain air and jogging to her house, locking the door behind her. She listened to his truck pull away before she walked down the hallway, her heart racing like she’d just escaped a lion.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Idris gritted his teeth as he watched his own blood paint the dirty cement floor. He’d lost his concentration again and No Teeth the Yeti had gotten yet another clean hit in.

  It wasn’t the pain that bothered him so much. That, Idris could take almost philosophically. Pain was a natural part of being an underground fighter. And one that had never particularly fired him up.

  It was the idea of losing this fight that had him whipping back to his feet, bringing his fists up to fighting stance. Idris danced back and forth on the balls of his toes for just a second, trying to regain feeling, recenter himself.

  He’d beaten No Teeth before. On two different occasions, in fact. Once in a planned underground fight, like this one, and once in a parking lot grudge match a few months later. In fact, Idris had heavily contributed to the reason the man was called No Teeth.

  Idris quickly shook the stars out of his eyes and brought his opponent’s face into focus. It was Isla. That’s why he was so off his game tonight. He’d been thinking about her all day.

  Actually he’d thought about her all night as well. He didn’t think he’d slept more than two hours, with her on his mind the way she’d been. He’d kept picturing her sitting in his car. Her seatbelt on. The headlights of other cars passing over her face. She’d looked so natural there. It’d fucked with his head.

  Idris dodged a lumbering roundhouse from No Teeth and ducked under his arm. His mind clicked off for a second and his body clicked on. Took over. There were moments like this, especially when he was fighting, that Idris felt like his body was a shell. That not only was he fighting, but there was something inside him trying to fight its way out. So, he brought his own fist up to catch his opponent right in the ribs.

  Isla flashed in his mind again, unbidden. When he’d thought she’d been asking about how much his services cost. His sexual services. Jesus, his heart sure had stopped.

  No Teeth grunted and doubled over and Idris quickly spun, planting a firm kick to the man’s backside and toppling him.

  And then when she’d insisted on paying him. Maybe it had been a dick move to tell her that she could pay him by stripping. But he could tell that fixing her car for free had freaked her out. And there was no way he was taking her money. But he wasn’t a saint. His blood was as red as the next man’s.

  As red as No Teeth’s. Which was currently drooling out of the big man’s nose like a leaky faucet. Idris joined him on the ground and executed a strong-armed headlock that had No Teeth slapping the ground in defeat within seconds.

  Half the crowd groaned while the other half cheered. Money changed hands all over the place.

  Idris hopped up and reached a hand down to help No Teeth up from the ground. The two men eyed one another with the adrenaline and wariness that bare-fisted fighting will naturally lend to a situation. But they weren’t particularly unfriendly. In fact, they both had pushed one another to be better fighters over the last few years.

  Speaking of being a better fighter, Idris went to collect his winnings from the bookie as soon as the crowd around him died down a little. Normally, Idris would hang around out back until most of the audience had left, but it was already pushing ten o clock and Idris had promised that he’d fix Isla’s car before work tonight. And he really wanted to fix her car. Because he really, really wanted the payment for it.

  So with his winnings shoved into his front pocket, Idris made his way out of the basement and up to the parking lot. The crowd parted like the red sea for him. No one wanted to get in his way. And that was just the way Idris liked it. He knew that the other fighters socialized a lot more than he did. They schmoozed their way into backers by pitting groups of funders against one another. But Idris didn’t have that in him. All he wanted to do was fight.

  Well, all he actually wanted to do was make an extra buck so that he could finally convince his mother to get the fuck out of here. And fighting was his meal ticket. Because he was good at it. He was a smart fighter. And he was brutal.

  He was just born that way, he guessed. And he never really questioned it. It was just the way he was.

  But tonight, as he drove toward the strip club, mopping up and changing his t-shirt along the way, he didn’t care about being a fighter. All he wanted to be was a man. All he wanted was to watch Isla slide down the pole and know that she was doing it for him.

  A few minutes later he pulled his truck into the parking lot next to her little blue Civic. The hood of her car was still unlatched from last night so Idris had no problem getting to work. H
e was glad he’d had an extra fan belt in his garage from when he’d fixed up a different old Honda a few years back.

  He was just finishing up the repair when he heard a car pull up behind him. And like a dream, or rather, like a movie star at a red carpet, Isla stepped out. She handed the cab driver some cash and the man ducked his head down so he could watch her walk away. But Idris didn’t even care. Because she was walking directly to him.

  Well, in reality she was probably walking toward her car. But it wasn’t a crime to pretend she was walking toward him.

  “How’s she looking?” Isla asked as she hustled over, a little line of worry creasing between her eyebrows.

  “She’ll live,” Idris answered as Isla leaned into the hood of the car, peering around. Her t-shirt rode up for a second, revealing just a sliver of her smooth back. Idris cleared his throat and leaned in after her to explain. He had to swallow past the scent of her, baby powder and coconut, to even be able to speak. “See, I just replaced this here. This was the old one. You can see that it’s run ragged, and parts of it were dragging. Which explains the smoke.”

  Isla nodded solemnly, studying the old part and surveying the new one. Jeez. She must really care about this car.

  The two of them leaned back and Idris slammed the hood down. She was gonna have to get to work soon. But it sure had been nice to stand shoulder to shoulder with her. To smell that scent of hers.

  “Jesus,” Isla whispered, looking up at him. “What the hell happened to you?”

  “What?” Idris asked, turning to face her and dusting his hands off. There wasn’t more than a hand’s length of distance between them.

  “Your face, Idris.” She raised a hand as if she were going to touch the rapidly forming bruise next to his eye socket. But then her eyes dropped lower, to his neck and shoulder and she gasped. “And, god, this too.” Her soft little fingers hooked into the collar of his black t-shirt. She pulled it to one side and revealed the bruising that was spreading like ink up from his chest and onto his neck.

  Idris wanted to groan and press into her touch like a puppy. But that wasn’t exactly the look he was going for so he held himself completely still. Tolerated her touch like a wild animal with a trainer.

  “It’s nothing,” he said, refusing to look down at the top of her head. His eyes skittered over it and his stomach both plummeted and soared when he observed the uneven little part in her dark, silky hair. She looked so perfect onstage. And here she was with a crooked part. The men who leered at her from the crowd would never know it. Just Idris would know.

  God. That just slayed him.

  He refused to take a step back from her even thought it was the only rational thing to do right now. He knew he needed distance before he bent her backwards and lapped her up like an ice cream cone. Something he was almost positive he’d get slapped for. But then she tipped her face up toward his. She hadn’t put her makeup on for the night yet. She looked about five years younger this way. Not more than 25. He could feel the heat kicking off from her skin. Yeah, maybe that slap was worth it.

  “Well, you don’t have to tell me what it’s from,” she said, confusing him for a moment before he remembered they were talking about his bruises from the fight. “But you should at least have a doctor look at it.”

  Her tone was admonishing, disapproving. He liked it. It meant that she wanted him to take care of himself.

  “Okay,” he replied. “If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll go tomorrow.”

  Her eyes flared with just a touch of surprise that he’d acquiesced. And then they were shuttered again. Neutral. She wanted him to go, but not on her account. “Suit yourself. I was just saying that it looks bad.”

  She turned to start walking into the club but she stopped, turned back around. “I would say thanks for fixing my car, but I figure our arrangement is an even trade.”

  The grin flashed across Idris’s face before he could stop it. He had no idea that the unexpected warmth of it softened his hard face. Set something loose in her belly. He gave her a slow, knowing nod. “A barter between two experts in their respective fields.”

  She let out a surprised little laugh. It was soft, musical. Like the first galloping patter of rain on a tent roof.

  She took a few more steps toward the club but stopped again. This time she only half-turned. “You’re really not going to tell me how you got all banged up.”

  He paused for a moment, his hands in his pockets, studied her profile. “Do you want me to?”

  She froze for a moment, a doe in the headlights of a semi. And then her hair was tossed back over her shoulder in a waterfall, catching the light of the street lamps. And she was walking into the club, the steel door banging behind her.

  ***

  It was ridiculous to be nervous. Isla had stripped for men more times than she could count. More than she could even remember. As much as it chagrined her to admit it, she was definitely a professional at this point. Not that she’d ever thought that’s where her life would take her.

  At one point she’d been a first grade teacher. She had the certificate to prove it. But that part of her life had ended three years ago. When she’d had to split town overnight, start over completely. Since then she’d been a babysitter, a waitress, a dog walker, anything that would possibly pay under the table. But when the money dried up at her last babysitting gig, Isla had skipped town, ended up about two hundred miles west in Chestershire. She’d been starving with not more than twenty bucks to her name. She’d considered it a stroke of luck when her car ran out of gas in front of City Lights.

  She’d never stripped before. But she’d always been sensual. She’d always been hot. She’d gotten hired on the spot and made $257 bucks that night. Little by little, the other girls had showed her how to work the pole and she started making even more money. Plus it was a hell of a workout. She hadn’t lost her curves, but she’d never been in better shape either. She hadn’t done a whole lot of questioning since then. She was making good money and that’s all she needed to know right now.

  It wasn’t until just this moment, though, applying her eye makeup in the mirror, adjusting her breasts in the lacy black bra, that she felt any real trepidation about stripping.

  Of course she knew that every time she went on stage there were about a hundred guys with their mouths open, staring at her, dreaming about her, slobbering and cat-calling. But she’d always been able to ignore them. Actually, she had a little fantasy that helped her rise above it. It was stupid, she knew it, but it made it easy to tune out all the horndogs.

  She pretended that she was in a bedroom, stripping for one man. A fictional husband. One man that loved her. In the fantasy, she wasn’t stripping for money. She was stripping to bring that one fantasy man pleasure, joy, to turn him on. And apparently it worked like a charm because all the dudes in the audience got turned on as well and she left with the dollar bills to prove it.

  “Shit,” Isla muttered as she attempted yet again to fix her part. She had good hair, and had it dyed into a gorgeous ombre. It was a dark, chocolate brown at her part and faded down to platinum at the tips. She loved it. Except she could never get her damn part right. Any time she made it straight, she ended up with a freaking cowlick. So she tossed the comb down and said to hell with it. Crooked part it was.

  She eyed herself in the mirror. Adjusted her short, black sheath dress over her hips. This Idris thing was throwing her off. Because she was about to strip for him. With him in her head. Something she’d never done and she had no idea how to do. The thing about her fantasy man that she stripped for in her head was that he wasn’t real. Of course. No man could possibly be as good as the one she imagined. And she had the life experience to prove it.

  She bared her teeth at herself. This was exactly why he’d suggested this shit. Because he wanted to get in her head. He wanted her to be thinking about him. Well, fuck that. She was done being controlled by a man. She’d left her old life behind to prove it.

  She
hadn’t fled her old life just to get mind-fucked by some security guard. Sure, Idris was hot. And actually, the more Isla got to know him, the hotter he was getting. But that didn’t mean she had to be sweating about him in the dressing room.

  Isla heard an Usher song come on onstage and she knew that Ricky’s set was starting. That meant that Isla had about ten minutes until she had to dance.

  An idea hit her like a lightbulb.

  She was going to change her music. She always stripped to whatever the DJ wanted to play for her. And it was always some AC/DC rock song or other. Typical stripper stuff. She didn’t care. She barely listened to it anyways. Just enough to catch the beat.

  But if she chose some dumb shit, teeny-bopper Taylor Swift or something then she could keep her promise to dance for him without things getting too heated. It was perfect. She’d be able to dance for him, keep things light, and still feel like she’d kept up her end of the deal. And then he’d get the picture that she didn’t want him in her head. She was halfway to the DJ booth when another idea hit her.

  No, that was the wrong tactic. What she really wanted was to teach him a lesson. If he thought he could mess her around with this dumbass flirty request, then she’d show him different. Make him regret asking. Yeah, she thought, pausing outside the DJ booth, it was way better to get in HIS head. She was going to choose the sexiest, most suggestive song she could think of and then completely ice him out afterward. Make him think that she was doing this whole thing for him and then treat him just like one of the pervs in the audience. He wasn’t special.

  That’s right. Isla straightened her shoulders as she slipped into the booth. He was just like all the other dudes in the club who wanted her and couldn’t have her. And she was going to show him.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Idris guarded the stage for the entire show. He didn’t let his mind wander to Isla. He didn’t let himself imagine her putting on makeup. For him. Choosing her costume. For him. Lipstick on those plump lips. For him.