“You’re the chef?” he asks incredulously.
“Connor Drexler,” I say by way of introduction. I don’t offer my hand. “What can I do for you?”
He swallows, puffing up his chest. “My steak is overcooked.”
I glance at the bright red middle of the piece of meat on his plate. “How rare do you want it?”
“Rare rare. This is clearly medium rare.”
I stab a finger toward his meal. “If that beef was any rarer, there would be hoofprints leading to your table.”
He crosses his arms and leans back in his chair.
Across from him, his date shifts nervously, her lashes fluttering. “It looks rare to me, Richard.”
“No one asked for your opinion,” the man barks, like she’s a dog he means to redirect.
I picture my hand shooting out, cuffing his ear, and knocking him out of his chair. I know guys like this. He’s a little man in a designer suit, a modern Napoleon type, making up for his small stature by throwing money around along with his attitude.
“Oh, I’m very interested in her opinion,” I say, returning her smile with a small, lazy one of my own. My voice drops an octave as I add, “on a number of things.”
“Hey, asshole, what about my steak? You gonna fix this or what?”
A low growl rumbles in my chest, and my skin grows hot with the desire to turn this fucker inside out. My bones rattle with a growing lust for his blood. They actually rattle as if I’m standing too close to an arriving train.I’m fantasizing about dismembering this guy and then bending his girlfriend over his bloody remains and giving her what I see she wants when she looks at me with those bedroom eyes.
Thank the creator, Carmen chooses that moment to deliver a swift punch to my kidney as she passes behind me. I do a double take.
“Check the date and time, Chef,” she says. “And stop making that noise.”
I glance at my watch. Past midnight.
March twenty-first.
My dragon’s alignment.
Fuck.
“Are you wearing contacts?” The woman at the table leans forward, catching my eye.
Yeah, I bet she got a show. I need to get out of here before I do something I’ll regret.
“Uh, Carmen?” I call her back over from the hostess stand.
“Chef?”
I close my eyes for a beat while I rein in my inner beast, then give her a nod. “Guy wants a rare steak,” I mumble. “Can you give him the Bones treatment?”
“It would be my pleasure.” She grins wickedly, then grabs his plate and follows me back into the kitchen.
Bones is my German shepherd. Recently he’s started getting really picky about his kibble. I’ve figured out if I put his bowl on the counter, shake it a bit to stir it up, then put it back in front of him, he eats it. It’s about the attention, not the food.
Carmen will let the guy’s steak sit under the warmerfor fifteen minutes, flip it over, trim it, and rearrange it on a new plate, then bring it back out to him. By that time, I predict table seven will either eat it or bolt.
Meanwhile, I need a breather to make sure my dragon knows who’s boss. I cut left and head into my office, bracing myself on the desk and taking a deep, cleansing breath. Every dragon is born under a certain star sign. Mine is Aries. But unlike humans, when a dragon reaches the part of the year aligned with his sign, we undergo changes. It’s the only time of year when we’re fertile, and so our dragons are at their strongest and most virile during that month. But all that power comes at a price. We run hot, all our emotions razor-sharp and our needs exaggerated to a fine point. Hunger feels like starvation. Anger feels like an explosion. And lust—fuck, we have a special name for it.Appetency, mating sickness.
Every year we grow older, our appetites get stronger. For those of us lucky enough to find a mate, our alignment ceases to be a problem. But without our one and only, our need grows and grows until, around the age of a hundred, we literally go up in flames. I’m thirty-eight, and I haven’t found a mate yet. Right now my spleen feels like it’s sliding down a red-hot cheese grater, and my dragon is telling me that the only thing that will ease the pain is seeing blood or sinking deep into a pretty pink pussy.
Fuck.
