Page 4 of Red Dragon’s Heart

Then he looked up—but not into her eyes. He rarely made eye contact with her, but she could picture the color of his eyes perfectly, from the few times he had. They were the color of honey, but there was nothing soft or sweet about them. Hot and intense was more like it.

Right now, though, he’d only gotten as far as looking at her boobs. “You need a new name tag,” he said abruptly. “Your name is spelled wrong. Crystal doesn’t have an ‘h’ in it.”

She narrowed her eyes, trying to figure out if he was really bugged by her name, or if he was just offering up an excuse for staring at her boobs. She kind of hoped it was the second one. She wasn’t used to having the boobs; they were new since she’d gained her disguise weight, and she’d found she kind of liked the attention they attracted.

Now she shrugged, letting her amusement show. “Tell it to my mama. It’s not like I filled out the birth certificate.”

Of course, she really had picked the name herself. And she’d deliberately spelled it that way. No one who knew precise, detail-oriented Madeleine Fox, the scientist, would believe she’d walk around with ‘Chrystal’ on her chest.

She couldn’t resist prodding him a little more. “I guess by your mood that the writing has hit a snag?”

Now he did look into her eyes, and… wow. She kept forgetting what happened to her when he did that.

He said, “No, actually, I’m just getting to the good part. The hero has a harem full of girls who fight over who should be allowed to fulfill his every whim. He doesn’t want them to hurt each other, so he lets them all fulfill him. Sexually.” He drew the last word out.

Maddie felt a flush wash over her body, her heartbeat rising. The scientist in her was cataloguing the physiological responses and wondering if they were caused only by visual stimuli, or the timbre of his voice, or something more subtle like pheromones.

The rest of her was trying to think cool thoughts, to keep her panties from melting.

“Awesome,” her mouth said. “That’s wild. Like, do they do it all at once, or one at a time?”

“Definitely all at once.”

Scientist Maddie immediately tried to figure out how that was logistically possible.

Chrystal-Maddie thought, He’s doing this on purpose, to try to get a rise out of you. Mess with him back.

She said brightly, “I read a book like that once, only it was a reverse harem. One girl and five guys, and they all did it at once too. You know, the sex orgy. Only I kept getting distracted, reading it, because the way the author described it, there really wasn’t room for all the guys to be doing all the things she said they were doing at the same time. Like, how would they fit?”

She waited a beat, then frowned. “Unless their penises were detachable. But she didn’t say they were, so…”

She saw the corner of his mouth twitch. Gotcha, smartass.

But all he said was, “Can I get back to my scene now? It’s really working for me. The harem girls are wearing chain mail bikinis.”

Maddie nodded. “For sure. Although, if you want a female perspective, having cold chain links rubbing up against your girl parts is not conducive to hot sex. Just sayin’.”

She walked off before he could ask what she would want rubbed against her girl parts. Because she would probably tell him, and then she would either end up totally humiliated, or going at it in the bathroom with this wild, dangerous guy who was probably an arms dealer selling missiles on the dark web. Or a black hat hacker. Or an undercover cop on a stakeout.

Because if he was a novelist, she was… well, she was Chrystal with an ‘h’.

Whatever he was, though, she should take his hint and keep her distance. The last thing she needed was another guy in her life—especially a scalp-tattooed possible arms dealer.

She had enough problems.

Chapter 3

The afternoon wore on. Zakerek drank his coffee. Ordered more. Tried not to watch Goth Tech Girl. Ate food he didn’t taste.

A message alert popped up on his computer. Zak had ditched his phone when he left the Al-Maddeiri clan and disappeared, so they couldn’t track him and be all pitying and make noises about how everything would be just fine, even though it wouldn’t.

But he’d rerouted his texts and emails to his new computer through an untraceable IP, just in case. In case of what, he’d never really articulated.

Cazbek and his other ‘brother’ dragon, Mikah, texted him regularly, for some reason. They seemed undeterred when he never replied.

Cazbek sent him long chatty texts about him and his mate and how fucking happy they were, as if that were something a person stuck all alone with a monster inside would want to know.

Mikah always tried to be upbeat and hopeful, saying they were still working on Zak’s problem, which was probably bullshit. When Mikah wasn’t doing that, he was also being chatty—about everything that was happening back at the Al-Maddeiri castle, and how busy he was being the king’s steward, which basically meant being a paper-pushing minion.