Day of the Dragon Read online

  The two men whose backs were to me spun around, and I recognized the auburn-haired man who’d run into me at the hotel, but before I could finish my sentence, his friend, the tall man with silky black hair, had me pinned up against the wall, one arm across my neck.

  “I think this might be it,” Auburn Hair said, searching Edgar’s desk, tossing aside a small heavily patterned rug before pulling out a black portfolio and opening it to peer inside. “It was beneath the prayer rug.”

  “That’s…not…yours…” I wheezed, and tried desperately to remember the instructions in a self-defense book I’d read years ago. “It’s been sold!”

  “I know,” he said, flipping open the archival portfolio.

  Desperate to save the very old leaf of an illuminated manuscript that I’d sold to a collector earlier that morning, I grabbed both of my captor’s arms and jerked my knees up, aiming for his noogies, but he was too close to me, his thighs blocking my attack.

  “Dammit,” I snarled, wondering if I had it within me to gouge at those pale, startlingly beautiful eyes.

  “Stop struggling. I mean you no harm,” Gorgeous Eyes said, giving me only a swift glance before looking over his shoulder at his friend. Despite him understanding the archaic Slavic language that his friend used at the bar, he had an English accent tinged only slightly with East European. “I’m only taking what is mine.”

  I made a fist and tried to get enough of a swing to punch him in the face, but flat against the wall as I was, I knew such an attack would be ineffectual at best. “You call pressing yourself against me in a wholly inappropriate and extremely repugnant manner while your friend steals things causing no harm? Wait…what? What’s yours? What are you talking about?”

  “The Venetian manuscript. The one you sold to me via my cousin.” He turned to look at me then, his pale eyes bright with anger. “Do not pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. Or is it that you now wish to demand more money for it after we agreed to a price? I don’t care how many other offers you have received for it—we agreed on a price, and I do not take kindly to a betrayal of our agreement.”

  “Your cousin?” I racked my brain for the name of the collector who had jumped on the manuscript listing the second I had it on the website storefront. “Milo somebody-or-other?”

  “Miles. You will honor the agreement he made in my name. When you did not reply to my messages, we decided to get the leaf before some ill befell it,” Tall, Dark, and Scary said, the lines of his face as hard and unyielding as his body, still pressed so intimately against me. I was suddenly very aware that the heat of his body sank through the thin layer of satin that was all that separated my skin from him.

  “I think you’re confused,” I said, finding it a bit difficult to get air into my lungs. He must have realized that, because he moved his arm off my neck, shifting so that he held both of my hands pinned to the wall alongside my ears. “I’m not trying to do your cousin out of anything.”

  “Did you get it or not?” he asked, watching as Auburn Hair examined the small page of vellum.

  “Yes, this is it.” Auburn tucked the parchment into a leather attaché case and gave his friend a nod.

  “I’ve left the payment you asked for upon on your desk,” Handsome Eyes said when he turned back to me, his anger almost palpable. “Tempted though I am to withhold it after you clearly have received other offers and wish to sell it to a higher bidder. Unlike you, I honor my word.”

  “I would never do that,” I said, outraged at the accusation, my mind partially distracted by the feel of him against me, so hard and foreign and…male. I was no shy virgin despite having had limited association with men, but never had I found myself pressed against one in a manner that made me very aware of the way his chest rose and fell against mine. “I didn’t know you were coming by to pick it up, and I certainly didn’t make any agreement to sell it to someone else.”

  “I’ll be outside,” Auburn Hair said, glancing at me as he passed, his gaze impersonal and clearly unimpressed, saying in Old East Slavic, “Do you need help…cleaning up?”

  “No,” the man holding me said in the same language. I wondered if they were scholars, too. That made sense if they had bought the leaf. “This won’t take long.”

  My eyes widened as the meaning behind the words struck me. Was this handsome, dangerous man not going to believe me? The second he said he’d bought the item his friend was stealing, I’d relaxed, chalking their unorthodox visit up to sometimes overly enthusiastic collectors. But now…was he hinting he intended on killing me?

  “I swear to you, I wasn’t trying to sell your leaf!” I struggled in earnest now, trying to punch and claw and scratch him. I might not be any great addition to the world, but I refused to leave it without so much as a whimper. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “You are only going to hurt yourself doing that,” he commented, his hands like iron holding my arms helpless. “If you did not intend to sell the manuscript, why did you not respond to my messages?”

  “I’ve been gone all day,” I panted, trying desperately to get my hands free, my fingers curling into claws. “Not that it’s any of your business, but my boss is out of town, so I spent the day with friends.”

  “Did your employer take other offers? Is that it?” His eyes lost a bit of their anger, speculation coming into them.

  “God’s nostrils, are you hard of hearing? I did not take another offer!” It skittered through my mind that I wouldn’t put it past Edgar to get a couple of collectors bidding against each other, but since he left the selling of items to me while he was off on buying trips, I figured he hadn’t had time to do that with this particular item. “I was going to contact you tomorrow—today—to find out if you wanted me to send it to you or arrange for you to pick it up. Now, let go of me!” I twisted, attempting to get out of his grip, but it was useless, and we both knew it.

  “Not until you calm down,” he said, the last of the anger in his eyes fading, replaced with amusement that I found highly insulting. “You will harm yourself trying to squirm free.”

  “You bastard! You’re not any better than a common criminal, treating me like this!” I tried again to get my knees up, but the movement just made him step forward until one of his legs was pressed between mine.

  I froze at the intimate position, my brain staggering to a halt at the feel of his hard thigh between mine. I knew—in the sane part of my mind—that I should be terrified, that women who were in my situation were at risk of a sexual assault, that I should be fighting with every ounce of my strength, but the sense of peril that I expected simply wasn’t there.

  “Criminal? Perhaps,” he said with a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth, “but common? I won’t say I’m as rarified as you are—” His gaze moved from my eyes, to my lashes, to my eyebrows, on up to my hair, now pulled back in a ponytail. “But I assure you that I am in no way common.”

  “Your leg,” I said through ground teeth, trying to hang on to what dignity I had left. If I could just get some distance from this beautiful, forceful man, I could think properly.

  “My leg?”

  “It’s between mine.”

  He looked down, which I realized gave him a clear view of my cleavage. I took a deep breath to protest the fact that he could see clear down to my stomach, but that just made my breasts squish against his chest even more than they already were. “Is it? I’m afraid I can’t see past your…er…”

  “It is.” My breath was coming hot and fast, something else I couldn’t control. I wanted to yell and scream and hide in a dark room where I would have time to think, but he kept distracting me by breathing, his chest moving against mine in a rhythmical manner that made my breasts feel heavy and very interested in him. “It’s…it’s rude. I realize you’re angry because I wasn’t around to get your messages saying you wanted to pick up the leaf, but assaulting my person by shoving your leg between mine, and rubbing your chest on me, and holding my hands is…it’s i
ntolerable.”

  “And yet, I find myself of the opposite opinion. You smell like a field of sun-warmed flowers. Spicy flowers,” he said softly. His head dipped down until his mouth was an inch from my ear, his breath hot on suddenly sensitive flesh. “You have a beautiful neck.”

  My mind came to a screeching halt when it struck me that he was flirting with me. Flirting! With me! What was so wrong with my life that I couldn’t find a man who didn’t run screaming from me unless he was the sort who pressed women against a wall and smelled their necks? “I…uh…thank you. I think. Now, release me.”

  He chuckled, the rumble of it in his chest making heat pool low in parts that hadn’t felt such things in years. “You sound offended. It was a compliment, little flower.” His breath steamed my neck as his lips just barely brushed a spot beneath my ear that was suddenly a full-on erogenous zone. “So sweet. So smooth and silky.”

  Thrill rippled down my back, making my breasts even heavier, a strange, restless feeling sweeping over me. I wanted to rub against him, to breathe in his scent just as he was breathing in mine. To bathe in the heat he was radiating…With a snap, I came back to reality, swearing at myself and heartily ashamed that I was evidently so desperate for a man’s attention that I was getting my jollies from what was clearly a dangerous situation. “Right, that’s it, I’m putting myself in Laura’s hands at the first opportunity.”

  “I don’t know who Laura is, but if you are of that persuasion…”

  He let the words trail off, his eyes filled with a steamy heat that I felt myself respond to despite everything that should have sent me running screaming from him. “I’m not gay, if that’s what you’re asking,” I heard myself say.

  “Ah. I can’t help but be pleased by that,” he murmured, his breath back on my neck.

  It struck me then that far from a compliment, what he had said was really an insult. I jerked, relieved when he released my hands at last. I didn’t wait for him to react, though—I jammed both of my palms onto his chest and shoved as hard as I could. “Do you really think I’m so stupid?”

  He didn’t budge so much as an inch, but his head did come up, his eyes narrowed on me.

  “Or maybe you think I’m just naïve.” I tried to shove him back again, but he held me where I was, both of his hands now on the wall next to my ears, using the strength of his body to keep me pinned in place.

  He looked confused. “About what?”

  “Your compliment,” I snapped, giving the word the sneer it deserved as I spoke it. “What you really mean is that my face is so freaky, my neck is nice by comparison. Well, I’m sorry that I’m not drop-dead gorgeous like you are, but some of us have to live with what the genetic shake of the dice throws us.”

  He frowned, two glossy ebony brows pulling together as he considered my face once again. I swear his eyes darkened, the blue leaching inward from the outer rim. “When did I say your face is freaky?”

  I couldn’t help myself. I knew it was stupid to stand there in nothing but a thin negligee, arguing about something unimportant when I should, at the very least, be trying to reach the panic button on the desk, but there was something about this man that enraged me. Annoyed me. Irritated and infuriated and intrigued me. “Oh, come on. My neck is lovely? My neck? You were clearly offering me a pity compliment because there was nothing nice you could say about my eyes or hair or anything else that men normally comment on when they want to flatter a woman, and that, Mr. Your Leg Is Still There, is the epitome of rude.”

  To my surprise, a little smile tugged up the corner of his lips. He leaned in until his breath fanned on my lips, his mouth a fraction of an inch from mine. Heat swept up my chest in a flush that made perspiration prick on my palms. When he spoke, his lips brushed against mine. “I’ve changed my mind. You aren’t rare…You are utterly unique.”

  “Are you…going to…You’re not going to…” I wanted badly to ask him if he was going to release me, but I couldn’t catch my breath. It was like the heat from his body sucked out all the air from my lungs.

  “Kiss you?” he asked, his lips moving gently on the corners of my mouth. “Ah, flower, you tempt me, but unique as you are, I would hate to see your petals wilt under my heat.”

  I stared into his eyes, now completely blue, and tried to think of something to say, tried to remember that I should be doing something to stop him, to regain control over my body, but my mind was too overwhelmed with the sense of him. The pressure of his leg between mine combined with the way his shirt rubbed against my breasts made me feel like I was standing in a shower of flame, effectively shutting down my ability to reason.

  And then he was gone, the soft click of the door—along with the sudden chill that prickled the hairs on my arm now that his body was no longer pressed so intimately against mine—the only sign he’d been there.

  “Dammit,” I said, staggering over to Edgar’s desk chair. “Damn him.”

  The satin of my nightgown rubbed over my now highly sensitized breasts as I sat down, giving me a full-body shiver. “And damn my lack of control.”

  Lying on top of a stack of packing manifests that I’d placed on Edgar’s desk over the last few days was a yellow certified check. The amount was enough to make me wish I owned the shop, instead of just working at it as Edgar’s researcher and general lackey, but my gaze moved quickly to the name of the strange, sexy man who had paid such a staggering amount for a leaf out of a medieval manuscript.

  Archer Andras. I stroked a finger across the name, mentally going through Edgar’s customer list. I had a pretty good memory where such things were concerned, and I’d never seen such an uncommon name. Without thinking about it, I found myself picking up the small prayer rug and folding it before placing it on the desk, digging through Edgar’s inbox until I found a manifest I’d placed there that morning.

  LOT 15A-VENICE. Sold to E. Wendell, Ross, California, USA. Contents: (1) prayer rug, 0.76 m x 1.22 m, wool and silk, c. 1811. (1) blow pipe, 15 cm x 4 cm, wood, c. 1788. (1) manuscript leaf, 188 mm x 137 mm, vellum, dated by scribe on colophon leaf 1474.

  “Manuscript leaf,” I murmured, putting the small wood blowpipe back in the box where Auburn Hair had removed it during his search. “What the hell was on the leaf that Mr. Handsome Eyes Archer was willing to pay triple the amount Edgar spent on it?”

  I pulled up the low-resolution pictures I’d taken of it that morning, but there was nothing that rang any bells in my scholar’s brain. The top had a scrawled hand in Latin, while the rest was in code. I’d planned on trying to crack the cipher, since that was my hobby, but the leaf sold before I had time to really look at it.

  What was so important about it that the two men broke in to get it rather than wait until the morning?

  I was still mulling over that question eleven hours later when Edgar called to check in. As usual, he dominated the conversation, barely letting me get a word in.

  “Be sure you pack the set carefully. Dr. Monroe chewed me out over the last set of books you sent him, and demanded I give him a discount on this sale. I didn’t, of course, because that’s not how you get ahead in the world, but I don’t want him annoyed any more than he is. Did you get the items from the last two auctions?”

  “I think so. We received a small box of jade figurines on Wednesday, and one shipment came yesterday morning. A small box of books came last night, while I was out.”

  “You were out? Why were you out?” he asked suspiciously. “I won’t have you taking unauthorized time off! I pay you to be at the store to receive the shipments and process them appropriately, not gallivanting about wasting my time and money! You can be replaced, you know! There are other unemployed scholars, hundreds of them, just aching to have a cushy job like yours! You remember that the next time you try to cheat me!”

  “Edgar, I’m not cheating you,” I interrupted, knowing it was no use to try stopping him until he was good and ready to listen. Which, sadly, was hardly ever. “I didn’t leave early. I didn’t know t
here was a carrier coming, or I would have stayed with Jamie.”

  “You’re paid to receive those shipments and get them online!” he snarled into the phone. I held it a foot away from my ear, sighing heavily. “I don’t care how long you have to stay, I won’t have my valuable property being left on the doorstep because you’re out sucking off some man.”

  “Edgar!” I said, shocked by his vulgarity. “I was not out with a man, not that it’s any of your business. I left at my regular time, and as I said, I had no idea that another shipment was coming—”

  “See to it that you know when the next one comes in,” he snapped. I thought about asking him how I was to expect to do that when he didn’t share shipping information with me, but I had a more important subject to bring up. He continued before I could tell him the good news about the manuscript. “There’s a prayer rug in the shipment that I want you to process, but be careful with it. It’s supposed to be imbued with demonic powers.”

  “It’s what?” I asked on a gasp, staring at the innocuous-looking rug that sat folded neatly next to the stack of papers I was idly rifling through. I picked up a stapler and used it to move the rug over a foot.

  “Just process it as usual, but don’t touch it unless you have to. The seller said that his daughter summoned a demon using it, which is why he tossed it into the auction lot. Had to get rid of it so the stupid girl wouldn’t keep using it. Pull up a list of demonologists, and send them the info on it, but don’t give them a price. We’ll see what offers come in before I decide what to ask for it.”

  I eyed the prayer rug. “Someone summoned…a demon?”

  “I’ve told you not to worry about anything odd like that. The people who are involved with the Otherworld aren’t interested in freaks like you; they just want objects of power,” he said, obviously not minding that he had just insulted me.

  I ignored the mention of his pet conspiracy theory—that there was a group of supernatural beings who mingled among normal people—and gritted my teeth for a moment over the sting of his insult. “Just as you like. Oh, I sold the manuscript leaf that came yesterday. It was snapped up almost immediately. In fact, the buyer came by late last night to pick it up—”