Susannah Scott: Luck of the Dragon

Excited applause rumbled through the crowd

“Where to first?” a man next to her asked his companion. From the stone in the ring on the man’s pinky finger, he had money to lose.

Alec Gerald was very good at his job.

“Dr. De Luca.” Jane, the personal assistant, had returned. “I can escort you to the exhibit now. Hopefully, Mr. Gerald will be along soon.”

Glancing toward the stage, Lucy stepped back and nearly tripped on her heels.

The casino owner stood to the side with a group of men, but his gaze was on her again, opaque and unflinching. Gerald ogled her up and down, as if he was assessing something he intended to catch—and keep.

Arrogant ass.

The con was afoot

Lucy forced a coquettish smile to her lips and flipped her hair over her shoulder. She turned to go with Jane and felt Gerald’s gaze take in the back of her dress, hot and interested.

“Oh, he’ll be along, Jane Knox,” Lucy said with a smile. “Don’t you worry.”

Alec sensed the woman the minute he stepped on stage. She stood near a column in a short red dress. She was the gemologist, the one Leo had arranged to appraise the exhibit.

He finished his speech, pausing for applause and laughing in all the right spots, but his eyes never left the woman. He watched her toss back a twenty-five dollar drink like it was water and then “stumble” into a high-roller. It was a ruse, as there was nothing impaired about the woman. She was a contradiction: A brainy Ph.D, whose curriculum vitae read like a woman who didn’t get out much, in a dress that proclaimed she never stayed home.

Alec’s senses hummed under his skin in primal awareness, and he only half-listened to his arguing lieutenants before Jane led the gemologist inside the casino. When she turned, Alec traced the small bumps of her spine to her narrow waist and swaying back. A small flower tattoo sat above the curve of her hips, just visible below the back of her dress. His hands reached toward her retreating back, and his men stopped talking mid-sentence.

“Enough.” Alec reprimanded the six men who surrounded him on the stage. They waited, watching him with alert and interested expressions. “We’re ready. We go forward. Now.”

“Jer’ol,” Darius said, using the ancient term of respect for the King of the dragons. “The families are just arriving, we have time to sort out the kinks. We could wait to start the ceremony.”

“There is no more time.” Alec’s lieutenants didn’t know how close he was to losing his dragon form, and there were plenty of other dragons in imminent danger, as well. “We’ve waited too long for a place for our people. I won’t wait any longer.” Alec turned to the man at his right. “Leo, let the commanders know that it’s time to bring the folds together. The mating ceremony will begin as planned with the full moon.”

“Yes, Jer’ol.” Leo put a bit of spin on the term and tugged the short hair on his chin. Alec gave him a warning glance. His oldest friend might disagree with his haste, but he would do so later, in private.

The men disbanded to their respective assignments, and Alec headed toward the gem collection. Skirting the action around a frenzied craps table, Alec nodded at the croupier and the chips piled high on the green table. They would be in his coffers soon—it was just a matter of time. The house won 98.9% of the time, and there was nothing a dragon liked more than accruing wealth.

At the top of one the candlelit staircases that led to the fetish dungeon, he paused. Humans were so easily titillated. A feather, a rope, hot candle wax…it didn’t take much to amuse them. Tyren, his Icelandic lieutenant, stepped up the stairs toward him.

“How’re the receipts?” Alec asked him.

Tyren consulted his handheld PDA. When he peered up, his pale blue eyes were amused. “It didn’t take them any time at all. We opened the doors at noon and already the paddle room is outpacing the wax room by 50K.”

“Spanking is the top grossing room?” Alec shook his head in disbelief. The fetish rooms were Tyren’s idea. Alec was all for fun and games—he even liked a few boundary-pushing pleasures with the right lady—but nothing in the world could convince him that being spanked, even by one of Tyren’s six-foot-tall goddesses, would be fun.

“I told you, torture them and they will come.” Tyren smiled, put his PDA back in his pocket, and glanced over the gaming room.

“You have this well in hand , I see.” Alec smiled at the bad pun. “Let Leo know if you have any problems. I’ll be in the gem exhibit, meeting with the appraiser.”

“She’s strange.” Tyren’s gaze moved over the nearby craps table as he talked. He was always looking, always shopping, never satisfied, this one.

“How so?”

“She has on expensive clothes and sexy shoes, but her toes and fingers aren’t painted.”

Alec raised his brows. Tyren was an expert on women, but his level of scrutiny of the gemologist seemed extreme. “You checked out her toes from the stage?”

“I notice these things.” He grinned and lifted his shoulders in a shrug.

Alec’s dragon surged possessively in his chest. Odd. There was no logical reason for such a reaction.

“I’ll take care of her.”

“Much is at stake, here.” Tyren met his gaze.

Alec took a step into Tyren’s personal space, noting the way Tyren’s cool blue irises constricted. “Do I strike you as needing a reminder of what’s at stake?”

“No, Jer’ol.” Tyren shifted his feet.

“Have I once, in the years it has taken us to get here, wavered from the course? Betrayed your trust?”

“No, Jer’ol.” Tyren watched the gaming table again. “It’s just…I feel such loss as my dragon fades.” His last word broke slightly.

Alec stepped back, needing the space. He knew the pain and the fear. He clapped Tyren on the shoulder and gave him a brotherly shake. “You keep a watch on the dungeon rooms, and I’ll keep a watch on the rest.”

Tyren nodded.

Alec strode past a bar overflowing with tipsy tourists, past a five-star restaurant serving gourmet food but in medieval-style. The lack of utensils made the experience messy, but the humans loved it, and it provided higher profit margins for him.

All of Alec’s plans were just as calculated and successful. His mind worked number margins so quickly that when they had first come to Vegas, he had been banned from gambling because he could count cards, even the four-deck loaders the super casinos used. The Vegas Old Guard had pissed him off when they told him he couldn’t play their human games. That’s when he had decided to buy a casino and turn it into a haven for his people.

Much was hidden in plain sight at the Crown Jewel.

No human would ever guess that the hundreds of “mechanical” dragons patrolling the top of the casino were sometimes real. No human needed to know that the top twenty floors of the casino provided housing for dragons. And if a herd of cattle sometimes disappeared in the desert…no one in Vegas noticed that, either.

He made sure of it.

After the Old Guard tried to stop him, Alec went behind their backs and bought an aging, down-on-her-luck spinster of a casino downtown, off the Strip. Using a portion of his significant cash reserves, he gave the old gal a tune up, and a boutique-ish feel. He’d collaborated with his neighbors, all small casino owners weary of being overshadowed by the flash from the Strip. Together, they had created the Freemont Street Experience, running party busses 24/7 to the super casinos on the Strip, hauling patrons, and their cash, to him downtown.

The plan had been a huge success. He’d cashed out for a hefty profit and bought a prime piece of real estate in between the Luxor and New York, New York. He’d built the Crown Jewel while the Old Guard watched and cursed him from the sidelines. It had been a sweet revenge. Made even better now that his people had a sanctuary.