Jane Kindred - Bewitching The Dragon

A little smile slipped out before she caught herself.

The bartender threw Dev a challenging look. “This guy bothering you, Kylie?”

Ione shrugged. “Nah, he’s fine. Thanks, Gus. I think maybe he just needs something a little...stiffer.” She tipped her glass toward him. “Get him one of these.”

“I’m really quite fine with the beer, actually.”

“Are you?” Ione looked him up and down. “Quite?”

His dark brows drew together. “Sorry...are you making fun of my speech?”

“Absolutely not. There is absolutely nothing funny about your speech.”

Gus brought the Balcones and Dev started to object, but Ione interrupted. “It’s on me.”

With a shrug, Dev lifted his glass to Ione and nodded before taking a drink. “So, do you come here often?” He grimaced as the words left his mouth. “God, that sounded like another line. I mean a line. The first one wasn’t a line. Neither was this—I mean...there were no lines. Oh, hell.” He concentrated on the drink and Ione laughed and shook her head. “What I meant,” said Dev, “was that it seems you come here often enough for the bartender to know you.” He paused for a moment as if he’d just heard himself and rolled his eyes. “I seem to be determined to keep digging this hole deeper.” Downing his drink, he slipped off the stool and straightened his suit. “It was lovely meeting you, Kylie. Thank you so much for the beverage.”

Ione strangled the urge to laugh at the word “beverage.” “You don’t get out much, do you?”

Dev paused in the act of turning away. “Sorry, do you mean me?”

She threw him a sidelong glance. “I’m pretty sure Gus’s job gives him plenty of opportunities to hit on women. So, yes, I meant you.”

The warm hue of his skin became even warmer. “I really wasn’t hitting on you—”

Ione turned on her stool and leaned back with her elbows propped against the bar. “My God, you’re adorably awkward—Dev, was it? Do they make them all like you across the pond?”

She seemed to have rendered him speechless.

Dev glanced around as if trying to find the actual person she was talking to before laughing at himself and shaking his head, the tension of his stiff posture finally easing. “I don’t think they make any more like me anywhere, thankfully. I am rather dreadful at this, aren’t I?”

Ione gave him a wry smile. “So you admit you were hitting on me.”

Dev looked down at his feet with a smile, rubbing the back of his neck. “I might have done. Just a bit.” That little vibration inside her began to quiver once more, like a tuning fork buzzing with a faint, pleasant note.

Ione swiveled around toward the bar and raised a finger as Gus glanced in her direction from the other end where he was ringing someone up. “One more over here, Gus, when you get the chance.” She looked back at Dev, still standing there regarding her with a quizzical smile. Those eyes were really unfair. No one needed eyes that incredible. “Well? You in?”

Dev eased himself back onto the stool and smoothed back the gray curls at his temples with a grin. “I’m not sure what I’m in for, precisely, but I believe that I am, in fact, ‘in.’”

Ione finished off her Balcones. “The ride, of course.”

Dev paused with his hand on the glass Gus had set in front of him. “I’m not sure it’s the wisest idea to be riding a motorbike after imbibing alcohol.”

She rolled her eyes and Dev’s cheeks went scarlet. He lowered his head over his drink and paid great attention to it as he sipped. With her elbow on the bar and her chin propped in her hand, Ione studied him. It probably wasn’t the wisest idea to be contemplating what she was contemplating, either. He was not what she was here for. But that vibration was only getting stronger.

She couldn’t take him home, though. She’d nursed her drink over the course of an hour and she had a sobriety elixir that allowed her to ride safely regardless, but she couldn’t exactly explain the elixir to this charming, awkward stranger who had her halfway to climaxing without even touching her. Or even knowing he was doing it. Which was what made her want to get to the other half so damn bad. She had a feeling his witting participation in getting to that goal would be toe-curlingly, ass-numbingly incredible.

“Do you have a car?” She’d blurted the words before her non-lizard brain could stop her. And of course he had a car. Did she think he’d walked all the way here?

Dev wiped sweat from his upper lip with a sensual gesture he probably wasn’t even conscious of as he glanced up at her. “I probably shouldn’t be driving at the moment, either.”

“You’re assuming I’d even let you drive.” Ione picked an ice cube out of her emptied glass and sucked on it. It was now or never. She crunched the ice between her teeth and slipped off the stool, pulling out her wallet to leave Gus a generous tip. “It’s kind of loud in here. I thought we could talk outside.”

She headed for the door without waiting to see what his reaction was. If he didn’t follow, she’d just take the sobriety elixir and get the hell out of there. And if he did, well...

Chapter 2

Dev twirled his glass in the ring of condensation on the bar, avoiding looking toward the door. He’d behaved recklessly, for reasons he couldn’t explain. Kylie wasn’t even his type. And, type or no type, he didn’t make a habit of hitting on women. As if that hadn’t been painfully obvious. He was here to gather information for his employer, not to snog strangers in pubs.

Although maybe it was a perfectly reasonable response to the pressure he was under. It was his first solo assignment, and if he didn’t get this thing right, he could lose everything he’d worked for. He supposed the inclination to let off a little steam before he got down to business was to be expected. Or maybe he was just letting Kur get to him.

It was the name he’d given the thing that coiled at the base of his brain—or more likely the base of his cock.

Simply put, Kur was a demon. It had been part of Dev since his first disastrous attempt at conjuring. The demon had been caged by Dev’s mentor, the first witch he’d been apprenticed to. Though, Simon, it turned out, had been something more than a witch. By all appearances a kindly white-haired elder, Simon had indulged in arcane arts that would have horrified most conventional practitioners. He’d trusted Dev with his secrets and Dev, in turn, had trusted him implicitly. But dabbling with the dark arcane and believing one could control such forces was a fool’s errand. Simon had lost his life trying to tame Kur—and Dev had lost his soul.

Dev had only been nineteen when the demon had fused with him because of his foolish attempt to call it as Simon lay bleeding from the wounds Kur had inflicted on him. He’d tried to put it back in its cage—and had woken in hospital three days later, his back shredded and his memory of that morning gone. It was only months later that he realized the marks on his back were where the demon had clawed its way in to take up permanent residence inside him.

Dev set down the glass with a decisive thump against the bar. Kur wasn’t in control of him.

He headed out to his rental car, keys in hand. He would politely decline if Kylie was actually out there waiting for him. Which he sincerely doubted she would be. She’d probably just been having a laugh at his expense. Either way, he’d have to take a chance on driving back to the hotel with a couple of drinks under his belt. It was a straight shot down the highway, which had been mostly empty when he’d come this way. And he was fairly certain that if he lingered at the bar any longer to make sure his blood alcohol level was sufficiently lowered, it would end up becoming much higher instead. Kur never let him off that easy.