Page 43 of Dragon in Denial
“We need to get close enough to figure out if the reeve is still alive,” Ketu said, slipping out of bed and walking over to the window. He tugged the chain and opened the curtains, flooding the room with sunlight. The effect created a halo around his body, outlining his bitable ass and muscular back.
Gods, two go-rounds with the hot dragon and was suddenly sex-starved.Focus, Antoinette.
“Tell me more about the half-dragon, half-witch,” she said.
“Gabe’s mother?” Ketu glanced over his shoulder, his eyebrows raised.
“Yes. Pongo implied she’s somehow connected to Darius.”
He nodded. “She is. She’s the supplier.”
“The supp—dragon’s blood?” Antoinette was certain her eyes were so big they took up half her face. “Your reeve’s mother?”
Ketu lifted his hands like he was surrendering. “Gabe has nothing to do with it. He just found out last fall. Before then, he didn’t even know who his mother was.”
“So that’s the connection with the gargoyles.”
Ketu snapped his fingers and practically leapt from the bed, heading over to his suitcase. “We need to talk to Argyle. He should be able to shed some light on their relationship.”
He grabbed a pair of jeans and a shirt and headed toward the bathroom, but then stopped and reached down and scooped her into his arms. She yelped and clasped her hands behind his neck. “What are you doing?”
Shrugging, he said, “Holding you. I like it when we’re touching.”
She smiled. “Me too.”
He placed her on her feet and kissed her forehead. “Now get dressed because you are distracting as hell wearing nothing but my T-shirt.”
Chuckling, she reached for her jeans. Clearly, she wasn’t the only one struggling to focus.
***
Argyle, it turned out, was the gargoyle who’d led her to Ketu last night. When he wasn’t assigned to protect living beings, Argyle resided as a stone statue, guarding the tombs in the City of the Dead.
Antoinette and Ketu entered the cemetery, the morning sun beating down on them as they made their way to his perch. Ketu stood, arms at his side, staring at the carved creation. After long seconds, the statue began to tremble and the weathered, gray stone turned to dark skin, the winged creature shifting into human form before he easily hopped from the top of the tomb to the ground and straightened.
“Argyle,” Ketu said. “It’s good to see you again. This is Antoinette.”
“Ah, yes,” the gargoyle said with an inclination of his head. “Your mate.”
Antoinette’s laugh was nervous as she shot Ketu a glance through her lashes. Was it that obvious they’d recently had sex?
Ketu said, “We’re here seeking information about Delilah.”
“I told you I have no awareness of her whereabouts now that I am no longer beholden to her.”
“We’re looking for historical information,” Ketu explained. “I want to know how she got involved in the distribution of dragon’s blood.”
Argyle waved at the haphazardly laid slate pavers that weaved around the aboveground crypts, and they followed his lead as he clasped his hands behind his back and began meandering along the path.
“I did not become beholden to her until after she purchased the antiques store,” he explained as he walked. “So I do not know precisely how she came into contact with the reeve’s son, the one who created that drug.”
“You still know more than we do about the situation,” Ketu pointed out.
Argyle inclined his head once. “She bought the shop deliberately to use as a front for her dragon’s blood trade. She had recently moved to the status of distributor and sought a central location that would make it easy to provide her product without human authorities questioning the interactions.”
For all these years, Antoinette had been so focused on taking down the dealers, it hadn’t occurred to her to track down their distributor and take her down instead. In fact, she had assumed there was no middleman between Darius and those who sold the drug to other dragons.
“Is Delilah the only distributor?” she asked.
