Page 12 of Under the Dragon's Spell
"Did anyone catch your eye, darling?" my mother asked as soon as I entered the room.
"They're humans, mother," I said, reaching for the mini bar. "They're basically toys."
She shot me a disapproving look from where she was sitting on the couch, a thick book in her hands. "Your father wasn't a toy."
I pretended like I didn't hear her. This was not a conversation I wanted to engage in.
"So," my mother said. "Tell me about these men you met today." She reached for a list that had been lying on the desk. Then she started reading from it. "Jason Matthews?"
"Cute, but a complete fool." He'd come late, then he'd stumbled on his way over to my table, and then he'd talked like a waterfall. If I cared about having a kid, I wouldn't trust him with it in a million years.
"Allen Smith?"
The guy who'd run around the table. "That's a no."
I took a bottle of beer and sat on the couch.
"You're picky," my mother said.
I shrugged. "Did you pick the first fool who approached you?"
"Certainly not. What about Michael Waters?"
I shrugged again. "He was pleasant enough. Nice butt."
My mother made a note. I pretended not to care what she wrote down. "Adrian Lark?"
I opened the bottle and took a sip, thinking about how to respond. Did I want my mother to know just how interesting Adrian was? "We had a good talk," I said, eventually. She raised an eyebrow at me, but I didn't comment further. Inviting anyone she didn't agree with would only make that person's life hell, and I had no idea how my mother felt about humans who could possibly resist us. Up until a few hours ago, I hadn't known humans like that existed, after all.
I wanted to keep the knowledge to myself for a little bit.
I also wanted to meet Adrian again. If only to see if he could truly resist me.
6
ADRIAN
I spent the next week circling back and forth between high and low points in my mood. Typically, I woke up feeling low because my life wasn't going anywhere and I'd messed up my chances with a guy I'd never known I wanted. By mid-afternoon, I usually convinced myself that I was being ridiculous and I didn't need that job anyway and I was going to find someone sooner or later. And then my mood went back down while I lay awake at night because anxiety about everything kept me up.
Some nights I took care of that by jerking off. Which only served to make me feel worse in the end because I jerked off to thoughts of Tyrel and why the hell was I doing that?
I really had to get out of this funk. With every day that passed, it became less and less likely that I'd ever hear from the dragon again, and I couldn't spend the rest of my life pining over someone I'd met for barely ten minutes. I'd run some searches on the Internet, trying to find information about dragon magic, but I hadn't found a lot of sources that seemed believable. I had however found one site that wouldn't quite leave my mind, even though I'd discarded the information as unbelievable. It had claimed that dragons were closer to the realm of the spiritual, the magical, than humans were. That hadn't sounded too out there, but then the author had gone on to write that sometimes, dragons found themselves bound to their mates, whether they be human or dragon, by fate. Connected by a higher power, their destinies inseparable.
It had sounded romantic. But it couldn't be true.
And it certainly couldn't be the reason I felt so attracted to Tyrel.
I shook my head at myself whenever my thoughts drifted to this kind of nonsense in the middle of the day. Still, I couldn't deny that by the time the week was over and I hadn't heard from Tyrel or his employees, I felt crushed.
I dragged myself out of bed Monday morning and greeted my brother at the kitchen table in a foul mood.
"What's got you so grumpy?" he asked. "Where's my waffles?"
You can stick your damn waffles up your ass, I thought, but I'd never say that out loud. Instead I said: "Be ready in a minute."
But before I could get my brother his waffles, my phone rang.
I answered the call without looking at the caller ID. "Adrian Lark."
