Luck of the Dragon (Entangled Covet) (2 page)

Ready to react to a threat, even in showman mode.

That was not good for her. Not good at all.

Lucy pondered the man on the stage, not happy with the picture she was forming of her opponent. Gerald’s playful words, five o’clock shadow, and slightly long hair all seemed to suggest a man of desultory casualness. Indeed, the articles she had read on him went on, and on, about his genial public presence. A veritable man of the world, who’d been-there-done-it all, twice. A man who could offer the all-elusive
it
to anyone with a plane ticket to Vegas. A man so charming, he didn’t need to shave twice a day.

But her instincts told her this was wrong. Gerald was a serious man who only pretended to be lighthearted and casual.

She would have to watch her step.

“Miss.” A waitress in a medieval wench body corset and fishnets handed her a glass. “Your drink.”

“Thank you.” Lucy held the glass of amber liquid up to the light. Two ice cubes, a good sign. She took a deep drink, rolling the earthy flavor across her tongue. It was a smooth single malt with a hint of peat smoke and berries, a Macallan or Glenmorangie, maybe even a Glenrothes? Her heart rate settled, and she turned her attention back to the Alec Gerald show.

“Tonight was a taste of our magnificent theater production.” Gerald smiled. “The concierge will be giving away tickets to thirty lucky people for tomorrow night’s show.” The crowd cheered, and Gerald tucked one wide palm into his pants pocket.

When they quieted, he continued. “And be sure to check out the dragon cadre flying protection patterns over the crown at the top of the casino,” he said. “The elevator in the south hall can take you to an observation deck for a better view.” He gestured to his right and then looked over his shoulder, directly at her, holding her gaze uncomfortably long.

Lucy looked away. When she peeked back, he still watched her, his lids slightly lowered over assessing eyes. He had seen her, then. The dress had worked. She controlled her panic. There was no way he could know what she really planned. She saluted him with her drink and smiled, just another half-dressed chick in the crowd.

“Or perhaps you’d like to walk on the wild side?” Alec Gerald said as if he spoke directly to her.

Lucy lost her smirk at his suggestive tone. Goose bumps traveled up her arm, and she tossed back the rest of her drink. The ice banged hard against her front teeth.

Gerald’s gaze returned to the crowd. “When you’ve worked up your appetite, one of our five-star restaurants will be happy to satiate you.” He drawled the word
satiate
, and it echoed elusively through her mind.

Sat-i-ate.

Lucy took a deep breath and focused on the job at hand, the one that would get her brother Joey out of hock. Gino had told Joey that Gerald kept his keycard on him at all times. She studied his black tuxedo. Even from her distance, she could see the suit was custom made, meaning the jacket pockets were probably sewn tightly into the lining.

She would have to be quick to outmaneuver him.

Her hand tightened on her empty glass. There hadn’t been time to dust off her rusty pickpocketing skills after Joey’s hysterical visit. She needed to get her confidence up before taking on the King of Las Vegas. Con man rule number one: swagger was the most important ingredient in a tasty soup of plunder.

Lucy perused the crowd for a good mark. The high-roller with a call girl on his arm would work. The woman was dressed as a naughty nurse. He was guaranteed to have a wallet on him somewhere—medical care was expensive.

Showtime.

Lucy set her glass on a tray and pulled her shoulders back, trying to shrug off the respectable woman she had become. The dress strap dug into the back of her neck like her overburdened conscience. She ignored the dress and her conscience and strutted toward the high-roller, setting each foot directly in front of the other to give her hips the maximum sway.

Con man rule number two: always keep ‘em looking away from your hands.

The nurse saw her moving in on her client and turned her back to Lucy, blocking the high-roller’s view.

Lucy kept strolling.

She brushed arms with the nurse and stumbled against the high-roller. “Oohhh.” She teetered on her heels and her hands snaked up the man’s pudgy middle to his breast pocket. “Excuse me.” Voilá. She moved the man’s fat wallet to his pants pocket and stepped back.

The nurse gave her a knowing look. “Check your wallet,” she said to the man.

Lucy kept her expression confused.

The high-roller frowned and patted his breast pocket. “It is gone. My wallet is gone!”

Security guards rushed forward and surrounded her before she could respond. “Gentlemen, pleeeassse.” Lucy let her words slur and held her arms out to her side. “I just tripped.” She raised her palms. “Sometimes a trip is just a trip.”

“Here it is.” The high-roller pulled his wallet from his pants.

“See.” Lucy pasted an overly bright smile on her face. “Have fun.” She winked at the nurse and wound her way to the edge of the stage.

The lift had gone well.

Did that mean she hadn’t changed after all, or was it simple muscle memory at work? It didn’t matter. It was a conversation for another day. Bottom line, she was ready for bigger fish.

She was ready for Gerald.

Behind her, the crowd still listened to Gerald’s every word. As he talked, the angles of his face shifted compellingly. “The entrances to the fetish rooms are on the perimeter of the casino, leading to a dungeon playground which will tempt the curious and challenge the connoisseur.” Gerald talked about sex with an ease that made her wonder which end of the spectrum he would fall on.

Gerald would be a connoisseur.

“Lastly, the Crown Jewel offers Vegas’s only all-inclusive experience. Meaning, you can have your fun, and even some danger in our dungeons, and pay for it, too.” The crowd laughed at Gerald’s forthrightness. “Thank you for coming. Savor your experience.”

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.”

Chapter Two

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.

“Jer’ol…” Alec heard one of his hostesses call his name.

He stopped and waited for her to reach him. “Mei, how are your whales?” Everyone in the industry called the highest of the high-rollers “whales.” Personally, Alec found it insulting, but the whales did not seem offended that the casinos planned to beach them—and their money.