Denying the Dragon Read online

  Denying the Dragon

  Jenny Schwartz

  Izzy has denied her dragon nature, her need to guard, for years. But when Danny crashes into her life, in danger and on a quest, she discovers that some decisions need revising, especially when the man pushing her to change is a sexy Chinese water dragon.

  “Denying the Dragon” is a flirty, dangerous paranormal romance novella, originally published in the collection, DARE, which is no longer available.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

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  Chapter One

  Dark as damnation and just as mysterious, the river carried its secrets out to the sea. Upstream, earlier in the day, people had lingered by its bridges and along its banks, enjoying the soft sunlight and renewal of spring. But now it was night time and New York. The river was a different creature.

  “Perfect.” With a fine disregard for danger, Izzy Draig stood with her back to the river and her whole attention focused on the half-complete warehouse conversion in front of her. “Meagan will love it.”

  There was even a balcony overhanging the river. For an undine such as Izzy’s latest client, Meagan Torrent, nothing could be more perfect.

  Izzy raised her arms above her head and stretched exultantly. She loved discovering hidden gems such as this apartment. It gave purpose to her night time prowls. Not that she ever admitted to anyone how often she left the security of her penthouse apartment to savor the freedom of darkness.

  Her family would take it as evidence of restlessness with her day job. They’d be wrong.

  She loved her work as a real estate agent and had no intention of being drawn into the Draig family’s shadow world of guardianship. She might be a dragon, but she wasn’t a guard. She could never be a guard. Izzy lowered her arms and wrapped them around herself. “But I’m a damn good real estate agent.”

  Her reputation with the world’s other-natured beings was growing. Like her, they looked human, but weren’t. When diplomacy or business brought them to New York, it was Isolde Draig they asked to find them a home—and unstated was the understanding that she’d meet their special needs: water for undines, emotion and violence for ghouls, sun-proofing for vampires and a minimum age of a hundred years for any building to house elves. Elves said anything younger roughed against their spirit like splinters.

  “Huh.” Izzy snorted in amused disbelief. The elves didn’t fool her. It wasn’t comfort that led them to old houses. It was sheer nosiness. They could “read” the human dramas that had played out in a house, and did so for entertainment.

  In the dark night, she giggled. How would Ludo, her latest elf client, like the house she’d found him? Although now outfitted in stylish minimalism, until a year ago, it had been a childcare center. Memories of smelly diapers and toddler tantrums wouldn’t amuse a sophisticated diplomat. However, for the sake of her reputation, if Ludo dived deeper, he’d find the house’s memories of the Prohibition Era. It had been a speakeasy then, a notorious one. Ludo would find plenty to entertain him in the antics its walls remembered.

  “He’ll never need to turn the TV on.” Which meant another satisfied client.

  And Meagan would love the warehouse conversion.

  Izzy gave the front wall of the warehouse a fond pat—then staggered, leaning hard against the rough brick as a shockwave of violence tore through the night. The violent aura broke around her, jagged with hate, death and desperation, and stinking of untilled, sour earth.

  But cutting through it was a fierce rejection of its power. Someone refused to let hate rule.

  Izzy whirled to face the river and the source of opposition. Who was out there?

  The dark water churned.

  A man dragged himself up and collapsed on the riverbank, black hair streaming water. His shoulders heaved as he fought for breath. Three figures emerged from the shadows of the waterfront and started toward him. He had to know they were there, waiting, because he struggled to his knees and called on the power of the river. It answered sluggishly, sullen and gray, then slipped through his weakened control.

  Izzy shivered. Her own power coiled around her, constricting her breathing as it fought to be free of the years she’d spent denying it. Her dragon nature saw a man in danger and wanted to guard.

  “I can’t.” She fumbled for her phone. She would call a cousin in the police. Rhys could handle anything, even this unknown danger.

  In front of her, the stranger made it to his feet, standing taller than the men who surrounded him.

  Not men! Goblins. Her power writhed, recognizing the enemy and wanting to engage. Her hands flexed, suddenly clumsy with the need to change into claws. She dropped the phone, the rattle of it on the hard ground sounding no more than a cat prowling the building site.

  Oh, for frig’s sake. She crouched, patting the ground, searching by touch for the phone, while her concentration remained riveted on the drama in front of her.

  “Give me the crown,” the shortest goblin growled.

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll take it.”

  The first blow knocked the man to the ground. Booted feet kicked him.

  Izzy forgot the phone. Her dragon nature roared free, breaking all restraints in outrage at the assault she witnessed. Her flesh ignited. Her body glowed like the heart of a furnace, light streaming through her clothes as if they were transparent.

  The white gold intensity blinded the goblins. They screamed, then grunted, staggering back as she walked toward them.

  Power roared through her veins, fed by her fury. It blunted her habitual caution and overrode her fear. She stood above the fallen man and her hair caught fire, flaring up like a beacon.

  Not in my city. She extended her hands, feeling the talons locked in the flesh, knowing that she wanted to rip and tear. This was the dragon nature she tried to deny. The change was very close. Her head tipped back and her banshee wailing was a claiming of the city and the man at her feet. Mine to guard. Mine to possess.

  Fire lashed around her.

  The goblins turned and ran.

  In their awkward pace she could see that they, too, were injured. Apparently, she’d entered this drama in the third and final act. The stranger at her feet had fought his enemies to the point of collapse. If he hadn’t—Izzy shuddered, and her power faltered. Would she have survived a fight against three goblins if they’d been at full strength?

  She called in her power, dimming her flesh. It scared her, how reluctantly it came. Her dragon nature wanted to hunt the goblins who’d scuttled like rats into the maze of old warehouses.

  “Thank you.” The stranger lay in the fading halo of her power, within the V of her legs as she stood over him. “I owe you my life.”

  “Don’t say that.” She ran her hands through the long tangle of her hair, twisting it into a tight knot in the same way she locked down her dragon nature. Despite her earlier words, mine to guard, mine to possess, the stranger was not hers. She stepped back from him.

  He rolled to his knees, braced himself on one hand and pushed up. Standing, he was her height, no taller. The moonlight caught the planes of his face, emphasizing high cheekbones and the angle of his eyes. His sodden jeans and sweater clung to a figure hard with muscle. The clothes were bloodstained. Slashes in the sweater showed where blades had struck him.

  She frowned in concern. None of the stains were spreading, so somehow he’d stopped the bleeding, but he still needed to be some place safe. “Do you have friends, a place to go?”

  “I’m fine. You need to leave. When Orde returns, you shouldn’t be here.” His accent was American, his appearance Chinese. “Go now.”
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br />   “Don’t be stupid.” It was one thing to fear her dragon nature, quite another to have it insulted with the advice that she run. “I can’t leave you here.” She retraced her steps and found her phone. Its fall hadn’t broken it. “I have a cousin in the police force. He’s a dragon, too. He’ll know—”

  “Contact whoever you want, but not here. And I’m not waiting for police.”

  Izzy hesitated, her finger hovering over Rhys’s name. She scowled at the stranger. She was scared and cross, and his stubborn refusal to face facts wasn’t helping. She wanted hot chocolate and to curl up in her gorgeous home. “And just where will you go?” With one hand she indicated the dark emptiness around them. “Don’t be stupidly heroic.”

  Although he stood straight, the very carefulness of his posture spoke of unhealed injuries. He stared back at her, though, defying commonsense. “It’s not your problem.”

  “Huh. Like I can walk off and leave you, here.” But she partly conceded his right to decide his own fate. She slid her phone into her pocket without phoning Rhys or an ambulance. “Can you walk?”

  “Yes.”

  But not easily. After three steps, she moved to his left side and put her arm around him. For two more steps he refused her support, before abruptly surrendering. His weight was considerable and as Izzy sagged under it, she felt she had a right to more information. “I don’t know your name.”

  “Danny Chao.”

  “I’m Izzy, Isolde Draig.”

  “Beautiful dragon.” He translated her name easily. “Appropriate.”

  She ignored the compliment, concentrating instead on his increasing weight and the corresponding loss of strength it indicated. “Why are you being chased by goblins?”

  “I am looking for someone, and so are they. If they find her first…” His arm around her shoulders tightened.

  Izzy understood. The goblins were killers. His unnamed “her” would be dead if they caught up with the woman. What shocked and annoyed Izzy was her jealous need to know who “her” was. Just because as dragon she’d claimed the man in the heat of the moment didn’t mean she wanted to keep him.

  She metaphorically whacked her dragon nature on the nose and said “drop it”. As best she could, she released her guard-claim on this chance-met, gorgeous stranger.

  “Where are we going?” Frustration thickened Danny’s voice as his feet dragged. “You should leave me and—”

  “Wait here.” They had reached the top of the laneway and she propped him against a wall.

  A yellow cab driving down the street stopped at her hail.

  There was one aspect of her dragon nature Izzy never denied, and that was the territorial connection. Since she’d moved to New York City with her parents at the age of fifteen, it had been home. She’d loved and explored it, and in eleven years, the bond had only deepened. When she asked something of the city, it answered. She’d never been more grateful for the bond as when the cab stopped.

  “Shit, lady. I thought I was the only one lost round here.” The cab driver looked at Danny as he hobbled forward blood-stained and unsteady, then obviously decided to ask no questions. “Where to?”

  Izzy gave her address and directions to it as she helped Danny into the cab. Then she got in the other door.

  The cab roared off, the driver only too happy to leave the area.

  “I can’t go to your apartment. Orde will follow me.” Despite cradling bruised or broken ribs, Danny sounded determined.

  “It’s warded.” Which was why she quite desperately wanted its sanctuary. In safety, she’d have time to convince him to call the police and to get help for his wounds. It was a much better option than arguing with a stubborn man on dangerous, goblin-haunted streets. “Why will Orde follow you?”

  Danny’s right hand crept from his ribs to lightly touch the bicep of his left arm. He arrested the gesture and cradled his ribs again.

  She pressed her lips into a thin line. Secrets. Secrets could kill. “Why will Orde follow you if he’s looking for a woman?”

  “I have—” He stopped. “They’ll be after Anna, as well. The shortest of the three was Orde, her cousin.”

  “Anna’s a goblin?” Izzy slumped against the seat, shocked.

  “They’re not all evil.” A shudder wracked him and he grimaced with the pain of it, his breath hitching.

  She slid across the seat and took his hand. “Do you need to go to the hospital? No heroics.”

  “I can’t afford the time. I have to find Anna. I’ll manage.” He sighed and his eyes closed, ending the discussion, but he didn’t release her hand.

  She looked down at the hand clasping hers and resting on his thigh. The nails were clean, the fingers long and strong and slightly calloused. Whoever Danny Chao was, he worked with his hands. She ran her thumb in a caress across his torn knuckles, and his fingers tightened around hers. Even as she watched, his skin healed. She concentrated, and sensed threads of her power leaking out from their joined hands to heal him.

  She glanced up and saw his eyes were open.

  “Thank you.” His dark eyes glowed.

  Her own eyes widened. She’d released the guard-claim between them. He shouldn’t have been able to access her power. She jerked her hand away—or tried to. His hold was too strong. “You’re a dragon.”

  It was so obvious, his power and protective instincts. Why hadn’t she recognized his nature?

  Because there are none so blind as those who don’t want to see. It was her Gran’s favorite saying.

  She hadn’t wanted to see that the man she’d claimed by the river was a match for her.

  “I’m a water dragon, not earth, as you are.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “We’re here, lady.” The cab driver’s impatient voice cut across her panic.

  “Oh.” Flustered, she paid while Danny levered himself out of the cab. She glared at him as the cab drove off. “Aren’t you running away, determined to lead the bad guys away from me?”

  He started to shrug, then halted, wincing. “You said your home’s warded. Sometimes we all need help.” It was quite a concession, from a dragon. He needed her.

  She walked up to him slowly and put her arm around his waist, taking his weight.

  He didn’t lean as heavily as before. The power he’d borrowed from her in the cab had strengthened him, and once they were in her building, in the elevator, he eased away from her to lean against the mirrored wall.

  Izzy saw her reflection behind him. Her face was white with emotional shock, her hair had unraveled again and framed her face in a deep red tangle. Her dark green sweater and jeans were muddied and bloodied from contact with Danny.

  “The penthouse,” he noted as the elevator travelled upwards.

  “I’ve worked hard for it,” Izzy said. She wouldn’t apologize just because most dragons were much less successful. Guarding was notoriously underpaid. She turned away from her reflection, and from him.

  “Hey, it wasn’t a criticism.”

  She didn’t answer. The elevator doors opened and she walked out to open the penthouse door, leaving Danny to make his own way.

  The welcome tingle of the protective wards her gran had set, and which Izzy renewed weekly, showed her how tense she’d been on the street. She breathed easier as the apartment’s spring-themed interior lit before her. Soft blues, pinks and greens, and polished woods welcomed and soothed.

  She turned back to Danny in time to see the wary set of his shoulders relax.

  “Sit down.” She directed him to the daffodil yellow sofa in the living area. The wall of windows opposite was blank and reflective, darkness pushing against it. She drew the curtains.

  He lowered himself carefully onto the sofa, and sighed as his head tilted back.

  Izzy crossed to sit in a separate chair.

  “I know it’s a lot to ask.” His voice, rough with pain, halted her. “May I borrow more of your power to heal?”

  “I—” She turned reluctantly,
rubbing her right hand over her left.

  He looked vulnerable, lines of suffering aging his face, and his eyes burning with frustration at his helplessness.

  She couldn’t refuse him, not when she could practically feel his pain, but he had to know how little she could help. As in the cab, only a trickle of her power carried across. “I can’t give much. I’m not a guard.” She had tried to lend power before, feeling that other dragons prepared to guard should have its use. “My power is tightly coiled. Only a little escapes.”

  “Escapes?” He questioned the word, then a shake of his head dismissed it. “If you could give more, would you?”

  “Yes.” Unhesitating.

  He held out his left hand.

  After a second, she accepted it, allowing him to draw her down to the sofa.

  “Kiss me.”

  “Pardon?” She pulled back to stare at him. He was hardly in a fit state for seduction even if something in her shouted a giddy yippee!

  “Passion,” he said wearily. “That’s what unlocks whatever barriers you have on your power. Down at the river, you were passionately angry.”

  “Oh.” She considered the insight. It felt true. The explosion of feeling, of outrage at the goblins beating him, had momentarily broken the stranglehold of her uncertainties. Passion had freed her power. But it was a passion of anger and it had had the advantage of taking her by surprise. The weakened man in front of her couldn’t do that. “Why do you think you can stir me to passion?”

  A light flared in his eyes. “You claimed me. There’s a bond there, and there’s this.” His thumb brushed her lips before his fingers tangled in her hair and pulled her against him. He held her gaze as he fused their mouths.

  Passion. Instantly.

  Her lips parted and swelled under the pressure of his hunger. Without preliminaries, he kissed her as if he wanted to dive inside her, and she, heaven help her, was shaking with the same need. It had been there between them in the cab, had ridden with them in the elevator. Their attraction was a blazing force field.