Page 14 of Feeding Beauty (The Lost Girls #5)

Flirting with the Dragon

AURORA

T he Poison Apple pulses, alive and thrumming. The music thrums low and dark, vibrating through the floorboards. Lights flash hot and fast. Every breath drags in sweet liquor and perfume, laced with sweat, magic, and lust.

A cheer goes up from the dance floor.

I glance over just in time to catch a mage conjuring a ribbon of glowing smoke between his fingers, twisting it into the shape of a snake. It slithers through the air before bursting in a harmless flash of gold sparks.

I’ve learned that Boston used to be a human city, but it’s shifted in the last couple years. Fae, mages—they’re pouring in. Poison Apple’s becoming a hotbed for supernatural nightlife. And all that junk reality mage television has given me a knack for spotting the different levels of magic.

The mage on the dance floor is a level one—low power, high showmanship—but the girl he’s trying to impress claps and giggles with an enthusiasm that guarantees he’s going to get laid.

I shake my head, smiling to myself, and line up four shot glasses.

Pour. Pour. Pour. Pour.

My movements are quick, practiced, no longer plagued by clumsiness.

The deep plum liquor catches the neon overhead, glowing with the shimmer of a potion.

I swipe a napkin beneath one glass before it can drip, just as Snow whistles from across the bar.

“Look at you, bartending and everything, babe.” She throws up two thumbs of approval.

I grin and slide the tray to a table of bachelorettes already deep into the night. Their words are slurred, and their eyes are glassy from the night of drinking. One of them leans toward the bride, who is wearing a LED light up tiara, and yells to be heard.

“That’s him, right? The Dragon at the door?”

“Seriously, I thought Dragons were extinct,” the bride replies with wide eyes, her tone a mix of disbelief and intrigue. “He might even be the last one.”

I pretend not to listen as I go about collecting the empty glasses littering the tables around them.

“I wonder if all of them were as hot as him though?” another chimes in, adjusting her glittering dress and flicking her hooded eyes toward the door with a smirk.

“Weren’t they hunted for their scales?” the first woman asks, her brow furrowed in thought.

“No, you dumb-dumb,” another laughs, playfully swatting her arm. “They were hunted for their treasures. Dragons are known to have amazing hoards they keep in like mountains and shit.”

“No, no,” the first woman insists, “I swear there is a thing about black market scales and Dragon wings.”

The thought of anyone cutting off bits of Talon to sell makes me queasy.

Another woman, her cheeks flushed from laughter and champagne, giggles. “He looks like he’d split you in half. In the best way,” she adds with a mischievous glint in her eye, glancing back at the doorway where the imposing figure stands.

Their laughter breaks like waves against my back. I don’t flinch.

More people are coming to Poison Apple to see the Dragon.

I often overhear people talk about him .

The tall, dark Dragon shifter guarding the door.

The girls flirt and swoon, half-joking about who could get him to crack a smile.

Who could convince him to go home with them.

How it would be to count how many scales he has and find out if there are any on his thighs or hips. No one has ever seen anyone like him.

I carry on like it doesn’t bother me, like it doesn't produce the same ache I felt back home whenever someone mentioned him with a sigh.

When I glance up, I catch Talon watching me from across the room, half in shadow. Arms crossed. Expression unreadable.

But I know that look. Know the weight of it.

He hasn’t looked at anyone else all night. And he won’t.

Because he’s mine. The same way I’m his.

I keep moving—pouring, wiping, garnishing—but it’s harder now, because my chest is tight and my skin too sensitive.

Talon’s presence is still the same steady force it’s always been, a quiet, grounding weight in my chest I’ve come to rely on more than I should.

It’s not healthy, needing that certainty.

Not when we can never be. But some selfish part of me still clings to it, comforted by the one thing that bachelorette party doesn't know—they’ll never touch him.

Not because they’d blister if they tried, but because what Talon and I have is undeniable, unbreakable, and untouchable.

Literally.

I’ve tried to brush off Snow’s out-of-the-box suggestions from the other night about how to get closer to Talon, but her words festered.

I hadn't thought of fireproof gloves or special bodysuits because it was never just the heat. It was also the history. The roles we were told to play. The boundaries we never crossed.

Seven years of restraint. Of pretending we didn’t feel what we felt. Of watching him stand beside me, behind me, never too close, never too far. Of being his mission. His responsibility.

But we’re not in the palace. We’re not being watched. We’re not confined by duty or chained by decorum. Boston has cracked everything open—my fear, my independence, my hope.

And this morning, when he caged me in at the sink, smoke curling from his fingertips and his body heat wrapping around me, I felt it shift. Something old and forbidden turned fluid. Possible.

He didn’t move right away. And I didn’t ask him to.

Maybe I could find a way to touch him without pain. Maybe I could wear something special so I could climb on top of him. Let my hands roam over all that hard, blistering heat and not burn.

The thought makes my heart pound harder.

Maybe the old rules are shattering.

And maybe, just maybe, he’d let them.

I slide a cocktail to a girl who doesn’t say thank you, and a ribbon of syrup sticks to my knuckle. I lick it off without thinking, my gaze drifting back toward the door.

He’s still watching. A shiver slides up my spine, vibrating through me at the possibilities.

That night, I go to bed thinking maybe, maybe, everything’s changing.

Until morning.

I wake with a sharp, molten spark low in my belly.

Hunger.