Perhaps she’d go put some mood music on, some Adele or Ed Sheeran, and then pull Mr. Rabbit out of the bottom drawer instead. Pull the curtains and—
Outside her window, the sound of a motorbike’s engine under full throttle growled over the street noise.
Jilly gasped. She knew that engine.
Running to the living room, she pressed her palms and forehead to the window, a part of her mind scolding her for being so damn childish.
The rest of her didn’t care. Her fantasy hunk with his dragon tat and black leather and scruffy beard and sublime arms had returned.
Returned, and was coming to a halt at the traffic lights in front of her apartment.
Oh boy.
Arriman “Ari” Drake cut back a gear and flung his Harley around the corner, his blood hot and his pulse pounding.
Not because of the Extraho Venator on his tail. Not because the dragon hunter had damn near dogged his every move for the last hour.
Not because the cops involved in his current Cleaning job were being particularly annoying about the warehouse roof and wanted more cash than normal to lose the incident report.
But because for the fourteenth morning in a bloody row, he found himself riding down Harper Street when he had no bloody good reason to.
And for the fourteenth morning in a row, his cock had turned to a rigid pole in his pants for no reason he could fathom and a hunger bordering on unsettling flooded through him.
So of course, where did he find himself again this morning?
Riding down the street not once, but twice. Twice.
Not because he needed to, but because his goddamn body and a mysterious, pain-in-the-arse urgency forced him to.
He could have headed in any number of directions trying to shake off the Extraho Venator, but the annoying bloody invisible tug on his groin had brought him this way.
Down this street.
Again.
He was beginning to think someone was trying to lay a trap for him.
Shooting a look over his shoulder, he searched for the irritating dragon hunter.
No sign of him. Thank freaking God for that at least.
Ari knew of this particular Extraho Venator. He was an imbecile with delusions of grandeur who called himself Blade but whose real name was Colin. Colin lived two hours north in Newcastle, but for some reason never hunted the dragons up there, and traveled almost monthly to Sydney to hunt the ones here.
As yet, all Colin had managed to do was irritate the Sydney dragon-shifter population with his bumbling about, asking random people if they knew where the “dragons hung out” while trying to bum cigarettes.
Ari had kept an eye on him though, more out of professional courtesy than concern. He was the region’s best Cleaner after all—a fixer who dealt with the fallout of any dragon-related issues and made them disappear. Being a dragon shifter himself, Ari did not take well to hunters trying to kill his kind, no matter how inefficient they were.
The fact Ari had somehow landed in Colin’s sights was an issue to be dealt with after finishing his current job.
How Colin had actually stuck with him for so long today was anyone’s guess. Maybe it had something to do with the fact Ari kept finding himself drawn to this same bloody street.
Throttling back his Harley, he returned his attention to the congested road. It wasn’t just a string of cars slowing him down now. The red light meant unless he wanted to run it—tempting—he had no option but to stop.
Stop.
On the street that inexplicably gave him a boner.
Great. Excellent.
His hog thrummed between his legs, as if the machine was as pissed as he was at being reined in.
Shifting on its seat, he planted his right foot on the road and ran his gaze around the area, letting his other senses seek out whatever it may be that made this street so…so…arousing.
No hint of the honeyed-sulfur scent of a female dragon, nor—for that matter—the musky-sulfur odor of a male one hung on the air. Nor could he detect the distinctive tinge of preternatural heat that accompanied the presence of a nearby dragon shifter.
Whatever affected him, it wasn’t a dragon. At least, not one he could identify, and Ari knew of every dragon shifter in the city, including those that fell into the just-visiting category.
It was his business.
And just-visiting dragon shifters—like the dragon from up the coast, Kellan Donovan, whose mess Ari currently had the pleasure of dealing with—had a habit of causing all sorts of trouble.
Kellan was a great bloke and a good friend, but damn, he’d left a bit of a mess in Sydney the last time he’d been here. Of course, being hunted by a brutal Extraho Venator father-and-son team hadn’t helped much.
Nor did the fact that the father of said father-son team had been one of Kellan’s work—
The invisible tug on Ari’s gut, in his groin, intensified to an almost physical pull, tearing a groan from him. An itch bloomed into prickling life between his shoulder blades, up the back of his neck, and across his scalp. Every hair on his body stood on end.
Holding the handgrips of his Harley tighter, Ari sucked in a deep breath.
Watching. Someone watching him.
Right now.
Colin? Or someone else? Something else?
His cock throbbed, straining against the leather of his pants.
His heart beating faster, Ari narrowed his eyes and ground his teeth. He didn’t like this. He was all for sexual pleasure and getting his rocks off with a willing partner, but getting hard when he didn’t know why? It was beginning to freak him out. And piss him—
A car horn blasted behind him.
Jumping at the jarring noise, Ari swung a look over his shoulder at the vehicle behind him.
An elderly woman in a shiny white Tesla waved her hand at him in a hurry-up gesture before stabbing her finger toward the traffic lights.
Ari turned back to the light.
Green. Huh. When had that happened?
The horn
