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  “Why would our uncle do that?” Amber asked. “He feels uncomfortable around aristocrats, just like our father did.”

  “He would agree.” Alex looked away and scratched the back of his neck. “I just have to ask him.”

  As their most beautiful and exotic sibling, Alex was one of the few invited to visit the manor during their grandmother’s lifetime. He knew how to speak to aristocrats and frequently seemed to “notice” secrets.

  “Will our uncle really be able to convince Mother to go on the cruise?” Jasper asked.

  “Yes. I am certain if he asks, Mother will not refuse.”

  After ascending as the matriarch, their mother had taken the unusual step of inviting their father’s low-class relatives to manage her estate. She was a large, dominant female and did a lot of unusual things.

  If Alex used his charm to convince their uncle to intervene and give them more time, Mal would take the reprieve.

  “So long as we’re not risking his arms, then okay.” Mal rubbed his own biceps pensively. “That will only delay her. What will stop her in her tracks?”

  “Grand dragonlets,” Amber said. Sarcasm crackled under her buttoned-up, distant tone.

  “We need time,” he said, yet again. “Time… to produce grand dragonlets.” Right. That was it. He smacked his hand into his fist. “We need to marry human women.”

  “That’s what we implied,” Alex said.

  “We need to actually do it.” He wrote on the interactive table Operation: Dragon Wife. “If one of us produces a dragonlet, she’ll shower her attention on it and forget the rest of us.”

  “So you’re looking for a sacrifice. One of us to go back to Draconis and marry.”

  “No, I’m looking for one of us to make our lie real. If a human wife produces a dragonlet, Mother will leave us alone to get on with our work. Here, on Earth.”

  He held their attention now.

  They’d all had different reasons for crossing half the Empire and helping Mal found this company. Now they had different reasons for staying. He would harness those differences to execute his project and succeed.

  “Who is closest to marrying a human?” His question cracked down the conference table.

  No one answered.

  “Jasper?”

  The steady dragon’s lips folded in. He shook his head. “I am not close.”

  Mal called on the others in turn. No one had a female to pursue.

  “Think,” he demanded. “This is critical to the success of our company. One of us needs to drop everything and pursue an Earth female, and the rest will help him secure her. Who’s it going to be?”

  Silence followed his question. He stared hard at Jasper. The Operations Manager avoided his gaze.

  Amber turned to face him. “You’re the CEO. This company is your idea and your responsibility.”

  “Agreed,” he barked. “So?”

  She regarded him with golden brown eyes.

  Realization heated him, filtering in slowly with tingles of destiny. “You think I should?”

  “It is the CEO’s responsibility to manage the company,” she said.

  “I must manage it!” he roared. “Not take weeks off to impregnate some female!”

  “You’ll have nothing to manage if you don’t.”

  His jaw tightened so hard his teeth ached. She was right. Everyone knew it.

  But he couldn’t drop everything. He was the CEO. He’d pulled them all away from their other lives and gathered them here. He was necessary to keep the company running.

  Wasn’t he?

  Of course he was. He forced the sliver of fear away. His siblings needed him. They couldn’t throw him away.

  He would have to do both.

  “Fine,” he ground out. “But tomorrow morning we also begin the hunt for our next sales product. It may be our last opportunity to challenge Sard Carnelian. I cannot allow the distraction of marriage to change our end goal.”

  “We will assume your company responsibilities,” Amber promised, and the rest of his siblings nodded agreement.

  The sliver of fear wiggled into a sharp pain. “Not all—”

  “All.” Her set face brooked no disagreement. “We will manage the company, Mal. You concentrate on acquiring a wife.”

  Chapter Two

  Today was a good day.

  It was product-sample day. Which meant that the dragons of the Onyx Corporation were striding down the hall between their offices half-naked, passing Cheryl’s desk without a glance in her direction, flexing gloriously.

  Cheryl traced Mal’s rock-hard abs outlined against the sheer silk nightshirt, capturing every bulge and divot. The rough sketch took shape on her digital art tablet. But it was impossible to capture his flashing green eyes or delicious, rough voice.

  “This will beat the Carnelians.” The CEO of Onyx Corporation gripped his silk collar, drawing the fabric taut against his broad backside. “It feels like sex against the skin.”

  She wanted to feel his sex against her skin.

  Was that wrong? She’d imagined Mal naked a thousand times in the last six months since she gotten this internship and stepped into the world of over-sexed dragon shifters who were too hot to be real.

  How would it feel? Sex in general, since she had no experience, and with Mal in particular? Him clasping her to his broad chest, panting as he pressed his hard member against her soft cleft… The sinful images teased her like hot tongues licking her forbidden places. She flushed to full awareness.

  Jasper, her direct boss, was also shirtless and cut like a male model. He held out his hand. “Give me the sample.”

  Mal stripped off the shirt and tossed it at him, revealing his full masculine torso.

  Yes. Thank you.

  “We must have this,” Mal ordered. “Find me a supplier!”

  He stalked, shirtless, to his office and slammed the door.

  Even in a gruff mood, he was still breathtakingly gorgeous. All the aliens were. Apparently, their scouts had visited Earth hundreds of years ago and started the lore about dragons, so their reappearance just a few years ago, while shocking at the time, had already worn off to normal.

  And anyway, they all looked like Superman in their human forms. Hard bodies, impossible good looks, and with a penchant for defying gravity and floating around.

  They rarely took dragon form. Mal had transformed once in front of Cheryl. He’d pissed off his sister and scrambled out a window to escape her fiery rage.

  One moment, he’d been standing in the hallway in a casual gray suit, ordering Amber to redo the year-end reports for the fifth time. “And this time, do it right!”

  Amber had dropped her file folders, fluttering on the carpet, and turned to him.

  Mal had backed up. “Uh… when you have time.”

  Amber burst her quiet wool dress and turned a golden honey color. She was a dragon straight out of a storybook. Her wings spread wide, smashing the hallway and breaking the drywall.

  The other dragons had scattered.

  “I said when you had time!”

  Red fire glowed in her throat.

  He flinched and flexed at the same moment like he’d been doused with a bucket of water. Iridescent green scales emerged all over his body, slicing through his suit. The fabric dropped off him in shreds. His fingers and toes elongated, bursting the leather shoes, and dug into the carpet as he wheeled away. His nose and mouth elongating while his forehead flattened over eye ridges and his cheeks drew back. In human form, he towered over Amber, but in dragon form, he was half Amber’s size.

  Amber ambled on four clawed dragon-feet toward Mal.

  He fled. Moments later, his form zoomed outside the building, a flaming female dragon chasing right behind him.

  As a consequence, Cheryl realized the otherwise quiet, staid Amber was a wild card who might snap at any moment.

  Mal she didn’t worry about. They’d spent the last six months in close quarters because her desk was outside his office.
He was too gorgeous, too focused, too busy to ever notice her hopeless crush.

  Jasper carried Mal’s silk shirt past her desk. “Good morning, Cheryl.”

  His greeting made the temperature rise a hundred degrees. Her throat closed and her hands started to shake. She muttered syllables she hoped his alien language translator made a sound like a greeting and coughed.

  He paused. “Are you working on graphic design?”

  Cheryl nodded and slid a stack of papers over her incriminating tablet screen.

  “Great. Mal will want to discuss your logo soon.”

  She tried to smile. Her eyes wouldn’t remove themselves from the silk shirt. It had touched Mal’s bare body. Was it wrong to want to touch it herself? It was weird. Definitely weird. She licked her lips.

  “Well, I’ll let you get back to work,” Jasper said and returned to his office.

  The empty hallway returned to quiet.

  She covered her burning cheeks. Cheryl tried not to draw the attention of the dragons. She didn’t want to give them a terrible impression of the human race.

  The outline of the dragon shifter torso on the tablet made her drool. She made sure the hall was still empty, and then she added in highlights and shadows, toning up the triceps, etching in the log-pressing biceps.

  The quiet murmur of the other employees—about ten upper-level managers in a small cubicle labyrinth behind her—mixed with paper shuffling and keyboard clicks. The layout had created a corridor from the elevator to the vacant “head” office. Soft cubicle walls lined one side and the drywall of the offices lined the other.

  Her cubicle opened to the corridor and her desk faced the VIP offices. The manager who’d had it before her had switched floors to avoid the constant distraction.

  She could understand. From here, she could enjoy every well-muscled male coming and going. It was delicious torture.

  But the nearness to Mal’s office had also saved her.

  On her first week of the internship, a manager harassed her about going to the cafeteria at lunch time. Cafeterias horrified her. They forced her to relive public school, having no friends and nowhere to sit, and being called fatso and red-face and tomato-girl.

  This manager just wouldn’t accept her eating a bag of chips and a soda at her desk.

  Mal had strode out of his office about the time she was saying—well, mumbling—that if it wasn’t required, she please didn’t want to go.

  “Mal, tell her.” The manager called him over. “The intern needs to leave for her breaks. Eating at her desk makes a mess, and it’s unprofessional.”

  Her face had heated like a radiator. Now she would get chastised by the CEO. She was, very possibly, going to die right there.

  Instead, Mal had snapped at the manager. “She’s working. Leave her alone.”

  “But—”

  “I eat at my desk all the time. Are you going to come into my office and tell me it’s unprofessional?”

  “She’s in the public—”

  “I’d rather see my employees at their desk working than wandering the halls harassing my interns.”

  The manager closed his mouth.

  Cheryl dared to look up.

  Mal glared at the other manager. He wasn’t angry. He was just completely on her side and had no qualms about saying so.

  That powerful certainty, decisively saying what he meant without fear, and expressing himself easily… His confidence was even more gorgeous than his sculpted body or chiseled face.

  The manager cleared his throat and excused himself. Mal walked off.

  Cheryl fell in love.

  If she could be only a little tiny bit like Mal, her life would drastically improve.

  For example, she’d already be done with her senior advertising art portfolio, which was currently missing three final pieces necessary for graduation.

  “Cheryl!” Mal roared from inside his office.

  Her hand jolted, drawing a thick, black line across the tablet. Her heart thumped. She closed the drawing of Mal’s lickable torso and jerked to her feet.

  A second later the door slammed open. Mal was covered again, this time in a loose gray dress shirt and jacket, looking carelessly gorgeous, like he’d just gotten out of bed. His green eyes focused on her with electrifying intensity.

  “Get in here!”

  Her heart thumped. She hurried to obey. Mal summoned everyone with a roar, so that wasn’t why she was nervous.

  He usually remained in the doorway. She had to squeeze through. Which meant they might accidentally touch.

  She was a wide woman, and Mal towered over her, filling the narrow space. She sucked in her gut to avoid him. Her navy blue hoodie brushed his suit jacket.

  “Sorry,” she muttered.

  He didn’t notice. He was already yelling down the hall for Flint and Pyro.

  Her heart thudded hard. Yes! Another precious memory.

  Crushing on Mal was safe and harmless. He would never be conscious of her the way she was overly conscious of him. His other siblings might suspect something. But he never would.

  His office was big and open and it overlooked the parking lot. Ah, scenic Vancouver. The “normal” suburb of Portland, Oregon that happened to be over the border in Washington State. They’d erected this building in an old field so they could tether a spaceship to it the way a cowboy ground-hitched a horse. Lights glowed at all times on the flat underside so airplanes wouldn’t crash into it on their flights into PDX.

  “Sit down,” he ordered.

  She parked her jeans-clad butt in one of the giant executive chairs.

  Alex, the Sales Manager, sat across from her and rested a slender ankle on his knee. His eyes were arresting. The left one was bluish-green and the right one was dark lavender. Like Mal, he was named after the mineral that his coloring most resembled. His perfect suit had no lint and his blond hair never fell out of place.

  He terrified her.

  “Hello, Cheryl.”

  She jolted as though he had yelled, and her teeth clunked together painfully on her tongue. She whimpered and covered her mouth.

  His perfect brows drew together. His charming smile was just a little knowing, as though he was well aware his beauty exerted a power over her. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded so hard her chin hit her hand. Her teeth bit her lip. Her mouth throbbed and her eyes filled with tears.

  He took pity on her and rose. “I’ll make you a tuxedo mocha.”

  She coughed to tell him it wasn’t necessary, but he was already crossing the room, humming to himself as he ground the gourmet beans and measured them into Mal’s always-on espresso maker.

  God. What was wrong with her?

  If only beautiful people like Alex didn’t make her nervous. If only people, in general, didn’t freak her out every time they looked, gestured, or spoke to her. If only she wasn’t so awkward.

  If only she could be more confident and expressive, like Mal…

  Mal returned to the office. “Where the hell’s Pyro?”

  “Prison, still.” Alex tamped the espresso, pushed it into the machine, and positioned the shot glass. All the dragons were expert baristas. It was like some weird dragon skill. “Nairobi or Istanbul.”

  “Why don’t you know?”

  “He started the night at a harem. The question is where he finished it. Kyanite is investigating.”

  “Of all the timing.” Mal pinched the bridge of his nose. “What are you doing?”

  “Cheryl needed something to drink.” Alex put the steaming mug of half dark chocolate, half white chocolate mocha in front of her and returned to his seat.

  “Fine. She has it. Cheryl, ready?”

  She held the warm ceramic carefully. “Yes.”

  He launched into the crux of the meeting. “Six months ago, you designed four logos for our company. The internship application only required three. Your impressive dedication to exceeding expectations is one of the reasons we hired you. Today we are reviewing your l
ogos.”

  On the wall, he put up the four vector images.

  She squirmed. Wasn’t it just a test of her abilities? Didn’t they have a professional logo designed already?

  Actually, come to think of it, she’d never seen a logo. But they had never reviewed hers before, either. Why now?

  “Cheryl. In your professional opinion, which of these logos will convince the Chinese government to sell us their silk worms? So we can produce enough pajamas to clothe the entire population of Draconis? Next week?”

  Cheryl blinked. “Uh… what?”

  Mal waited.

  The dragons wanted to buy all the silk worms in China? To make silk pajamas? Next week? “I’m not sure your logo will make a difference.”

  “Our logo will appear on company letterhead.”

  Yes, she knew what logos were for. “I, uh, made these so I might not be the best judge.”

  He nodded wisely. “Of course you put in your full effort on every design. All are high quality. Alex?”

  She sipped her sweet mocha. Chocolatey coffee warmed her belly while Mal’s approving comments warmed her heart.

  Unfortunately, as Mal and Alex discussed the pros and cons of each logo, it became more and more apparent that they had no clue what they were doing.

  The three official logos were variations of sharp, pointy, fire-breathing dragons stylized around the label “Onyx.”

  “The fourth stands out,” Alex said.

  “Is that good or bad?” Mal demanded.

  “It is uncommon.”

  “Hmm.”

  It is uncommon. That was a nice way of putting it. The fourth one was a joke. It was a fat little dragon with big, hopeful eyes holding a placard that said, “Please Hire Me.”

  She had meant it as a plea for herself to get the internship. Now, suddenly, her bosses were seriously considering it as the logo for their billion-dollar company.

  “There is a memorable quality,” Alex said.

  “I like it,” Mal said.

  She flushed hot and cold from pride. They liked her silly drawing.

  Her professors and classmates said the silly ones would never make her any money and were a waste of time. That was the whole reason she was behind on her final portfolio. She could draw thirty cute things a day but she couldn’t draw three “serious” advertising pieces to complete her portfolio.