Guillaume hurried forward, attempting to block the safe by inserting his body between us and it. “One moment, please! The Venediger said nothing about you attempting to break the curse while you are on the grounds of Goety and Theurgy, nothing at all. No indeed, she did not.”

“What harm can it do?” I said, about to point out that breaking a curse didn’t affect the environment. Before I could do so, Constantine took my hand and strolled forward until he had Guillaume pinned against the safe.

“Bee assures me that the ring will be secure so long as it is within the confines of this club. Therefore, she will use it here. Open the safe.”

“The Venediger has rules, many rules, very strict rules about magic being performed at G&T—” Guillaume squeaked, squishing himself tighter against the safe.

“Open the safe.” Constantine’s eyes lit brighter. I jerked to the side when I noticed the ring of fire around his feet, fire that spread outward, licking the tips of Guillaume’s toes.

The little man shrieked and tried to stamp it out.

“I dislike repeating myself,” Constantine said, his eyes now shining like sunlight through amber. “Open it or suffer my wrath.”

“The Venediger—”

“OPEN IT!” Constantine roared, making both Guillaume and me jump.

He opened it. He complained the entire time that he was going to have to report us to the Venediger, and then we’d know what real trouble was, but neither Constantine nor I paid him much attention. Constantine was staring intently at the safe, and I… well, I was staring at Constantine. I knew from previous experience just how bossy and dominant dragons could be, but Constantine was different from the other dragons I’d met. He was forceful, but it was a comforting sort of forceful. Protective, almost.

In a fanciful sort of way, it made me feel cherished. And definitely aware of him as a man.

I shook away the sudden smutty thoughts that followed that revelation, and focused on the situation in front of me. Inside the safe was a collection of small boxes, the usual legal-looking documents, a pale metal sword, two long gold chains, a couple of pretty crystals, and a small green-stone statue that bore a strong resemblance to a fertility figure.

“That is it?” Constantine asked when Guillaume handed me a small onyx box. I opened it to reveal a ring of pale sand-colored horn chased in gold. “It is… uninspiring.”

“I admit it’s a bit anticlimactic,” I agreed, putting the ring on the palm of my hand. “But appearances are often deceiving, and all that. I’m still surprised that Aoife let me have the ring after making such a big deal about it.”

“The dragon mate said that the ring may not let you use it, indeed, it may not, and if it does not, then I am to return the ring to the safe, so you will let me know what transpires. The onus of its preservation is upon you, indeed it is, and thus I wash my hands of it.”

Constantine’s nose twitched, and I remembered from my time with the dragon boyfriend how gold had struck him like a powerful aphrodisiac.

“The gold is of a good quality. Very pure and pleasant.” Constantine plucked the ring off my palm, squinted at it for a few seconds, and then before I could warn him, stuck it on his index finger.

“Wait!” I cried, grabbing at his hand at the same time that Guillaume, with a moan, dropped to his knees and covered his head. “Don’t do that!”

“Why not?” Constantine waggled his fingers at me. “Did you fear I would become all powerful and destroy you? If so, I remind you that I risked not just the success of this mission but my own personal well-being by returning to save you from Asmodeus.”

I held out my hand for the ring, nervous about it being out of my protection. “I should hope you wouldn’t become a raving lunatic with it.”

“Please,” Guillaume moaned, peeking through his fingers at us. “Take it from here. The Venediger will have my head if anything more happens to the club.”

We both ignored him. “The ring itself isn’t evil,” I continued, addressing Constantine. “But it can heighten existing or even latent powers.”

“I am a dragon. I do not need my power heightened,” he said simply, plucking the ring off and dropping it back onto my waiting hand. “Such things seldom have an effect on dragonkin.”

“That was a fascinating peek into the makeup of dragons, but not really pertinent at the moment.” I closed my fingers around the ring. “Now, if you don’t mind me examining you, I can get a better idea of just how the curse is made.”

Guillaume moaned again, and clutched his head, making his hair stand out in spiky clumps. “I’m a dead man, I am indeed, dead as dead can be when the Venediger discovers that I’ve allowed you to perform your ceremony here. I will be a former Guillaume, nothing but a memory of Guilluame.”

“Do not be such a drama llama,” Constantine told him, and was about to leave the office when I stopped him with a puzzled look.

“What?” he asked.

“Drama llama? I think you mean drama queen.”

“The phrase as I spoke it is correct,” he said loftily. It was then that I noticed his eyes weren’t truly amber, but were more amber with brown, gold, and black flecks dashed around the irises. His lashes were darker and thicker than he had any right to, the sort of lashes most women would kill for. But it was the tiny spray of lines radiating from the outer edges of his eyes that made a little ball of warmth glow deep in my belly.

I’d never seen a dragon with laugh lines before. It was strangely appealing, and very sexy. “I think you’ll find I’m right, and the phrase is drama queen.”

“Just because you are mortal and raised in this time does not mean I am completely clueless,” he argued. “I am quite conversant with Internet memes and social phrases. I Twatter. I read the Wikipodium. I am as hip as they come.”

“All right, Guillaume, we’ll leave your mistress’s precious office, so you can stop wringing your hands and moaning.”

“Just like a drama llama,” Constantine added without looking at me, heading for the door.

I tsked and shook my head at his back, but said nothing until we reentered the main room of the club.

Six

“Now you will break the curse,” Constantine announced. “Do you need anything special for it? Do you need to inscribe a circle? Draw wards? Call the quarters?”