Dragon Justice Read Online Free PDF

what was on the surface; that was why
Stosser hired us in the first place, because we didn’t accept the first
impression as truth. But two years of doing this day in and out had put us on
another skill level entirely. The more you used, the more you could do. The
thought of what we might be able to do five years from now…
    “Bonita?”
    Oh, hell. I brought myself back to the Starbucks, keeping the
connection to the generator open, if narrowed, and looked to see who had
approached me, who knew me well enough to use my name, but not so well to use
the shorter version.
    “Andrea. I didn’t know you slummed in public coffeehouses.”
    The words were joking, the tone probably softer than I’d
intended, because Andrea took it for an invite, sitting on the windowsill next
to my table in lieu of an available chair.
    Five foot ten, short blond hair, eyes the color of the Aegean
Sea, and teeth as white and straight as money could make them. Andrea was
Eastern Council, running at the same levels as my mentor used to.
    Because of that, I was cautious about why she’d approached me.
I doubted she was just happy to see a familiar face; we’d flirted a bit back
when I was still living with J up in Boston, but she was in her thirties, and
I’d been twenty, and nothing more than a few innuendos had been exchanged.
    And now…now I was a PUP and had to think about things like why
someone wanted to get to know me, rather than just enjoying their company. Even
the Council people who supported Stosser’s Great Experiment still saw us as
tools for them to use rather than the impartial clearinghouse we were trying to
become. So there was that.
    “I heard that you were living in the city now, but I didn’t
think I’d run into you. I should have, of course. That’s how it works—you think
this is a huge place, but it’s really such a small town.” She leaned forward,
her blue silk blouse open just enough at the collar that I could see the swell
of her breasts and the gold chain that dropped between them, and part of my
brain kicked into a different gear. Apparently, being out of college meant I was
fair game now.
    Huh. Andy was gorgeous, smart, ambitious, and potentially very
useful to me, long-term, if I were going to think the way she did. And I
was—modesty aside—smart, good-looking, and potentially very useful to her, both
short- and long-term, if she had any ambitions in the Council, which I knew damn
well she did. We would be, as the pundits like to say, a dream power couple.
    And the sex would probably be a lot of fun.
    There was just one damn problem. The Merge. Other than Pietr,
who knew what the deal was and where he stood, all of my sexual relations for
the past year had lasted two weeks, tops. Not that my sex drive had suddenly
gone away—far from it. It had just… I need to be emotionally engaged with the
person I’m sleeping with. Not love, but like-a-lot. And respect. And…
    And every time I touched someone else, I knew that it wasn’t
enough. I wanted Venec. I wanted the spark-and-thump I got just touching him.
Wanted to know if his eyes were as intense when he hit orgasm as they were when
he was decoding an evidence tangle. Wanted…
    I wanted him out of my head, out of my groin, and the last
lingering scent of him out of my core, because it was just the damn Merge, and I
did not like being directed by anything, least of all some obscure, magical
hand-of-fate.
    But I knew, by now, that he wasn’t going anywhere. And neither
was I. It just… I wasn’t ready yet.
    Andy touched my hand, her fingers soft and firm and smelling
like very expensive sin. “I have to get to a meeting—I’m already running
late—but can I ping you later, maybe have dinner?”
    I didn’t want to encourage her if there was nothing
happening—I’m a flirt, not a tease—but Andy could be useful. And it wasn’t like
I wasn’t glad to have someone to exchange friendly innuendo with who knew the
rules and wasn’t interested in