Page 107 of Dragon Her Heels

“I’ll hold you down for her while she dismantles you,” Yuless stated, his voice a match for mine.

Lucifer laughed. “Spoken like a true horse owner, and you’ve only gotten started. Good job. I will invite Hagnar over to help transport everybody to Florida. That way, you two can enjoy yourselves tonight without having to worry about heading back here. Keys, please.”

Heaving a sigh, I went to my purse, which I’d stashed out of the reach of bored horses, grabbed my keys, and tossed them his way, keeping the primary house fob so I could get back into my home. “Please don’t lose them, damage my truck, or hurt my horses. If you can’t get the gate fob to work, just use the intercom. Assuming I’m not shitfaced by the time you arrive or sleeping off being shitfaced, I’ll even let you in.”

Lucifer raised a brow. “Why are you going to be shitfaced?”

“That is how confident I am about my ability to make a mess of a date. Once I make a mess of the date, I’m going to be drinking away my sorrows.”

“Should you be saying this in front of the man you’ll be dating?”

I bowed my head. “Honestly, I’ll be relying on him to make it home after completely humiliating myself and drinking away my sorrows.”

Lucifer made a thoughtful sound. “Well, I’m sure Gabriel intended to do a good deed for you, Yuless, but it seems you’re going on a date with disaster. I wish you the best of luck. You’re going to need it.”

“Honestly, I’m amazed that someone who is as confident as Crystal is even capable of suffering through such self-esteem problems. Actually, I’m a little alarmed.”

“She has two modes of operation: confident or wallowing in pity over her position as last place in everything dealing with life. Just be glad her self-esteem woes seem to mostly deal with her dating life.”

“You should sacrifice yourself and be our squeaky toy; maybe if she’s punting you into the lake, she’ll forget about her self-esteem woes,” Yuless suggested.

“How about I take you straight to hell and give you a collection of fucking assholes who are there with me because they abused animals, conjure lava alligators with zero interest in cuddling, and let you handle their punishment as your evening activity after dinner? Then you can take her to the gemstone fields and streams to see if you can find anything. I’ll point you at one of the challenging spots that requires some luck to find something so you’re not done in five minutes.”

I sniffled, went for the box of tissues, and blew my nose. “I’m going to blame the rescues for my unstable condition.”

Yuless came over, plucked a collection of tissues from the box, folded them, and put them in his pocket. “There is nothing wrong with having emotions. Frankly, the only reason I didn’t cry over them is that I prefer to do my crying where nobody can catch me doing it. Later, I probably will shed more than a few tears over them. No matter how they came to be in that state, it was not fair.”

Life rarely was, and I reminded myself I did what little I could on a daily basis to make life a little more fair to my neighbors. “As far as I’m concerned, they’ve prepaid for luxury accommodations, the best treats money can buy, and the opportunity to be happy horses in my fields. I will also destroy anyone who even thinks of trying to take either one from me. Those horses stay with me until their dying day.”

“Watch what you wish for,” Lucifer warned. “You might get it—and their dying day might take a lot longer to come than you realize.”

“Well, good! They can mow down my pasture for all eternity. Your threats are not at all threatening. Are you sure you’re actually the Devil? You’re just a goth angel in a phase right now.”

Lucifer clutched at his chest and played at having a heart attack while Yuless gaped at me with both brows raised. “That was startlingly vicious.”

“I haven’t even gotten started yet. Let’s go find Darlene, get changed, and get this date started. Otherwise, I’m just going to verbally assault the Devil until he runs away crying.”

“We could just start our date with abusing Lucifer. That does sound like fun.”

“I mean, we could, but if we actually send him packing while in tears, Darlene is going to wonder what we did to him, we’ll spend all night being absolutely worshipped, and I can’t deal with her worshipping me today. After our date and our session punting fucking assholes into fire and feeding them to lava alligators, we’ll head to my place and cuddle with the kittens.” The kittens had grown up to be twice the size of house cats, lived to hunt any pests bold enough to test my wards, and otherwise lounged about the house enriching the lives of those fortunate enough to behold them. “Sateen would love if you come into her domain so she can sleep on you.”

Of my four beasts, the smallest of the black kittens lived for when Yuless came over and graced her with even a minute of his time. Mistofees, Purrcifur, and Beelzipurr tended to ghost my heels, prowl the property and remind the residents they were the rulers of the place, and otherwise earn their keep through being wretchedly adorable.

Lucifer grumbled a rather long string of profanities. “Did you have to name every single one of your pets some horribly mangled version of my name?”

“Yes. They love it. Sometimes, you show up when I’m calling them for supper, and they love when you come over. You wouldn’t want to ruin their happiness, would you?”

“I absolutely would.”

I huffed, lifted my chin, and helped Yuless prepare the mare to go to her stall. “Deal with it. If you had wanted a meek minion, you would have picked somebody else.”

“Oh, Yuless. That reminds me. What are my odds of convincing Hagnar to go on a date?”

Yuless narrowed his eyes, grabbed his mare’s lead line, clipped it into place, and released her from the cross ties. “They’re better than you expect, but it would take the perfect woman—and she has to deal with his quirks and hobbies. Good luck with that. Why are you asking?”

“There’s a woman similar to Ashley who needs a gentle hand, but once the gentle hand has cultivated her, he needs to be able to deal with a great deal of spice and fire. She’s not a human, but she has no idea she’s not a human, so I’d want to broach the subject with him first. I don’t mean literal fire. She’s just going to push the limits because she can. I wasn’t able to find an appropriate pair of starter seeds, so I’m hunting for a target for her.”

“I see. He does like rescuing people when he thinks he can get away with it, much like he did Kanika. Now that he’s freed from some of his obligations, it’s a possibility. Bring some bribes. But you’ll have to deal with his one problem. If you can deal with that, he’ll do just about whatever you want.”