Page 114 of Dragon Her Heels

One way or another, I would dine upon steak, and no matter what I picked, I would indulge in a heavenly fare and regret having to return to my cooking, which was doomed to be substandard comparatively.

Once the waiter headed off to bring our beverages and the first wave of our meal, I examined the dinner selection. “I am torn between the tiny and fierce or the tomahawk steak that will leave me battling to finish all night and possibly into tomorrow.”

“I am going for the tomahawk, and I am expecting to be defeated.”

Gluttony it was. “I feel I should have checked the main course before deciding to go all in on the appetizers.”

“What we don’t finish here we can take home. It’s not like either one of us will be walking out on our own steam.”

I snickered at that. “And to think Darlene spent all that time attempting to turn me into a seductress. Had she wanted any seductions to be a success, she would have made certain to send us to a restaurant with tiny portions rather than giving us a decent bang for our buck and doing serious damage to our waists.”

“At the risk of sounding uncouth, she dressed you quite well for her plan, although I do agree about the flaws in her plan. We would need to be both conscious and capable of moving to pursue such activities.” Yuless stared at the menu with wide eyes. “I’m not sure I’m going to be.”

“I know I’m not going to be. At least we’ll have transportation home, although I would not be surprised if the transportation home decides the unconscious will share a bed. Clothing may become optional. I mean, we’re dealing with the Devil and the Queen of Hell. Those two can be the purest of evil when they wish to be.”

“If I’m not coherent enough to protest the loss of my attire, that is my fault.”

I nodded. “Then we’re agreed. Should we lose our clothing in ways unbeknownst to us, neither party present holds any responsibility. Any seductions of any persons present will be done when both parties are coherent and conscious. I require approximately ten minutes after waking up to be conscious and coherent.”

“I require close to an hour,” Yuless confessed. “For the most part, I spend the first forty minutes in bed denying that it’s time to get up, and then I take a shower to become functional.”

I could see the differences in our morning schedules working well; by the time he got up to use the shower, I would be pattering downstairs to feed the animals before making coffee and breakfast. In good news, the animals tolerated me feeding them and bailing before coming back and cleaning their stalls, setting them loose in the pasture, and otherwise properly serving them. “If you require coffee, I always feed the animals first, then I make the coffee and feed myself. It is not an issue to add another person to the morning routine.”

“I can handle the coffee and breakfast needs while you tend to the beasts. I can also tend to the felines. At least they have accepted me in your domain with little fuss. I’m pretty sure they enjoy hunting dragons and batting them around.”

“They’re scaled squeaky toys, Yuless. The cats just make them squeak in a different fashion than I do. Personally, I prefer my way. It’s that aborted squeal at the landing splash. It is perfection.”

“Have you punted the other dragons yet?”

I shook my head. “They are wise and decided to stop doing things that annoy me—or they stay in shapes too large for me to punt. I have asked Mr. Magic to deal with them a time or two. He’s a good alligator. He got several hours of exercise, the dragons got out from under foot for a while, and it made an excellent excuse to give him an extra chicken. I don’t want to teach him he gets four chickens a week yet, so they’re presented as treats for good behavior. I want him eating some fish while I provide the majority of his calories.” I bowed my head. “I am going to have to hide medicine in his food.”

“What sort of medicine is he going to need?”

“Mostly supplements. I don’t know if he’s getting enough, so I’m going to talk to an alligator expert and confirm he’s doing okay. I’m going to have to literally hire a vet to do blood tests on my wild pet. And because he’s not really wild anymore, he’ll let us do it. He knows to come to the garage if there is a particularly bad storm. I installed a bell for him to ring!”

The bell, snout height for him, would activate the same software I used on my front gate. It had cost me a small fortune, but I could remotely open the garage door as well.

“And he uses it,” Yuless reminded me. “And if it’s a really bad blow, he opens your chicken coops and herds the flock to the garage. The first time I saw him do that, I about had a heart attack. Your alligator can manipulate your coop catches.”

“Yeah, that is terrifying, I’m not going to lie. I had to reinforce the support posts on the coops to handle his weight when he’s opening the gate. But if Mr. Magic is bringing in my flock, I know to herd the cattle and the horses and lock everyone indoors.” The months between being hired by the Devil on behalf of the Destroyer of Georgia and riding in the Iroquois Stakes had changed me and my animals—and sometimes, the changes had slipped by without me noticing, just like the steady progression of time. “The next few months are going to be crazy.”

“The races alone are going to be crazy. You have Alligator Bait enrolled in quite a few.”

I had done the math; if I placed top three in the precursor races, I would qualify without needing the large stakes win prior to the Kentucky Derby—I would just need a top three placement in that race, too. “You’ll come with me for the races, right?”

“Of course. Ashley is coming as well, although she prefers doing her work in the background or handling the rest of your herd like we did this time. It’ll be fine. We already made certain we had the appropriate days off, including transit. Lucifer helped with that, I will admit.”

“Do we even deserve Lucifer?” I complained. “I really don’t know how he has his reputation.”

“He can—and will—turn people inside out for looking at his daughter wrong.”

I shrugged. “As one does in such circumstances.”

Yuless eyed me. “Are you capable of turning people inside out?”

“Well, no, but I’m armed with alligators and I’m willing to feed people to them if they were to look at young members of my family wrong.”

The tall, dark, and handsome bowed his head and sighed. “I can’t even blame you for that one. If I had a bunch of alligators doing my bidding, I’d be the same way.”