Free One Night with the Demon Prince: Paranormal Fantasy Demon/Dragon Shifter Romance (Paranormal Protection Agency Book 9) by Mina Carter

Chapter One
     
    Coffee Girl was back. Hopefully, she’d have pastries again.
    There were few things a demon, even a half demon like Rat, liked more than darkness, fire, and brimstone. Coffee was one of them. Pastries ranked a close second.
    Hidden high on the fire escape opposite the back entrance to Frankie’s Coffee Shop, he eased himself out of the shadows and surveyed the alley. His sharp gaze focused on the young woman below him with interest. A tray in her hands, she kept the door opened with one hip as she peered around the shadowed alleyway. Her apprehension was obvious.
    She should be nervous. Dusk was hours away but it might as well have been the middle of the night. Darkness crowded into the hidden corners, creeping into his peripheral vision until he turned his head and banished them with a direct look. Crammed between high-rise buildings, the alley rarely saw direct sunlight.
    Which was the reason Rat was camped on the fire escape. Something of the supernatural persuasion had decided to take advantage of the permanently near-nocturnal conditions. Bins rooted through weren’t so bad, all food-based businesses were used to that. Stray cats and dogs were endemic in the city…there were even a few wolfweres—the opposite of werewolves—who ran loose occasionally, even though the resident wolf packs tried to keep them in line.
    But when those stray cats and dogs were found, their guts shredded and chewed on, shit got real, fast. Whatever it was had graduated from scavenging its dinner to hunting it. So the owners of the coffee shop had called in the Paranormal Protection Agency to deal with the problem.
    Rat knew predators. It wouldn’t stay on small prey long. Which meant he needed to find out what the fuck it was and shut it down. Fast.
    “Hello?” Coffee Girl called out, obviously unwilling to leave the safety of the doorway. Rat took pity on her, and grabbing a rail, dropped from his perch, unrolling on the way, to land lightly onto his booted feet in the center of the alley. Coffee Girl was human, so she needed to be wary of whatever lurked in the shadows, but Rat wasn’t human. Nothing anywhere near.
    Oh, he looked it right now. Tall and broad-shouldered, he’d pass for a big human male at first. One look at the electric blue of his undercut hair and the heavy muscles under his leather jacket soon dispelled that notion. He looked like the pixie he was… and that wasn’t his dangerous half. Something far more lethal lurked beneath the surface.
    “Hi.” He flashed a small grin when he spotted that she had, indeed, brought pastries.
    Her relief flavored the air, palpable to a creature like him and she thrust the tray forward. “I thought you’d be hungry, being out here all day.”
    Her shy little smile pulled at the hidden side of him, and not for good reasons. He quelled it with the ease of long practice. That way led to bad things, dark and dangerous urges this pretty little human would run screaming from if she had any clue what he really was. No human could hope to tempt him and survive.
    No, he needed something more exotic and dangerous… Like a dragon. The thought slipped through the cracks in his armor before he could stop it. Hurriedly, he stuffed it back and locked it away.
    “Thanks.” Plucking a coffee mug from the tray, he turned to sit next to her on the step by the door. With him here, she needn’t worry about anything that lurked in the dark. The mug was tiny in his hands, the same size huge in hers. Setting his feet apart, he leaned back with a sigh. The warmth from the drink caressed the skin of his palms, the small, mundane heat a lure to his demon nature.
    Coffee Girl turned to take a pastry and his gaze locked onto the delicate curve of her jaw and the plump temptation of her lips. But he wasn’t seeing her. Instead, he saw another woman with fiery red hair and golden eyes. His mug paused mid-air as a wave of fierce longing stole his breath.
    Baby. The dragon queenling the