It was the famous book about dragon-shifters, the one written a couple years ago by a human female in the UK mated to a dragonman.
Jose had to admit he didn't think anyone would've bothered to study his kind before the lottery since they didn't need to try to win him to get into his pants.
He watched as the female stole a glimpse of him again, her dark brows coming together as if trying to assess something, and then returned her eyes to the book.
Okay, his curiosity was piqued.
While he was supposed to go down the rows in order, he ignored the suggested route and made his way toward the female with the book.
Only when he was right in front of her did she finally gasp and lower the book, revealing her beautiful face. The O shape of her mouth made one side of his own tick up.
Before he could notice more than her dark hair and brown eyes, let alone say anything, his dragon roared. That's her.
Victoria Lewis knew she should keep her beloved book in the backpack under her chair and try to look sexy to attract the dragonman's notice.
Hell, every woman around her was doing that, some even wearing tops that were little more than bras and skirts that would no doubt show the edges of their asses if they bent over a little.
She resisted looking down at her own outfit. Victoria had worn a simple stretchy bright green V-neck shirt, a color everyone said looked good on her, and jeans. No makeup, no flashy earrings, nothing. She was just herself. Well, mostly. She preferred sweats to jeans, but being close to a dragon-shifter for the first time required a teensy bit of effort.
Not that she expected to be chosen. Victoria was here to sate her curiosity, end of story. The dragonman toward the front of the room was the closest she'd ever gotten to one. Sure, she could've tried joining one of those tours or finding one of the rumored bars where dragon-shifters sometimes hung out.
However, the thought of going into a bar and trying to talk with strangers made her want to run in the opposite direction.
No, the only way for an introvert like her to ever see a dragon-shifter up close like this was at one of these lotteries.
Entering alone had taken her several hours of mustering courage before she could hit Send. And even being accepted had almost made her decline and forget about it.
But then she remembered that if two hundred women gathered into a room, all vying to be the one to win sex with a dragon-shifter, it was highly unlikely the dragon-shifter would pick her.
Oh, Victoria liked herself and didn't really care about how she preferred books to people most of the time, or that her job entailed her working from home on her computer and she could lounge in yoga pants all day.
But dragon-shifters at these lotteries tended to want outgoing women who radiated experience.
Virgin she may not be, but she could count the number of guys on her hand and still not use all the fingers.
So out the book had come, and she'd been checking it against what she saw in person, not wanting to waste a second of this rare opportunity.
Tattoo on one of his biceps? Check. Although his was in a stylized form of a dragon, much different than the more jagged, patterned version of the British dragon examples in the book.
After checking the section on tattoos, she looked up again to see if his pupils flashed. When they didn't, back to the book she went.
Ah, they only flashed when the inner dragon talked to their human halves. Maybe the dragon was being quiet.
Just as she finished reading that, she glanced up and gasped.
Somehow, the dragonman had appeared right in front of her without her noticing. And if seeing his sexy, muscled form wasn't a big enough shock, his pupils flashed to slits and back.
Up close, it was fascinating and a teeny bit terrifying.
The dragonman grunted. "You. I want you."
She blinked. "M-Me?"
The ADDA employee stood next to him and raised her brows. "Are you backing out?"
For the briefest of seconds, Victoria considered it. The selected woman was to be whisked off to have lots and lots of sex with the dragonman, until she finally conceived his child.
And then, once the baby was born, she could either stay with the dragons or go back to her old life.