Authors: Elsa Jade

Tags: #BBW dragon shifter paranormal romance

Dragon Fever (19 page)

BOOK: Dragon Fever

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Nobody believed in dragons anymore.

Except the girl dangling from his claws, obviously. She believed.

She’d struggled hard as he dragged her up to the turret. She’d resisted everything he’d tried since he took her under his wing, so to speak, after she tried to kill him. But her weight had gone slack with shock—and lack of anything to push off of—when he’d thrown them from the heights. He hadn’t been in his dragon form at that moment, so it might have seemed to her like they were plunging to their doom.

But he was a powerful shifter, and in midair he’d made the change. Bones cracked and lengthened, skin hardened to scales, and nerves screamed with fire like they were coming awake after a thousand years of sleep.

Felt so good.

Almost as good as it would’ve been if she screamed. He’d earned only a gasp out of her though, which had to suffice as he swooped them up through the pouring rain.

The lights of Sin City spiraled away beneath as he reached the clouds, lost in the water as if the world had drowned and only the two of them remained. Rain sleeked over his scales and across the tough stretch of his wings like cool fingertips caressing him.

What would her touch be like?

He spread his talons and dropped her.

***

Anjali Herne had told herself she wouldn’t say a word to the vile monster torturing her, no matter what.

Screaming didn’t count as words, right?

But her wide-open mouth filled with water and the ends of her dreadlocks as she tumbled through the air. The rain tasted…

Almost sweet.

The Vegas lights were a bad mushroom trip below her, but the swirling colors gave her one very clear insight: she did not want to die.

Of course, not wanting to die was how she’d gotten into this trouble in the first place, so maybe she should just resign herself to her fucking fate.

The moment she decided the game was up and she was about to decorate the sidewalks of the Strip with shredded red dreadlocks and scraps of fake velvet, vicious claws wrapped around her upper arm and one leg, piercing through her skirt.

She braced herself to be torn in half, but the other half of her was self-conscious about the meat of her thigh in his clutches. Which seemed silly; did she really need good muscle tone to be dismembered?

Mighty wings beat downward on both sides, and the scent of hot metal surrounded her.

Instead of rocketing away and snapping her neck—it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop at the end—the monster continued plummeting for a heart-stopping moment then banked sideways and up, bearing her along on the stomach-curling arc. If she’d been on a rollercoaster, she would’ve screamed in delight.

As it was, she could only sob that the beast had her once again.

They were so high now the city was completely lost. Only the purple-silver illumination of lightning crackling between the clouds let her see. She gasped again as a pitchfork of white stabbed past them, so close all the little hairs on her drenched body prickled.

She was really going to die this time—

With a mighty twist, the dragon barrel-rolled out of the way. For a heartbeat, she was on top, sprawled on the powerfully muscled chest. To her shock, the scales were silky smooth and so hot—

Those wings snapped out wide again, catching the winds and bearing them higher into the storm.

Thunder boomed in her ears.

All good intentions lost, Anjali screamed like a little girl.

As if that had been the sign it was waiting for, the dragon arrowed toward the earth. Clouds streamed past them so fast she wasn’t sure if it was rain or tears streaming from her eyes.

The lights of the Keep—the huge, brooding casino on the outskirts of the city—burst into bright relief.

They were going to crash…

At the last moment, the dragon backwinged, sending mini tornadoes of wind and water flowing ahead of them. It gave her a light toss…and instead of plunging to her death, she rolled across the marble-tiled roof of the Keep’s highest turret.

She came to a rest sheltered under the overhang of the small gazebo that housed the spiral staircase down into the Keep. A fringe of triangular gold flags decorating the edge of the gazebo roof snapped restlessly in the wind like tongues of flame that wouldn’t go out.

She huddled there as the storm intensified, seemingly pissed that they’d escaped its wrath. Lightning flashed all around. Was there a damn lightning rod on the roof above her?

Clamping her hands over her ears, she peered down the line of her elbows.

Right at the dragon.

Perched at the edge of the roof, talons clenched on the stone parapet, it spread its wings wide like a challenge to the storm. The long, sinuous neck snaked upward, jaws gaping. It roared, flames erupting from between shining fangs.

The sky sent a lightning bolt in answer.

Fire—red and white—met in a vicious dance.

Maybe she screamed again, but she couldn’t hear it over the cacophony of the thunderclap.

When her blinded vision cleared, a man stood where the dragon had been.

Torch Dorado wasn’t a man, she knew.

Damn it, she wanted to keep thinking of him as it, as the monster.

But that was impossible when he was just so fucking…

Naked.

For a long moment he stood with his arms still spread, his heels hanging over the edge of the fall.

Not that a fall mattered to him, of course. Hard muscles bunched in his arms and chest, even in this shape, a silent testament to the strength it took to fly. His dishwater blond hair—mostly water at this point—stuck straight up, as if the charged atmosphere was still coursing though him. Rain streaked down his chest, contouring around his pecs and abs, and cut darker channels into the thatch of hair around his—

She jerked her gaze away from his cock which was thrusting like another lightning rod toward the sky.

Oh god, this storm was turning him on.

She clamped her arms down to her chest and was shocked when the pressure sent a jolt through her peaked nipples. No. No no no. If she was high beaming and wet it was only because of the cold rain, not because of the monstrous, wicked, grotesque, fucking naked shapeshifter staring at her through the silver veil with eyes as dark and violent as the desert tempest.

Thunder continued to grumble and mutter, but no more lightning shot from the sky. He lowered his arms abruptly, flinging droplets from his fingertips, and stalked toward her. Smoke curled from his flared nostrils.

Anjali too lowered her hands and scooted backward on the slick marble tile until her spine slammed into one of the gazebo pillars. She felt pinned there by his narrowed gaze.

He swept one arrogant look over her, taking in her bedraggled dreadlocks trailing over the vintage ivory-hued blouse that was now only good for wash rags. His claws had torn through her gypsy skirt, and the slashes fell open around her thighs, exposing her legs and her bare feet, her ballet slippers having disappeared somewhere over Vegas. Her skin prickled at his unspoken verdict.

Years ago, when she’d complained to her mother about all her, ah, extra curves, her mother had tsked. “Girl, those sturdy legs will take you wherever you want to go.”

Sturdy had not been her teenage ideal, but now she didn’t even have that—her damn knees were knocking so loud it was like they wanted to let someone in…

No. No no no again. He was not getting in, not into her body, not into her head, not in nowhere, no how.

He stopped just beyond the gazebo overhang, as if he needed the rain to cool the temper she sensed still boiling in him. He’d dragged her up here in the first place because he swore he was done with her defiance.

Someone like him, with all that power at his fingertips—literally—could never understand the difference between defiance and desperation.

With his hands on his hips, he stared down at her. The stance only emphasized his blatant, threatening masculinity.

But he wasn’t a man.

“Could you…” When the words barely stuttered out of her, she cleared her throat.

He tensed, every muscle rippling in a way that made her own body clench in helpless response. “Could I what?”

“Point that thing somewhere else? I’m afraid it’s going to go off.”

For a moment, the clenched line of his square jaw softened as if she’d actually startled him. He looked down. “After everything we just did, that’s what scares you?” He slid his hands down his lean hips. At the sensual gesture, his cock pulsed.

Not that she was looking.

His lashes lowered, hiding the silver echo of lightning in his dark eyes. “Would that make you talk?”

She thought hard about her answer. “No. It’s not as bad as the alternative.”

In a move so fast she couldn’t process it, he was crouched in front of her, one raised knee blocking her view of his cock, the fingers of one hand steepled next to his bare foot. “Let’s get one thing straight,” he snarled, his eyes wide and glittering with the aurora borealis finish of expensive crystals. “It would be good. More than good. It would blow your mind.”

She slammed her head back against the pillar, but the thin coil of smoke from his sensual lips didn’t smell like brimstone. More like the rare temple incense her uncle sold from the back room of his head shop.

Still, she held her breath. Because she knew what that incense could do, and she didn’t want her mind blown.

Torch crouched back on his heel, watching her. “Lars Ashcraft can’t get to you here. So tell me what he’s planning. Tell me why he sent you.”

“I already told you.” Although she tightened her throat, she couldn’t keep the plaintive note out of her voice. “I. Don’t. Know.”

“Your friend Piper Ramirez already repeated everything you told her,” he said in the same harsh tone as the campus cops who’d always tried to get her to admit she had weed in her backpack. “That Ashcraft wanted you to use your friend Esme Montenegro to lure a dragon so you could steal our ichor.”

Anjali raised her chin. “And that’s all I know. I explained everything when Piper found us at the motel.” Pipsqueak had been furious and hurt at being abandoned, but Anjali had only wanted to keep her out of harm’s way. Harm equaling dragons like the one staring holes in her right now. And like the one that had appeared out of nowhere to force their escaping private jet to the ground and then burning it into the dirt. “You can keep asking me like you have been for the last three days, but the answer is going to be the same. I don’t know why Ashcraft wants dragon ichor. Just that he’s willing to do anything to get it.”

Including threatening to destroy everything she had left.

Which wasn’t much.

Torch tilted his head, as if he smelled her weakness. “Including binding Esme to him, thinking he can siphon a dragon’s power through her. It’s killing your friend.” He tilted his head the other way, always watching. “Or should I say ex-friends. They are almost as done with you as I am.”

She sucked in a harsh breath, and water burned in her lungs as his words tore deeper than his talons had. Esme and Piper had been her only friends during her haphazard and ultimately pointless attempt at a fine arts degree. But they’d stayed friends even when she had to go back to work for her uncle, even when she couldn’t quite hold up her end of their apartment rent or the wine and ice cream binges.

To lose them hurt worse than anything she’d ever felt in her life.

Worse except for whatever Ashcraft would do when he found out she’d failed.