Escape with A Rogue (45 page)
Read Escape with A Rogue Online
Authors: Sharon Page
Tags: #Regency romance Historical Romance Prison Break Romantic suspense USA Today Bestseller Stephanie Laurens Liz Carlyle
In
Blood Secret
, Lucy Drake is prepared to do all she must to save her family, even if that means giving herself as a sexual plaything to the Duke of Greystone. Despite to keep her ability to shape-shift into dragon form a secret, she willingly enters an unfamiliar world of carnal ecstasy with the one man who is sworn to destroy all of her kind . . .
The Duke of Greystone will do whatever he must to discover the Drake family secret and uncover the whereabouts of his missing nephew. A vampire highly skilled in the ways of erotic pleasure and adept with games of dark seduction, he will prevail upon his sexual expertise to ensure Lucy’s complete surrender . . .
Read on for an excerpt . . .
Lucy bit her lip, let it start, but then she stopped before she changed. Suddenly, she did not want to do this alone. “Can’t you shift shape and fly? Vampires can turn into bats, can’t they?”
“I can’t,” the duke said, and even though she was yards away, she heard him distinctly. “I’m a vampire who cannot do any of the fun things. But you do it—I want to watch you.”
She could do this. How could she be so afraid of it? Perhaps he was correct. Perhaps it was her fear of what she really was that could hurt her.
The duke came over to her. Slowly, carefully, he took off her clothing. Her heartbeat raced as his hands moved over her. Soon she was naked on the hill.
Naked. Out in the open. Where anyone could see. Except they were alone here. The carriage was so far away, surely the servants couldn’t see her. And the duke stood between her and the sight line of their vehicle. He would have to do so, otherwise the servants would see her transform.
She was going to do it. Her heart thundered, but she was going to try.
Lucy closed her eyes, and in the magical way she never understood, she began the change.
Heat began to gather around her heart. The warmth flowed through her blood, slowly leaching everywhere under her skin. Here was the point where she should start to fight. Gritting her teeth hard, she fought against herself. Instead of trying to will the change to stop, she stopped her body from battling. She let herself change.
It was a strange feeling, as though her body was being wobbled apart. It didn’t feel bad, but it felt like she was losing control of her limbs. The wobbling made them longer, as though giants were stretching her. Her body grew—or rather, the ground got farther away. It happened so quickly, she only knew she had become a dragon by the way she tingled and the way the jutting granite rock and waving grass receded in a swift blur. She stretched. The sound that rumbled from her throat was a little-used roar.
Her arms were longer and tipped with claws that glowed blue-white in the moonlight. Scales glittered, catching the light, and they looked blue and green and silver all at the same time. Her legs were strong, muscled. Her body was slender and her face had changed completely. She now had a muzzle, a snaking tongue, and large, heavy-lidded eyes with long, curling eyelashes.
She had wings on her back—large wings that spanned ten feet across, and were made of gossamer-thin, shimmering panels of skin stretched on a bone-like structure. She gave her wings a flick, feeling the way they stirred the air. Her tail lifted behind her. It was a beautiful thing, long and sinuous, and the spine of it was marked with diamond-shaped scales that stood upright in a line. The end held a flat silvery diamond that glinted when she moved her tail.
Female dragons could use their tales to draw a mate. They used their tails for playful flirting the way human ladies plied their fans in the ballroom. Though Lucy couldn’t—she’d never learned. She had never spent much time as a dragon.
But here, in the velvety dark and the amazing stillness of the moors, she felt like stretching out. She let her tail drift through the air, drawing patterns in the dark with the reflectivity of her scales.
Then, her dragon’s heart beating swiftly, she looked to the duke.
He was watching her, a soft smile on his mouth. “You are beautiful,” he said. “I would like to see you fly.”
“All right,” she whispered, but as a dragon, she could not speak in English. She used a language of whispers and snorts that was more musical that it sounded.
“And breathe fire.”
She tipped up her muzzle and let out one small lick of flame. Breathing fire was dangerous, and it drained her of energy quickly. If a dragon breathed too much fire, the dragon could die—a dragon could deplete its life force without even realizing it was doing it.
Lucy gave her wings a flap. Never had she had so much open space in which to do it. She lifted them high, feeling the strain of new, different muscles. Then she pushed the wings down, so she rose gracefully from the ground. With beat after beat, she soared up into the cool, clear night sky. She cut cleanly through the velvety dark. Flying felt different. Flying over the moors felt utterly new.
She didn’t feel guilty for letting herself become a dragon. Instead, her heart pattered in excitement. This was . . .
“It is fun,” she cried out, though her sounds were soft growls, not words. Lucy twirled in the air, then swooped down and lifted to the sky. She flapped hard, pretended she was reaching for the stars, then she dove down, spinning like a barrel.
A new sound rumbled up. One she had never made as a dragon, and she had no idea what it would sound like.
It was laughter, and it tinkled like the light tap of a fork against glass.
Excerpted from
Blood Secret
by Sharon Page
Copyright ©2012 Edith E. Bruce. Excerpted by permission of Dell Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Sinful
Some sins are impossible to forgive . . .
Ruthless and devilishly handsome, former Bow Street Runner Trevelyan Foxton has been hired to find a missing debutante. But the woman who holds the key to the girl’s disappearance is the one woman Lyan vowed he would never see again. After all, when a young man proposes marriage and gives his virginity to his beloved, he’s going to be furious when she steals his money and runs away.
Some men are impossible to resist . . .
Haunted by dark secrets, Estelle Desjardins was forced to desert Lyan ten years before, take half his money, and disappear. She has built an independent life as a dressmaker and secretly helps young ladies escape loveless arranged marriages. When Lyan comes back into her life, she must lie to him all over again. But he suspects the truth and wages a campaign of seduction that melts all her defenses . . .
Available in e-book format
ISBN: 978-0-9878641-0-9
Other novels by
USA Today
Bestselling Author Sharon Page
Sensual Regency-set Romance from Dell Books
The Club
It is London’s most secretive gentlemen’s club—a place where no well-bred lady would dare to be seen. But Jane St. Giles, Lady Sherringham has no choice. Her friend Del has vanished, and Jane must enter into a dangerous charade to find her. Now, within the gilded walls of the erotic lair, Jane awaits the lover she has procured for the evening. But the man who enters is no stranger. He is Del’s brother Christian, the Earl of Wickham, London’s wickedest rake—a man on a rescue mission of his own.
Erotic Vampire Romances from Kensington Aphrodisia
Blood Fire
(coming October 30, 2012)
Blood Secret
Blood Wicked
Blood Deep
Blood Rose
Blood Red
“Wicked for Christmas” in
Silent Night, Sinful Night
“Midnight Man” in
Wild Nights
Erotic Regency-set Romances from Kensington Aphrodisia
Sin
Black Silk
Hot Silk
Erotic Regency-set Romance from Ellora’s Cave (digital)
A Gentleman Seduced
About the Author
Sharon Page is the
USA Today
bestselling author of numerous novels of historical and erotic romance. She is a two-time, consecutive winner of the National Readers’ Choice Award, winner of the Golden Quill and the Colorado Award of Excellence, and a multiple finalist for the Daphne Du Maurier Award. She has twice received the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, and is a four-time finalist.
Married with two children, Sharon Page holds an industrial design degree and has worked for many years for a structural engineering firm. When not writing, she enjoys reading with her children, downhill skiing, and mountain biking. Writing romance has long been her dream and she is thrilled to share her stories. Sharon loves to hear from readers and can be reached at
www.SharonPage.com
.
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