Stranded with the Cajun (Captured by a Dragon-Shifter Book 3) (8 page)

D
rake could not stop kissing
his mate. Lori was everything he could have hoped for. The connection between them deepened with each passing second until he could feel her inside his soul. She was a vital part of him he could never live without.

Her aching need for him mirrored his need for her, and he fumbled to free her of her pants. Lori pulled at his waistband, freeing his arousal. In an eager joining of half-dressed bodies and desperate hands, they managed to come together against the door. He lifted her thigh, entering her without testing her depths. He didn’t have to. He knew what she wanted.

The perfection of the moment was punctuated by harsh breaths and hushed sighs. They connected with more than flesh, and the deep bond would never be severed. Lori held on to him, gripping his shoulders as he lifted her other leg. The position allowed him deep, and he pumped himself into her. The tension built and he thrust harder and faster. Lori’s release washed over him as she let him partake of her pleasure. The feelings were too much, and he orgasmed hard.

In the aftermath, he did not let her go. He held her close. “I pledge to do everything I can to make you happy, Lori.”

“You already have, Dra—”

Her words were cut off by a loud crash coming from the front of the house. Drake instantly shoved her behind his back and faced the door. He’d been so focused on Lori and the connection between their bodies and souls that he hadn’t been paying attention to potential dangers.

“Get out of my house!” Ursa yelled belligerently. There was a sound of a struggle.

Drake jerked up his pants and whispered. “Stay here.”

“Guns don’t work without bullets,” a man mocked from the other room. “Give me that before you hurt yourself.”

“Drake,” Lori whispered and grabbed his arm, and he felt her fear.

“Stay,” he insisted. When he’d taken Ursa’s bullets, he’d thought he was protecting her. It was now his fault she was left helpless.

“All we want is the lizard man,” a man said.

“That’s Howards,” Lori said. “He must have tracked you here.”

“Where are you hiding it?” Mr. Howards yelled at Ursa.

Ursa responded with a string of confrontational words.

“We know it’s hiding here. There are tracks coming from the swamp.” The sound of slamming doors followed Mr. Howards’s statement.

Drake slowly opened the door to assess what was happening. Ursa lay on the floor, trembling and holding her face. Still, despite her obvious pain, she continued to curse the two men and all of their descendants. Howards was a larger man and directed more than helped a second, smaller man to knock DVDs off the shelves.

Drake tried to move undetected to gain the advantage and keep the men from firing the guns around the women, but the door hinge creaked and gave his position away. Drake sprang into action, surging forward. He shifted as he attacked, using his taloned hand to swipe at the nearest opponent.

“Kill it, Mr. Howards, kill it!” the smaller human yelled in fright and flailed around, wielding his rifle as a club because Drake was too close to shoot. He struck Drake’s chest, but the metal barrel barely registered against the dragon-shifter armor.

Gunfire sounded behind Drake as Howards shot at his back. The bullet grazed his thigh and struck the rifle-club wielding man in the hip. The man screamed and fell back, dropping his weapon. He grabbed his injury and crawled across the floor to the open front door.

Chaos erupted. Drake saw Lori from the corner of his eye. She charged Howards. The hunter fired again, but the shot went wide as Lori flung her body against the man’s arm. Ursa grabbed Mr. Howards’s ankle and pulled. The hunter shouted in protest at the attack. He kicked and punched to get the women off him. Ursa and Lori both sustained blows but kept fighting. Mr. Howards angled the butt of his rifle toward Lori.

Drake roared. The sound reverberated off the cabin walls. He reached the man as the rifle swung down. His talons ripped into the hunter’s arm, and he jerked the weapon out of his hands and threw it aside.

Unlike his terrified partner, Mr. Howards didn’t stop fighting. He reached for his waist and pulled a handgun. He aimed it at Ursa’s head as she held on to his leg. Drake reacted, tearing through the man’s neck and shoulder with one slash of his hand. The gun never fired and dropped out of the man’s hand. Mr. Howards grabbed his neck to stop the flow of blood, but the wound was too deep. He crumbled to the floor.

“Drake,” Lori whispered, her voice small.

Drake turned to the door. He blocked the women with his body.

“Go,” he ordered, worried that more hunters were coming for them. “Take Ursa and run. I’ll fight them off.”

“This is the police,” Sheriff Jackson shouted from outside. “Ursa? Drake?”

Drake dropped his arms slightly in relief to hear his friend’s voice.

“Come in,” Ursa yelled from her place on the floor. “You’re late to de party. Punch bowl is empty, and I’m going to bed.”

Lori offered Ursa a hand and helped her to her feet. Drake didn’t relax his guard until he saw the sheriff enter.

Jackson eyed the bloody mess on Ursa’s floor. “Ah, hell, Ursa, what did you go and do? I told you to lock the door.”

“They broke in,” Lori said, using Drake’s arm for support as she inched past the dead body. “It was self-defense. I’ll testify to it. This is Mr. Howards. He’s a big-game hunter staying at Planation Inn. He hacked my computer and found where Drake was and tried to hunt him. He’s a sick bastard. And they shot Drake.” She motioned at his healing shoulder and then his leg. “Twice.”

Ursa waved a dismissing hand at Lori and pointed to Mr. Howards. “Dat one shot de other one who bled out on de porch and I, um—” she tilted her head and studied the giant gash on Mr. Howards’s body, “—bit dis one in de neck and he bled out right here. I was all by myself, minding my own, when dey came in and start wrecking de place. Left me no choice. I’m just a little old lady, all alone in de swamp, so helpless and—”

“All right, all right,” the sheriff interrupted. Ursa chuckled to herself, the sound more of a cackle.

“I killed them,” Drake stated. “I will accept my punishment.”

“You weren’t even here,” Ursa denied. “You’re not here now.”

The sheriff looked at Mr. Howards. “I think you’re confused Ursa. You must have stabbed him with a kitchen knife. Must have been cooking when they surprised you.”

“Dat is it,” Ursa said. She limped over to where the hunter’s gun had fallen to the floor and picked it up. She moved toward her bedroom. “Dis is mine now. I’m going to bed. Lock up when you’re done dragging out de…”

“Uh, Ursa, that’s evidence. I have to take it with me.” The sheriff followed her.

“No, you don’t,” Ursa yelled. “Dis is a nice gun. Take my old—”

L
ori couldn’t stand
in Ursa’s living room any longer. The cabin felt too small, and the smell of blood was making her sick to her stomach. She rushed to the front door. Mr. Howards associate was dead on the porch, having been shot in an artery if the blood pool was any indication. She hurried past the body and instantly began walking toward her car.

“Lori, wait.” Drake chased after her.

Trembling, she turned to face him. “I am so sorry, Drake. This is my fault.”

He stopped walking. “You are apologizing to me? It was my duty to protect you. I should have heard them coming.”

“I should have known that he would track you here,” Lori said. “You were so calm, and I thought it would be safe. If he hacked my computer to find you, he probably also put a tracker on my car. This could be my fault.”

“You cannot control the evil in other men,” Drake stated. “The gods have seen to it that he has been punished. Perhaps that was their will. They wished for us to end Mr. Howards’s murdering ways.”

His answer was so simple, so pure, and she could tell he believed it. “I don’t know if I said it out loud, but I love you.”

“I know. I feel it in you.” He inched closer. “And you feel it in me.”

“If I’m going to stay here with you, if we are going to make this work, we’re going to have to talk about these alligator swims of yours, and about getting Internet service at your house so I can work. Do you even have a job? And no more hunters. I can’t handle being shot at. And—”

Drake grimaced and held his temple.

“What is it? Are you injured?” She closed the distance to him and reached for his face.

“Do all female brains spin with thoughts and worry as yours does?” He gave her a wary look. “It was very scary in your brain just now.”

“Well,” she answered, wrapping her arms around his neck, “at least now I know how to get you out of my thoughts.”

“
U
h
, Drake?”

Drake felt his wife calling to him in his mind as he swam beneath the water. Something hadn’t been quite right about the ambient noise of the swamp, and he wanted to make sure his pregnant wife was safe. The full force of her apprehension filled him, and he quickened his pace.

“Drake, you have company.”
He saw a flash of reptilian eyes in his mind as he heard her words.

Drake surged up from the water and leaped onto the shore. His worried gaze found Lori standing on the porch, not daring to move. Lori pointed to the tree line near the water to a gathering of yellow reptilian eyes staring back at her in the evening light. She’d seen him shifted on many occasions, but that apparently hadn’t prepared her for a yard full of dragons looking as if they’d just arrived from a refugee camp. Half a dozen men turned to look at him.

“Dimosthenis, thank the gods we have found you,” Galen said, relaxing his stance. He stood in shifted form, speaking their native Draig language. He was a guard at the royal palace, and by all memories, a very loyal dragon to the ruling family. “We feared you were lost in the city of plague, but then we found this—” the man held up a brochure for swamp tours, “—and knew this was where you would be waiting for us if you made it out alive.”

“Galen?” Drake couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Since he had been swimming naked, Drake grabbed a pair of shorts off the edge of the broken dock and slid them on. Though he didn’t know all the men now facing him, Drake recognized a few of them as workers from the palace. “I don’t understand. How did you find me?”

“See.” Galen offered the worn, crumpled brochure forward. “The shadowed marshes. The gods pointed us to you. It is their will. We were able to determine when you made it through. Then we waited for the right time so that we could track you.”

“Are you here to take me back?” Drake edged closer to his wife. He’d fight them all if he had to. “I will not go easily.”

“Drake?”
Lori asked in his mind. He held up his hand to her in an effort to calm her fears.

“We’re here to follow you,” Galen said. Those behind him nodded eagerly in agreement. “You had the courage to leave, to forge a path into the unknown.” The man looked at Lori and began to breathe hard as if emotions welled inside him. “To find a wife. All the things the royals seek to deny us and keep for themselves. One Var prince and one Draig prince have wives. The other two refuse to choose and yet journey here whenever they wish. They deny the rest of us a chance at happiness. You are a legend, and we would like to be like you, Dimosthenis. Please, do not send us away. We cannot go back to the city of plague. The trials those humans face are most horrible.”

“Retching in the streets,” someone added behind Galen. The dragon-shifter stepped forward to make himself seen. “Whipped into a frenzy of dancing and screaming. And they laugh as they spill their pickled insides onto the streets.”

“We have faced that challenge and have proven ourselves,” Galen said, touching the man’s arm in a comforting gesture. He then turned back to Drake. “Help us to understand this world.”

“Drake?” Lori asked out loud. She couldn’t understand his native language. The dragon-shifters turned to face her in unison.

Drake let his body shift into human form. Using the Earth language, he said, “May I introduce to you my wife, Lori.”

“Wife,” the men repeated as if awed by the very word. They too shifted into their human forms as they eyed Lori intently.

“Then it is true. Earth has women for us.” Gerard pushed his way forward. He’d worked taking care of ceffyls in the royal stables and normally kept to himself. Since he’d worked in the palace, his English was much clearer. “Lady Lori, you will show us how to capture women and make them our mates? You will show us which villages to raid, so we do not get plague carriers?”

Lori opened her mouth and made a weak noise before saying, “Uh, well, I think you’re thinking of the medieval period, and I, uh, well—”

“I am an honorable man,” another dragon-shifter interrupted enthusiastically. His English was thickly accented, much like Drake imagined he’d sounded when he’d first arrived. “When the portal again opens, I am to meet my brothers. There are seven of us. I would like to find a woman who will give me many children. And my brothers will need wives as well. We will live together in the forest as we did on Qurilixen. You will find me a woman who is not like those in the giant board drawings?”

“Giant…?” Lori looked helplessly at Drake. The men edged closer to her.

“Models,” Drake supplied. “I believe he means billboards. He doesn’t want a…” Drake paused and drew his hands up and down in front of him in a straight line. “He wishes for a woman with…” Drake gestured as if to draw voluptuously curved hips in the air.

“Oh,” Lori said in surprise as she got his meaning.

“I am trained in combat. You can find me one to protect? I would bring a woman to my home and lock her there where she is safe,” Galen said. “The royals have said how fragile human women are. That is why they do not want us coming here to get them. But I promise I will not let her out of the home so she cannot be injured.”

“Oh, all right,” Lori said in an authoritative tone. She lifted her hands with a decisive air to stop them from talking. “First, welcome to Earth. I’m sorry you had to enter through the French Quarter—”

“City of plague,” Drake supplied.

“Which is not a city of plague,” Lori continued. “It is a place of celebration where college kids go to party and woman take off their shirts in exchange for, you know what, never mind. As far as you’re concerned, it’s a city of plague. Stay away from it. We’ll find you a nice church picnic or something to try first. In fact, you might want to stay out of most towns until you get a little more acclimated to the planet. Baby steps.”

“I would like babies,” the man with seven brothers inserted.

“As would I,” another added.

“And I,” said another.

“I would be happy just to have a woman,” Galan said. “And babies if she is not too delicate to be filled with the dragon seed.”

“Ok, ground rules time,” Lori said, touching her rounded stomach. “No one says the words dragon and seed together in a sentence.”

“As you wish, my lady,” Galen said. “So you will help us?”

Lori looked at Drake. He couldn’t help the happiness he felt when he looked at her. Telepathically, he said,
“They have nowhere else to go, chere. Look at them.”

Slowly, Lori turned at the request to eye the tattered gathering of dragon-shifters before her. They had clearly been traveling for a long time and were tired. “You can stay here for now until we figure something out. We can’t have you running about the countryside like a swarm of bayou lizard men. The last thing we need is Janice at the Plantation Inn to get wind of your existence.”

“I will make this Janice a fine husband,” one of them said. “Janice is a woman?”

“First things first. Come inside. Eat. Sleep. And tomorrow we will discuss—”

“Plans for the village raid?” Galen inserted eagerly.

“Earth etiquette,” Lori corrected.

“And I will speak to Ursa about making you all Cajun,” Drake stated. “I hope she has enough moonshine to perform this many ceremonies.”

“Oh, I’m sure she’ll figure it out,” Lori said, chuckling. She waved the men into their home. “Find a place to rest. Try not to break anything.”

Drake met his wife on the porch and pulled her into his arms. “They heard tales of my coming through the portal and followed. I do not wish to turn them away. They didn’t even think to hide their dragons from you. I cannot let them roam around like that. And I cannot send them home after they defied royal orders not to come to Earth.”

Lori slid her hands up his chest to rest them on his shoulders. “Drake, I would never ask you to send your friends away. They need us. And Earth women clearly need us to protect them from some very well-meaning but terribly misguided Romeos.”

“They are dragons, not Romeos,” Drake said, confused.

“My mistake,” she answered, leaning up on her toes to offer her mouth for a kiss. It was an offer he gladly accepted.

“Lady Lori,” Galen called, “we found this box with women in it. You will take us to find them?”

“Box…?” Lori gasped. “My photos. They’re in my office. I had those proofs organized for the book, oh my God, stop!” She rushed into the house.

Drake smiled as he stood alone on the porch and listened to the chaos inside. This was how life was supposed to be—filled with love, purpose, and family.