Dragon's Heart, Volume 1 Read online

  She lay there, her heart gently slowing, relishing in the afterglow of a fantastic orgasm when she realized his weight was getting heavier. She pushed at his chest, the last twitching of her orgasm quickly disappearing. She opened her eyes with a little panic, and like a bucket of cold water, she watched her handsome man turning green, his nose becoming...what? A snout? His emerald eyes pulling back. His skin seemed to grow scaly—not yucky slimy scaly, but like a hard skin scaly.

  Her rising panic only made her push at his chest more. He was so heavy. Her panting breath no longer came from sexual bliss but fear. Huge, leather-like wings unfolded from his back and spread on each side of him, filling the space in his room. Finally finding a little breath as he lifted his heavy weight off her chest, she screamed!

  Sitting up in her drenched, sweaty bed, Amy stood and ran to the bathroom, letting what little she had eaten that day into the bowl of the toilet.

  * * * *

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Troy yelled as he paced his office.

  It had been six weeks. Six damn weeks, and all he had were a couple of pictures from his security cameras. His dragon had quickly picked her out of the crowd. She had been wearing a red dress that wrapped tightly around her luscious hourglass-shaped body. Her long, honey-colored hair reached over her backside, slightly hiding the groove of it. Her heart-shaped face seemed to shine when she smiled. Then there was her pert little nose, and her lips that he remembered touching with his. His cock twitched just thinking about it.

  He wanted her. Mine.

  Ours, his dragon reminded him.

  All he could do was put everything to memory so he would know her when he met her again. He would know her anyway—her scent and the pull between mates would call to him. There was no if he saw her again, it was when and only when, he wouldn’t accept anything else. She was his!

  He could only feel a slight bond to her, something dragon shifters had when they found their mate. Dragons mated for life, but finding their mate was uncommon. With billions of people on the planet, finding ‘the one’ was bloody rare. Some shifters never found their mate and withered away, their zest for life dwindling with each passing year of loneliness.

  But he could feel her slightly, through a very thin strand of the bond, something that had happened when he had bitten her and spent his seed inside of her. All he could feel was her growing weakness, the sickness, and the nightmares. With the bond being as weak as it was he couldn’t just go out and find her.

  When they knew each other better, spent more time together, their bond would be strong, and nothing would come between them. It should have been strong now, but he had made a monumental mistake...a really bad day and a drink. The strongest of drinks, one that only a shifter could get away with, Ember Tears. The name given from some of the very first shifters. Humans couldn’t handle the stuff. A simple sip would lay them under the table for a night. A quick grin raised his lips as he remembered slipping a drop of it in one of Todd’s drinks one night after he had annoyed him. Todd was his second, his manager at the club. He had watched Todd finish his spiked drink with a small grimace, and within minutes the poor bloke was laid out on his sofa, out cold. Boy, did he have one hell of a hangover the next morning.

  Troy shook his head, lowering his gaze to the floor. The night he met his mate he had drunk almost half a bottle of the stuff and had been a little out of his head. Watching the security feed, he saw as he went up to her, wrapped his arms around her luscious body, and whispered something in her ear. With growing frustration, he watched as she turned toward him, her head lifting to look into his eyes. Her body fitted against his like a glove. His gaze followed them as they walked through the crowd and left the club together. He found out later that his chauffeur had driven them to his place in the city at his request. No one had seen or heard her leave the next morning. Like a wisp, she had vanished.

  Now with only memories from his dragon and the pictures from the club, he had nothing other than the fading scent of her. His dragon was as frustrated as he was, constantly pushing him to shift and fly around to look her. Screw the humans, he didn’t care about hiding from them, he just wanted to find her.

  Mine.

  Ours, my friend. We will find her, we will have her again. We will, he assured his dragon.

  If he didn’t find her soon, both he and his mate would perish from broken hearts. He had doomed his mate after just one seriously fucked up meeting. He would find her, and then he would keep her as close to him as he could. He would never let her go again!

  Troy had sent her picture out to some of the other dragons in the area with the hope that someone would know her and help him. He wasn’t worried that another dragon might be stunned by her beauty and want to keep her for himself, because no dragon would poach another’s mate. They were too rare, and no dragon wanted to see another suffering—it just wasn’t right.

  His parents had been on their annual holiday, but he had called them after having no success at finding her. His mother and father immediately boarded a plane and came to London to help, not wanting him to feel the pain of losing a mate. Of course his mother had given him a stern tongue lashing before she gave him the much needed motherly hug.

  “Son, you have to calm down.” His father’s voice was deep with concern as he stepped into Troy’s office. “It will take strength from you, strength you need to search for her.”

  Troy turned to see his father. It was like looking at himself a few years older in the mirror; the only difference was his green eyes that belonged to his mother. His father looked like he was in his fifties, but he was well over a hundred. His firm, toned body didn’t reflect his age at all.

  “I need to find her, Father. I need my mate. It hurts.” He sat in his office chair, one of his hands rubbing at his chest. “What if I never find her, what if I have really screwed this up? Even my security team knows nothing. It’s so frustrating!” Slamming his fist into the finely polished wood of his desk, he lowered his head in shame.

  His father walked behind him and laid a hand on his shoulder, gently gripping it in comfort. “I wish I could help you, son. Alas, all I can do is be here for you.”

  Troy placed his hand over his father’s in a silent thank you.

  Chapter 3

  “Come on, sleepyhead, you can’t keep laying in that bed. You’ve been off work for a week now. Bills, woman, bills, they need to be paid!”

  Amy groaned and tried to hold onto the quilt that Wendy was now tugging off the bed. “Oh, come on. Please, just one more day,” she begged.

  She felt so tired, so weak. She wasn’t hungry...no, shit that hadn’t been the problem at all, and takeaways had been her friend this week. Meat, meat, and more meat—anything juicy and fattening. She couldn’t explain it. She had no cold or fever, and she was eating and drinking well now that the sickness had stopped. Now she just felt tired beyond belief, and her nightmares weren’t helping either.

  Wendy tugged at her legs, slowly sliding her to the edge of the bed. “Oh God, woman, we need to get you in the shower.”

  “Hey, you saying I stink?” she asked, a little pissed off, into her mattress, not having the energy to raise her head.

  “Yep,” Wendy replied, chuckling. “I’m sure you’re growing mushrooms or something that grows in sweaty, dark places.”

  “Eww, you are so gross.” Amy slowly pushed herself to her feet and walked into the bathroom. “Okay, okay, you win. I’ll go shower.”

  “So what’s going on, Amy? You’ve been tucked up in bed all week, but with all these takeaway boxes you sure haven’t gone hungry.”

  Amy stepped into the shower and groaned as the hot water sluiced down her hair and shoulders. Wendy had been right, she did stink. She needed to sort herself out, maybe visit a doctor. She grabbed the soap and lathered her body, trying to figure out what was going on with herself.

  Reaching up, she swiped the soap around her neck, gently rubbing her sore muscles. She paused as she felt the four small bumps
on her neck, two on either side of her shoulders. They had scarred over now. She remembered him sinking his teeth into her, and that had tipped off a rip-roaring orgasm. Her pussy had clenched on his pounding cock as he rammed in one last time and let out an almighty roar, then she felt the heat of his cum as he came inside her. Her body tingled at the memory.

  She’d never had unprotected sex before, but she was on the pill. Somewhere in her foggy mind she remembered he had told her that he was disease-free. She would think about that later because for now, with her waning energy, all she could do was finish washing her hair.

  As Amy stepped out of the shower she shrieked a little seeing Wendy sitting on the toilet watching her.

  “Hey, perv, bugger off. Let me get dressed.”

  “Just making sure you didn’t drown or something.” Wendy laughed, walking out of the room, but just before she left she asked, “You going to that teacher training this weekend in London? Melanie, Sarah, and Bobbie are going. It’s something to do with new first aid rules.”

  “I don’t know. I feel like shit. Traveling, then those courses are just...ugh.” She sighed. “But I suppose if I want to keep my job, I’d better.”

  “I’ll pick you up tomorrow at five PM then. Be ready, okay?”

  “What makes you think I won’t be at work tomorrow?” Amy asked, trying to take the shake out of her voice. The shower had taken more out of her than she realized.

  “Woman, you’re standing there white as a sheet. Go back to bed before you fall down. I’ll call the plumber on the way home, because I’m sure all that dirt, mushrooms, and grime blocked your pipes.”

  “Fuck you!” Amy called out, collapsing on her bed with a groan at the thought of drying her hair. Maybe it was time to cut it.

  * * * *

  The drive into London hadn’t been the nightmare Amy had expected, the overwhelming tiredness she had felt all week was slowly ebbing away. The closer she got to the city, the stronger she felt. When they finally reached the Hilton Hotel in Canary Wharf, the lights of the building shining like a beacon in the night, she was bursting with energy.

  Wendy looked at her in surprise. “City air good for you or what?”

  Amy scrunched up her face and stuck her tongue out. Her immediate thoughts went to the hunky man who’d she gone home with the last time she’d been in London. Troy. She wasn’t so drunk she couldn’t remember his very fine body and his huge cock as it pounded inside her. It would be a memory she’d take with her until her dying day. A one off—she didn’t think she’d ever have the guts to do something like that again.

  She had always been careful not to get into trouble. She always took the steady, long path instead of the quick short-cut. She knew that after Adam’s death she had curled up into a ball and taken self-safety to the extreme. Anything that had looked like trouble she had treated like a leper, not even bothering to entertain it. That was until she met the women she was currently sitting in the car with. Having friends with mischievous sides had helped her find the fun in things again. They proved to her not everything was bad.

  She now took life day by day with an added bit of fun in it. Going home with a strange guy that night had been her letting loose and she had enjoyed it. Why did he plague her thoughts if he was just a one-night stand? His eyes, his body, his sweaty muscles as he fucked her. Nope, don’t go there. It was just a one-nighter...never again.

  She had woken early in the morning, desperately needing to go to the bathroom. She’d forgotten where she was at first, but as the memory of the evening had caught up with her so had her embarrassment. She was lying beside a hunk, and looking around the room she knew he was someone who had money too. She didn’t fancy doing the ‘I’m me and you are you’ bit, so she had slipped out of bed, careful not to disturb the man, and gathered her clothes.

  Taking one last look at the male lying in the bed, she quickly used the facilities and got dressed. She didn’t even bother taking in her surroundings as she walked through the place and out the front door. But she knew she was pretty damn high up as she could see the city through a window while waiting for the elevator. Downstairs she had collared a cab back to the hotel. She was lucky enough that the room she shared with Bobbie that night was empty. Bobbie was out sowing her oats too.

  “Food,” Amy blurted out, trying to get her mind out of the gutter. “I’m starving.”

  * * * *

  Troy stood at one of his floor-to-ceiling windows that covered two of his walls. His silk black pajama bottoms hugged his lower body, his naked chest cool in the air-conditioned room. He watched over the bustling evening city. Lights twinkled, coming on in apartments or offices of those who worked nights. Was one of those offices hers? No. He shook his head as his thoughts ran away with themselves. He would know if she was close.

  He would know!

  His energy had been waning the past week, his dragon curling up and sleeping more, not caring, but he had begun to feel a little better in the last hour. He shifted restlessly and closed his eyes. He found the thin strand of a bond that linked him to his mate, and surprisingly, it wasn’t as wispy. It was as thin as a piece of paper, but it was there!

  Stronger!

  She was getting closer!

  He turned and strode through his living room toward the front door. He placed his hand on the handle, but his mother’s soft voice stopped him. His parents had their own penthouse a few blocks over, but as the week had gone on and his energy continued to wane his mother had been worried and had chosen to stay with him for a few days. Every time he had looked at his mother he could see the sorrow and fear of losing her son.

  “Umm, son, where are you going?”

  “She’s getting closer, Mama. I’m going to find her.”

  “In those?” She grinned and pointed at his pajama bottoms. “Although I’m sure you’ve done the dirty before, I honestly don’t think it would be a great second meeting.” She chuckled.

  He glanced down at what he was wearing, then headed to his bedroom. Grabbing his phone, he rang his driver and told him to meet him out front in five minutes. Walking into his closet, he grabbed the first clothes his fingers touched. He quickly dressed, thinking about her. She was near, she was there in London, so god damn close.

  Finally dressed, he walked past his mother and received a smile and wink of approval. Kissing her gently on her cheek, he headed out, sure that before the night ended his mate would be in his arms.

  The elevator trip down to the ground floor took longer than he wanted, but after a long minute the door pinged open. When he walked out of the building, he was glad to see his driver waiting and already opening the car door. Climbing in, he tuned into the small wisp of a bond he shared with Amy and started giving orders on where to go.

  Troy watched the buildings pass by, not seeing them; all he could concentrate on was that tiny sliver inside of him that slowly grew thicker as he drew closer to her. The driver was quick at taking orders when Troy barked the occasional instruction. Even to the point of pulling quite a few U-turns as he went too far.

  Close, his dragon excitedly said. Ours. Keep, he repeated over and over.

  Yes, my friend. Calm! Let me concentrate.

  “Here, stop here,” he practically shouted at his driver.

  Looking out the window, he watched as they pulled up to a hotel. He nearly lost what was left of his cool exterior as he climbed out of the car, not waiting for his chauffeur to open his door.

  With quick strides he walked through the revolving doors into the foyer. Looking around the quiet, well-lit area, he had to calm his beating heart. Take a breath.

  Close. Mate. Keep.

  It was getting harder to keep his dragon from coming forth. It was so damn excited to be near their mate. After all these lonely weeks it was bursting at the seams. He had to take a minute to calm them both down before even more of a mistake took place.

  Calm, you don’t want to scare her away. We have to take it easy. Remember the pain, my friend. It w
ill get worse if we lose her.

  With a begrudging reluctance, his dragon stopped pushing forward. Mate, he grumbled but then said no more.

  The hotel was quaint, clean, and didn’t appear to be very old. Three elevators and a set of stairs leading to the upstairs were immediately on his right. Looking further on, there was a small seating area with some plush sofas and seats along a hallway up to a dining and bar area. He took a step forward toward the reception desk when a group of five giggling women rounded the corner, coming out of the dining areas and heading toward the lifts.

  “Woman, you are so bad. That poor waiter really had a thing for you,” a redhead screeched, setting the others off into a giggling mess again.

  His heart thumped in his chest when he saw his mate. The dress she’d had on in the club had been seductive, sexy, drawing stares from males he didn’t care to think of, but now she had on a long, flowing skirt that wrapped around her ankles as she walked. Her hair that had been left down the night he had met her was pulled up in a bun. The tight blue t-shirt she had on pulled against her breasts when her hand lifted as she laughed, and he saw the slight outline of her bra underneath. His cock stood to attention, growing more rigid as he stared.

  Taking in a breath, he sifted through the foyer scents to pick hers up. He had to shift a little as his now rock hard cock pushed against his zipper so strongly he was sure it would leave a permanent imprint if he didn’t take it in hand soon. He pictured gripping her hips firmly enough to leave bruises as he pushed inside her. Crap, he had to stop those thoughts before he went all cavemen, grabbing her up, slinging her over his shoulder, finding a corner or wall and just taking her there and then.

  Yes! Mate! Fuck! Keep!

  Chapter 4

  After Amy and her friends had checked into the hotel and did a quick unpack they met in the bar to have a few drinks before their evening meal.