Dragon Called: A Slow Burn Sexy Paranormal Romance

by Kara Lockharte

  The dragon folded its wings, lowering itself slowly as if trying not to scare her. And those eyes—those familiar eyes—they were massive now, but still the same.

  Damian’s eyes.

  Damian was a dragon.

  A real, honest-to-God dragon.

  There are dragons in this world, my dear. Real dragons. Beware. To know a dragon is to be cursed.

  But Grand Auntie Kim never explained how, exactly. And in the stories she’d told her, things weren’t clear either. In some, the dragons were savage and ruthless; in others, noble protectors and guardians, but as she wracked her brain for childhood memories, she couldn’t remember a way to tell one kind from the other. The only thing that echoed was Auntie Kim’s warning about avoiding being cursed.

  With what?

  Why had I never bothered to ask her?

  Because I didn’t ever dare think they were real.

  Yet Andi couldn’t stop herself from moving toward the dragon, her hand outstretched.

  She knew she would probably regret this later—but wouldn’t she regret it just as much if she didn’t? Which was worse? What ifs or never should haves?

  She stopped mere inches away from him.

  No! No, no, no! Damian shouted at the beast and fought to regain control from the inside. The dragon wrestled him.

  Mine, it growled.

  No. She is her own. Damian redoubled his efforts, pushing the dragon back and down.

  For now, it conceded, and then abruptly went away, leaving Damian pushing against nothing but himself inside his dragon form. Able for the first time to see the outside world with his own eyes, he found Andi.

  Staring at him.

  She knew what he was.

  And still, she walked slowly toward him, with a look on her face that wasn’t the horror, disgust, or fear he had expected.

  It was awe.

  She would turn and run at any moment, and he would have to chase her down, change back to human, and somehow convince her to go back to the house where he could expose her to the Forgetting Fire as quickly as possible.

  But something in him wanted her to see this beastly part of him, the part he kept hidden deep inside. He folded his wings and lowered himself to all fours, in an attempt to make himself smaller and less threatening.

  Step by slow step, she approached him, watching him as carefully as he was watching her. With his extended senses, he could hear the rapid beating of her heart, smell that sinfully sweet scent of near panic and wariness.

  She stopped inches away from him.

  Run, he thought, run for your own good.

  He lowered his head to her, intending to show her his teeth, which were the size of short swords.

  And to his surprise, she reached out and touched him.

  I should run, she thought, for my own good.

  But instead of running, she touched the protruding ridge on the side of the dragon’s face, where a cheekbone would be on a human. His scales were hard and hot but not uncomfortably so.

  Suddenly his scales rattled in a shivering reaction. Andi gasped and jumped back and watched as the dragon seemed to melt away.

  And then Damian stood there, in human form. The same man she’d seen in his bedroom earlier, only now completely naked, and the rest of him was just as hot as the half she’d already seen. He was perfectly proportioned chiseled perfection, and the memory of his lips on hers and his hands on her body came rushing back with fresh heat.

  “Why aren’t you afraid?” he asked her.

  Andi blinked. “Should I be?”

  Damian opened his lips, but no words came out. Instead, he tilted his head, watching her as if he thought she would bolt—running off screaming at any moment. She’d be lying to herself if she didn’t admit that a small part of her wanted to do just precisely that.

  Damian was a dragon. But he was also a man.

  A very, very good-looking man. And the rest of her wondered if his skin would be as hot to the touch as the scales had if she felt it now.

  Thoughts like that will only get me into trouble. Andi made an effort to look around, at the steaming bits of monster flesh scattered around them and the smoking wreck of a van behind her. She should be scared witless, and part of her was, but the same snark she hid fear with at the hospital came out to protect her. “I take it this is just another normal Friday night for you?”

  “Saturday morning, technically,” he corrected, slowly smiling.

  She turned back toward him and smiled too, then quickly looked away—feeling her face getting red. She’d seen a lot of naked men; it was a hazard of her job, but he wasn’t a patient, and…she tugged at the too long cuffs of the shirt she was wearing.

  “So, what happened to your injury?” she asked.

  He put his hand to his ribs where she’d pulled out the stinger. “I heal quickly.”

  “Uh-huh.” She made every effort to keep her gaze high. “Any more monsters coming that I need to worry about?”

  “Not to my knowledge.” He kept looking at her strangely—like he thought she was the unreal one.

  Andi folded her arms carefully. “Okay, then, look, are you going to tell me what’s going on? Or are you going to pretend this isn’t happening and tell me I’m going crazy?”

  He squinted his golden eyes at her. “No. You’re not going crazy,” he said, tilting his head. “Aren’t I…scary?”

  The bubble of nervous expectation around her popped, and Andi laughed out loud. “If you have to ask, you’re probably not.” She gave up and let herself look at him, at his fucking perfect naked body. “At least, not right now.”

  He cracked a smile. “Yes, well, about that,” he said, lowering his hands to cover himself politely, and then the smile fell from his face as he took a fast step toward her. “What’s that?”

  Andi blinked at his abrupt shift in tone. “What’s what?”

  He grabbed her arm and held it out. There was a spot of violet on the white shirt she was wearing, right under her left breast.

  “Did it touch you?” He didn’t unbutton it—he just grabbed both sides of it and ripped it off her.

  Chapter 9

  DO NOT LET ANYTHING HAPPEN TO HER! his dragon shouted at him, as though there was a chance in hell he might.

  Shut it! he shouted back at it. He scooped her up as she shrieked, racing her back into the house and through the halls. How much Unearthly blood had touched her? How long had it been in contact with her skin? The closest earthly comparison was like phenol—an acid that numbed you as it burned—incredibly dangerous, and one of the many reasons all his men had magical protections.

  “Damian!” She was pounding her fist on his chest, and he was entirely ignoring her until they reached the room with his dragon’s bathing pond. He threw her far out into the water and then leapt into it himself to swim after her.

  She bobbed back up, spitting water—and spitting mad. “What the fuck!”

  “The blood is dangerous. You have no idea.” He hauled her up to inspect her side.

  “I’m half-naked!” she shouted at him.

  “So? I’m all naked.” He reached for her to inspect where the blood had brushed her skin. It had already erupted into a bright red welt. He dunked her back into the water, chest-height, and started swirling water quickly past it with a hand. She stood in the water on her tiptoes, panting angrily, water flowing over her breasts with each sweep of his hands, nipples pebbling in the pond’s chill. Shit. “Grim, heat the pond!” he commanded.

  “Do you want to explain what the fuck is happening to me right now?” She moved to cross her arms, to hide herself from him, but he caught her wrist just in time. He couldn’t risk her getting burned elsewhere.

  “I’m sorry. I know this is strange, but some Unearthly blood is acidic. Or poisonous. Depending on the monster.”

  Will she be all right? His dragon rushed forward inside him as if to see for himself.

  STOP THAT, Damian commanded. Since when had his dragon ever given a fu
ck about a human?

  Andi slowly lowered her head down to look at her side. “Don’t,” he warned her.

  “I’m a nurse, okay? Let me see.” She pushed his hands away and held her arm up, while holding her breast out of the way, rocking forward out of the water to look. Watching her touch herself, even for clinical reasons, did dark things to him. Damian wished the water was opaquer. “It doesn’t look that bad,” she went on.

  “We caught it in time. But you’ll need to stay in here for a while until it’s all diluted—just in case.”

  She carefully crossed her arms high on her chest, fully covering herself from him. “Fine.”

  Had he been looking that greedily? If so, who was to blame? The remnants of the succubus’s sting, his dragon, or him? All three? His dragon was roiling inside, beside himself with proprietary concern. He could still feel the surges of inappropriate lust—surely just his succubus-caused hangover from being attacked last night—and he’d be lying if he said she wasn’t beautiful now. The perfection of her breasts, curve of her neck, the way her hair flowed around her like she was a goddamned mermaid, right down to the blue streak in it. After her kissing him earlier, it was all too easy to imagine them entwined together, his lips on her neck, her breasts pressed against him, his cock seated deep.

  Yessssss, his dragon purred.

  Damian quickly swallowed and splashed his face, trying to get his head clear. She would have to forget all this—he should not, could not get attached. It would only make it hurt more later.

  Pain is fine, his dragon disagreed.

  No one asked you, he told it.

  Andi watched him splash himself beside her, totally in his element. Less than three minutes ago, she’d been flirting with a dragon, and now she was half-naked in the water with one. Oh, and also burned by acid from monster-blood—because that was a thing that could happen. And to think they never covered that in nursing school.

  Damian dunked himself then resurfaced, snapping water out of his hair with a quick shake, before he looked at her again. She could tell by the way he was trying to look at her eyes and not down at all that he was trying very, very hard to grant her some privacy—and she was trying to do the same. Only the way his shoulders breeched the water and how she could see his biceps every time he moved his arms was pretty damn distracting—as was the rest of him. His wide chest narrowed down to abs that were as rippled as the water they both stood in—the expression on his face, dark and brooding like a storm. He was almost too hot to be real—which made sense because he was a dragon. A dragon. An actual, real, honest-to-God, wings-and-all dragon.

  She let herself drop into the water, letting it surround her so that she could think. Then she made the mistake of opening her eyes and found herself at Damian’s waist height—and the view below was not any less distracting than the view above. She sprang out of the water, back to her feet again.

  If she slept with him—an “if” that was getting smaller all the time, turning the corner into a “when”—chances were, she would have a very good time.

  “Are you okay?” He leaned closer, his voice full of concern. She had a feeling he was asking about more than the burn.

  “Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be? I just almost died two or three times, plus met a dragon. One that I kissed for some strange reason, earlier in the night.” She laughed nervously and rose up on her tiptoes, the seam of his jeans riding uncomfortably-comfortable between her legs.

  He grunted. “About that…that wasn’t you.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “No…literally. You weren’t thinking right. You were under a spell.”

  Of course, she was, Andi thought with a titter. That made as much sense as anything else. She covered her breasts with her elbows and splashed her face with water to buy herself time to just calm down and think, because if she didn’t, she was going to have a panic attack, or just sleep with him to stop from having one—because at the current rate of craziness, why not?—which also wasn’t optimal. She released a breath and gathered herself before addressing him again. “So, you’re going to tell me everything, right?” That was the least he could do after making her live through last night.

  His eyes widened. “Not if I can help it.” He looked away from her, a lock of dark wet hair falling into his face. “Andi, no one can know what we are. Or what we do.”

  She gave up on covering herself, as his words sank in. “Wait,” she began, trying to manage this U-turn in her mind. “Why save me from getting burned if you’re going to kill me?”

  “What?” he whirled on her and laughed. “No. I’m not going to kill you.”

  His protest seemed genuine. “But you said—”

  “No.” He shook his head and grabbed her shoulders. And where she hadn’t been able to feel the acid burning her before, she could feel him now, the heat emanating from his hands. She wanted to grab his wrists and pull them down around her. Was that really her or just his ‘spell’? “You’re safe with me. You’re always safe with me. I swear. It’s just that…you might not remember all this tomorrow.”

  She stepped back reluctantly. “And why is that?” Complicated emotions swam across his face, and it took him so long to answer, she made a guess. “You’re cursed? And people forget you when they’re not looking at you?” Was that what Auntie Kim had meant?

  He barked a laugh. “I wish things were that easy. But no, there’s a room here that I have to take you to before you leave. It’ll help you forget things.”

  Andi double-blinked. “After everything I’ve seen? That seems incredibly unlikely.”

  He spread his hands into the water in front of her and bowed his head. “And yet, it’s true.”

  Why had he told her?

  Because he felt like he had to.

  Because acting on anything he felt right now—no matter how badly he wanted her, without telling her—would’ve been fucked up. And there’d been a brief window when he could’ve been with her. Her body’d wanted him already; he could scent it this close to her—even in the water like they were—but he’d finally seen it in her eyes.

  And so, he’d blurted the truth out to save her from himself. Now. While he was still strong enough. Before any of the things he ached for could happen.

  Fool, his dragon chastised from a distance.

  Damian closed his eyes and shook his head at his dragon and himself. Selflessness was not a trait often found in his family—or indeed, in any of the Unearthly—and it seemed to cost him more strength than his fire did. But his own mother had been lured in by some “situation” like this. He would never curse another woman to the life he’d watched her lead—one she’d had no choice in.

  Meanwhile, Andi was talking at him. Peppering him with questions as her panic rose—another way in which she is delicious, his dragon noted—and he shook his head further.

  “There’s no point in explaining anything else,” he said firmly, cutting her off mid-sentence. “More answers will only lead to more questions, and they’re all a waste of time.”

  He looked down and saw the fear in her eyes—not quite wild, but getting there—and ignored the small dark voice in his head that said his dragon was right; her fear was beautiful and would that he could scare her more.

  “You want me to forget me…you…this?” she sputtered, looking around the waters and then at him again. “No way.”

  “You have to. It’s not safe.”

  “What about Austin?”

  “He’s different.”

  She crossed her arms again—this time defiantly and below her breasts—and it made him want to pick her up and bury his face in them.

  Cut that out, he growled at his dragon.

  You think that’s me? his dragon laughed.

  “I’m different!” she protested.

  “You are.” It was the truth. It had been a very long time since he’d allowed himself to think dark thoughts, and yet somehow, her presence summoned them. The things he could do to her if given time. All
the ways he could make her scream. He swallowed, getting control of his urges. “Very different. And yet, all of this is way too dangerous for you.”

  “Why do you get to be the person to make that decision?”

  “Because I’m the one who involved you in the first place.” He advanced on her, slowly corralling her toward the shore. “You’re less than twenty-four hours out from the only world you’ve always known. How terrible can it be to return?”

  She stood her ground. “If you pick me up… If I am picked up by one more man today—I don’t care what you can turn into—I am kneeing you in the balls. Which I have pretty good access to right now.” She glanced down into the water pointedly.

  At the thought of her fighting him, Damian bit back a smile. She fights you because she wants you, his dragon explained.

  You have no idea how humans work, he explained back.

  “It’s just not safe for you to know, Andi. Humans shouldn’t deal in Unearthly business. They wind up injured—like the man you cared for earlier tonight. And like you, here, now.” He reached his hand out toward her rib cage, longing for an excuse to touch her again. “I don’t want to pick you up and carry you to the Forgetting Fire. Don’t make me.”

  He left his hand out and willed her to put hers inside of it. She hesitated, looking at him closely, searching for some mercy in his face. Finding none, she finally took his hand. He pulled her closer with it, and together they started walking back to shore.

  What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck. Andi’s mind was spinning, looking for a way out. “And so we’re both going to forget everything?” Andi picked the least bad option and tried to keep the fear out of her voice.

  “No. Just you. I’m immune.”

  She stopped. “And, what, you’ll just whisk me back to my apartment, with no explanation?”

  “Pretty much. You’ll wake up in bed and feel like you’ve been sick—it’ll excuse the lost time.” He lifted her hand out of the water like he was asking her to dance, propelling her forward again.