Table of Contents
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Dragonfire Romance Book 4
Author’s Note
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Other works by Kelly Armenta
DRAGON ENVY
The Dragonfire Series Book 3
Kelly Armenta
All Rights Reserved © 2018 by Kelly D. Armenta
1ST Edition
ISBN 978-0-9846509-7-2
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book including the cover art, may be reproduced scanned, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system, without the written permission of the author. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
For information please email:
Kelly D. Armenta
[email protected]
Cover art owned by Kelly Armenta
Chapter 1
I dreamt I was riding a Unicorn with huge purple eyes and a long silky mane and tail. We raced the sunrise through the surf and the sound of hooves and crashing waves filled the air. Salty spray covered my naked body, dripping from my lashes and face as I held to the beast with my legs. I bent forward, all the while the wind’s fine fingers plucked and worried at me. In that in between place where the light and darkness vie for control, we ran. I clung to my beast and suddenly it was no longer a pale Unicorn, but something dark as midnight with glowing red eyes and long jagged fangs. The fur on its back was as smooth as velvet between my legs. I buried my hands in its silky mane and held on, as it turned and ran into deeper water. Quickly the frothy waves covered my knees. When the water was at my waist I pulled at its mane, trying to steer my beast back to the water’s edge. It shifted yet again and I found myself astride a grey beast of bones and tautly stretched skin. It turned on me and grabbed at me with skeletal hands, plunging me under the water and holding me there, while I struggled to free myself and managing only to swallow mouthfuls of water. I was conscious only of the panic I felt and the horrible taste of salty water.
“Lexi! Hear me,” a voice commanded in my panic and darkness, the speaker male, his words urgent. “You must wake, release the dream… take my hand… come back to us.” Fingers appeared before me and I reached for them, clutching tightly as I was drawn out of the dream and into the light.
I could hear my ragged breathing and cracked open an eye, moaning at the pain filling every nook and cranny in my head. I looked around and realized I lay on a bed of moss. Beside me Cursed and Amras were slumped over as if in a feint. Roral and Lira stood next to Kit and Owen; bleak eyed, and by all counts, worried looking.
Movement caused me to gag and cough up a vile smelling fluid, which spewed from my mouth and throat in a stream. Owen plucked me from the bower and turned me so that the liquid was released onto the grass of the meadow. To my horror, everything the liquid touched turned black and immediately withered. Kit assisted Owen in holding back my hair. Both urged me to vomit up every last ounce from my lungs. Fortunately my body agreed with their advice.
When I was done and my ribs hurt from dry heaving, Owen carefully lifted me into his arms and seated us on the meadow floor, away from the charred ground. Lira and Roral helped Amras and Cursed, who appeared to be coming around. Both were moaning, clutching their heads and attempting to push themselves upright.
My own head rolled against Owen’s shoulder, my body felt deprived of oxygen and was just now coming back to life. Pins and needles radiated throughout my limbs and I too moaned and shifted uncomfortably in his lap, wanting to scream but somehow managing to restrain myself. The feeling lasted several agonizing minutes. It was long enough for Amras and Cursed to manage a position more vertical, less horizontal. While they still looked unsteady, they both managed to remain upright, heads held in hands.
When the worst of the pain had fled, I tried pushing myself to my feet, only to be gently restrained by Owen. “I need to help them,” I breathed a sigh when he rose and carried me across the distance that separated us. He went to a knee, balancing me so that I could place a hand on each of them. I pulled air into my aching lungs and forced the healing out of my body and into theirs. And then sweet bliss rose up to enfold me. I felt Owen grab my arms as I slipped sideways.
“That was not wise, My Lady,” Cursed chastised me when I came around the second time. I smiled wanly up into his now healthy looking complexion and stretched out a shaky hand to cup his cheek.
“Were hurting,” I whispered, my throat feeling like I had swallowed dry sandpaper.
He reached for my hand and bit me softly, his sharp teeth leaving indentations in my skin. “I am sorry,” he whispered when his tongue lathed the pressure marks. I sighed and curled into a ball in Owen’s lap, struggling to keep my eyes open.
“S’okay,” I rasped and rubbed my cheek against the soft hair as I wrapped myself around Owen’s arm. “Feels good.”
And then Amras was there and his fingers pushed back the hair from my face. “Princess, you must not sleep,” he told me firmly and plucked me from Owen’s lap. “You must wake and change now.”
“Mmm… already naked,” I rasped, as I looked at him from beneath my lashes. He smiled tightly and shook his head, his hair spilling around him so that it brushed my cheek and hand. I moved my fingers slightly and grasped a lock. “So beautiful, like liquid silk,” I breathed.
“It’s like she’s drugged,” I heard Owen remark.
“Or drunk,” Kit offered as I moved my body suggestively against Amras.
“I’ve never seen her like this before,” Owen muttered while I ran my tongue over Amras nipple.
I blinked then stared in wonder at the strobing lights reflected on Amras’ chest, murmuring softly. My finger traced the lights across his smooth skin for several seconds and then I turned my head and stared at Cursed, my nostrils flaring as I pulled the scent of him into my lungs. The lights increased and I struggled suddenly, my body arching toward Cursed. My eyes narrowed and in the next instant I was fighting Amras in my attempt to reach Cursed. A low hissing noise filling the air as my agitation grew and speech left me.
“Stay back,” Owen growled when Cursed lifted his hand toward my outstretched fingers.
Lira and Roral reached for me and Lira cried out as I raked him with nails gone sharp and not quite human. They dragged me to the ground where I continued to struggle trying to reach Cursed, who stared back at me in amazement.
“Get Gareth and Jace,” Owen told Kit harshly. “She’s been poisoned and needs to shift.”
Voices filled the air while I clawed and bit anything within reach in my insane attempt to get to Cursed. It was like a burning in me, excluding all other thought. I had to have him. Smoke leaked from my nostrils and someone cried out sharply.
Then minds pressed in on me and I screamed and choked from the
internal pressure, my nerves and muscles feeling like they were tearing me apart from the inside out. More hands held me while alien thoughts forced themselves into my brain. I screamed again and thrashed about against the something or someone inside me their voices all coaxing, and wheedling. I writhed and my scream turned to a roar as I abruptly shifted, then shifted once again. When the shifting ceased, I found myself at the bottom of a pile of six or seven people, everything smelled of blood and fear, and the air nearly vibrated with heavy breathing and angst.
How do I manage to get myself into these situations I wondered bleakly? I couldn’t help thinking it wasn’t so very long ago I was a simple girl with a simple boring life. Well perhaps not completely boring, after all I had lived with a Merecat. I had grown up with the notion that men in white coats wanted to dissect me, and therefore had had to conceal my true identity behind the façade of a frumpy mouse of a woman. I was a woman who had no friends, and very little family to speak of. Yeah, compared to this, it was beyond boring.
So how does one go from being a Plain Jane one day to an Elvin Princess and unmitigated Queen of All Dragons the next? Someone who apparently became physically ill if she went too long without sexual interaction with her men and who seemed to be attracting more with every breath she took? Well, I suppose if your name is Lexi Helyanwe, whose mother is also a Princess of Farie, and whose father is a silver dragon who made a deal with a Rage Demon that preferred a boy child and was therefore willing to give or trade her away to a Lust Demon, it might explain a few things. Or perhaps not, it’s a bit difficult to say.
What I did know is that something, call it nature or the universe or whatever, ‘it’ seemed to be trying to make up for the lack of restrained adventure in my first 25 years of life. Unfortunately for me, fate or whatever ‘it’ was seemed to want to cram as much excitement into each moment of each day, as I could possibly stand. At this moment, it appeared to be more than I could handle, which might explain my current predicament.
“Can someone please get their knee out of my kidney?” I asked politely while bodies scrambled off me. I grunted at the force some of them used to disentangle themselves, but finally found myself without passengers, still naked. It seemed my hair was a rat’s nest, its long golden red strands wrapped round my neck and face like wet rope. I realized I probably looked like something quite wild as I stared up at everyone surrounding me. Everyone including Lira and Roral, my new bodyguards who were recent additions thanks to my Grandmother, the Queen of the Seelie. And much to my chagrin, Dane Black, newest and not entirely welcome addition to my group of male dragons, all silently staring back at me in varied degrees of confusion and concern.
“Gee that was fun,” I said and then was yanked off the ground and into Jace’s arms as he went to his knees on the grass. I closed my eyes briefly and inhaled the scent of him deep into my lungs, thankful it no longer burned. As I slumped against him I tried to reason through what this, my latest adventure, might mean to me. I had but a moment to consider, it wasn’t nearly long enough.
“What the hell happened here?” Gareth demanded, his voice coming from behind me and sounding strained.
“Well, let’s see,” I started, turning my head and looking toward him as I ran through the events leading up to my latest misadventure. “I was sleeping and then I was riding a Unicorn which turned into something black that ran into the water then turned into a bag of bones with dried grey skin with hands that dragged me under. Then I was here and suddenly felt an itch for Cursed. No sorry, not ‘that’ kind of itch. I quickly added when Jace tensed and Gareth’s eyes dilated and his brows lowered. Ummm…and now I’m here again… and it would be nice to have some clothing!” I looked at Kit, who widened his eyes and snapped his fingers. I grimaced when I looked down, and then sighed at my demon’s choice of apparel. It would have been better to have asked Owen I thought, trying not to grit my teeth. Apparently Kit had found my pale yellow bathrobe… the see through one, and figured that would suffice. “Ah… thanks,” I muttered and put my legs together with as much modesty as I could muster.
I thought about it for a few moments, while they all appeared to reason though my abbreviated explanation before coming up with. “I’m not sure, but I think you might have been right when you said your Uncle was going to be mad at us,” I told Cursed as I glanced at him over Jace’s shoulder. He looked pale and nearly as shaky as I felt.
“Uncle?” Dane asked when the ensuing silence stretched on for another minute or so.
I sighed and shook my head burying my face in Jace’s neck. Mmmm... he smelled so good I thought to myself again, and tensed when Jace shifted beneath me. “Let me up,” I whispered, knowing that being this close to him was doing things to me. Things I didn’t want done to me given our current company.
It wasn’t that I was ashamed of my recently discovered medical condition…exactly…it was more that I didn’t see the need to subject my newly assigned guards to something they wouldn’t be sharing in. And of course there was Dane, the Black that had haunted my dreams for some time. This being his first night, and the fact that he’d already begun demanding his “rights” had annoyed me enough to keep me from Jace and Gareth. I didn’t like being manipulated. It didn’t help his case that Dane, who was supposed to be a youngster like me, knew more about the whole dragon lore and my current situation that I did. In fact it irritated me no end. Something needed to be done about that, just as soon as I learned how to cram a few more hours into my days.
Jace spread his hand across my back and stroked me gently, causing me to suck air into my lungs. Of course it only excited me more, since I managed to pull a lot more of his scent in too. Around me the others were speaking but I’d lost my ability to concentrate. I struggled to maintain my control by breathing shallow breaths through my mouth, and trying not to move. It didn’t help… the heat from Jace’s body seeped into me, sending off internal fireworks as mini electrical currents jumped between his skin and mine. Much more of this and I’d be stuttering.
“I’d like to go now,” I said in a small voice and was completely ignored. Biting my lip I debated my options and tried not to fidget in Jace’s lap. I tried counting blades of grass and then trees, which didn’t help in the least since I couldn’t seem to remember what number I was on. “Lira, come here!” I demanded sharply, causing him to jump at my tone. Everyone stopped talking and glanced down at me in surprise.
Lira turned his wide, two tone eyes on me and immediately sank to a knee in front of Jace. My breath was coming in short gasps when I reached for him and Jace made a growling noise that rumbled up from beneath me, causing me to shift slightly and Lira to tense where he knelt. I stared at the fresh gashes down his cheek and bit my lip. Lira also had bruising around his eye and scrapes on his knuckles. “Um… sorry about that,” I said and placed my palm upon him, healing him in a matter of seconds. Roral looked at me and held up his forearms and I winced and motioned him to the ground. Like Lira, he also looked more battered than our recent struggles would have accounted for and I eyed his split lip and abraded chin knowingly. When he was all better I turned to Amras, who was covered in nasty bite marks across his upper chest and neck. Apparently he’d been closest to me when I’d started in with my teeth.
He smiled softly and knelt before me. “Twice in one day, Princess.” And I nodded while gritting my teeth and trying to ignore the feel of Jace’s body cupping my bottom and other parts. What had caused this I wondered, watching as his skin knit together between my spread fingers? I’d run to Amras earlier, made love to him and remembered falling asleep next to him. I only wanted to hold him against the time I might have to give him up to the Queen’s orders that he return to the Sidhe. A place I’d never been, and judging by my men’s reactions, one I wasn’t likely to escape unscathed. Should I insist on going through with my decision to accompany Amras back and attempt to negotiate some kind of deal to keep him with me, it was worth the risk.
When I was done with him, I gla
nced around and my eyes found Dane. He was looking at me strangely, which caused me to smile. Healing was a legacy handed down through my blood on my Mother’s side, though one I’d never had much need for till I walked into Jace and Gareth’s nightclub and my life turned upside down. Dane hesitated briefly then held up his shirt and I sucked in another breath as I caught sight of his superb abs and the three deep gashes. I wasn’t sure what bothered me more, his body or the wounds. He moved toward me and I whimpered softly, pressing back against Jace, and causing Dane to hesitate. Everyone held their breath while we stared at each other. I felt the same itching sensation I’d experienced yesterday spread like a heavy wet blanket across my body and into my pores.
“No no no no no,” I muttered under my breath. “Help me,” I begged Jace while I buried my face in his neck. My fingers clenched in his shirt as shudders wracked my frame. I knew it wouldn’t be long before I was screaming and the thought scared the hell out of me. This was so wrong!
“Hush,” Jace whispered and his clothing was suddenly gone. He lifted me onto his lap and positioned my legs to either side. The feel of him sliding into me immediately stilled my tremors but couldn’t stem the golden tears which flowed like a small hailstorm from my eyes. He held me while I cried brokenly against him, the soft words he murmured lost in my hair.
My sobs had long since turned to sniffles, then dried up altogether when he gently began moving his hips beneath me. “Do you remember what I said to you last night… in the hills?” he whispered against my cheek and I nodded. “Lexi, I need you… please,” he whispered.
I nodded and somehow managed to pull myself together. It seemed me feeling sorry for me wasn’t going to change anything. Jace needed me and he’d given so much, I couldn’t deny him. Leaning back I ran my fingers over his widow’s peak and kissed the tip of his nose. “I’ll do better,” I told him and gave him a lopsided smile. His eyes looked worried but he nodded and smoothed the hair down my back.
Dragon Envy Page 1
