I Like Big Dragons and I Cannot Lie (The I Like Big Dragons Series)

by Lani Lynn Vale

  “I kind of like the idea of me being inside of you for the rest of the day. For my scent to play along your skin while I’m thirty minutes away from you,” he whispered softly against my lips.

  I snorted. “You would.”

  He grinned unrepentantly and started to button up his jeans.

  “You ready to get back?” He asked with a raised brow.

  I nodded, then looked around us.

  “You’ll need to do something with those,” I pointed at the balls of flame.

  He grinned, winked, and then suddenly everything around us was plunged into darkness.

  I gasped as I watched the fire travel from the balls on the floor, straight to Keifer’s hand. Then, as if in a special effect movie, the flame was absorbed into Keifer’s skin.

  What looked to be the light from the fire traveled up Keifer’s arm, almost as if a light was shining out from the inside, and moved under his shirt until I couldn’t see it anymore.

  “Holy shit!” I breathed, lurching forward and stopping only when I came into contact with Keifer’s body. “You have got to tell me how to do that!”

  He laughed, dropped his mouth down to mine, and kissed me playfully.

  He only pulled away when I was gasping for breath and barely standing once again.

  “Ready to go now?” He rumbled happily.

  I knew he was smiling, even though I couldn’t see him.

  “Yeah,” I nodded, laying my head against his chest. “Now I’m ready.”

  I felt the hard ridge of his cock against my thigh just before he turned me in his arms and let his arm travel down the length of my arm until he had my hand.

  “Let’s go.”

  I followed him blindly, thinking there was something profound there.

  It took real trust to follow someone through the dark, and I had that with Keifer.

  I trusted him with my life.

  With my very soul.

  And I was so glad to know that we’d be together forever.

  Instinctually, my hand went down to the one connected with Keifer’s, and I let my hand trail over the skin of my wrist.

  “The tattoos are raised,” I whispered in awe.

  “Nowhere in my dad’s book did it say these markings would hurt like a bitch when they made their appearance.” Keifer grumbled.

  I didn’t have any insight on that fact, so I stayed silent as I came to a stop at what I assumed was the elevator.

  Then a thought occurred to me, and I narrowed my eyes.

  “How are you able to see where we’re going?” I asked him.

  He let my hand go, pressing the button to the elevator, proving my earlier guess true, before he answered.

  “You could, too, I think. I…” he hesitated. “Borrow powers from Declan. For instance, there are times when I can move faster than any normal human should be able to. I can see in the dark, but not all the time. It’s like I have to ask permission first. Usually Declan has no problem sharing, and now it’s so ingrained that I just think the thought, and I have the ability to do so.”

  I blinked. “Is borrowing powers normal?”

  The doors to the elevator opened, and blessed light filled the darkened corridor. “Yes and no. I know for a fact that my brothers and I can. From each other and from our dragons. Actually, all of us can borrow from any dragon rider. That’s part of being in the royal family.”

  “Royal family?” I asked in alarm. “What do you mean royal family?”

  He turned his back on the elevator door as he crossed his arms.

  His hair was slightly ruffled from my attentions earlier, and his mouth was wearing some of my glittery lip-gloss.

  I smiled, looked down, and waited for him to answer me.

  “I’m the Prince of Dragons. I’m the highest ranking official of the royal family. No one is higher ranked than me,” he told me softly.

  I looked up from contemplating my shoes, eyes wide. “You’re what?”

  Ok, I might have shrieked it.

  But holy fuck! What did that make me? A princess?

  Keifer smiled, revealing his beautifully straight white teeth to me.

  “Yeah, I’m the prince. Which means you’re my princess. Princess Blythe of the Dragon Riders,” he grinned.

  “What…how…what…how…” I stammered.

  He walked forward, pinned me against the wall, and slammed his mouth onto mine.

  Then the bell sounded that I was on my floor, and Keifer broke off.

  Slowly.

  Too slowly.

  When the door started to close, I pushed at his chest, but he didn’t move.

  “I’m gonna be late. The doors are gonna close,” I whispered.

  I was in no way, shape, or form in a hurry to get out of his arms.

  Not after the last thirty minutes we’d just spent together.

  But he didn’t need to know that.

  The doors that’d been closing at his back slammed back open and stayed that way.

  Narrowing my eyes I asked, “Did you do that?”

  He winked. “See you tonight.”

  With that, he let me go, and moved to the opposite side of the elevator, crossing his arms across his chest, and leaning his butt against the railing before crossing his feet out in front of him.

  “You’re late,” he reminded me when I looked at him in stunned silence.

  That worked.

  Jumping forward like I’d been cattle prodded, I rushed out of the elevator car.

  I can proudly say that I only looked back at him twice before I made it to the nurses’ station.

  A very full nurses’ station.

  “Holy hell,” one of the nurses breathed.

  “You have sex hair,” another one of them said.

  I blushed and turned my face away.

  “Honey child, don’t let them tease you. When you find the right one, and he wants to come up to your work on your lunch break for a quickie, you do it. Because when you find that one that wants you that much, you hold onto them with both hands, both legs around their waist, and your hair if you need to. Trust me on this,” an older woman continued sagely.

  I smiled timidly at her.

  And I took her advice to heart.

  After all, she was right.

  Chapter 10

  You call it nagging. I call it listen to what I said the first fucking time.

  -Keifer to Farrow

  Keifer

  “What the fuck is that?” Nikolai asked when I got back to work.

  I looked down to where his eyes were trained, and held up my arms for his inspection.

  “It happened when I was with Blythe this afternoon,” I explained. “I’m thinking they’re the mating marks that the book was speaking about.”

  Nikolai’s eyes went wide. “You fucked her at work?”

  I grimaced.

  “I couldn’t help it! It was like waves of agony and desire were pulsing through me. And the fucking hospital is over twenty miles from here, but the closer I got to her, the more I felt it. Then this happened,” I indicated my hands. “I think it was just time. I had no control over it at all.”

  Before Nikolai could respond, a massive roar filled the air surrounding and inside the shop.

  The roar was so loud that car alarms started to sound, as well as building alarms.

  Windows shattered, and the metal building around us started to shake.

  I dropped my tools that I’d just picked up and started running blindly toward the open door at the front of the bay.

  Nikolai was not far behind me.

  A few of the other riders that worked in the shop started running toward the front too, as they’d been trained, and I was thankful they were there.

  Declan would’ve never roared like that had there not been something very wrong.

  Our dragons tended to follow us around.

  So even though I rode in today with Blythe,
I knew he was close by.

  The same went for the other dragon riders.

  Most of them chose to drive since it brought less attention to them, seeing as not all of them could veil themselves like Declan and I could.

  “Holy fucking shit,” I breathed as I made it outside. “Holy fucking shit.”

  Declan’s mate was at Declan’s feet, laying deathly still.

  But as I got closer, I could tell she was still breathing.

  Which was also about the time I saw the metal ball sticking into her side.

  “What the fuck is that?” Nikolai asked me, coming to a stop a few feet away from Story.

  He would’ve come closer had Declan allowed him. But when a dragon’s mate was injured, the dragon only allowed the most trusted of allies close, and right then it was me.

  I fell to my knees beside Story’s head, hands going to the scaled skin at her neck where the ball was attached.

  I pressed down lightly around the ball, seeing the area surrounding the ball separate from the metal.

  Lightly, I pulled on the ball, wincing when the skin pulled with it.

  “It’s barbed,” I said. “Declan, let Nikolai in here to look. I need his help.”

  Nikolai came slowly, watching Declan warily as he made it to Story’s side.

  When he was where he wanted to be, he dropped down to his knees. “Pull it up slightly so I can take a look.”

  I did, and Nikolai dropped down to look at the small gap that was there between the metal ball and Story’s skin.

  He pulled out his pocketknife and said, “I think it’s spring loaded. If I can pull it in, I think it’ll loosen.”

  Declan growled when he saw the knife, but he didn’t stop Nikolai when he fit the backside of the blade between the gap and pressed in.

  The metal barb clicked inside, and I felt one side loosen.

  “It worked,” I said hurriedly. “Do the rest.”

  He did, working the last three loose before saying, “Okay, pull it back.”

  I did.

  As soon as I did it, Story’s eyes snapped open and she leapt off the ground, hovering ten feet above our heads.

  Declan’s snout lifted, and he ran it along the underside of Story’s belly before dropping it down to Nikolai’s head, and blew out a puff of air, ruffling his hair.

  “You’re welcome, big guy.” Nikolai patted Declan on the back.

  They shot her, Declan thundered.

  Sometimes, when dragons got overly emotional—mad, sad, happy or whatever other intense feelings they were experiencing—they had difficulty communicating their thoughts. Once they calmed down enough to concentrate, then they were able to send their thoughts to their human counterpart.

  Who shot her? I asked him.

  Purists. White van. They took off the moment she went down, Declan growled.

  “It was as if the ball somehow cut off her link to the Meridian. When that link was severed, she instantly came out of her hover as if all of her powers were gone. She’s lucky she didn’t have a far fall and that she was here instead of somewhere we wouldn’t have gotten to her quickly enough,” Nikolai breathed, studying the ball.

  I looked down, studying the ball myself.

  “Declan says they shot her from a white van,” I told Nikolai.

  “Perdita says the same.” Nikolai nodded his head.

  Perdita was Nikolai’s dragon, and she was a beautiful white beast of a dragon who was only slightly smaller than Declan.

  She practically made Story look like a dwarf.

  She also had an attitude from hell.

  “She followed the van,” I guessed.

  Nikolai sighed. “Yep.”

  “Where’d the van go?” I persisted.

  “Parking garage on Texas Street,” Nikolai held the ball up.

  Then my eyes widened, and I yanked the ball from Nikolai’s hands.

  Hauling my arm back, I threw the ball as far as I could across the street.

  So hard that my arm was sore and aching.

  Luckily, there was a large abandoned building across the street from us, because had it been occupied, there would have been all kinds of casualties seeing as the motherfucking ball blew up.

  Boom!

  The building exploded. The blowback from the explosion forced all of us that were standing at the entrance of our building to be blown backwards. We were thrown through the air about ten feet back into the building beyond us.

  My head smacked into the hard metal building, and my body screamed on impact.

  I was alive, though.

  “Should’ve probably seen that coming,” Nikolai groaned as he gained his feet further down from me.

  I winced, climbing to my feet and surveying the damage.

  Dragons did much the same around us, coming to their feet from where they’d gone down.

  “So it has a timer,” I surmised.

  The building was trashed.

  Nothing viable remained.

  Bricks were scattered about fifty to a hundred feet in a large arc surrounding the building.

  “Boss,” Jose called from behind me.

  I blinked, turning my face to Jose.

  “Yeah?” I asked.

  He pointed to a spot on the ground, and I looked down to see my phone on the stained concrete at my feet, buzzing.

  I swooped down, picking it up from ground, and grimacing when I got a look at the cracked screen.

  “I keep telling you not to leave it in your front pocket,” Nikolai chastised.

  I flipped him off and opened the phone by sliding my thumb against the bottom of the screen, happy to see that it at least still worked mostly.

  I winced when I saw that there’d been at least seven missed calls from Blythe.

  Remembering what she’d said when I’d gotten hurt by the dragon’s claw ripping into my arm earlier in the week, I hit Go as I called her back.

  “Why do you keep getting hurt?” She yelled worriedly.

  I smiled. “I’m okay.”

  “You’ve hurt your head and your back. And I stabbed a patient with a tongue depressor,” Blythe yelled.

  I snorted. “I’m sure your patient will live.”

  She hissed, “What happened?”

  I closed my eyes, broke down, and told her.

  I knew she’d be worried.

  Hell, I was worried.

  If I wanted the same courtesy extended to me, then I’d have to do the same for her when I needed to.

  And right now was one of those times.

  So I explained the last fifteen minutes.

  “Holy shit,” she breathed. “That could’ve been very, very bad.”

  I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me.

  “That it could have,” I agreed solemnly.

  “Is Story okay?” She worried.

  I looked over to Story and Declan, relieved to see that they were both okay, albeit a little shaken up.

  She’s fine, Declan promised.

  I assumed he projected that to the both of us, because in the next moment, Blythe said a very relieved, “Good!”

  “Alright, baby. I’ve got to go. We have some things we need to figure out, but I’ll still be there to pick you up after your shift, okay?” I promised.

  “Yeah, honey. That’s fine. I’ll see you in a few,” she whispered.

  We both stayed silent, waiting for words that neither one of us had said, but both of us felt.

  It went on so long that I finally said, “Bye, baby.”

  I’d say it eventually, though. I just needed to hear it from her, first.

  “What do you want us to do?” Nikolai asked impatiently the moment I disconnected.

  I looked at the men surrounding me. At Declan, who was still next to Story.

  Murder rippling over the scales of his back and sparking in his eyes.

  Nikolai and Perdita watching me with anticipation.
/>   “We go hunting,” I answered threateningly. “Nikolai, go to the parking garage, see what you can find. Jose, you and Sin go to the sanctuary with Story. Watch over her and let us know the minute you get home. Declan, you’re with me.”

  “And where are you going?” Nikolai asked.

  I smiled.

  It wasn’t a pretty smile, either.

  It was one filled with promises of death and dismemberment.

  “Declan and I are going to go have a chat with Father Joseph,” I smiled.

  Declan shivered and watched closely as the others did my bidding.

  Story got up into the air without any effort, flying away and disappearing before all our eyes.

  Nikolai mounted Perdita’s back and flew out, leaving four men at my back, and Declan at my front.

  “Alright, boys,” I called, turning to the men left.

  All of them were dragon riders.

  I didn’t bring anyone in to work for me that I didn’t trust implicitly.

  They worked with me day in and day out, hand in hand with me and my family.

  Ford, Alaric, Jean Luc, and Dorian were four of my best men, and I knew they’d take care of the shop for me while I was gone.

  None of our properties were ever left unprotected.

  Had something happened to the sanctuary, the shop would be the next best thing as a temporary headquarters for the dragons, due to its extensive warding and spells.

  Not that they made a fucking difference today, seeing as Story was shot right outside the fucking ward.

  “Take care of the place. Get the work done that needs to be done. I’ll be back later,” I told them, then I mounted Declan’s back, and we rode to Father Joseph’s house of worship.

  ***

  “So, who was that man earlier? How’d you meet him?” Brooklyn asked as we rode down the elevator later that day.

  I grimaced.

  Brooklyn and I had been best friends for a really long time, so it was odd for me not to tell her something as important as this.

  But how did you tell your best friend that you’re mated to a dragon rider? And that I could now set my vagina on fire to wax my hair?

  “I met him when he came over to get his brother out of Macy’s apartment. He’s the one that makes her scream so loud,” I informed her.

  “The brother, or the man you slept with?” Brooklyn asked in confusion.