Thrilled: Reckless Desires (Dragon Mates Book 2)

by J. K Harper

  She felt sick. It went against every single thing Gabi believed in. Every single thing she'd been trained in as a protector of the past. Every single piece of paper she'd signed prior to joining this crew.

  It was also crucial proof she needed in order to save the one person in the world who meant more to Gabi than life itself. The one for whom she would do anything in world. Even jeopardize her own morals and her career.

  Forcing down her emotional upset, Gabi slowly swam back to the ship, the nugget making a sharp, accusing lump against her finger where it was hidden in her glove.

  Chapter Two

  Kai Long barreled through the water, diving far down into the black depths, then using powerful strokes of his wings and tail to catapult himself back up to the lightening surface of the ocean. He shot straight up out of the water, closing his eyes against the brightness of the sun glancing across the open miles of ocean as he spread his wings out into a soaring dive through the air before gracefully curving into an arc back downward. Pinioning his wings against him, he dove back into the gorgeous, salty depths.

  He could feel his gold, calling to him with ever-increasing strength as he got closer to it. Its presence infused him with a magnetic energy and awareness that would sustain him for weeks.

  It was nothing like the actual strength he should be at, though.

  As he sliced back down into the coolness of the water, startling a pod of dolphins and narrowly missing the flank of a killer whale, Kai shook his head once, hard. The memory of his true power faded every day. What he experienced now every time he was near his hoard seemed to him to be just as potent as it had once been. Yet intellectually, he knew better. He wasn't at full strength. He never would be until he could finally figure out how to break the death spell that encased the mingled hoard that had once belonged to both him and his mate.

  A tiny shard of pain bit at him as he thought of her. It was much fainter than it used to be. But it was still there. Opening his mouth, he unleashed a bellow of sheer rage and frustration. It reverberated throughout the water. Entire schools of nearby fish turned as one and fled into the distance as the sea's most incredible predator raced through it, throwing all those damned emotions into the depths so they would leave him be.

  So they would allow him the blissful luxury of being unable to feel anything at all.

  Mouth still open in a terrifying grimace, Kai swooped down into the blackening depths that few creatures could withstand. Yet the pressure hardly bothered him. Water dragons were made for this environment. This place was his natural home.

  Several moments more through the darkness, then he turned and swam upward. Toward the surface of the ocean, where light came through again. His dragon form actually had an excellent mix of vision as well as sonar that helped him navigate in the deepest, darkest depths of the sea. But his treasure was located in more shallow waters. Besides, the land was going to start angling up again in a moment.

  As he followed the contours of the underwater valleys and canyons, some of them more sizable than the largest ones upon dry land found anywhere on earth, he felt the sweet nothingness surround him with its soothing balm of quietude and peace.

  After another round of yelling with his brother that morning on the phone—yelling by his brother, really, who just got more and more incensed as Kai stayed calm and non-reactive on the other end of the line—he'd known he needed this trip to visit his hoard. It had been nearly a month, because he'd just spent the past several weeks in Hawaii. Hence the reason for his brother being all pissed off at him anyway.

  When Kai was in Hawaii, his brother expected him to do some work for the family company, Long Worldwide Shipping. The fact that Kai had unequivocally reminded his brother that he no longer held a controlling share in the company nor any job title nor any position on the board, so he didn't have to do a damn thing about it, had definitely not helped matters in soothing over the chasm that had developed between him and his arrogantly bossy older sibling during the past five years.

  As the feeling of nothingness threatened to dissipate at thoughts of his brother, Kai banked hard to the left, spun in a circular torpedo motion—and nearly crashed into a great white shark.

  He instinctively flung open his enormous wings and dragged his giant front claws through the water to slow his motion. As the water exploded around him into millions of shattering ripples of seawater, briefly obscuring his vision, Kai opened his mouth in a fearsome dragon version of a smile.

  Hell, yeah, he muttered deep in his mind.

  Sharks were always fun to play with. He carried extra pent-up steam around with him today anyway, after that phone call. A good underwater brawl would expend some of his energy. This shark was enormous, easily a thirty-footer. She wasn't looking to hurt Kai, and he knew it. He was the apex predator of the ocean anyway. Nor would he really hurt her. A little pretend game of hunter and hunted, though? No problem. He often played with the ocean's denizens, always leaving both parties unscathed.

  But as the water settled and Kai's vision returned to its normal excellent acuity far beneath the waves, he immediately changed his mind. Damn it. The shark was injured. A large hook stuck out of her mouth. He also now saw she had an awkwardness of motion that meant she was in no shape to play, let alone defend her life if Kai had actually meant to attack.

  Kai swore with savage abandon inside against the most terrible parts of humanity that existed on this miserable planet. The terrible kinds of people that thought nothing of harming every single creature in it, including this shark that was protected by law against being fished in these waters. Very slowly, he unfurled his wings all the way while gently curving his claws toward and below the shark as he gave a light snap of his tail to smoothly and quickly propel himself toward the creature.

  Being a shark, the most feared animal in the oceans that humans, at least, knew about, not to mention that sharks just weren't possessed of high intelligence, the creature didn't react as Kai's far larger dragon shape drew near and caught it up with his powerful front legs and claws. Kai instantly sensed how weak she actually was as well, clearly to do with the blood loss streaming in a diffused reddish cloud now visible in the settling water.

  Damn. Even if he could remove the hook, the shark was liable to either bleed out or attract other sharks that wouldn't think twice about chomping down on their fellow creature. They would finish off what an illegal human hunter hadn't quite been able to do.

  Kai paused for a bare moment to consider the options. Before he even finished his thought process, he pulled his front legs close to his body, cradled the injured shark close to his chest, and shot off due east.

  Straight for his underwater gold hoard, twenty nautical miles away. His slowly waning powers would be more acute when he was near it. That way, he could give the shark a fighting chance.

  The only chance she would have.

  Moments later, as he neared the shipwreck, Kai felt the compelling draw of his hoard reach out to him through the water. Like a slow but powerfully rolling tide, it eased along the currents to surround and fill him with strength. With clarity.

  And with the limited yet genuine power to heal.

  The broken yet mostly intact hull of the ship that housed Kai's treasure hoard came into view through the brightening gloom of the rippling blue-greens of the water. As he blasted closer toward the old wreck, he anticipated the incoming swell of energy that would carry him through the next month. Giving him more time to figure out how to break the spell and be able to receive the full powers that his gold gave him.

  First, though, he had a wounded creature to help. Hovering in the water, his wings fluttering just a bit to keep him in one spot as his tail gently swayed to buoy him against the calm yet ceaseless motion of the ocean, Kai unfolded his front legs just a bit so he could concentrate on the shark. For long moments, Kai hovered as motionless as he could in the water. He drew upon the mingled powers of his hoard and his own legacy as a water dragon to heal this creature that shar
ed space with him in the ocean depths.

  Deep concentration finally bore fruit. With an abrupt wrench, the shark jettisoned herself out of Kai's loose grasp. She swam away through the shimmering murk of the water, her body a large grayish-white blur. Completely healed.

  Satisfied, Kai turned his attention back to his ship. A sudden shadow overhead flashed across him. Startled, he glanced upward. He expected a whale, or perhaps another pod of dolphins to be skimming their way through the water above.

  His heart about catapulted out of its giant chest as the unmistakable shape of a boat barely fifty feet above shivered on the surface of the water. Kai snapped his head back around to look at the ship again, a shocking dread sending massive amounts of adrenaline streaming through his system.

  A tiny figure bobbed in front of him, scuba fins descending from two legs gently swimming at the bottom of the black clad body. The force of his approach sent a slight wave through the water, and the figure turned toward him.

  A woman. A human woman, a diver. Right by the long-lost shipwreck that kept his gold hoard captive. Staring right at him, camera in one hand, a piece of his own gold held in her other hand, as he hovered not twenty feet from her in his dragon shape.

  Clearly able to see him despite the fact that he should be utterly invisible to her human eyes.

  ~~~

  A flash of movement to the right caught Gabi's eye. She quickly turned her head, camera coming with her. Grinning with delight, she watched as a colorful school of scythe butterflyfish waved and danced as if one, playing in the waving giant bladder kelp that grew off the ledges by the wreck. She filmed the fish for a few moments, enjoying the flashes of yellow and black as they darted around. Just as quickly, they were gone. Turning her attention back to the Santa Maria, she continued her official work.

  She could hardly wait to tell Lacey about this. Her best friend, a museum curator who far preferred dry land yet still was always excited to hear about Gabi's adventures, was the only living soul outside the crew's university department that knew how close Gabi and the team had been to this discovery. Well, and her abuela. It would be about a week before Gabi even talked to Lacey, because when Gabi worked, she stayed really focused and didn't communicate much with anyone, except her family. But damn. She'd have an awful lot to share with both her confidantes when she was back on the mainland.

  “Heading down the masts, checking out the hole on the northwest corner.” Shane's voice murmured in her ear. Gabi responded so he knew she'd heard.

  Gently, she let herself continue to drift along the side of the ship. It was in amazingly good shape for something so long settled on the ocean floor. Part of the team's quest was to figure out why. Most ancient shipwrecks were in pretty bad condition. The Santa Maria looked like she had been sunk a mere decade ago, rather than the more than three hundred years she'd rested in her watery site.

  Camera still steady in her hand, Gabi zoomed in a bit on the wood of the ship's side. The vessel had been traveling from the islands of Hawaii to the California coast bearing trade items. But since it originally had been made in New England, Gabi knew the wood used for it was most likely some type of oak. Oak was sturdy—but it was also prone to rotting in a long-term undersea situation, particularly if it had not been treated with one of the high quality, water-insoluble resins of the time. But even treated wood should show far more sign of rot and damage than did the Santa Maria after all her years here.

  Then how, she mused yet again as she stared at the nearly perfect wreck before her in the water, did it stay so—

  A sudden, enormous movement to her left yanked her attention away from the ship.

  For the next thirty seconds, Gabi's life went into a slow-motion reel. As she swung her head toward the movement, expecting another large school of fish, the hand holding the camera dropped loosely to her side, her fingers releasing the camera in pure shock as she gaped at the giant sea creature staring at her from merely a few lengths away.

  Shimmering aqua, green, and white all mixed together to create a luminous hide covering a creature Gabi could only describe as being a—a dragon.

  There's a dragon. I'm looking at a dragon. A real dragon. The rational part of her mind thought the words quite calmly. Her heart, though, threatened to explode its way out of her body.

  A long, sinuous neck ridged with spikes that glimmered faintly in the water ended in a large, wedge-shaped head. It frankly seemed just as surprised as she was. Gigantic green eyes that were about the size of her own face gazed at her with a multifaceted beauty that captured her even in her dreamlike shock.

  Focused intelligence stirred back at her from those eyes.

  It's looking at me. It knows it's looking at me. The same conversational tone of her own mind echoed in Gabi's head as she stared at the stunning creature.

  It almost shimmered in the water, powerfully resplendent and jaw-droppingly immense at the same time. She somehow instinctively sensed it was male. Gigantic wings, nearly translucent in the membrane-thin sections between the long, beautiful joints, suddenly unfurled to each side, sending waves toward her. Gabi startled backward through the shimmering green water until she smacked into the side of the Santa Maria.

  As she stared, her body somewhat sliding down the ship because she'd stopped the gentle paddling with her feet, the creature abruptly turned and shot off like an arrow through the waters. The long tail and powerful hind legs propelled it away so quickly it vanished from sight almost immediately.

  After a long, unblinking moment despite the fact that her vision was now obscured by the cloud of silt and bubbles left behind by the creature—which somewhere in her scientific mind she vaguely realized meant it also must be able to breathe air—Gabi experimented with her voice.

  "Um, Shane?" She sounded surprisingly calm. "Did you see that?"

  There was a pause before his voice sounded in her ear over the mic. "See what? You find some more artifacts?" Eagerness strengthened his voice.

  "No." Damn, her voice sounded stupidly chipper. “But, I did see some sort of unidentified ocean life. You haven't seen anything?"

  A longer pause, then a sudden movement to her right badly jolted her. Shane swam around the side of the ship toward her.

  Wow. Despite her calm voice, she definitely was a little freaked out. Not to mention quietly, immensely thrilled as the truth settled into her more and more with each passing second.

  Shane's head swiveled as he looked around the area. "I don't see anything. Was it a shark, maybe?"

  He didn't sound worried. Gabi wouldn't have been either, if it had just been a shark. The general human populace tended to well overestimate the dangers sharks posed to divers, even the feared great white shark. She actually loved sharks. They were cool creatures.

  Which she had seen most definitely had not been a Carcharodon carcharias, or any other type of Selachimorpha. She'd seen a—something like a Draco Volans?

  Yeah. A dragon. But one that seemed to be able to fly through water rather than air. And it was a real one. A freaking gigantic one.

  "Definitely not a shark,” she answered Shane in what was still a calm voice. “But I sort of dropped my camera. Help me find it?"

  Grumbling good-naturedly under his breath, the sound a bit staticky in Gabi's ears, Shane helped her look down along the bottom of where the ship rested partially on the ledge. Dammit. The camera had been dropped into the canyon below the ship. There was no way they'd be able to find it, not without a substantial search.

  Gabi looked at Shane. "How's your camera? You having any better luck than I am today?" Just stay calm, she sternly advised herself. If she could just focus on mundane things like work, she could ignore the fact that she'd just seen a dragon.

  The part of her that had been raised on the utterly serious stories her grandmother had always told her about spirits and ghosts and old legends was threatening to rise up and overwhelm the methodical side that she'd studied so hard for many years to learn to use overall.


  The part of her which knew without a doubt that every old story her abuela had ever told her was actually real.

  Later. Later, she could carefully assess what had just happened. She could confirm that she had just seen one of the legends come to life. For now, though, she had to be a scientist. A scientist who had stupidly just lost her camera.

  And who had just seen a real live water dragon swimming in the Pacific Ocean.

  Chapter Three

  "Come here often, sailor?"

  Throaty, somewhat drunk little giggles followed the words. Kai couldn't help but smile at the girl who had just uttered that terrible pick up line. She was attractive enough. Compact, busty, blonde hair down to her ass, clearly looking for some playtime below decks, so to speak. Normally, he would have had no problem saying yes to her. Agreeing to dance and booze for a little bit before enjoying a night of pleasure.

  But tonight he was on a mission. Tonight, he was only looking for one woman.

  Too bad he had no idea what the hell she looked like. He just knew she wasn't this girl.

  "Sorry, sweetheart," he said, giving her a lazy grin as he checked her out, much to her delight. "Hate to say it, but I'm waiting for someone else tonight. Maybe another time?"

  Another fit of giggles had the girl nodding. She scrawled her name and number down on a bar napkin before leaning forward to tuck it into the front pocket of his pants, her fingers lingering just a little too long as she planted a kiss on his cheek. She breathed into his ear, "Anytime, sailor. I'm on the island all week."

  Kai waggled his fingers at her as she drunkenly wobbled back to her friends, tossing him another look over her shoulder that almost sent her plummeting as she stumbled over her heels. He chuckled a bit, but it was in pure understanding. That was his type of girl. Stumbles like that were how he ended some nights himself, half the time.