“Don’t you dare!” Anna Severn smacked his arm. “That belongs to me.” Laughing, she took it back. “You all had an opportunity to make a sparkly pinecone as lovely as Theo’s. We’ll find Gunnar’s.” She placed it on the tree at eye level.
Theo patted the boy again. “Bear up, lad,” he said. “Mamma likes to keep the dreck we made when we were adorable, little white-haired boys.”
The scrawny kid looked stupidly grateful to be patronized. Didn’t he realize that ugly was ugly?
* * *
It wasn’t hard to find her dragon’s sleeping room. She had just had to follow her nose. This house was a big improvement on the nasty, smelly dwellings of his ancestors. Theodor Lindorm slept in a large, warm room that was almost underground. A broad band of windows ran along the top of one wall, so it wasn’t dark, even on this shortest day of the year.
From the broad window ledge, she peered out at the snowy woods that grew up almost to the house. Just enough space had been left between the trees and the dwelling that the sky was visible from inside the room. Or at least it was to her. She had no idea what someone as unnaturally tall as those dragons saw. But she was cold away from her tree, so she headed to her dragon’s sleeping place.
He reposed on a huge green plain piled with enormous springy pillows at one end. Lexi explored it cautiously. The fabric was rough against her bare feet and the pillows resisted her efforts to climb them. She flew to the topmost spot and sat down. Her mortal’s den smelled deliciously of him. She had disliked the scent of dragons ever since her youthful folly, but she enjoyed the smell of this one. To be sure, that wasn’t everything, but it boded well.
She squirmed to get comfortable and found herself trapped in an avalanche. She was unharmed, but she could not extend her wings to escape. Somehow, that cunning devil Theo Lindorm had booby-trapped his sleeping place. Hurriedly she transformed into a pinecone and lay perfectly still, awaiting developments. The warmth of her soft cavern, and the smell of her mate, lulled her to sleep.
A harsh male voice disturbed her. Lexi felt herself lifted and sent spines out to protect herself. The dragon immediately released her. She transformed back into an elf. Theo’s blue eyes examined her from a respectful distance. “What are you doing in here, Fröken?” he asked more gently. He reached for her again but she backed away brandishing her trident.
“Waiting for you, Lindorm. You are my captive.” To reinforce her claim, when he reached for her again, she stabbed at his outstretched hand. She grazed his knuckles.
“Will you stop that? Haven’t you wounded me enough? What do you want, you ridiculous sprite?”
“You cut down my home. You owe me another. Moreover, I have need of a dragon,” Lexi cried. Why was he being so difficult? Did he not understand he was her captive?
He picked her up again without warning. “Put me down,” she shouted.
He set her on the icy windowsill. She shivered. “You’ll be out of the way there. Tell me who you are, again, Fröken.”
Lexi drew herself up to her full height. She changed her robes and made sure a circlet bound her hair neatly. Appearances were of the first importance. “I am the Princess Alexandra – the guardian of the forest and all who dwell on this island,” she intoned with all the dignity she could infuse into her voice. She hoped she still remembered how to comport herself before vassals. “You have cut down my dwelling place, Theodor Son of Lind. In compensation, I have made you captive.”
Her loutish dragon put his huge yellow head back and laughed so loudly the air shook. “If I am your captive, how come you are here in my bedroom?” He put his great, hairy face close to hers. Huge blue eyes stared. “How do you do that, Princess? You’re never the same twice.”
“Magic,” Lexi said, surprised by his ignorance. She preened a little. Her leafy green gown was one of her best enchantments. Hundreds of tiny green leaves quivered and sparkled with her every movement. Light danced from her jewels and painted her wings with a rainbow of colors. She knew she looked well. This raiment displayed to all her status as the heiress to the Kingdom of Erikki.
“All right, Princess, allowing that you have taken me captive – although I can’t see it myself – what do you plan to do with me?”
Lexi let the silence grow, the better to hold her prisoner’s attention. “I have need of a dragon.” She used her most solemn tones to bait her trap. “If you fulfill my Quest, Theodor Son of Lind, you shall win the hand of the Princess of Erikki in marriage, and half the king’s treasury beside.”
“That would be you?”
Lexi inclined her head in gracious assent.
More laughter shook the room. Lexi’s leaves fluttered. Theo sat down and clutched his shaggy yellow head. His shoulders heaved. He slapped his knee. The air shook.
“Don’t you mock me, dragon.” Lexi brandished her trident.
“Princess, if I can be of service, I’ll give it my best shot,” Theo said still chuckling. “But marriage is out of the q-q-question.”
Incensed, Lexi flew across and perched unsteadily on his head. She drove her trident deep into his scalp. “I claim you by right of capture,” she cried fiercely. She knew she had the formula right, because those were the exact words Jörmungandr the Cursed had used when he had caught her, all those long years ago.
“Cut it out!” thundered Theo. He plucked her off his head with two fingers and a thumb and set her on his palm. His blue eyes narrowed. “Don’t cry.”
Tears! When had she become so foolish? Lexi dashed wetness from her face with a trembling hand. She sat cross-legged on his palm and the rightness of being in Theo’s presence soothed her. Perhaps he was the right one after all. She adjusted her draperies and regarded him severely. She would teach him to show her respect!
“No offense, Princess, but we are not well matched,” Theo said gravely. “I am tall – even for a dragon, and you are particularly, um, petite. But if I can be of service, I will try to help if I can. What it is you need a dragon for?”
“I want you to fetch me the ring of Hrothgar from the depths of the sea.”
“The what?”
“The ring of Hrothgar the Magnificent. It lies many fathoms beneath the waves. But you, Dragon, shall fetch it from the lair of the monster and restore it to me. This is to be your Quest.”
“You better start from the beginning, Princess,” Theo retorted.
There was so much amusement in his deep voice, she nearly stabbed him again. Restraining herself, she settled onto his broad palm as if she was sitting on her stool before the throne of King Erikki. It had been a long time since she had recited, but once the Princess Alexandra had been renowned for her ability to hold the rowdiest visitors enthralled. Surely, she had not forgotten her skills? Although ten centuries were a long time, even for an Elven Princess.
Lexi began in the high style: “Long, long ago, in the country of the elven folk, there dwelt a princess who was young, fair, and feckless. This foolish maiden was heir to the King of the Elves, the joy of his heart and the hope of her people. Yet this witless damsel let herself be taken captive by a common pirate. And when he claimed her as his mate, she gave to him her heart and a token of her esteem, worth half her father’s kingdom. But Jörmungandr the Cursed was a scoundrel. A thief. And as treacherous as all his race.”
“Sounds like a pirate,” Theodor concurred.
“Be silent,” Lexi hissed. “The princess had foolishly given this pirate her greatest treasure: the great ring of Hrothgar the Magnificent. Jörmungandr wore it for all the world to see, as though he did in truth intend to be her bridegroom.”
“On his finger?” Theodor asked.
“Don’t you know how to listen to a story?” Lexi cried in exasperation. “Be still, Dragon. The ring of Hrothgar is a magical token. One of the many treasures of Erikki. When the princess wore it, it was a necklace, a bracelet, a belt, a ring on her finger or a circlet in her hair. Whatever she chose. But when she bestowed it on this faithless mortal, she placed i
t around his upper arm as a sign to all that he was to be her bridegroom.”
Theodor Lindorm tugged his beard. His lips curved slightly, but he didn’t speak. Lexi decided he didn’t actually need to be disciplined right this moment. But she held her trident ready.
“Jörmungandr the Cursed was a deceiver and a scoundrel. He wished merely to add the Princess to his houseful of concubines. King Erikki was terrible in his wrath. He was angry both at his daughter and at her pirate lover. He recovered the ring of Hrothgar from black-hearted Jörmungandr and sent him and his ship to the bottom of the ocean.
But Erikki punished his daughter by imprisoning her within a tree, which grew on a scrap of barren land in the middle of the iciest, bleakest, most treacherous stretch of water in the North Lands. He set the ring of Hrothgar within an acorn, which he planted close by the pine tree that was his daughter’s cell.”
“Are we talking about you, Princess?” Theo asked.
Lexi bounced up onto her feet. She stabbed at her dragon’s palm with her trident. “Have you no manners?”
A monstrous thumb and forefinger picked her up and set her on a giant wooden chest. “You have to stop doing that,” Theo rumbled. He began to tug at the giant piece of furniture he had placed her on. It was like standing on top of an earthquake. He found a big square of white fabric inside the chest and the tremors stopped. He folded the cloth and pressed it against his palm.
“You’re not taking me seriously” Lexi accused.
“You’re awfully small,” he excused himself. He stalked across to his sleeping platform and sat down. “You go on with your story, Princess.”
Was she supposed to shout at this ignoramus? With a flutter of wings, Lexi perched on his shoulder, moving his heavy yellow locks aside so she had room to sit.
Read the rest of Dragon’s Christmas Captive on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited.
Phoenix Ablaze
Alpha Phoenix Book 1
How will Maj. Pierce D’Angelo of the US Air Force get his reluctant BBW Diana wooed and won, and keep her safe from a vicious snake-shifting creep? When curvy Diana discovers her heart has been given to a giant, fiery phoenix shifter – Pierce’s troubles have just begun.
Smut alert: This author is known for her graphic descriptions of sassy BBWs getting it off with handsome studs. Watch out as a Phoenix indulges his passions and those of his voluptuous beauty!
Available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited.
CHAPTER ONE
Missiles roared out of an apparently featureless gray landscape. Two screeched past the fighter jet. The third scored a direct hit to the fuselage. The plane lurched sideways. Despite the tight webbing of the seat belts, the pilot and the co-pilot were tossed around in their seats like crash test dummies. The controls went slack in the pilot’s hands. Maj. Pierce D’Angelo wrestled futilely with his joystick. A split second later he accepted that his aircraft was in a nosedive from which he could not divert it.
“Take over,” Maj. D’Angelo ordered his co-pilot.
Lt. Edwin Hatcher was still flipping switches as per standing orders, one hand on his stick. He engaged and attempted to level the plane. His controls were as slack as D’Angelo’s. The plane began to spin as it maintained its downward trajectory.
“Eject,” D’Angelo ordered.
Despite the damage done to the aircraft, the mechanisms that released Pierce’s seat responded smoothly. He was in freefall at the count of three. His parachute deployed precisely fifteen seconds after he pulled the cord. Automatically, he checked for Hatch. The other officer shot past him, chute still unopened, orange ripcord handle gripped in one fist, the attached cord flailing wildly.
Pierce knew Hatch was in freefall. Neither of them had been issued auxiliary packs with backup parachutes. The uprush of air into Pierce’s parachute yanked him away from his subordinate. He saw rather than heard Hatch’s scream. Without a parachute, his teammate was doomed.
Pierce was unbuckling his own parachute before he realized he had made a decision. The canopy floated away as he shifted into phoenix. His buff-colored G-suit became confetti whisked away on the hot winds. A blazing bird spread his enormous wings to catch the fierce updraft.
Only the radiant glow of phoenix plumage could be seen by human eyes. The dazzling, paranormal rainbow colors of their feathers were virtually impossible for ordinary mortals to see — particularly at high speed. Pierce might appear as an iridescent blur too bright to focus on, but that was all. If anyone was observing his descent, he was now as good as invisible.
Far below him, Hatch’s body splayed out and spiraled helplessly towards the ground. Pierce could see that Hatch was unconscious. That was one blessing of freefalling. You passed out before you hit the ground. Before you died.
Pierce was strong. Impossibly strong. In greater phoenix, he was as large as a small plane and just as fast. His eyesight was more acute than an eagle’s. At will, with the touch of a single feather, he could set anything afire. But to save his brother officer, speed was what he needed.
Pierce folded his immense wings against his torso and prepared to dive. Like a blast from a suddenly opened furnace, a rush of hot wind battered him from the side, reminding him that this was the Arabian Desert. He fought for control. Despite the urgency and terror of the moment, he had to fight the dizzying excitement that accompanied flying faster than the speed of sound. As always, acceleration was itself an intoxicant.
Like the streamlined raptor he was, Pierce dropped headfirst, aiming for Hatch. Below him, his buddy grew bigger as the phoenix got closer. Twenty feet above the ground, he extended his wings, thrust his mighty legs forward, and snatched Hatch’s torso in his talons. His wings decelerated them both.
Pierce had pulled his buddy back from the brink of death. But he had not calculated for the extra weight and momentum of Hatch’s burly body. His balance altered. He destabilized. There was no time to correct his error. Pierce juddered and cartwheeled in the air on wings that had lost their lift. The ground rose up to meet him.
The landing knocked the air from Pierce’s lungs. His eyes opened. The dust had settled. He had a worrying sense of being newly awakened. How long had he been out? Pain overwhelmed him. Each breath was crippling agony. Hatch’s body was a dead weight, pinning him to the rocky ground. Had he killed himself attempting to save a dead man?
The hot wind roared down through the gray and rocky mountains, flinging a storm cloud of gritty dust around. As if this was a signal, guns blazed from the stunted shrubs a hundred yards to the north of them. Pierce did the only thing he could do. He became fire.
Crap. Despite Hatch’s flameproof suit, Pierce had set his buddy ablaze. If his co-pilot wasn’t already dead, he would be soon. But the fire roused the other man, who immediately began to roll in the dust, smothering the flames that enveloped him. Hatch had extinguished his G-suit and was pulling out his pistol, before the fire-that-was-Pierce had reached the clump of bushes that was his goal. Those dusty, desiccated shrubs ignited even faster than Hatch’s G-suit.
The enemy guns went silent. Hatch emptied his pistol into the clump of bushes where the muzzle flashes had come from. Pierce desperately tried to decide on his best course of action. When a phoenix became fire, he could regenerate. But the risk was great. It was always your last option. And he had never done it before. Other members of his clan had told him about regeneration. It hurt. A lot. And there were other drawbacks too.
But his phoenix form had been dying before he took fire. He wasn’t sure what would happen if he returned to human now. Probably nothing good. The pathway to rejuvenation was fire, phoenix, human. In that order. Excruciating agony clouded his thinking, but he struggled to reason out his options. The vegetation was too sparse to sustain him as fire for long. If he continued to blaze, he would burn away to ash. He had to take phoenix soon. And yet, remaining fire was tempting beyond his imaginings. Just as he had always been warned.
As if trying to extinguish him, the wind blew harder. But the
fresh oxygen only made him burn hotter. Blue flames jumped from the flaming bushes that Pierce was now a part of, and blazed a path across the desert scrub setting it on fire. Smoke rose in towering clouds. The dusty, spiny shrubs screening the guerrillas became a bonfire. Pierce followed willy-nilly. He was the fire, but he had lost control of his talent, and the brush fire had taken on a life of its own.
In the face of certain immolation, the guerrillas leapt up, abandoning their hidden emplacement. Bent double, they scurried away, beating at their clothing with panicky hands. An engine started. Their dust-colored armored vehicle roared out of a pile of rocks, heading away from the fire which stood between them and their prey. A black haze effectively screened them even from Pierce’s paranormal vision.
He gathered his remaining strength. He and the scrubby bushes had become one mighty conflagration. He would die if he did not abandon this form. He ignored the searing agony, and the desire to remain a flame, and thrust upward. His phoenix emerged from the embers as perfect as if he had never fallen. Never burned. More than perfect. Improved.
He felt larger and more muscular than before. Wider. Longer. Stronger. His forked tailfeathers streamed far behind him as he glided over the smoke. This was fantastic. Abruptly he lost altitude. This too was something he had been warned about. After regeneration, initially you were as clumsy as a raw-boned adolescent after first-change.
All around him the winds calmed. The dust storm died down as precipitously as it had begun. The smoke lightened. Pierce tried to level out, but his newly made wings were sluggish. It took all his concentration to get his flight feathers to work.
Like all birds, a phoenix’s feathers were individually under full control. But like any fledgling, Pierce had had to learn to fly when he came into his talent in his teens. It now felt as if he had to relearn the whole process. And this inhospitable place was no ideal training arena.
To his relief, he caught a thermal and soared, regaining altitude. He peered through the lingering smoke and dust. Lightning split the sky. Before the noise of the thunderclap had reached him, torrential rain soaked the parched earth. The heavy drops also extinguished Pierce’s flaming feathers and beat fiercely at his wings. Worse, it saturated his plumage. He plunged for a second time to the ground.
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