Blake

by Celeste Raye

  Blake: Through the Portal

  (A Sci-Fi Weredragon Romance)

  Celeste Raye

  Copyright ©2017 by Celeste Raye - All rights reserved.

  In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.

  Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.

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  Contents

  Author’s Note

  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

  Also by Celeste Raye

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  Wait!

  You should know that Blake is the second book of three in the Through the Portal romance series. Although each story can be read independently and all end with a HEA with no cliffhangers, to get the full experience of the Weredragons Universe, you should really read them in order.

  Through the Portal

  Max

  Blake

  Craig -to be released Aug 9th, 2018

  Chapter One

  Christy wanted to shake Heather, hard. They were best friends and always had been, and Christy would not have changed that for the world, but sometimes Heather really got under her skin.

  For one thing, Heather had no idea how gorgeous she was. That was not all her fault. Her parents had been hard on her and always told her she was smart, and that was better than pretty, which had just made Heather think she was not pretty. Her lousy ex hadn’t helped that low self-esteem either.

  Christy, on the other hand, had always had the opposite problem. Everyone told her she was pretty, but nobody had seemed to care that she was smart. She’d had to tell herself every day, for years, that she was smart, and prove it too, not just to herself but to everyone else she came into contact with.

  Men always thought she was dumb, which is why nothing had ever worked out for her in the love department. But who needed love when they had a perfectly awesome loft-style condo in the heart of the city’s trendiest section, a job that paid her an obscene amount of money, and there were dating apps that let her fit as much, or little, sex as she wanted into her busy life?

  Sex she could have without worrying about making plans for a relationship, or how hectic her workload and life were. No strings attached, no wedding rings, no complications.

  If there was anything Christy hated in her life, it was a complication.

  She’d grown up in a house where complicated wasn’t just a word; it was a constant. She was always on edge, always worried, always trying to see what was going to come flying at her next.

  She was smart, and she was careful, and the last thing she wanted was love or commitment. Unlike Heather, who was all about the love. Christy sucked in an irritated breath. “Look, just swipe one way or the other.”

  Ugh. Did Heather even know what swipe meant? Christy doubted it. Heather wasn’t a dating app kind of girl, really, and she never would have been sitting there in such a dilemma if Christy hadn’t put up a profile for her. Christy’s irritation vanished as she studied her friend’s face. Heather had had a series of blind dates so awful they made the worst of Christy’s app dates look incredible.

  Christy asked, “What if he’s a serial killer?”

  Heather peered down at the screen of Christy’s phone. Her heart beat a little faster. The guy whose profile was up was hot, hot, hot. Like panty-melting hot. Blow your clothes off before you even get to a bed hot. If he was really the guy in the pic, that was. Lots of guys heisted model’s photos from stock photo sites and used them on the dating apps, and the guy might actually turn out to be fat, bald, and about six inches shorter than his profile declared him to be. It happened. More than she would have liked to admit—not that she was about to say so to Christy, who was already nervous enough to bolt like a freshly released rabbit.

  But if that was really him in that picture? Wow. Christy had just hit dating app gold! Why hadn’t she seen him on there before? He wanted coffee and to talk. Which was probably why. Coffee and chatter led to complications.

  She would think about that later and laugh, but right then she was busy trying to calm down her bestie, whom she truly cared for. Heather had been the one real constant in her life. Christy said, “Then I’ll taser his ass and get you out. I’ll go along. It’s coffee. I’ll skulk into the shop behind you by like thirty seconds, take a seat at a nearby table, and keep the mace and taser at the ready.”

  For the first time in a long time, a real smile cropped up on Heather's mouth. “I think you’re serious.”

  “I am.” She was. “It will be fine, I promise. Look, if he’s really heinous, just throw the coffee in his face and run, and I’ll be right behind you.”

  She actually recoiled. “What? I can’t do that! I might scald him!”

  Christy groaned inwardly. One day Heather really might get herself slaughtered by a serial killer on one of the horrible blind dates she kept letting people set her up on because she was just so…so polite! “Okay. Then I’ll use my weaponry. Come on, get dressed.”

  Heather got off the sofa and headed for her closet. Christy glanced back down at the hot guy on the screen. Some women had all the luck!

  Chapter Two

  The coffee shop was mostly empty when Christy, carefully eyeing Heather as she made her way to the counter, placed her order. The guy was indeed the guy in the picture, and he was still hot. Ugh. It just figured!

  Christy ordered a scone and a coffee, figuring she might as well stifle her envy in starchy sweets and a full-fat caramel latte. She took her phone out and brought up the app. Her luck really did suck it seemed because the first guy to pop up on her screen was at least ten years her senior, and she’d dated him before. He wasn’t bad, just a little selfish in bed, but a lot of guys were.

  She flicked her gaze up from the phone and toward her friend and the date. Her forehead crinkled. Heather looked really nervous and upset, and the guy looked—Christy’s brows drew together. He looked pained. There was no other way to say it. Just then he burped, long and loudly, and Christy, sitting a little way back from them, felt her nose wrinkle and her body tense. What the hell? Had he been eating fire or something? Gross! That smell was beyond pungent; she could practically see a funky cloud forming around his face, which wasn’t looking so handsome after she knew what could come out of it!

  Heather seemed okay; her face hadn’t been eaten away like acid, shockingly enough. Christy pretended to not be watching them, playing with her phone and considering taking a swipe to the left on the guy she’d met before, peeking at Heather and the guy more than at her phone just in case Heather needed some help.

  Christy’s phone beeped, and she looked down to see a really cute guy on her app. Well, hello, she thought as she perused his profile. The sound of a chair scraping back and Heather’s voice rising in anger caught her attention. Christy looked up and saw Heather running for the door!

/>   Before she knew it, she and Heather were both in the alley, trying to outrun the guy with the hot face and body, but apparently a bad case of heartburn, was coming right after them.

  Then things got really crazy.

  Chapter Three

  This was a bad idea. The worst. Blake knew it before the woman named Heather, who had answered his request for a date, even sat down. She was pretty, yes, but it was clear that she was guarded. To make matters worse, the coffee was causing him heartburn, and his unease in that world was apparent. He didn’t really know how money worked, they did not have it in his world, and the woman had a shielded look on her face that didn’t go away while he was trying to pay for her drink, with what was apparently the wrong amount of human cash.

  He was frustrated and exhausted, and he was also worried that he was going to have to go back to his own world before he got what he needed.

  What he needed was a child.

  His line, a noble line, was in danger of going extinct. His father had committed a crime that broke dragon law. That his father had had to break that law was not in doubt. Many of the elders that had known his father felt badly about the consequences of his action, especially since it had been so necessary. Necessary, and an action none of the other dragons would undertake because they could not face those consequences. It had to be his father, and it had been.

  As a result, he, Blake, was not allowed to mate with the female dragons in his world. That meant he could not have children. No children meant his line was about to end. That was something that he could not allow. That rankled all the way to the core. He wanted a child, wanted to see his line continue, naturally. It was not so much to ask, really.

  To complicate it all so much further, his gaze kept going to the gorgeous woman with the dark hair and stunning figure set off by a pair of some kind of pants that clung to her long legs and a blouse in an emerald hue that showed off every one of the enviable curves of her waist and breasts. She kept looking at them, him and his date, and he wondered if it was a bad thing, in the human world, to leave one date and sit down with a different woman.

  Probably.

  Heather, the woman, said something but he didn’t really hear her. His heartburn was rumbling again, and he had to hold it back. He’d belched a moment before, and he’d had to tamp down the real and deadly fire that had wanted to come up in his chest. Setting a woman on fire was not the way to win her heart, of that he was sure.

  He sighed inwardly. There were human women on his world, the descendants of the ones who had been caught up in the same curse that had seen his father and other knights being turned into dragons and sent to the world that they now inhabited, but since they were part of his world, they too were off limits.

  He knew some female dragons lived in their human guise in this world and he had been hoping to find one of them with that stupid dating app, but all he had gotten were human women answering. This was his fourth date in six hours, and none of them had worked out.

  One woman had talked incessantly. He’d wanted to flee when she had begun chattering about something called a celebrity and then went from there to the subjects of her shoes and her hair. He had made an excuse and bolted out of there. The second date was a woman who had shown up with a bad attitude and practically accused him of being a gigolo. He had no idea what that meant and since he was not sure if she had somehow known that he was a dragon, or if she thought him something even worse, he’d left that date too, and swiftly.

  He’d barely sat down at the third when the woman burst into tears and then spent an hour telling him about her ex, and how much he looked like him. He should have skipped this date. His luck was all bad, and he had to get back to his world before his absence was truly noted.

  He finally just blurted out, “I need a child. I’m willing to pay…” and Heather, his date, immediately headed for the door, but not before cursing him out.

  Shit. She was the last chance he had, so he followed her. To his surprise, the woman that had caught his eye and interest was with her, and they were both running as fast as they could.

  He overtook them easily and said, “Wait! Listen…” And the woman who’d been sitting at the other table promptly turned around and sprayed something in his face! It was delicious, all peppery and spicy. He licked it off his lips, realized it was in his eyes, and knuckled them to get the stuff out of there. “I just need a child…”

  Bad thing to say, apparently, because both of them started screaming. Blake sighed inwardly and tried to give them his most charming smile. “I have money, lots of it…”

  The sound of wings beating against the sky broke off his words. He looked upward, and his mood went flatter than ever. Max, in dragon form, arrowed down from the sky. Blake knew things were about to get much worse.

  Both women were screaming now. Heather grabbed a board and started swinging. He ducked easily, but that board whacked across Max’s forearm. Max, glaring and clearly pissed off, said, “Goddammit, Blake! Get her under control!”

  Good idea. Blake knew he had to do a spell, fast. These two women could not be allowed to remember that they had seen a dragon, or to keep screaming like they were. They were definitely going to draw unwanted attention, and that was something he and Max both couldn’t afford.

  Heather was trying to kill him with that old board and Blake, determined to get a good grip on her in order to cast that forgetful spell over her, clutched her to him, hoping to get her under control. Max, no longer willing to deal with any of it, grabbed him. Blake knew Max was about to yank him through the portal. He was loosening his grip on Heather when the other woman darted in and grabbed Heather by the arm, doing her best to yank her away from Blake.

  It happened so fast he didn’t have time to think. Max, who was strong enough to do it, suddenly launched his body upward toward the portal. They were too far off the ground to let either of the women go. They’d die if he did.

  He knew Max knew that too. Blake looked down to see the humans stepping into the alley. The women had stopped screaming right about the time Max had lifted off, probably out of shock, and Max was moving too fast for their eyes to spot them, but now there was only one option: to take the women into their world, give them a forgetting spell and send them back through the portal.

  It was official. Trying to find a human woman willing to have his child was the worst idea he had ever had.

  They landed right below Ragalan, the castle where he and the rest of the dragons lived. The two women stared at him, both of them clearly confused and angry. He didn’t blame them.

  Their world was crowded with people and those automobiles and other vehicles. It was smoggy and thick with sound and pollution. But in this new world, there were no roads in sight, and no towns or people or stores, none of the things that they were used to. There was a village, the last bastion of human habitation, but it was on the other side of that mountain that they stood upon and while there were humans there, they were so different from those two women he doubted that they would find much comfort in them.

  Heather tottered toward him and shouted, “Take us back right now!”

  “I can’t.” He chewed at his bottom lip. He would have liked to do just that, but the portal, that rift in the sky that allowed him to go into their world and back from it, was rapidly closing. He could see the eye of it diminishing, and he knew there was no way to take them back just then.

  They stared at him. Remorse came soaring in. He had always acted without thinking and usually he was the only one who got hurt by that, but now he was facing down two women who had gotten caught up in his actions and the consequences of them, something he really disliked given his own circumstances.

  Before he could apologize, the Orcs showed up.

  In the middle of the screaming and yelling that emanated from the two women, he managed to get them to get on his back. As soon as they were settled, he felt the one he had been attracted to—and still was, no reason to lie about it—clench her thigh muscles do
wn on his flesh. An immediate bolt of desire hit, threatening to distract him. He had to focus his eyes on the castle and tell himself, over and over, that he was no way getting involved with her or Heather. That he was going to cast that forgetting spell and get them back to their world as soon as possible and forget that any of this had ever happened.

  “My name’s Christy, asshole.”

  It just kept getting better, and he meant that in as sarcastic a way as he could muster. Blake eyed Christy carefully. He’d stepped into the room to check on her, and so far, she’d thrown a chair at his head, called him so many names he’d been stunned into speechless, and now she was mad because he hadn’t known her name. Okay. “Christy.” He gave her what he hoped was a charming smile. “That’s a beautiful name.” Her eyes rolled around in their sockets. Her lips parted, probably to send another stream of profanities at his head, and Blake decided to beat a hasty and ignominious defeat. “Okay, so um…yeah. I’ll just let you, um…” He edged toward the door. Her words stopped him cold.

  She said, “Where the hell is Heather? That asshole took off with her, and she hasn’t come back.”

  That asshole being Max, who had flown off with Heather right after dinner. He said, stiffly, “I do not know. Sorry. I just knew you were alone and it’s a strange place, and I was just thinking…”