Warrior's Destiny (Warriors of Raspharion 1)

by Vivian Venus

  A shock of energy crossed through Heather’s body, and she felt her clothes ruffling and her hair floating as she lifted off the ground. A blue light filled the room, and Rachel’s mouth dropped open. A thunder crack and burst of light, and she disappeared.

  Moments later, Heather stepped out of the portal and was greeted by a bright light shining in her eyes and the howling noise of an engine. She covered her eyes and looked up and saw the Fang and Claw hovering above the forest canopy, a searchlight scanning over the temple ruins. It landed on her, and she waved her arms.

  “Stay there!” Rhys’ amplified voice boomed out. The ship hovered down as low as it could above the trees, and then she saw Rhys lowering himself down on a cable. “What took you so long,” he said, holding out his hand to her.

  “Do I want to know how long I’ve been gone?” she asked.

  “Long enough for me to get worried. Let’s go.” He pulled her up against him and the cable hoisted them back up to the ship. They climbed aboard, and Rhys punched the controls and shot the ship out of the atmosphere and back towards Van-Raspharion.

  Heather threw her arms around Rhys and kissed him. “You did it,” he said, hugging her tight. “What was the prize? Where did you go?”

  “I don’t know about the prize… But I saw my friend again, back on Earth.”

  “I thought that I might never see you again,” Rhys said, kissing her face. “I came to search for you.”

  She smiled at him and held him close. “Thank you for coming for me.”

  The ship hummed along on auto guidance as the two kissed. Rhys undid the knot of Heather’s belt and pulled the fabric from her waist. The dagger clattered to the floor, and he dropped the belt on top of it. Her robe opened at the front, hanging loosely over her breasts and just barely covering her nipples. Rhys felt himself become aroused as he took in the sight of Heather’s skin, the line of the cleavage and her smooth stomach. He ran his hand along her stomach and down under the loose fabric of her pants. She gasped as his fingers touched her. She was soaking wet with desire for him.

  “Oh, Rhys,” she murmured. “I love you.”

  “I love you too, my darling,” Rhys said. He kissed her as pulled her robe off her shoulders, rubbing his strong fingers against her clit. Heather tugged the buckle of Rhys’ belt and undid it, then opened his pants and pulled them down to let his cock pop out. He was hard, and she began to stroke him with her hand. Rhys grunted and pushed up across the ship until her back ran up against the wall. She moaned and wrapped her leg around him, his warm thickness pushing up against her stomach. Rhys sucked on her neck and then in a quick motion spun her around and pushed her up against the wall. He yanked her pants down to her ankles and Heather spread her legs and pushed her ass up against him as he reached up and squeezed her breast and kissed her neck.

  “Fuck me,” she begged him.

  Rhys grabbed his cock with his hand and rubbed his thick head up against her wetness, coating it in her juices. Then he entered her, spreading her wet pussy and filling her up all the way with his cock.

  Heather moaned as Rhys slammed into her, her face pressed up against the cold metal wall of the ship. Her lust dripped on the floor as they fucked with a brand new intensity. It was fast and hard and rough, the energy of Rhys’ dragon being channeled through his cock into her. Rhys grunted and squeezed her ass with a thick hand, ramming in all the way to the hilt. “Come inside me,” Heather begged him, sensing he was close.

  Rhys’ cock swelled and flexed as he reached climax, his hot seed shooting deep into Heather’s channel. She shivered and moaned as she felt him fill her, and she went over the edge too. The intense sensations arced through every part of her body, and when she was finished she had to do all she could to keep herself from falling to the floor. Rhys kissed her as he withdrew his throbbing cock, and he held her in his arms, their breaths heavy.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The king and queen rose from their thrones and Rhys and Heather strode triumphantly into the throne room to the murmurs of the court. The Oracle came forward from her chair to receive them, and Heather bowed her head respectfully.

  “I have no prize,” she confessed to the Oracle. The old woman took Heather’s hands and closed her eyes.

  “You have become whole of heart and soul. This I sense was your fated prize.” Her eyes then opened in surprise. “And I sense one other thing…inside of you.” She placed her hand on Heather’s stomach. “Another prize is growing within you.”

  The king and queen were ecstatic at the news, and Rhys and Heather kissed. “Well then,” the king said, “let’s get the ceremony under way.”

  Rhys held out his hand, and the Oracle withdrew her ceremonial knife. She made a cut on his palm and then on Heather’s, and the two joined hands together. Heather beamed up at Rhys, her face looking radiant with energy. He smiled back, and then shut his eyes as he concentrated. His body morphed and shifted, changing to his dragon form, and the Oracle murmured the rites of the dragon shift.

  Heather felt a surge of energy flow from Rhys through her hand and up into her heart. It felt like every cell in her body had become energized, and every sense had become a thousand times more acute.

  She felt it.

  The dragon emerging from the depths of her soul, and the energy spreading and growing as her body began to change.

  She looked at Rhys with different eyes. She could sense everything around her. She felt the wings on her back, and stretched them out wide. He scales were ivory white, her eyes as clear as a blue ocean. She was a dragon. She would be forever wed to Prince Rhys Vandell of the Kingdom of Raspharion. And she was home.

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  Turn the page for a two chapter sample of Vivian Venus’ sci-fi romance story Crash Landed!

  Crash Landed: A Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Link)

  Available on sale now, or read free with Kindle Unlimited!

  Ryn Tilley came to the desert to paint in solitude away from the city art scene she had come to despise, and to escape from the memory of the man who broke her heart and betrayed her trust. Remote, vast and quiet, Ryn’s refuge was perfect – but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing. That is until a mysterious stranger, dehydrated and lost in the desert, stumbled into her life.

  Daggen Trys shouldn’t be on Earth, and he especially shouldn’t be lying unconscious in the bed of this beautiful human female. Interaction with humans is strictly forbidden in his mission to observe the deserts of Earth undetected from orbit – but when his scopes came across Ryn creating stunning landscapes with her paintbrush, he was enthralled enough to bring his ship in for a closer look. Close enough to lose control and crash to the Earth’s surface.

  Ryn fights to contain her undeniable attraction to him as Daggen tries to keep his true identity hidden and their forbidden relationship contained. He can’t let things go too far… after all, he knows what happens to those who break the rules of his kind.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Her strokes were vibrant and strong, each one placed purposefully with a practiced hand that was perfectly in sync with her version of the vast and lonely desert landscape. Ryn Tilley dipped her brush into her jar of turpentine and strained the loosening oil paint from the bristles against the edge of the glass. The inside of the jar was murky and caked with the buildup of hundreds of hours of painting time, a mix of every color she had placed on her canvases within the past few weeks. When she glanced into the jar, she reminded herself to do it, probably for the tenth time that week.

  She wiped the bristles off with a blue shop towel and delicately dipped the tip into a pre-mixed combination of cadmium red and yellow ochre on her pallet and then raised it to her canvas. After three hours of work she was nearly done with the plein air painting, and just on time too. The afternoon sun
was reaching up into its highest point in the sky, and the blot of shade her beach umbrella provided was barely enough to keep her comfortable in the desert heat. The light had changed over the vista, but Ryn had already committed the scene at its most beautiful moment to her memory. She would put the finishing touches on now, and then add the details back at her camper.

  She took a step back and crossed her arms as she examined her work. It was good, not spectacular, but she was sure it would be able to sell in town. Ryn thought of Gretta, the old lady who owned the local art gallery. “A beautiful, talented young girl like you shouldn’t be selling your work in an old place like this,” she had said kindly. “You deserve to be off doing something great. More folks should be seeing your paintings. I’m always surprised you’re not out in some big city gallery, Ryn.”

  That was exactly what Ryn had come to the desert to get away from. The memories of the galleries, of the city, where everything seemed to be tainted with memories of him. When she learned just what kind of a manipulative, abusive, wicked scumbag he was, that just destroyed everything. He had been cheating on her with one of the other artists he had been managing, girl who was in his own words, “the next biggest thing,” and that it was “nothing personal.”

  Here, her work was free of the pretentiousness of the city art scene. It was free of him. And best of all, nobody knew her. She liked it that way, it gave her a chance to mend her mind and concentrate on what mattered most. She loved that she could paint as much as she wanted and could support herself enough on that. But still, Ryn felt like there was something missing. She painted and painted, trying to find what it was that was lacking. But no matter how much work she did, or how much she improved, she still felt like there was something she couldn’t grasp.

  Just a couple more things… She added a bit of color to the shadow underneath a red rock vista, and then peeked her head out from behind the canvas to take one more look at the landscape. Movement off in the distance caught her eye.

  What was that?

  She squinted. Was her eye playing tricks on her? Was that a…?

  No, she wasn’t seeing things. There was a man out there, stumbling around in the heat. A naked man, sun glinting off sweat covered skin. Ryn watched as he came closer into view. She could see his face now; he looked exhausted and dehydrated. She grabbed her water bladder and hurried down the rocky hill where she had set her easel towards the man. He turned and saw her, and their eyes locked. She shivered as his blue eyes caught her dark brown ones, and he looked at her in a way that seemed like recognition. Then he collapsed onto the dirt.

  He lay cheek to the ground, his eyes closed and breath shallow. What was he, some kind of a drug addict tripping out in the desert and wandered off from his car? The road was miles away. He could’ve come in on a 4x4, but why the hell was he naked?

  “Hey, are you okay?” she asked, shaking his shoulder. He had an athletic body, and she felt his muscle twitch under her touch.

  She cleared her throat and tried not to stare at anything indecent, and then with some effort managed to turn him over. “Hello?” No response. She sighed and tucked her arm behind his head and stuck the tube of her water bladder into his mouth and opened the spigot. Water filled his mouth until he coughed and spluttered, spilling all over his chest. Ryn saw that he was wearing a necklace – a teardrop shaped piece of metal with some kind of gem in the center. The man’s eyes opened and he gave her a delirious look.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Yeah, hi. Come on, get up, I can’t carry you out of here by myself.” She grabbed him by the arm and grunted to pull him up, then supported him on her by wrapping his arm around her shoulders. She could feel his bare skin radiating his body heat against her, and she unexpectedly found her heart beating faster. “Come on buddy, let’s go,” she said as she struggled to keep him up as she started the long walk back to her camper.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Warning! Altitude dampening thrusters unstable. Advising readjustment to surveillance altitude immediately…

  Warning! Thruster malfunction! Prepare for emergency landing…

  Daggen Trys slowly opened his eyes, and immediately began to recall what had happened. What a foolish mistake. He should’ve known that his ship would be unstable while cloaked at such a low altitude. It was only a geological surveillance ship, after all, designed to operate outside the atmosphere. All he had wanted was a closer look. No problem, he had thought. He would only be in atmo for a short amount of time, and then he’d go back to his post.

  As his senses recovered, he realized that he was lying in a bed. Where am I? Then he remembered the face of the girl. That’s right, she had found him. He heard movement, and he slowly tilted his head down to look. He winced as pain shot through his muscles.

  She was there, her back to him as she worked on something. She’s doing that thing, he thought, and struggled to sit up to get a better view. He watched her silently as she created the world with her tool, with each movement adding more life to the image. Daggen had seen her do this before from out in orbit – in fact it was what she was doing when he first spotted her down in the desert below his ship.

  Humans were off limits, he had been briefed. Surveying them was left to others. When Daggen had caught her on his scope, unexpected and tiny in that vast desert, he couldn’t help but look. She was beautiful, like the light of a supernova, and she drew him in. Before long his daily routine was colored by her appearance. He would wait for her, sometimes watching her work instead of paying attention to his own function. Her work enthralled him. He had never seen anything like it before.

  He tried to sit up further and groaned in pain. The girl turned around and set down her tool. “You’re awake,” she said briskly. “Good. I was half expecting you to overdose or something in my bed.” She stood up and picked up a bag from a chair and then threw it onto the bed. “I bought you some clothes from town, since you didn’t seem to have any.”

  He groaned. How embarrassing.

  “Apologies,” he said, sitting upright, the blanket sliding down off his bare chest. “And thank you for saving me. My name is Daggen. Daggen Trys.”

  “Ryn Tilley,” she said, turning back to her work. “Daggen, huh? That’s an interesting name. Daggen, what were you doing out there in the desert all alone? We’re miles from town and miles from the road, but you don’t have any sunburns.”

  Daggen blinked. How could he explain that he was from another world? That he had crash landed on her planet? He cleared his throat. It was better that she didn’t know, anyway. He had already breached protocol by bringing his ship down from orbit. Now he was in her bed. Eventually one of them would be here to fix things.

  “I…got lost.”

  “You got lost. Without water or clothes.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Okay,” she shrugged. “I guess you have a right to your privacy. I’m gonna go outside and catch that sunset. You should put those clothes on and I’ll drive you back to town.”

  Daggen thought of his ship, crashed out in the desert. It was fixable, he just needed a bit of time. “I don’t think I should go to town.”

  Ryn stopped in the doorway. “Why not?”

  Daggen scratched his head. “I can’t really say.”

  “Jesus. Are you some kind of escaped convict or something? Because I’ll kick your ass right now if you are.”

  He couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m not.”

  Ryn glared silently at him for a moment before stepping out of the door. “Just get dressed already. I’m going to take you back to town, because you aren’t staying here.”

  She shut the door of her camper behind her and stepped out into the warm desert evening. The sun was dipping towards the horizon, and the golden light of sundown was starting to make its way over the rocky vistas. The dirt crunched beneath her boots as she got her easel off the side of her camper and set it up to do a quick sunset impression. She thought about Daggen as she mixed her palette. It
didn’t make any sense to her. She was alone out here with him. She should’ve driven him straight into town and dropped him off at the hospital the moment she found him, but for some reason she felt compelled to take him home to her trailer and patch him up herself.

  Ryn kicked herself. Yeah, the guy was attractive. Was that what this was about? Was she seriously doing this because he was hot? She dipped her brush into the oil paint and then furiously set to work, putting down broad impressionistic strokes of bright color.

  Maybe a little bit? Damnit. He’d be out of her life soon anyway. She quickly finished with the lay-in and started refining some of the details of the painting.

  Inside the camper, Daggen threw off the sheets and found that Ryn had wrapped bandages around his abdomen and chest where he had been bruised and cut. Then he got out of the bed, picked up the bag of clothes and got dressed. He found a mirror and examined himself, chuckling at his appearance. “Dressing like a human,” he said. “Daggen, you’re breaking all the rules now.”