Table of Contents
COPYRIGHT
BOOKS BY ISADORA MONTROSE
DRAGON’S POSSESSION
SEXY SNEAK PEEK
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
DRAGON'S CHRISTMAS CAPTIVE PREVIEW
DRAGON'S CHRISTMAS CAPTIVE: CHAPTER ONE
DRAGON'S CHRISTMAS CAPTIVE: CHAPTER TWO
PHOENIX ABLAZE PREVIEW
PHOENIX ABLAZE: CHAPTER ONE
PHOENIX ABLAZE: CHAPTER TWO
BEARLY BEGUN PREVIEW
BEARLY BEGUN: CHAPTER ONE
BEARLY BEGUN: CHAPTER TWO
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY ISADORA MONTROSE
Dragon’s Possession ©Copyright Isadora Montrose 2017
Dragon’s Christmas Captive: Preview ©Copyright Isadora Montrose 2016
Phoenix Ablaze: Preview ©Copyright Isadora Montrose 2016
Bearly Begun: Preview ©Copyright Isadora Montrose 2016
Cover Art by Resplendent Media ©Copyright 2016
This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the author, Isadora Montrose.
Warning: These books contain sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers.
Books by Isadora Montrose
Bear Necessities
Bear Possibilities
Bear Affinities
Bear Infinities
Bear Fursuits Books 1-4
Bear Cubs for Christmas (available only in Bear Fursuits Books 1-4 Bundle)
Bearly Begun
Bearly Enough
Bearly Ever
Bearly Forever
Bearly Beloved
Bear Skin: A Billionaire Oil Bearons Romance
Dragon’s Treasure
Dragon’s Successor
Brides for the Bachelor Bears Books 0-4 Bundle
Bearly a Bride (available only in Brides for the Bachelor Bears)
Dragon’s Pleasure
Bear Pause: A Billionaire Oil Bearons Romance
Dragon’s Christmas Captive
Dragon’s Possession
Phoenix Aglow
Phoenix Ablaze
Amazon Author Page: https://amazon.com/author/isadoramontrose
DRAGON’S POSSESSION
BOOK 4
LORDS OF THE DRAGON ISLANDS
by
Isadora Montrose
SEXY SNEAK PEEK
“I told myself you could handle a couple of shifters. But...waiting incommunicado was the hardest thing I have ever done.”
“It’s over,” Nikki said gently. “We’re all safe.”
“I’m going to take you to Sweden and lock you away,” Lars declared.
“In your dungeon?” she teased.
“If I only had one.”
“Tied up?” she asked pleasantly.
“If you like. You are a heartless woman,” he said, “Teasing an old man. I can see I will be living under the cat’s paw.”
She giggled. She couldn’t help it. “Under the dragoness’ paw, anyway.”
He stood up with her in his arms. “I can see that you and I will have to fight it out.”
“Now?” she asked astonished by the husky coyness of her voice.
“I think there is no time like the present,” he said and carried her off still giggling.
“I would think that the last thing that surviving an attack would do is make us horny,” complained Nicole as she went to work on Lars’ shirt.
He laughed. “It’s all part of the hormones that got us through the excitement and stress. In an hour, I can guarantee we will be fighting to keep our eyes open – or just fighting.”
“Then it isn’t real?” she asked. “You don’t love me?”
“I didn’t say that. And that’s not what I meant. But your interpretation is part of the adrenaline jag.” He hauled her T-shirt over her head and tossed it across the room.
“I can take my own clothes off,” she grumbled.
“Sure you can.” He stroked the delicate skin above her bra. “Your skin is so soft.” He ran his tongue along the line his fingers had traced. He buried his nose between the pillowy mounds and breathed in. “And you smell like a sex goddess.”
“I smell, all right,” she retorted. “I was sweating like a pig while I waited in the tunnel.”
Lars took a good look at his feisty little mate. Her whole attitude had become belligerent. She was on a tear. He stepped backward and began to strip off his clothes. “Do you want to f**k or fight?” he asked conversationally.
“What happened to making love?” she asked angrily.
Lars glanced down. He was naked and fully aroused. He took himself in one hand and waved it at her. “F**king or fighting?” he repeated. “I love you, but that’s all that’s on tonight’s menu.”
She answered him by dropping to her knees...
CHAPTER ONE
May, Las Pampas
An elderly red scooter bumped slowly over the rutted backstreets of the sleeping town. At this hour, most houses in Santa Rosa del Pampas were entirely dark, their inhabitants sound asleep. The streetlights were few and far apart, and the little vehicle avoided their feeble illumination as much as possible. The waning moon was only a gentle curve in the night sky. But the driver was familiar with her route. And her night vision was extraordinarily acute. She effortlessly steered between the numerous potholes that lay in wait for the incautious.
Nicole Estevan y Garcia pulled out of the hushed residential streets. She headed towards the outskirts of town where the grasslands of the province of Las Pampas began. Here the paved roads gave way to dirt trails used by gauchos herding cattle and peasants going to market. Tonight, the grassy plain was deserted.
Nicole ended her trip at a tussock of ten-foot-tall pampas grass. Her many visits had worn a hollow in the silvery stalks. The white plumes of the flowers had dried during the summer, but were still dense enough to completely conceal her little Vespa. She dismounted and hastily began to strip off her clothes. It was an autumna
l evening, and the air was chilly enough to discourage any nude lingering.
When she sprang upwards into the sky, Nicole’s body had already completed its shift. Her powerful hind quarters launched her high above the pampas grass. She spread her wings wide and flapped hard, since the thermals that would have supplied lift had died in the cold night air. The restlessness that had plagued her all day eased. She drew in deep lungfuls of fresh air as she beat her wings and rose higher and higher. Once she was aloft and gliding, serenity replaced her agitation.
Below her the grassland was bleached of color, but Nicole’s dragon vision could make out every blade of grass, see every rodent scuttling through the rustling stalks. Here and there, in companionable clumps, cattle slept out the night. When she passed overhead only a few raised their curious heads. These particular cows had long since discovered that this great flying beast was not after them or their young. They dropped their heads again and closed their eyes.
Far above them the air was fragrant with the breezes that came down the slopes of the Andes. The pampas stretched as far as even dragon vision could see, tall grasses waving in the brisk wind. Nicole loved to fly. It was the one compensation for her unwilling transformation into a scaly, fire-breathing monster. When she flew she felt strong and free, as she never did when she was a dumpy, ungainly woman.
Now she indulged herself in vigorous aerial acrobatics. She spun her muscular body in a complex pattern of barrel rolls and plunging dives until she was breathing hard and every exhalation was accompanied by a long flare of brilliant light. When the tightly wound feeling in her muscles and mind smoothed out into fatigue, it was time to go home. She angled her wings in a great downward spiral that ended in a graceful landing beside her scooter.
Her hind feet took the force of her return to earth. Her tail balanced her until she could drop to all four legs. The shrinking of her gargantuan snout, the retreat of her scales, and all the rest of her return to human form, was as rapid as her shift to dragon had been. Nicole dressed just as swiftly as she had undressed.
The trip home always seemed shorter, even though she held her little scooter to a snail’s pace in both directions to minimize the noise of her engine. She knew it was because returning to her bed and her humdrum life was far less exciting than anticipating a flying session.
Since she had found out that Felipe was dead, the urge to fly had come upon her almost nightly. She’d been driven to take dragon. Fortunately, at night the pampas was a great deserted arena. No one had ever caught her coming or going. No one but the animals had ever observed her. She couldn’t really understand why Felipe’s death had made her so restless. Her body so tormented with sensations she did not recognize. She only knew that she had to fly.
Nicole clung to the shadows as she puttered back into town. There was a light on in the house that shared the narrow alley behind the Villa Mendoza where she lived. But no one looked out. Doubtless, Señora Johnson was up with one of her children and had no interest in spying on Nicole. The paying guests were all sleeping on the other side of the Villa, well away from any windows that overlooked its courtyard. Nevertheless, Nicole kept to the shadows and moved as unobtrusively as possible.
The wooden door into the private, enclosed garden moved easily on well-oiled hinges. Nicole let it close softly behind her. No one except the residents of the Villa Mendoza could see into the courtyard. Her bedroom and Matteo’s overlooked it. But her son had been fast asleep for hours. Tia Evita slept on the other side of the big, old house. There was no one to see her lock the scooter in the shed. It was beat-up and no prize to any thief. But it was seven-year-old Matteo’s greatest ambition to ride it. Best to keep temptation away from him.
The back door was shut, but not locked. In the almost eight years that Nicole had lived in this house it had never been locked. She toed off her shoes to walk quietly through the house. The house was cool and the terracotta tiles almost icy but she didn’t want to wake Matteo. The refrigerator hummed. The kitchen faucet dripped. Nicole tightened the tap and water stopped splashing into the deep, old-fashioned enameled sink. Moving quietly, she went through the dark, quiet house and up the stairs and along the hall to her bedroom.
There was a jug of water and a bowl on the antique dry sink in her room. The house had indoor plumbing, but it had been furnished in the nineteenth century. It took Nicole only a moment to wash the pampas dust from her face and body. Only a second to throw her nightgown and robe on before she went to check on her son.
Matteo had started the night lying on his back with his covers under his arms. Now he was sprawled on top of them on his stomach. Nicole lifted her boy and turned back the coverlet and sheet. She tucked her boy in. In sleep he looked angelic. His curls gave him the appearance of a dark cherub. His eyelashes lay like two black crescents on his cheeks. Had it only been a few months ago that those cheeks had been round? Her boy was stretching out and growing up. And every day he looked more like his late, unlamented father.
One day she might have to tell Matteo about his parentage. But for the present he showed no sign of becoming a dragon as she had. Hopefully, the curse had bypassed him and he would never need to know his mother was a monster. And now that Felipe was dead, she no longer had to fear that he would appear to take Matteo away from her, or tell her innocent child about his dragon heritage.
Tia Evita was sleeping as soundly as she ever did. Her breathing was loud, but not labored. The doctor had said she might go at any time – or live for years. Nicole didn’t want her elderly aunt to die, but Tia was nearly ninety-five, and since her sister Luisa’s death five years earlier, Tia Evita’s zest for life had drained away. Even her indomitable spirit couldn’t go on indefinitely. Nicole closed the door and tiptoed away to nurse her sorrow.
* * *
June, Baltic Sea, Swedish waters
The little two-man submersible moved sleekly through the inky waters of the Baltic Sea like the shark it so nearly resembled. It nosed its careful way above the sea floor tracking its prey by sonar. The twenty-two-foot-long Russian submarine it was following meandered obliviously along the Swedish coastline.
“How they dare!” declared Löjtnant Anders Magnusson hotly. His young face was a lean mask of fury.
Beside him, Kapten Lars Lindorm watched his screen impassively. He made no reply to Löjtnant Magnusson’s passionate outburst. What was there to say? The Russians had illegally entered Swedish territorial waters. They were spying – illegally mapping the coastline. Nothing else accounted for their presence. In one way or another, Lars had been shadowing them for six months from the North Atlantic to the Baltic. He reserved his anger for those who had sent them to spy on his homeland.
He had been ready to act for months. But only recently had he and Magnusson been tasked with eliminating the Russian spy submarine without creating an international incident. Lars had been selected for the original mission from the ranks of those officers of the Swedish Royal Navy trained in covert operations. Of course, that wasn’t the only reason he had been chosen.
The elite force Lars had the honor to be enrolled in boasted many other officers as well trained and as fit as he. But he was also a dragon shifter which gave him a broader range of talents. He and Anders Magnusson were also brothers of another sort. Magnusson was a wolf. Admiral Hammond Lindorm had maneuvered to ensure that on this take-down mission Lars had a teammate who would keep his secrets.
“What’s our timing?” asked Magnusson eagerly.
Lars shrugged. What did it matter when? He had his orders and their execution was up to him. Now was as good as any other moment. On the other hand, if he disabled the submarine during daylight hours, while shipping plied the busy Baltic Sea, there was more chance of discovery. He struggled to care about the consequences of getting caught. As always duty won. They would wait until dark.
“Sir?” pleaded Magnusson.
Although these days his apathy felt like a comfy sweater, Lars drew on his self-discipline. “Continue to
track the target, Löjtnant. Our program will proceed at zero two hundred hours.”
“Yes, sir.” Magnusson was visibly relieved. He relaxed fractionally. A moment later he tensed again. “They’re halting.” He peered dubiously at his screen. “What are they doing?”
“Dead slow, Magnusson,” Lars said calmly. “No wake. They are too far from any port to be up to much mischief. And this behavior is typical of this sub.”
“Typical?” Magnusson asked.
Of course, Magnusson had not been briefed by Command. They operated on a need-to-know basis. “Mechanical defects.” Kapten Lindorm suggested prosaically.
He tried to explain. “I don’t think those thugs who run Russia are above stealing the military allotment. Those poor bastards were probably sent to do their spying in a broken-down sub. They don’t seem to be able to go longer than a few days without a problem. They have been back and forth to Russia since we detected them. Presumably for repairs.”
The two sailors looked at each other. Neither one said the obvious. Going to sea in a submarine that was not in perfect order was a death sentence. Both spared thanks that their own equipment functioned at peak efficiency courtesy of the Swedish Navy. After an hour, the Russian sub had neither hidden itself further nor moved on.
“We will use the fishing port of Holick as a base,” Lars informed his junior. “I suggest we head there. It’s almost directly above the Russians.”
“Yes, sir. Will you sleep before you leave, sir?” Magnusson inquired tentatively.
Lars sighed. He did not want to sleep. No. Scratch that. He wished to sleep. It was his dreams he wished to avoid. But shifting took energy. Swimming in the Baltic was a chilly business even in summer. There were places where the sea ice had only just finished melting. Lars would need to be well fed and well rested for this mission. The Lindorms were lucky because they made their luck. Since puberty, he had been taught to make sure he kept his dragon fighting fit. And Magnusson was supposed to keep tabs on Lars’ fitness.
“I will sleep aboard, Löjtnant.” Lars glanced at his watch. There was plenty of time for the slow ascent required for safe decompression. “Return us to the surface. I want this vessel berthed and seen in Holick before I start.”
Dragon's Possession (BBW / Dragon Shifter Romance) (Lords of the Dragon Islands Book 4) Page 1
