Aris: A Paranormal Shifter Romance (Stratham Dragons Book 1)

by Sarah J. Stone

  The next kiss was deeper, hotter than the first one. It was a kind of claiming and Cassie tried to reach up and offer more – take more – but he refused to let her take control. Her fingers clutched at him and when her abdomen clenched, she realized she was riding his jean-clad thigh.

  The knowledge did not stop her, and as he lowered his mouth to bite the lush swell of her breast, he kept rubbing her with his thigh and she gasped as she pushed down. Her cheeks were flushed and her lips parted as she concentrated on taking the pleasure that her body so desperately craved.

  Had she been herself and not in a lust-induced haze, she might even have been embarrassed – humiliated. But right now, there was nothing but need and from the fiercely intense look in his eyes, her partner was not thinking about social protocol as well. Instead, he ran a hand over her back, cupped her ass, and squeezed, making her gasp. Then that very hand slid down and shifted her into a more intimate position on his thigh.

  Her eyes were wide when that hidden muscle deliberately rubbed against her most intimate spot. He pulled away from her breast and watched her, a smug smile on his face as he brought her closer to the edge. And then she shattered with him watching.

  He didn’t give her time to come down from her high. Seeing her come apart in front of him made his animal roar and he ripped off her pants. Making quick work of his jeans, he grabbed her, put her on his cock, and thrust inside roughly.

  Cassie screamed.

  The power behind his thrusts did not falter. He tugged her legs around him and forced her back to the wall. He pulled out and entered again, making her sob in pleasure. He kept watching her and her eyes opened, clouded with confused pleasure.

  He smiled.

  It wasn’t a cocky smirk, or a satisfied grin.

  It was a genuine smile.

  And when she threw her arms around his neck to find some stability, he grabbed her ass and his thrusts turned harder until Cassie exploded, and he followed.

  His animal relaxed. The contentment which filled him made him kiss the side of her neck, happily.

  As he drifted into an unusual slumber, he grinned sleepily. Kevin had been right. This was what he had needed.

  He didn’t see the glowing on his chest just above his heart. As the strange symbol glowed and then faded, Cassie’s unconscious form snuggled into him, and he wrapped his arms around her.

  ****

  It wasn’t yet light when Luke woke up.

  Feeling this well rested was very unlike him. Since last year, he had not been able to truly sleep. Their entire den had been uprooted after the attack, and it had taken time to recover their stability again. Most of their fighting force had been killed in that unexpected attack. The children and elders had been moved immediately and most of them had survived.

  Their pack was not to be taken lightly, though.

  Once they had settled in their new home and Luke had incorporated the modern human security systems along with their own patrols, he and his best lieutenants had paid the panthers back in kind. The bloodshed had been minimal, but they had damaged the panther pack at their core.

  There had been no sign of the panthers after that, but Luke had tightened the patrols and every adolescent was made to undergo training. They were quite good at it, and although Luke was not one for sitting and laughing with them, he provided a form of comfort and security to them. He would often be tracked down by his pack members, some wanting to tell him about their training progress, some of them wanting to enroll in modern IT classes or similar courses which they felt would benefit the pack. Some would just come up to get some physical contact from their alpha and leave.

  He was their glue and their center, and although he didn’t dislike it, he couldn’t be their friend. He didn’t have that sense of bond in him. He could protect and he could nurture, but he felt a huge deficiency in his emotional state, and he didn’t know how to fix that.

  He sat up and watched the girl sleeping next to him.

  He couldn’t believe he had stooped so low as to sleep with a witch. Rubbing his face, he groaned internally. He would never hear the end of this.

  He should leave now and send some younger packmate back to make sure that Cassie left.

  Putting on his clothes, he tossed out the ruined t-shirt and searched for something one of his people might have left behind. He found a 90s-band t-shirt and, scowling at the rock star whose tongue was hanging out in the printed image, he put it on. He laid out some clothes for Cassie as well. He wasn’t that much of a bastard.

  Before he left, he gave another look at the sleeping woman and then left the apartment.

  ****

  Cassie waited until he left before opening her eyes. She had awoken the minute she had heard him moving about.

  Always on the run with her mother, she had become a light sleeper, her senses always attuned to her surroundings. She threw the back of her hand on her eyes, shuddering. What had she done?

  She felt the mating bond inside her quiver, and she surrounded it by her will of steel. No. The shifter could not realize what had happened.

  How could she not have noticed? Now that the bond was in place, she could tell from his strength and power that he was an alpha. She couldn’t mate with an alpha. Her eyes darkened as she clenched the sheets to her chest. Her mother had suffered enough. She knew firsthand what alphas did to their kind.

  She knew he wouldn’t be back anytime soon, but she couldn’t risk his coming back. She saw the clothes on the chair and was about to grab them, but hesitated. Glancing outside, she determined that it was dark enough for no one to be up at this hour. Opening the window, she glanced down.

  She’d jumped from worse heights.

  Her landing was smooth and in the shelter of the dark alley. She shifted into a large bear and ran into the streets, her clothes in her mouth.

  End of Preview

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  Saved by a Dragon

  (Exiled Dragons Book 1)

  SARAH J. STONE

  CHAPTER 1

  “And that is all for today’s report on Around L.A, your source for everything new and exciting in the Los Angeles area. We’re going to take a few phone calls before we close out the hour, so give us a jingle and let us know what’s happening that we may have missed,” Amy said into the mike.

  She sat watching as the lines began to light up on the technician’s console just outside the sound booth where she recorded her daily radio show. To her fans, she was A.J. Webb, a radio personality gaining rapid popularity due to her daily reports on all the happening places to be in the area. To her friends, she was just Amy, voted most likely to become a hermit by her senior class. She had come a long way since she was a demure book nerd in school, having blossomed both in physique and personality during her college days.

  “You’re on air with A.J. Webb. What do you have to tell everyone today?” she said cheerfully to the caller patched through to her.

  “I just saw a dragon flying near the freeway,” the caller said.

  “I’m sorry. Did you say you saw a dragon?” she asked.

  “Yes. It was huge. It was a bright blue color with silver wings.”

  “I hate to ask you this on the air, but have you perhaps been drinking this morning?” she laughed.

  “I’m not seeing things!” the caller said indignantly.

  “Okay. So you saw a dragon near the freeway then. What was the dragon doing? Laying eggs? Torching cars?”

  “I don’t appreciate your sarcasm. I know what I saw,” the caller said angrily.

  “Hey, I’m just trying to determine what the dragon was doing. Surely you didn’t expect to call and report a dragon sighting without getting at least a hint of disbelief!” she replied.

  “Listen, you bitch . . .” the man began.

  “And let’s move right along to our next caller,” Amy said, hoping the censors caught the expletive before it went out.

  There was a dela
y of a few seconds on her “live” show just for that purpose, but someone would occasionally slip past the censors. The caller clicked off and she went to the next one, a woman who called to tell her about a community movie event being held in an abandoned warehouse for Halloween. She could see that the phone bank was lighting up like crazy, no doubt other naysayers calling to bash the guy seeing dragons.

  “What was that all about? Why did you even put him through?” she asked the call screener after finishing up and exiting her booth.

  “Well, I thought it would be a hoot, honestly – a morning laugh. But listen. After you cut him off, the phones went nuts with folks reporting dragon sightings.”

  “I’m sure they did. People trying to get on the radio by copying what another crazy was saying. Sometimes I wonder why we even allow live phone calls here. There’s always some sort of nut job in the bunch – every single morning!”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Of course I’m right. No more dragon sighting calls, okay?”

  “Okay, Amy,” he said with a laugh.

  “I appreciate it. I can’t believe people would expect someone to even believe there is a dragon flying around Los Angeles. This is what happens when you legalize weed,” she laughed.

  “I don’t think weed causes hallucinations,” he replied.

  “You might be wrong about that.”

  “I might be. Anyway, I’ll let you get going. I’ve got a meeting with the producers to discuss the format of the show.”

  “Again? I hope you aren’t cowing down to them. I don’t want to end up sounding like some sort of low budget product pusher, hocking the latest inventions to the masses.”

  “You won’t. I promise.”

  “I’m going to hold you to that,” she said, turning to push her way through the glass doors as she exited the studio.

  It was no secret that the owner of the station had been after the producers to change her show and make it less controversial. Amy was well known for calling out her guests live on the air on scandals they were involved in. No one was spared, not even the politicians that seemed to think the producers were putting them on the air to spew their rhetoric to the masses. That wasn’t her style and it never would be, not even if it meant leaving the show. There were plenty of other stations out there interested in her no-bullshit approach to current events.

  “Ah, sunshine,” she said joyfully as the warm, California sun kissed her skin outside the large glass and steel building. Making her way to her car in the studio parking lot, she mentally prepared herself for the drive home. It was rush hour – never a good time of day to be in traffic.

  CHAPTER 2

  “This is WDRQ radio weather, bringing you all the latest news from Mother Nature. Today’s high is ninety-six degrees with no rain in sight. Stay cool, Los Angeles,” came the voice of Jon Levine, meteorologist at Amy’s station across her car speakers. She grimaced every time she heard his voice, which she found annoying more than most since she had to listen to his endless complaints in station meetings. It was getting dark outside, and she was still stuck in traffic.

  “I need a hovercraft,” she mumbled to herself, wishing such a thing existed.

  The station switched back over to the all-music hour it ran at this time of day as she continued to crawl down the highway in bumper-to-bumper traffic that barely moved, her hands clenching the wheel in annoyance. Damn it, she wanted to get home already.

  “What the hell?” she said aloud as the car in front of her came to a compete standstill, the driver getting out of his car and looking up at the sky. She craned her neck toward the windshield, trying to get a glimpse of what was there as more people began to climb from their vehicles to look up toward the sky. Not seeing anything, she finally climbed from her car and looked upward. “Oh, my God!” she exclaimed.

  Soaring high above them was something large and dark. It was hard to make it out in the dusk that had now fallen, but it looked like a dragon. No way could it be, though. Dragons simply didn’t exist, in L.A. or anywhere else on the planet. It had to be a hoax – a kite perhaps, or a drone dressed up to look that way. She marveled at how realistic it looked. No wonder people were calling to report it as an actual dragon.

  Amy watched as it flapped its large wings, appearing to be a deep red metallic color that almost blended in with the night, but not enough to completely conceal it. Kites didn’t move like that. Drones neither. Still, there was a reasonable explanation. The man had said he saw a blue and silver dragon. This one was much darker than that. What was going on here?

  “Hey, lady. I want to get home sometime today!” a man yelled from the car behind her.

  “Yeah, me too,” she replied, looking forward to see the man in front of her was returning to his car now that the dragon disappeared beyond the horizon.

  Inside the car, she reached for her cell phone, hitting speed dial and the handsfree speaker as traffic began to inch forward once again. She waited anxiously while it rang on the other end, finally answered by the station receptionist.

  “Melanie, this is Amy. Can you get me The Grid on the phone?” she asked her.

  “Sure thing, Amy,” the young woman replied, putting her on hold while she shifted her call to the telephone operator that they nicknamed The Grid because he controlled the large sound and inbound call grid that sat outside her sound booth.

  “Go,” he said from the other end.

  “It’s Amy. Tell me about the dragon phone calls this morning,” she said.

  “Man, there were dozens of them. Crazy people talking about dragons flying over the city,” he said.

  “What color did they say they were?” she asked.

  “All over the show. There was blue and silver mostly, but a couple said red or orange,” he told her. “Why?”

  “Just some thoughts on a follow up,” she replied, unwilling to admit she had seen them too just yet. “Thanks, Grid.”

  “Sure. Talk to you later.”

  Amy ended the call and wondered what was going on here. Whoever had put those things into the sky had done one hell of a job making them look realistic. Of course, the darkness aided that, but still, what she had been able to make out seemed very authentic looking. She had to know who was behind it. Though she was a radio DJ, her training was as an investigative reporter, and this seemed worthy of further scrutiny if for no other reason than curiosity.

  “What do you know about dragons?” she was asking her best friend, Barb, on the phone an hour later when she finally managed to make it out of traffic and into her small apartment just outside the city.

  “Dragons?” Barb repeated.

  “Yes, dragons.”

  “They don’t exist. They never did,” Barb replied.

  “Are you certain? There is no evidence to support that they have ever roamed the planet?” Amy asked.

  “I am certain. I would stake my anthropology degree on it.”

  “What I if I told you that I saw one tonight?”

  “I’d have to ask what you are drinking and if I can come over to help you finish it off,” Barb laughed.

  “I’m serious, Barb.”

  “So am I. Listen, it’s not a matter of dragons no longer existing. They never did.”

  “I saw one flying over my head, Barb.”

  “I don’t know what you saw, but I can assure you that it wasn’t a dragon. Probably some military experiment.”

  “This was no military UFO.”

  “Look, even if an animal that size did once exist, it doesn’t anymore, and anything that might have even been similar just wouldn’t have been able to fly. No wing span on an animal would have supported that kind of weight. It is an impossibility. Really, Amy . . . you’re the last person I’d expect to drum up some dragon hoax.”

  “I’m not drumming up a hoax. I had a caller earlier on the show that claimed he saw a dragon. I reacted the same way, but then, on my way home, I saw it for myself.”

  “I don’t know what you
saw, but I can promise you it wasn’t a dragon.”

  “Of course. You’re right. It must have been something else. I’m just being foolish,” Amy told her, second guessing what she had seen now that Barb’s voice of reason had stepped in.

  “Exactly. I’m glad you called though. Do you want to have lunch tomorrow before you go in for your show?”

  “Yeah, that sounds good. It’s been a while since we hung out.”

  “Eleven at our usual spot?”

  “It’s a date,” Amy told her. They said their goodbyes and hung up.

  At first, Amy dismissed any further thoughts about the dragon, but then she decided to see what she could find out about any other sightings. Firing up her laptop, she opened a search page and looked for dragon sightings in Los Angeles. Her eyes grew wide as she saw all the recent posts on various social media and blogs from people who had seen the creatures, too. There were even a few pictures, but they were all too grainy or blurry to say beyond a certainty that what anyone had seen was real. She made some notes and closed the computer, still pondering it all as she made herself some dinner.

  Sitting down with a bowl of reheated pasta and a glass of wine, she poured over the information she had gathered, pulling out a road map she hadn’t used since the invention of GPS and marking the locations people had noted in their sightings. There seemed to be a flight path from Los Angeles out toward the San Bernardino Mountains. For something that didn’t exist, the dragon seemed to have a definite route into and out of the city limits. After a while, she put the map aside and got ready for bed, but sleep was slow to come as she contemplated how someone could pull off something so convincing as to make people believe there were dragons.

  CHAPTER 3

  “I’m telling you, Barb. I saw it with my own eyes,” Amy told her friend over lunch the following day.

  “I don’t know what you saw, but I can assure you that there is a more logical explanation than a big red dragon soaring above the freeway,” Barb replied.