Dragon's Promise. Denise Lynn

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      “If you don’t know, then I haven’t given it my all.” He sighed then chuckled softly and drew a fingertip down her spine. “Feeding.”

      For three days? And she couldn’t remember any of it? She was in bed with a man who possessed the chiseled body and face of a Greek god and she couldn’t remember the feel of his body on, or in, hers? Either she’d lost her mind, or he was some type of preternatural she’d never met before.

      She closed her eyes tightly, trying desperately to remember. Then slowly, bit by bit, the fog started to clear, permitting snippets of their time together to trickle into her mind.

      They’d met in a bar and had been attracted to each other from the beginning.

      His inner animal—the part that made him preternatural—had marked her. She wasn’t certain why it had done so, only that for some reason it had chosen her. More importantly, she hadn’t turned him away.

      Images of the thugs in the alley floated through her mind. When she’d become sick immediately after draining the one attacker, this man, the one now in her bed, had been there to catch her before she fell to the wet pavement. He’d given her energy—his own life force, without question.

      A shiver of lust raced down her spine as more, broken bits of memories poured forth. Not quite visual memories, but more like remembered feelings. The warmth of his mind-robbing kiss as his tongue had swept across hers. And the certainty of his touch when he’d stroked and caressed her to a fevered pitch that left her gasping for air and wanting so much more.

      All of this was so foreign to her, so strange. She’d never let a man into her bedroom. She’d never been so swept away by a kiss that she’d lost the ability to think. She’d never met a man who could willingly fill her life force and live.

      Never before had she desired, longed for, lusted after a man who possessed an inner strength that was on a level she couldn’t quite understand, and while it excited her, it also frightened her.

      Though she could remember the feel of his touch, the taste of his kiss, she couldn’t pull his name from her memories. It was an odd time to ask, but she wanted to know.

      Caitlin took a breath, looked at him and asked, “Who are you?”

      He tugged on the sheet, dragging it down to her waist, and sat up far enough to slide his tongue along the curve of her breast. “Ladies first.”

      She shivered. How many times had he done that the last few days? Caitlin swallowed her moan. Had she enjoyed it as much as she did now? “Caitlin St. George.”

      The man froze, his eyes widening for a split second before he moved away from her. His smile faded into a deep, menacing laugh, wiping away her desire to lean in to his caress.

      Fear slid in behind her lingering passion, pushing it away, flowing over the warmth to bury it with a cold, foreboding chill. Maybe she should have asked what he was, instead of who.

      Before she could part her lips to voice her question, he shifted into the form of a smoky dragon and was gone.

Chapter 2

      Dragon’s Lair, Drakes’ Resort in East Tennessee—today

      “Sean, we have a problem.”

      Without taking his attention away from the lines of coding on his monitor, Sean reached out to absently hit the button on the intercom. “What now?”

      “The security alerts are going insane. Again.”

      “Be right there.” He saved the program he’d been debugging, shrugged into his suit jacket and headed out of the private office in his suite.

      Sean reminded himself to be patient. Harold was doing the best he could. The security tech had called in sick this morning, and he didn’t have time to sit and watch the monitors himself.

      The rest of the family had left for the family’s medieval stronghold on Mirabilus Isle a few days ago, and he wasn’t about to call either of his brothers, or his aunt, home for something this minor. Not when this was the first time since his return they’d left him in complete charge of the Lair.

      So when Harold, the family’s right-hand man, sometimes chauffeur, mechanic and occasional handyman, had volunteered to watch the cameras, Sean had accepted his help.

      Of course, today was the day when everything that could go wrong, did. Now, for the third time this morning, Sean’s new tweaks to the system were having fits.

      Walking into the basement security room, Sean glanced at the half-round bank of monitors. “Which one now?”

      “The lobby.” Harold rose and moved out of the inner circle.

      Well, at least it wasn’t in the kitchen again. Sean sat down and swiveled the task chair back around to glance at the screen to the lobby.

      The temperature bar at the bottom of the monitor was blinking red—something very hot, or on fire, was in the lobby. He knew if he turned the sound on, that the alarm would be barking in time with the blinks.

      “I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.” Harold leaned over his shoulder, pointing at the check-in counter. “But it went off when she entered.”

      A woman stood at the counter. Either the modified alarm system was a total bust, or it was finally doing its job correctly.

      Sean tapped in another view of the counter and cursed softly.

      The system was working just as it should—monitoring the temperature of the guests’ bodies and alerting the security staff to the presence of a nonhuman.

      She hadn’t changed much since he’d last seen her. A little paler, with lines of distress marring her forehead, making her appear drained and weak. Shadows of worry framed her amber eyes. If anything, her apparent vulnerability made her more enticing now than before. Caitlin St. George—the magic dragon slayer—was checking in to Dragon’s Lair.

      When she’d first told him her name, he had gotten the impression that she didn’t realize what her name even meant. But then, since he’d refused her entry into his thoughts, she hadn’t known who, or what, he was, so there’d been no reason for her to put two and two together.

      Actually, other than her name—which could be nothing more than a strange coincidence—he’d had no reason to vanish the way he had. Granted, she was a St. George and he a Drake—the dragon slayer and the dragon—but as far as he knew, the days of killing dragons had ended centuries ago.

      Yet at hearing her name, something sharp and menacing had poked at his dragon, enraging it beyond reason. So he’d done the only thing he could upon discovering he’d been sleeping with what his beast seemed to distrust—laughed at the complete irony of the situation and then vanished from her life.

      What was she doing here at the Lair? Something was obviously wrong. But why would she come to him? After the way he’d deserted her so abruptly, it made no sense for her to be here.

      Sean cleared the event from the system and reset the lobby’s alarm. “There СКАЧАТЬ