Romancing the Recluse
Page 1
Romancing the Recluse
Stop Dragon My Heart Around
Michelle M. Pillow
writing with Mandy M. Roth
Michelle M. Pillow Online
Romancing the Recluse (Stop Dragon My Heart Around) © Copyright 2006 - 2016 by Michelle M. Pillow
Second Electronic Printing June 2011, The Raven Books LLC
First Electronic Printing 2006
ISBN-13: 9781452409344
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
All books copyrighted to the author and may not be resold or given away without written permission from the author, Michelle M. Pillow.
This novel is a work of fiction. Any and all characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or events or places is merely coincidence. Novel intended for adults only. Must be 18 years or older to read.
Published by The Raven Books
www.TheRavenBooks.com
Raven Books and all affiliate sites and projects are © Copyrighted 2004-2016
Contents
About the Book
Author Updates
Stop Dragon My Heart Around Series World Stories
Michelle’s Bestselling Series
Dedication
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
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About the Book
Romancing the Recluse
Part of the Stop Dragon My Heart Around Collection
* * *
Viktor Dracodomus’ biological clock is ticking. As a dragon shifter, he only has a short time left to find his mate and reproduce or he’ll be forever sterile. Considering he’s lived for centuries, it shouldn’t be too hard. But there’s one catch. This recluse hasn’t been on a date for some time—since Queen Victoria took the throne. Modern women are nothing like those he remembers dealing with.
Samantha Egan’s life is in a slump, despite the fact she’s an heiress. She was just fired from a volunteer job, her boyfriend left her and she’s all alone in the world. But being the lady of propriety she is, she can’t believe it when she is compelled to start making out with a stranger in the middle of Central Park. Now the sexy man won’t keep his hands to himself and it’s all she can do to say no.
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Stop Dragon My Heart Around Series World Stories
Michelle M. Pillow & Mandy M. Roth
Romancing the Recluse by Michelle M. Pillow
Tipping the Scales by Mandy M. Roth
Licking Fire by Mandy M. Roth
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Michelle’s Bestselling Series
Qurilixen World Novels
Dragon Lords Series
Barbarian Prince
Perfect Prince
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His Highness The Duke
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Lords of the Var Series
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Captured by a Dragon-Shifter Series
Determined Prince
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* * *
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Dedication
To Mandy and our future minions.
* * *
We are still getting the minions, right?
You promised.
Chapter 1
Jotunheimen Mountain Range, Norway
Viktor Dracodomus shifted his weight, rolling onto his side. A rock poked him and he grunted, lifting up on all fours. He lay on the cool cave floor of his home, sweeping the ground with his long tail. The waving limb batted the stone away as he readjusted, trying to get comfortable and finding it nearly impossible. Stretching his long, black wings, he forced his body to relax.
“Hurmph,” the sound came from his throat in a small puff of fire and smoke. The brief flame spurted from his nostrils, lighting the surrounding cave. Viktor closed his eyes. He didn’t need the light to see through the blackness that encased him. His eyes could pierce the dark with ease, just as his nose could detect any intruder long before they entered the part of the cave he called his home.
The dark tunnels around him led all through the mountains in a confusion of continuous mazes that eventually made their way out into the wild Norwegian countryside. He was thirty miles from the nearest town, hidden from the outside world in his cave. Because the country was so far north it was called the Land of the Midnight Sun. At one time, he’d been amazed by the constant summer daylight of the northern lands, daylight that lasted twenty-four hours. In the winter, snow covered the land and many people used skis to travel inland, at least they had the last time he checked. Warm winds from the sea usually melted the snow off the coastline and many of the inhabitants centered there.
Viktor’s cave home was more inland, away from the densely populated coastal towns. He never received visitors and rarely sought the company of others. The wilderness of the Jotunheimen Mountains provided him with everything he needed—food, water, caves for shelter and wide-open skies where no one could see him take to flight. Flying was one of his only pleasures.
Nowadays he preferred resting shifted into his dragon form. Actually, he seemed to prefer the body of the dragon more and more as the years passed. Maybe it was because when he shifted into his human figure his cock would be so hard he could break stones with it. The damned organ constantly seemed to be demanding attention—more attention than he’d been willing to give it. His kind was never meant to go without sex for long periods. In fact, Viktor was sure he’d hit some kind of celibacy record.
There had been a time when he liked being a man, liked walking on two legs amongst mortals—even in the Middle Ages as humans tried to track his kind and kill them for sport. One family of dragon slayers in particular had been a real thorn in their side, nearly hunting them to extinction. Though, to be fair, he and his brother Zarek had done plenty of “sporting” of their own.
How young they’d been then! It was strange to think of all the centuries they’
d seen. They’d been born in the early fourteen hundreds at the same time—well, Zarek was born a minute earlier, making him the oldest. The Dracodomus brothers were raised in an era that was as wild as they were. Over the years, the world seemed to settle around them. They saw nations and monarchies change hands, lives transformed until one generation’s morals became another’s sins. Fashion, art, music, all of it changed and yet he stayed the same—a young man forever. It was just the way it was for all of them. They hit their twenties and their bodies peaked, aging stopped.
Viktor was homesick for his family, for his past, for his homeland—Greece. He hadn’t seen his brother in a long time—perhaps too long. Though, as immortals, all they seemed to have was time. It was natural for dragon shifters to lead a solitary life, but the loneliness was beginning to wear on him. The last he heard, he had a cousin living in the Rocky Mountains, another around Mount Everest. And Zarek was…
Viktor frowned. Well, truthfully, it was hard to say where his brother was for sure, only that it was probably in some woman’s bed. The man was never without some sort of female companionship and Viktor was sure no amount of time passing would change that fact.
Thinking of the old days when dragons flew freely about the open skies only made him sad. He sighed. Ah, that had been the life. Women. Fighting. Sex. Many wenches couldn’t wait to lift their skirts for a Dracodomus brother. And the brothers in turn had been insatiable in their youth, full of vigor and passion and lust for adventure.
Then she had happened. Elise. Miss Elise Fenton, daughter to a wealthy lord. What a fine time it had been. What fun they had. How they had loved—in so many positions, in so many sordid ways. Theirs had been a relationship of pure, fiery hot passion. Viktor had been nearly five hundred years old at the time and still he confused what he felt for Elise as love when obviously it had been only lust.
Queen Victoria had just taken her throne when he met Elise. Society was alive with arts and music, and women wore dresses and bonnets. Not like the last time he’d gone down into the so-called civilized world. He’d been shocked to see every single woman he came across in breeches. And the men were little better—sloppily dressed and not a one of them in a suit. How a hundred years seemed to change things.
A hundred years without sex, without fulfillment, without a way to ease the ache inside me.
Viktor frowned, spouting another small puff of smoke from his long nose. He still thought of Elise. Though, truthfully, he didn’t remember what he saw in her. All he remembered was that she’d hurt him badly enough to send him into his solitude. Maybe it wasn’t just her betrayal that had sent him into hiding. Maybe it had been everything—the way the world had been changing at an alarming rate, the way the world always changed. Elise had said she loved him, but she married the man her father chose for her. Viktor had been close to mating to her for all eternity too. Elise knew it and still she didn’t stop him. If not for Zarek’s interference, he would’ve mated to a woman he couldn’t have and who didn’t love him. She would have his eternity to do as she pleased and he would be left with nothing but the pain her indiscretions would have caused him. For a Dracodomus it would have been a fate worse than death.
The memory of it only reinforced why he didn’t want to go into the world again. Feeling a tightening in his stomach, he knew he had to go into the world again. His time was close. He’d felt it coming for years, knew there would be the day when he’d have to chance his heart again or risk forever being alone. Somehow he’d managed to avoid the draco mating ritual for the past centuries.
But there is no more avoiding my fate, no matter how scared I am of it. The time has come and I cannot deny my needs any longer. I must find her before my six-hundredth birthday. I must go out into the world and try one last time to find happiness, to find my one true mate.
For months he’d tried to tell himself he wasn’t leaving the sanctuary of his cave, that he didn’t care if he ever had sex again. The man inside him laughed. Oh, he cared. He cared a great deal. Viktor knew he couldn’t stay in dragon form forever, hiding from the needs of his cock or the more dire needs of his heart.
It was time to end the solitude.
It was time Viktor Dracodomus found himself a mate.
He’d finally had the vision as to where he needed to look. America. If he didn’t mate, he’d never have sex again—not that he was really having sex now. Could a person actually forget how? As much as he masturbated, he was surprised his fist wasn’t raw and bleeding all the time.
Viktor growled, sending fire spouting out of his dragon nose. He wanted sex. He wanted to mate. And, bloody hell, he was going to the New World to find it.
Chapter 2
Manhattan, New York, one week later…
“Okay, now, this next thing I’m going to show you is really very simple. Anyone can do it. You’re going to hold Frank by the…um…head and tilt back the…um…head. Mmm, very good, nice.”
Samantha Egan smiled at her class in approval. She hoped her voice didn’t sound too breathy, but she was really nervous speaking to the group. They weren’t her usual type of people. She was an Upper East Side kind of chick and this class was…
Well, they were just not.
She was dressed in her favorite black blanket-wrap sweater and dark blue jeans. Her black leather, side-zip boots had cost nearly seven hundred dollars. She doubted any of the people in front of her had ever spent that much money on a single article of clothing in their lives. It’s not that she thought she was better than them, she didn’t. She just didn’t know how to relate to them.
Could she help it if she’d been born into privilege?
“Now, lower your mouth onto his…um…”
“Head?” a woman with a band tattooed around her upper arm inserted, much to the amusement of the class. Samantha made a weak noise, trying to smile at the joke.
“Onto him and create a seal before blowing…ah…” Samantha paused in her instruction, trying to avoid eye contact with the tattooed woman. She sat in the front row and stared at Samantha like she was an idiot. The woman wore thick black eyeliner around both eyes and her hair was dyed to a stark crimson. It was clear she didn’t want to be taking the class—as seemed to be the case with most of them. Samantha cleared her throat, trying to remember where she’d left off. “Form suction and blow… ah…fo-for just one second and then…”
Samantha frowned and ran to her book on the old card table in front of the class. The room was really just part of an old office building the organization she worked for rented. Well, “worked for” was a little of an overstatement. She volunteered and didn’t get paid. It was a good thing too. She sucked at teaching cardiopulmonary resuscitation. CPR definitely wasn’t her thing. She couldn’t even spell cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
“I think Frank is choking to death. We’re a little late on the finger sweep,” a tall man in the back teased. He’d been giving her a hard time since he walked in the door. Samantha was sure he thought it was cute. She just found it annoying—and frankly a little on the scary side. He wore a leather biker vest with a skull on the back and his arms were covered in tattoos. She hated to be a girly-girl, but well, she was what she was. Afraid of pissing him off and incurring the wrath of his biker clan, she gave a small, nervous laugh.
Samantha flipped through her training manual. She was supposed to have it memorized, but it was just so boring. Was it her fault that she didn’t have a natural aptitude for this stuff? She tried five times to read the manual, but her mind kept drifting into bizarre daydreams of smoke and fire, wavy patterns that seemed to dance all around her, yet not hurting her.
The fanciful daydream struck her as odd as she tried to analyze it. Maybe it was the feeling of isolation she had being so rich. She was physically safe in her luxury from the passions of the outside world and yet she was so alone at the same time. Safe and alone.
“We still get credit if Frank kicks it, don’t we?” the man asked, causing a round of snickers at his ques
tion.
Samantha managed a weak smile and forced herself to concentrate. Now, was it five breaths? Pulse? Heart? Compress? Oxygenate the blood?
Crap, what do I say to them? They can all see I’m a phony. I don’t know what I’m doing here. What am I doing here? Why did I think to do this again? Oh, yeah, I wanted to find something fulfilling to do with my time. How do you spell cardiopulmonary resuscitation? No, that’s not important. Um… Um…
“Ms. Egan?”
Samantha stopped, her fingers pressed to a page in the manual. A sickening feeling curled inside her gut and she had to hold back the urge to vomit. It took her a moment, but she finally forced her eyes up. “Yes, Mrs. Gladhouser?”
Mrs. Gladhouser didn’t look too pleased. “Could I see you in my office, please? Clarisse will take over your class.”