by Starla Night
Dragon VIP: Kyanite
7 Virgin Brides for 7 Weredragon Billionaires
Starla Night
Copyright © 2018 Starla Night
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Earthly Charms.
Created with Vellum
Contents
Special Thanks
Kyanite
Prologue
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
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Kyan’s Housewarming Party
Dragon VIP Syenite
Also by Starla Night
About the Author
Special Thanks
to Dia Cole, Marianne Hull, TBR Publishing, and everyone who helped bring this book to life.
Blurb
The dragons of Draconis have no idea what to do with these curvy Earth females — but taking them as mates will change the fate of the universe!
Scarred dragon shifter Kyanite “Kyan” Onyx is the security officer of the Onyx Corporation. Used to working in the shadows, this deadly mercenary has no time for a political marriage to the Empress of his home planet, Draconis. But what choice does he have? No female will look on his battered body with desire.
Nursing intern Laura has never seen a warrior as hard, as capable, as protective as Kyan. When an unknown enemy turns her into a target, she naturally runs for shelter in his muscular arms. But even her hottest kiss can’t melt the ice around his heart.
Fighting passion and dangers, Laura may be exactly what Kyan needs to begin a new age of dragon-human harmony — or she may be the means to destroy it.
This is a complete, standalone novel with a happy ending! It features steamy dragon shifter love scenes and a warrior who believes he’s beyond redemption. Must love dragons!
Kyanite
Bladed habit. Blue to white; may be gray or green. The color is often uneven with the deepest tint in the center.
~ From the Larousse Guide to Minerals, Rocks, and Fossils [1977] by Hamilton, Woolley, and Bishop.
Prologue
“You are in danger. Here, you will be safe.”
Her savior walked out. The door closed behind him, sealing Laura into his fortress.
“Wait! Where are you going?” She pounded on the stone door. “You can’t keep me here. The hospital is expecting me back at work. I still have half a shift!”
In the eerie silence of the crackling fire, alone and hidden in the cliff of a glacier, she had to face the terrifying truth.
The dragon had carried her to his lair.
And now she was his prisoner.
Chapter One
Four days earlier…
Laura ran into a wall of male.
She’d been crumpling her granola bar wrapper into her scrubs pocket and racing through the busy patient waiting room of the downtown Portland emergency department. She never even saw what she’d rammed into — except it was a hard, masculine chest and her full force didn’t move it a millimeter.
“Excuse me!” She stumbled back. “I’m so sorry.”
Two bulging arms steadied her. Giant palms spanned her elbows.
She looked up — and up and up and up — into the face of the male who had caught her.
Her mouth went dry.
His face told a story. Not handsome, he had been ravaged by disaster.
Within the scarred wreckage, steely blue eyes pierced her like twin blades. They were clear and capable, like an ambulance driver or police officer fresh on his shift, ready to deal with anything.
Capability, in her line of work, was the most seductive.
He released her because she had regained her balance, and she was sorry again — this time, to be out of his deliciously masculine arms.
“You work here.” His voice was quiet, rough as gravel, but threaded with steel, and his gaze flicked to the badge clipped to the waist of her scrubs. “Take me to your medkits.”
She blinked. The order echoed in her brain.
Medkit wasn’t a common term in the ER; it was a sci fi term from TV. Did he mean…
Wait, no, he was asking for a sci fi medkit, and in fact this hospital did have three of them because Saint General Restoration was the only hospital in all of Oregon treating dragon shifter aliens.
Which meant the huge, scarred, capable male in front of her wasn’t human. Or, he wasn’t entirely human.
Her ordinary night — no codes yet, the possible heart patient had turned out to be anxiety, and the out-of-control diabetic’s sugar was coming down — tilted into the surreal.
“Just a moment.” She moved around him, through the rest of the crowded waiting room, to the front desk.
Both clerks were assessing new patients for triage, and the charge nurse was busy delegating assignments.
Laura swooped around the counter and cleared her throat. “Sabrina.”
The charge nurse looked up in irritation. She was trying to fit fifty people into ten rooms and this was the slowest part of the night. They were anticipating a rush. “What?”
Laura pointed over her shoulder. “He needs to see the medkits.”
Sabrina unfocused.
The clerks also paused.
No patient frothed at the mouth or complained of chest pains at this exact moment, so they could all take the second to be shocked.
Sabrina’s eyes cleared. “He have a name?”
“Oh, I—”
“Kyan,” the male said softly behind Laura.
He was closer than she’d realized. Moving swiftly and silently despite his large size.
Smooth. Capable. In control.
A little shiver of awareness tingled through her.
The charge nurse brought up a list on her computer screen. “Kyanite Onyx?”
“Yes.”
Like the rock. The mineral. How very dragon alien-y.
“Head of Security for the Onyx Corporation?” Sabrina continued.
He nodded.
“One moment.” She dialed an outside line to the Director of the Hospital, at home in the middle of the night, and conveyed the request, speaking concisely in respectful tones.
Laura’s excitement increased a notch.
“I understand.” Sabrina hung up, stared at the male, then at Laura, and apparently decided that since Laura had already made first contact, she should continue. “You know where they are.”
She did, but she was mid-shift. “I’ve got tests coming back and Dr. Richard said I’m not turning my rooms fast—”
“I’ll assign another tech.” Sabrina looked over the male and swallowed. “Check in when you get back.”
Her tone almost suggested if you get back.
The clerks picked up their assessments again.
Laura led Kyan down the hall, away from the moan of the waiting room. She swiped her badge over the elevator controls to activate them and pressed the call button. A moment later, the doors whooshed open. They entered.
The silent male filled the small space like a steel tank. A SWAT captain grown to world-saving size, or a super hero Hulk of legend.
She swept her badge across the inside controls so the floor buttons would activate, then pressed the top floor. The doors closed, and they began to move. Her patients — well, her preceptor’s patients — were left far beh
ind.
In the small space, Kyan’s masculine scent teased her nostrils. Leather, body armor, and his own spice.
Laura breathed deeply, trying not to lean in. There were a lot of smells in the hospital and most of them weren’t nice.
She traced the line of muscle at his neck. There was so much. A male in the tip top peak of health. He put ripped bodybuilders to shame. The dark T-shirt and collar of his trench coat interrupted the perfect corded strength—
His blue eyes pierced her. “You’re staring.”
“Oh, um…” Yes, she absolutely had been. And drooling, but he didn’t need to know. “You look different from what I expected.”
“Different?”
“You are a dragon, right?”
He held up one massive hand. Iridescent blue scales shimmered beneath his human skin. They were the same piercing color as his eyes.
Wow.
He lowered his hand. “Better?”
That was amazing! Can you just do that? All over your body?
Was what she wanted to ask, but instead, she tried to match his level of nonchalance. “I guess that’s closer.”
His dark brows twitched into the ghost of a frown.
Oh no.
She rushed to explain herself. “I thought you’d look dragon-y. But you look ordinary.”
“Ordinary,” he repeated.
“You know. Like anybody else. Normal.”
The elevator slowed and the doors dinged open. She strode onto the private wing.
“I look normal,” he repeated, and cut in front of her.
His head swiveled right and left, taking in the long hallway, whisper-soft carpet, and subdued lighting like a secret service officer securing the floor.
How protective. Even on the top floor of the hospital, he was taking care of her, watching for danger.
And she’d just called him “ordinary” and “normal” when it was clear he had military skills no ordinary, normal guy had. No wonder he reacted.
She hurried to follow. “I hope that’s not an insult.”
“Insult,” he repeated, parroting her word again with a new nuance, and then stopped abruptly. “Laura.”
She jolted. Her name on his commanding lips made her heart thump in double-time, pumping hot blood to her heating face.
She was so flustered she stood on her tip-toes to avoid running into his broad back. Twice in one night would be … well, it would be yummy. And lovely. And also hard to explain.
He whirled to face her, his trench coat flying. The move highlighted muscle bunching in his iron-hard thighs, flexing in his tapered sixty-pack, and rippling across his pectorals.
Her mouth watered.
She’d love to peel off his black tactical shirt and see the real muscle instead of shadowy hints. The heart-pounding sensation descended from her chest to her feminine regions and she came awake as a woman.
He looked down on her imperiously. “Did you get a good look?”
“Oh.” Yikes, he’d caught her again. She put her hand up in surrender. “I didn’t mean — it’s because you’re like a celebrity and I couldn’t help myself. You are actually very normal and ordinary and I’ll only keep my eyes on the appropriate areas from now on.”
“Appropriate? No.” He shook his head as though encountering a strange sound. Reaching out, he grasped her hand. “Did you get a good look at my face?”
Hadn’t she?
His gaze bored into her like two blue gemstone lasers, melting her body and adding fire. His spicy scent flooded her nostrils, hitting her veins like the first warning signs of a new addiction.
She licked her suddenly dry lips.
His mouth was much more approachable only a few inches from hers.
“Do I look ordinary?” he demanded.
She tore her gaze from his commanding mouth and traced the firm lines of his jaw, high cheekbones, stern forehead. He was used to being obeyed, clearly.
Atop these features lay his scars.
His nose had been broken multiple times, and the skin stretched and twisted in rubbery paths like he’d once been held down and scrubbed with thorns.
But although his scars dominated a first glance, they faded from her consciousness and she was intimately aware of everything else — his scent, his piercing eyes, and the dynamic energy that was Kyan.
His visage was fringed by brown hair tempered with lighter sandy threads.
Her fingers twitched to stroke them.
“Do I?”
Her mouth was too dry to form words. She shook her head.
No, he did not look ordinary. He looked like a god of war incarnate. A male who had seen the blackest pits of hell and emerged scathed but triumphant.
And he held her hand. His broad thumb and powerful digits held her safe.
She wanted to melt into him, rub her pearled nipples against his hard chest, and taste the spice that teased her nose.
Heat soaked her lower regions.
His nostrils flared. A predator scenting his prey.
She ought to be afraid. The last man she had tried to entrust with her first time had twisted into someone she didn’t recognize once she’d opened her bedroom door. Her fantasies had cracked into a nightmare, and she’d worked very hard to get over the shock and return to the hopeful, loving, passionate woman within.
Kyan overflowed with an infinite well of patience, self-denial, control — and most of all, honesty. She did not have to fear him. For the first time, maybe, she could open the door all the way and allow a male — allow Kyan — in.
He released her, stepped back to a respectable distance, and whirled away.
She sucked in a deep breath. Arousal tingled all over her body, which was not something she ever felt in her ciel blue scrubs.
The sensation was a little terrifying, a lot exhilarating, and most of all, reassuring. This was progress. This was recovery. She was almost whole.
He reached the room and tried the door. The handle didn’t move.
She caught up with him and swiped her badge. The lock changed from red to green and the latch clicked.
She’d been shown this room on her welcome tour of the hospital six months earlier when she’d been assigned her final round of clinicals. Laura flicked on the lights of the lush “Dragon” suite.
It was outfitted like all the other rooms on this top-level VIP floor. The shiniest bed with the highest thread count hospital sheets, polished oak tables, gold brocade-upholstered chairs, and a giant glass vase filled with mounds of fresh roses, chrysanthemums, and spider orchids.
Kyan strode to a wall cabinet, pulled down a large metal case, and opened it. The contents gleamed. Slender implements mixed with short, fat tools. The foreign trays resembled an automobile toolbox more than a first aid kit.
He sorted the devices as though checking off a list in his mind.
Thinking about it, calling him ordinary probably had been an insult. Maybe he’d gotten his wounds while serving his Dragon Empire. Like a Purple Heart. Or maybe dragons scarred themselves on purpose. She didn’t know much about their culture. Her odds of meeting a rock star or Oscar-winning actor were much higher than her odds of meeting one of the few hundred dragons living on Earth.
But now she had met one. He’d called so much attention to his scars, he must want to talk about them.
“What’s the story?” she asked. “What happened?”
He closed the case. His frown deepened.
Or maybe he didn’t want to talk. That was fine too. She’d only thought—
“Someone committed great harm using a stolen medkit.”
Huh? Oh. That was why he was here. “You’re checking ours weren’t stolen.”
He opened the second case and sorted through the implements silently.
Hospitals did fight inventory loss. Drugs were the obvious black market good, but some thefts were accidental. Laura herself had carried out pockets full of syringes, bandages, cold packs, and other items she’d grabbed for patients and for
gotten to return. Someone could probably perform minor surgery in the back seat of her sedan with all the things she’d accidentally stolen in the last six months.
It would be harder to make off with a large glowing alien case. Kyan’s frown only deepened the more implements he examined.
“Was someone hurt?” she asked.
“He reached medical facilities in time.”
In time? Yikes. “I hope it wasn’t too bad.”
Kyan pulled a small device from inside his trench coat. Thin and rectangular, like a phone, it was no brand she recognized.
A holographic image of a man with a badly charred chest — fourth degree burns? — filled the screen.
She sucked in a breath. Burns were always breath-taking, and not in a good way. “So extensive. And he survived?”
“A dragon would not succumb without a fight.”
So, the man on the screen was a dragon like Kyan, and he’d lived through what would kill most humans. Dragon alien medical technology must be so advanced.
It required minerals and resources Earth didn’t possess, which was one reason their small planet on the farthest edge of the Dragon Empire had been ignored for centuries.
Only five years ago, dragons had landed their spaceships on the White House front lawn, shattering the belief humans were alone in the universe. The dragons were like a massively advanced colonial group barging into an isolated, primitive jungle village. But, unlike Earth’s darker past, they came for the sole purpose of exporting “colorful human clothes” back to the rest of the Empire. Not for conquest.