by Rosko, Mandy
Kidnapped by the Dragon
Mandy Rosko
Copyright © 2019, Eighth Ripple Press
All rights reserved.
These books are a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover art by Melody Simmons of Book Covers Cre8tive
Edited by Brieanna Robertson, Beth Fawcett, and Jessica Ripley
Published by Eighth Ripple Press
Print ISBN: 978-1-9990270-6-3
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-9990270-7-0
Contents
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
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
About the Author
Also by Mandy Rosko
Dedication
This book is dedicated to all of my patrons from 2019 over on Patreon! Thank you for your support! - Mandy
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1
Fiona Blache flicked on the pathetic yellow lights of her studio apartment which lit the space up enough to let her see but not enough to remove the dim, dark ambiance. She shuffled inside, kicking the door shut behind her before toeing off her shoes. God, that’s so much better. Her feet killed her after that double shift and Mateen had been harping down her neck all day.
But it was a good day, she reminded herself. It was a very good day indeed because she’d been able to give a dragon shifter prince and his new fiancée some of the chocolate cupcakes she made. The pair had loved them a lot more than the cinnamon cakes Mateen had tried to get them to buy. Instead of peanut butter, she used chocolate cashew butter in the icing, just one of the many secret ingredients that she loved not telling Mateen.
The prince, a tall dragon shifter, Inferno Blackclaw the Fourth, enjoyed her chocolates so much that he bought an entire box. While she packed them up for him, he’d licked his fingers and stared at her, boring into her as though she were something special. That look was hot enough to…
Okay, down girl. He was an engaged prince, and she was just a peasant in his world. When they made their surprise visit to the bakery, Fiona had been covered in flour, wearing no makeup, with hair bunched up in a hair net and shoved under a white baker’s cap. Someone like that didn’t have a chance of being noticed next to the prince’s fiancée, someone so out-and-out gorgeous that she could have been on a magazine cover. The woman was the perfect combination of curves, with a nice set of boobs and an ass that Fiona couldn’t compete with even on her best-dressed days.
Fiona was naturally skinny, which was a good thing since she did have to taste test her own high calorie, high carb baked goods, but it also meant she had no ass to speak of, and her boobs could fit into a Martini glass with some room to spare.
Fiona smiled tiredly. Whatever. The prince just liked her cupcakes while she had been star-struck and smitten with his good looks. There hadn’t been anything there but what was in her overactive imagination.
She set her purse down on the floor and let her hair out of the tight ponytail, reflecting on the dream that one day she’d own her own bakery. She wouldn’t have to go through the motions like she did with Mateen and all the corners he cut. She was going to be able to proudly say that she had served the future King of Dragon shifters, and if that, plus her recipes, didn’t bring in a lot of business, she didn’t know what would.
Starving, she pulled out a cup of chicken ramen noodles and set it on the five inches of countertop space that was clear of papers, bills, magazines, spices, and recipe books stacked high on top of each other. They were only there because the shelf she got from IKEA was overflowing.
She put a kettle of hot water on and stuck some frozen veggies into her microwave.
Food would be ready in five minutes.
God, she was beat.
Dinner in hand, in a proper bowl, Fiona pulled her tiny coffee table close to her futon that doubled as her bed and leaned over her meal as she ate it.
She checked her bank balance on her phone as if she could somehow make the numbers go up from when she’d looked earlier today. She wasn’t even close to having enough to open her bakery. Not when she factored in buying the ovens she would need, the ingredients, various cooking supplies, and the likelihood that it would take a full year before she was able to turn a profit.
Everyone said it took one to three years before a profit was had, which meant she needed even more money saved to be able to survive. Even if she could get a loan, she still wouldn’t have enough.
But what if it didn’t take a full year? The eldest prince of dragon shifters had walked into Mateen’s bakery unannounced, on a whim, to see about possible cakes for his wedding, and there were always paparazzi following him. She remembered the cameras pointing through the glass as he ate her cupcakes, recording him licking his fingers…
Fiona shivered.
He was licking his fingers because the chocolate was good. Not because he was trying to send a message, no matter how much her body begged her to let him take her right there.
Focus. There had to be some way she could use the situation. Fiona closed down her bank’s app and opened her social media accounts where she had a bit of a following that came over from her cooking blog and video channel.
She’d usually share
her made-up recipes that weren’t her super-secret specials, and she also gave sneak-peeks of the cookbook she was working on. Sometimes she got in a few advertising dollars from her blog or videos. Her following was small, but a viral video could be her ticket to something bigger.
There has to be some video of me online, something showing me serving the goddamn dragon prince.
She had to make sure people knew it was her, that Fiona Blache had made a dragon prince—a super-hot dragon prince with scorching dark eyes and a fantastic mouth—lick his fingers clean…while staring at her as if he wanted to lick her clean.
She shook her head. Now was not the time for that.
A quick trip to YouTube showed the videos were already up because, of course, they were. Fiona grinned. She’d never been so happy to know how ravenous the media could be, bloodsuckers that they were. She was going to have to find out how to rip a video off YouTube, edit it down, combine it with a reaction or commentary to ensure fair use, give it a good clickbait title, and upload it to her channel with her one hundred and thirteen subscribers. Then she could share it on the various other social networks and try to make it gain traction.
She tapped on the first one in the search results. She watched the recording of herself in front of the dragon prince and felt her heart jump with excitement. The prince’s bride-to-be was on his other side; the camera barely picked up a hint of her. This video made it look as if it was just Fiona and Prince Inferno Blackclaw standing there, and her memory hadn’t been playing tricks. Was he ever giving her a scorching eye.
Fiona released a tiny squeal, pressing the screen to her chest because she couldn’t bear to look much longer. Her face was hot, and not because she’d been leaning over the steam of her ramen cup a couple of seconds ago.
Damn. He was so good-looking, and he liked her food, and now she was going to make sure the entire world would see it!
She pulled the phone away from her chest, still smiling, but quirking her head to the side a little. She hadn’t known Mateen gave an interview after the prince tasted her food. The smile slowly melted from her face when she realized what he was saying.
“Of course he would enjoy our cakes. My recipes are done and redone to perfection.”
“Uh, no, that was my recipe.”
The reporter spoke up. Fiona increased the volume so she could hear better.
“If Prince Inferno and his future princess want you to recreate those exact cakes for his wedding, would you be able to?”
“Of course. I hand make everything here by myself.”
Fiona was standing now. “No. I hand make everything, and you sit on your ass and let the machines do all the work.”
“Everything is done with love and care. If the prince wants more like this, if anyone wants more like this, they would do well to come down to my bakery, and they will see what I have to offer.”
Fiona stared at her phone. She clutched it in two hands and screamed at the screen. She was raging and furious. The heat boiling inside her wouldn’t be contained. He was taking credit for her recipe. He was going to have people coming to his bakery wanting what Fiona had made for the prince. His sales would probably shoot through the roof, leaving Fiona in the dust once more.
She screamed again. She kicked over the coffee table. Her big toe flared with pain, and she watched her ramen cup fly up high before coming back down almost in slow motion, but still too fast for her to do anything about it. She’d forgotten she had her food on the table. Her toe throbbed, the carpet was wet with her wasted dinner, and Fiona immediately started to cry as she sank on the floor. Her apartment was a mess, and she’d wasted food, and now she was going to have to clean it up while crying.
Okay, okay, no, this was…this was bullshit, but she wasn’t going to let this stand. There was still something she could do. Her platform might be small, but she’d use her blog, even if it weren’t read by many people, and her channel, which not too many people were subscribed to, and share the truth. If she posted that the recipe and the cupcakes were entirely hers, then at least it would stay on the internet forever. Some people would believe her, and ultimately, the prince was still eating in front of her, looking at her like that. The reporters didn’t know what the prince was saying to her. She could say that he’d told her the cupcakes were amazing or something. It wouldn’t entirely be a lie. He obviously liked what he was eating.
She quickly wrote off a post and published it, telling the world that those were her cupcakes, not Mateen’s, and that she had made them that morning for regular customers when the prince and his fiancée dropped in. She didn’t have pictures but promised to update the blog the minute she did, although she did post the recipe as proof.
Only when she finished could she breathe, but she still needed a video. It was dark outside. She needed natural light to do this well since she didn’t have any lighting equipment. Would it be a better idea to make a low-quality video this one time? It was kind of an emergency.
Shit. She needed to clean up her soup first.
A knock sounded at the door. Fiona groaned. “Who is it?” She wasn’t in the mood to hear about some cable package she didn’t need.
No one answered as she scrambled to scoop her noodles and veggies back into their cup. She was going to have to use a whole roll of paper towels to soak up the broth.
The door banged this time. Fiona jumped and was so pissed off from everything that had just hit her that she yelled. “What? I don’t want to buy anything. Go away.” She stood up, still angry, still thinking about how much she could get done before she had to get some sleep to go to work tomorrow.
If she could go back to work for Mateen, that fucker.
The door burst open just as Fiona was about to put the remains of her dinner into the sink. She dropped the cup in the sink just as several big men rushed into her tiny apartment.
Fiona screamed when the black, suffocating bag was shoved over her head.
2
“You realize this is creepy as fuck, right?”
Inferno hissed at his brother. “Shut up.”
Blaze didn’t shut up, and he didn’t get down. He stood tall behind Inferno where anyone with a resistance to the cloaking spells Inferno had set up could look up and see them. “I mean, this is fucked up. You’re creeping outside that girl’s window, and you’re engaged.”
They weren’t directly outside her window. They were on the roof of the opposite building looking at the window where she happened to live. When the light turned on, Inferno’s heartrate spiked, and even though her curtains were closed, he couldn’t take his eyes off the silhouette of the goddess as she did whatever her kind did at the end of a long day’s work.
“It’s not like Tinder and I actually love each other, and this is different. Did you see her hair?”
“Barely, it was all done up under that cap, and the reporters were too busy trying to stick their cameras in front of each other that I barely saw anything on my screen.”
Blaze hadn’t been there, so he couldn’t know what Inferno had felt. Something about the woman made him feel like he took a punch to the gut when he thought about the smile on her face as she told them about the cakes. Or about those sparkling green eyes, unlike any other green he’d ever seen—the color of the ocean under a bright sun—that followed him closely as he ate the food she offered. Green eyes were the rarest color, and hers were an even more unnatural shade.
And that hair.
He’d seen enough strands poking out from under that little white cap to know the color of it. It wasn’t as if the paper hat had covered her entire head. It was bright red; a fire engine red, with streaks of flame orange, a reflection of fire as clear as anything he’d ever seen.
That woman was a rare creature. There was only one family that was supposed to have hair and eyes like that.
“She’s an Istavan.”
He heard Blaze’s pacing footsteps stop behind him. Inferno wasn’t looking at his brother, but he could imagine t
he other man staring at him, burning a hole in the back of his head.
“No fucking way.”
“She is.”
“That’s impossible. That family died out years ago.”
Inferno shook his head. “No, they just vanished. She’s an Istavan. I can feel it.”
“Wait.” Blaze came up and knelt next to him. From the corner of Inferno’s eye, he saw his brother watching him, but Inferno couldn’t look away from that window. “Are you serious? You’re really feeling this? I mean, you’re feeling it?”
Inferno nodded.
“Oh my God, you should see your face right now. You’re scaring me.”
“What’s wrong with my face?”
“That stupid smile you’ve got on it. And the fact that you haven’t once looked at me this whole conversation. Are you sure about this?”
Inferno nodded. “Positive. She’s my mate.”
There were only a handful of human families that could produce offspring with dragons, and every few years, the families were cycled through. This was supposed to be the time for the Istavans to produce a child that would be mated with Inferno. It was just the way it worked. Inferno’s mother had been from the Montgomery family, so it was the Istavan family’s turn.
The problem was that the family had been missing for the last five hundred years. Every time it came around for the Istavans to step forward, the noble dragon families had to marry another dragon or they would simply waste away alone. Either way, they went without their natural mate.