by Kyle, Celia
Buddy looked positively apoplectic. “I can’t believe you’d do me like that, Cray!”
Cray gave him an icy glare. “Your little stunt almost sent Elissa to prison through no fault of her own. Nobody messes with my daughter,” he said fiercely.
“Or my mate,” Ragan added.
Elissa’s heart soared.
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Keep reading for an excerpt from book 2 in the Real Men of Wildridge series, His Blazing Passion…
https://rmrom.com/hisblazingpassion-amazon
Finding a snake shifter in the grass was one thing. Finding one in the woods was another. But finding a snake shifter in the grass, in the woods, who had a five-figure bounty behind his name after a string of violent bank robberies—two of which had body counts—when he knew he was being searched for?
That type of search was in Allon’s league, and as his massive dragon form dipped down out of the clouds over the forest below, he knew he was close. He kept his magic tight around his dragon-shape, hiding him from the view of humans. No sense in violating shifter law by exposing shifters and bringing Othercross Judiciary down on him while he worked a bounty hunting job for them. It wouldn’t do at all which was why his guard remained high while he closed in on his slippery prey.
His quarry, Danque Anguis, was a wiry little man pushing forty, with eyes as black as his hair and skin so pale that its faint green hue showed in good lighting. That was what he looked like when he wasn’t a long mass of slithering scales, anyway. It wasn’t clear whether he had begun killing during his heists because he was getting sloppy, or because his ego was getting too big. In truth, it was probably a little of both, but Allon only cared about which came first. It would tell him how much of a fight Danque would give him.
And the way Allon felt right then, he hoped Danque was a tad spirited.
This neck of the woods was just the latest and final leg of an investigation that made Allon particularly proud. In all fairness, he had been chomping at the bit for a tough job like this. Sure, the huge bounty on Danque was attractive, but he had other reasons for drawing on all his resources to close in on his target like a steel bear trap.
One reason, actually, and her name was Chelle.
If Allon was Wildridge Security’s star skip tracer—fancy talk for a bounty hunter, Allon liked to explain to his dates—then Chelle was his counterpart for Skypoint. The two of them were better at tracking fugitives across the country than anyone else in their respective stomping grounds, Allon liked to think, so it was only natural they occasionally worked the same jobs.
They had done so a total of four times, to be exact. And it just so happened they were evenly tied—for now. Danque was going to break that tie, and Allon smiled to himself, already thinking of the consolation prize he’d send Chelle: a lovingly wrapped box of four-day old lobsters.
Chelle already had a reputation when Allon entered the field three years ago, and he had jumped at the chance to swipe a bounty from under Skypoint Security’s nose. He’d done it, to the surprise of all. But because Allon shamelessly didn’t know when to keep his ego in check, he had sent her a bottle of the cheapest knockoff sparkling wine he could find, along with an off-brand box of stale chocolate with the sketchy gas station receipt in the box.
That had kicked off their little tradition. When Chelle brought her A-game to the next bounty and beat Allon by a hair, he got a consolation letter from her containing a $50 gift card for a local restaurant… which had been shut down when a colony of rat shifters was discovered living in the kitchen walls.
Allon got the third, for which he had cheerfully mailed her some gourmet salt to rub in her wounds. She had won the latest round. It wasn’t the gift basket full of tampons she had delivered to him at work that really pissed him off, though. It was how she’d tricked him out of the victory he had earned.
But if she wanted to play dirty, that was fine by Allon. Lobsters it would be. They were currently “marinating” in some cracked, near-expiration eggs Allon had added as a garnish.
He had gotten the location of Danque’s hideout from one of his contacts in Los Angeles’s underworld, which sometimes felt like it hardly operated in the shadows. Being a skip tracer meant being a friend to valuable people sometimes, even if that meant calling in a favor behind a sketchy club now and then in order to discover which “cozy, remote cabins” in the woods were actually safehouses for criminals.
Simply dipping below the clouds was a risk, because dragons were easy to spot—his innate magic worked on humans, not shifters—especially a dragon who cast as large a shadow as Allon. But he knew precisely where he was, and as he neared the small clearing, his heart jumped when he spied a dot of black hair by the pond.
It was Danque, there was no doubt about it. The slight man’s pale face looked up just as Allon’s shadow passed over him. He was shirtless, and he appeared to be halfway through washing some clothes in the pond. The wet, wrung shirt fell from his hands with a soft thud as his jaw dropped, and Allon hugged his wings to himself to free fall toward the ground at the same time that Danque’s body melted into the slender form of a snake.
Allon’s mouth curled into a grin as he barreled downward, air howling around his furled leathery wings as he extended his foreclaws like an eagle to snatch his—
WHOOMP!
Something airborne and nearly Allon-sized collided with him mid-air with the force of a semi-truck barreling down a highway at full speed. It knocked and sent him into a barrel roll, and he released a gout of flame on reflex.
“Son of a—” he snapped and shook his head as he hovered in the air to glare at whoever had just hit him. He only had a moment to see the other dragon before it dove at him once more and thrust their—her—full body weight onto him.
Chelle. He sensed it was her despite never having seen her inner dragon in the past. There was no mistaking the other skip tracer.
Allon’s size as a dragon stayed proportional to his towering human stature, but even so, Chelle as a dragon was far larger than he had expected. The two dragons snarled and grappled with each other in the air as they tumbled together, jaws snapping and warning gouts of flame threatening to sear them the longer they stayed entangled. Chelle purposefully used her weight to try and drop them from the air, and her strategy worked.
But he wasn’t going to let her steal a mark out from under him this time!
He kicked her with his hind claws as they hit the treeline, and she hissed, but she managed to spin him around and let him take the brunt of the impact as the two colossal dragons crashed into Danque’s clearing.
Vibrant grass and soft earth flew up as if a bomb had gone off all around them. The two dragons were in a miniature crater in the ground of their own making, and flaring their wings only sent another shower of dirt and rocks flying.
Allon staggered to his feet, and he heard the sound of wings beating—Chelle was attempting to take flight. Before he had even managed to get his breath back, he lunged for her and caught her by the tail in his foreclaws.
“Fuck!” she yelped before he slung her against the treeline.
Her frame hit the woods and sent the already terrified woodland animals scattering. The trees groaned with the impact, but she was back on her feet in an instant. Allon got his first full look at her as she snorted smoke, glaring at him as she pawed at the ground before launching herself at him once more. Before their skulls collided, Allon had been stunned by how… surprising her form was.
The shock was short-lived. They tumbled down their crater and back out the other side. Allon snapped at her with his jaws, but she thrust her hind legs out at just the right angle to get plenty of leverage to send him flying across the clearing.
Halfway through
the air, his eyes caught sight of Danque’s clothes, lying damp and useless on the ground. The snake was nowhere to be seen.
They had lost him.
Allon tumbled across the ground, but before he even finished rolling, he shifted back to his human form to call the fight off. He skidded to a stop and pushed himself to his feet. The fact that he didn’t get hit with a face full of tail told him Chelle must have noticed the situation too.
Naked, he stood to his full height as he dusted the fresh earth and leaves off his rippling muscles, bulging after the exercise. He looked across the clearing and froze. The most beautiful woman he’d ever seen glared at him.
She was over six feet tall, with thick red hair, brilliant jade-green eyes, and muscles on her statuesque body that made Allon realize just how fit she was to be his rival. That thought only lasted an instant before he remembered his anger, and he gestured furiously at the spot where Danque had been only moments ago.
“Whose side are you on?” he bellowed.
https://rmrom.com/hisblazingpassion-amazon
About the Authors
Celia Kyle
Ex-dance teacher, former accountant and erstwhile collectible doll salesperson, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Celia Kyle now writes paranormal romances. It goes without saying that there’s always a happily-ever-after for her characters, even if there are a few road bumps along the way. Today she lives in central Florida and writes full-time with the support of her loving husband and two finicky cats.
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Marina Maddix
New York Times & USA Today Bestselling Author Marina Maddix is a romantic at heart, but hates closing the bedroom door on her readers. Her stories are sweet, with just enough spice to make your mother blush. She lives with her husband and cat near the Pacific Ocean, and loves to hear from her fans.
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Copyright © 2020 by Celia Kyle & Marina Maddix
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