by Haley Weir
She handed him a stack and sat in a chair across from him. There was no way she was joining him on the couch. Claire began to read and soon found herself lost in the essay of one of her fellow classmates. It was a well-thought out piece, and she soon became so immersed in it that she forgot the effect Drake had on her. When she next glanced up, she saw that Drake retrieved his glass of wine from the balcony, and was chuckling at an essay in his hand. There were a slew of other papers scattered across the coffee table.
“What are you doing?” she asked as he took a sip of his wine.
“Grading papers.”
“You can’t honestly tell me that you’ve read through all of those essays already. I’m only on my first one!” she asserted.
“Of course, I didn’t. That would be a complete waste of time.”
“Waist of…are you kidding me?!” Claire struggled to untangle her legs and get out of the chair. “You can’t just grade papers on your assessment of whether they are good or not!” She looked at the essays. There was a mix of grades written in bright red ink.
“Sure I can. Half of these students have New York history wrong. Another three of them have plagiarized from a piece I remember quite well. . They have copied it verbatim. The others have all made a passing attempt to recapture the true nature of New York’s illustrious history. Congratulations, you are amongst the rare few who passed.”
“But…but…you haven’t even read them!”
“I read the introductions. The ones who cheated automatically fail. The ones with incorrect thesis, I read the second page. If their thesis was wrong but they backed it up using historically accurate evidence, they passed. If their thesis was wrong and their paper went off in a direction that resembles what you consider a fairy tale, then they failed.”
“You can’t…how can you…” Claire didn’t even know where to start. She began pacing the living room again. “You have to give everyone a fair chance! You can’t just judge papers based on the introduction! That’s not right!” She turned to him, hands on her hips, and glared.
Drake set a paper onto the coffee table and crossed his arms behind his head, watching her. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re beautiful when your angry?”
“No. Most men tell me I’m beautiful when they make me happy,” she snapped.
Drake snorted. “Touché.”
“Drake, you can’t just glimpse at a paper and mark it. It’s not right. Give them a chance.”
“Like how you’ve given me a chance?”
Claire opened her mouth to respond, couldn’t come up with a decent retort. It took her a moment before she finally said, “that’s not the point. It’s not the same.”
“The principle of it is.” Drake uncrossed his arms and his legs and stood, circling the coffee table. Claire held her breath as he approached and tilted her chin up to meet his gaze. “I’ll tell you what, I don’t give a damn about grading papers.”
“But you’re a college professor…”
“I wasn’t finished.” Claire shut her mouth. “I don’t give a damn about papers, but I will read every single one of them if you would just give me one little chance,” he said.
Drake’s lips were so close to hers she could feel his breath. Her eyelids fluttered, and she fought to remain still as he lowered his head further. He didn’t touch her, but his lips lightly grazed her own and her whole body tingled at the light contact. Claire swayed on the spot, wanting more of Drake. She knew he wasn’t playing fair. But her body was betraying her as lust took over. She wanted him to touch her, and pull her into his arms again. She reveled in his warm, safe embrace . She loathed her craving for him.When Drake’s lips brushed over hers again, she groaned and felt her hands move up to grab the two sides of his shirt, holding herself steady. Drake took that as his cue to wrap her up in his arms again, and deepen the kiss.
Chapter 4
Drake felt the moment when her resolve broke and she grabbed his shirt. He was hoping for the opportunity to seduce her and convince her that she belonged to him. Now, he would jump at that chance before she changed her mind.
Drake wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her to his chest. His tongue dipped in between her parted lips and he caught the taste of her. Drake groaned into her mouth as he felt the swell of his erection in his pants. He hated how restrictive his clothing was, and when she pressed up against him, he fought the urge to reach down between them and cup himself, squeezing and rubbing the ache away.
He let his hands wander up Claire’s back and he felt the way she shuddered as he continued to touch and explore with his hands and tongue. She was going to be a hard to convince her to stay with him, but he thought that maybe, if she was in the blissful aftershocks of a night in bed with him, revealing his secret wouldn’t be so difficult. He hesitated when she said she didn’t believe in fairy tales. He wanted her to know how very real he was, so he grabbed her hips and ground them to his. The rest of his truth, the wings and the scales and the fire-breathing, would come later. Right now, he was soaking in the small gasps she made when he rolled his hips back and forth, pressing his cock into her. He could feel the heat emanating from between her own thighs. She was ready for him, and he had every intention of taking full advantage of that.
Just then, a blast like a bomb came from outside the apartment. It sent glass and plaster spewing everywhere. Then the fire came, and Drake dived with Claire in his arms to keep her safe. Drake caught a glimpse of burning red eyes and flashing scales as they passed by the window of the ruined apartment.
“Serpentina!” he shouted, and glanced down at Claire She looked both scared and shocked by what she had just seen, and that wasn’t accounting for the fear that she must feel now that the apartment around them was on fire. .
Bits of the ceiling were raining down into piles of debris on the floor. Drake knew there was no way he could shift in the confines of the tiny apartment, so he scooped Claire up in his arms and ran for the ruined balcony. Glass littered the floor, making it difficult to get outside. The balcony was hanging on by a few posts, and he knew it wouldn’t hold them both much longer. He glanced left and right to see if the Serpentina was circling back around yet. Then, he did the only thing he could think of: he jumped.
Drake fell through the air towards the bustling city below with Claire screaming in his arms. He felt his body shift into something from legend. His appendages grew, and wings sprouted from his back. Scales erupted from his skin as he began to glide seamlessly in between buildings. He flew so fast that a fleeting glimpse of wind and color was all the human eye could see. Once, he observed his brothers flying and although he knew what to look for, it felt as if something had just passed by. He jerked his head around, but nothing was there.
He felt the crisp night air rush over his body, cooling his internal temperature. He was confined to skin and clothes for so long, he felt like an inferno had built inside him, ready to burst and spew like molten lava. The breeze was like a soothing balm to the heat he kept contained for so long.
Drake looked down into his cupped talons. Claire was curled up into a ball, staring up at him wide-eyed in shock and fear. He had not wanted to show her like this. He was hoping that he could convince her to come away to the North for a weekend where he could properly show her his dragon form. He was afraid the damage had been done. He assumed that when she recovered from shock, she would run screaming and never return.
He knew it wasn’t customary for two people to feel such intensity for one another so soon after their first meeting. But he wasn’t a normal person. He did feel intensely, with the heart of a dragon. Drake worried as he saw her shivering violently. He continued to fly around buildings, making his way north. He couldn’t engage with the Serpentina in the city, and certainly not with Claire in his grasp.
Drake ducked his head and let the heat of his breath warm the air around Claire. Her shivering continued so kept breathing on her, hoping the reassurance of his warmth would bring her out of her state of
shock. He contemplated stopping outside the city in a rural area so that he could put her down, to shift and explain. But he feared that once he let her, go he wouldn’t get her back. There was also the added issue of the Serpentina being nearby. He hadn’t seen her fly back by his ruined apartment, which meant she was banking through the city somewhere, lurking and ready to strike. He couldn’t afford to engage, and he needed to get Claire to safety. The Serpentina saw Drake with Claire, and would stop at nothing to hurt her.
He continued to fly straight out of the city. They were more likely to be exposed if he stopped somewhere rural. Surprising as that might be, people living in the city bore witness to far stranger things on a daily basis than a farmer in a field attending to his livestock. They were the ones who tended to gaze up at the stars and just happen to catch sight of a dragon soaring overhead. Establishing cover ups was a nightmare, and the excuses for dragon sightings turned their existence into a conspiracy theory. s
Drake anticipated the attack but when the weight of the smaller, black-scaled Serpentina slammed into him, it still knocked him slightly off course. He had to flap his wings in swift spurts to regain his equilibrium. The Serpentina was also thrown off course by the velocity of her impact, which gave Drake the perfect chance to gain some ground to escape her. As leader of the Dragon warriors, it was not in his nature to take flight and flee, but rather to stay and fight. The problem was, the human woman in his large paws was now clutching one of his talons. Her face was contorted in a frozen scream. The sooner as he ditched the Serpentina, the sooner he could touch down and see her through her panic attack.
Drake flew to the right, flying out over the bay in hopes the Serpentina would follow. He craned his long neck around to find her hot on his long, scaled tail. He did the one thing he could think of and reared up in the air, letting his wings act like a sail to catch the wind and slow him down. The Serpentina tried to do the same, but was caught completely off guard by the maneuver and she sailed right under him. He leaned out and snapped at her tail, catching a spike in the side of the face that split his cheek open. He could feel the trickle of blood run down the side of his face and fall into the water below. But his plan still worked. The Serpentina began to fall in a free fall towards the water. Tugging on her tail had completely disrupted her ability to fly, and sure enough a giant splash sounded when she hit the water. He knew he only had moments before she surfaced, and worked on taking flight again. It was moments like this, when a dragon decided to go for a swim, that sightings of creatures like the Loch Ness monster were recorded. The long neck and huge body were a dead giveaway, but the truth was it was more likely a dragon emerging from the water.
Drake’s own flight slowed as he beat his wings, causing the water under him to white-cap and swell. He used the momentum to soar rather than having to work for his flight again. It took a few minutes to get back on course. When he finally did, he knew it would take the Serpentina a lot longer to hoist herself out of the water, thus buying him a few more precious moments to escape with Claire. Flying from a stand still required a great deal of physical exertion. Dragons typically chose high rise habitats like his now destroyed penthouse, or back in the days before high rise apartments, caves high on top of cliffs. The free fall method was the fastest way to gain momentum to keep their heavy bodies in the air.
Drake felt the sting on his cheek but flew as fast as he could toward the Hudson Valley up north. He knew the flight would only take an hour, but he wasn’t sure Claire had that in her. She was so pale and horror stricken that he had to keep sneaking peaks in his cupped paws to make sure she was still breathing.
Drake knew that the Serpentina would follow him. They all knew where his home was, which was why he had relocated to the city. But now that his apartment was destroyed, at least the natural defenses of the house on the river prevented them from attacking at any time. They had begun to anticipate at least one attack per week, but he knew he had time to call his brothers home to help him defend Claire until the Serpentina could be dealt with.
The Serpentina’s numbers were dwindling. They were dying out because they had turned so vicious and cold. They couldn’t find mates, but at least he and his brothers were willing to consider half-breeds as an alternative to losing their species. Half breeds had the potential to completely shift into dragon form, and he would take that over extinction any day. There was also the possibility of producing female half breeds who could continue the line of his Dragon-kind. .
As he flew, he occasionally blew warm breath down for Claire, to keep her from freezing to death. When he swooped into the tunnel entrance along the Hudson River to gain entrance into his home, the cave was damp and cool and there weren’t any lights. Drake inhaled a huge breath and blew outward, so the flames shot out in front of him, lighting up the path. He reached the ledge and was finally able to touch down, landing on his back legs as he outstretched a taloned, winged arm and pulled the lever to let himself into the back entrance to his home. The river was vast and wide. His reflection cast an ominous shadow over the gray water, and he noticed the fish jumping and leaving ripples in the water as he flew by.
Once inside, he landed and gently set Claire on the ground before he shifted. She was still in shock, and wasn’t moving. He quickly shifted back into his human form. This transition was always more painful, because it was like cramming a body that defied logic into this smaller human form with limitations and parameters. It always made his skin tight and hot for a day or two, and he was irritable, but she needed him right now. What he did know was she was the kind of woman that, once she snapped out of her current state, would need to shout and rant and take her aggression out. But he was hoping to curb that energy into something he needed from her in the bedroom.
Drake touched his cheek and was satisfied that the cut had already started to heal. He bent down and scooped her up. Sure enough, her skin was covered in goosebumps and she was still shivering so hard that her teeth were chattering. Drake hastened to the back door, letting himself in with the passcode. He entered a small, dimly lit hallway and made his way toward the back of the kitchen where he could smell coffee brewing. He pushed open the door and found Corey, his butler and manager in the kitchen pouring a cup.
“My lord!” Corey jumped and attempted a bow. He was shocked to see Drake, especially in his current state. But Drake couldn’t help the fact that he was naked. His clothes had torn away from him like tattered ribbons when he had shifted, and he would have to retrieve some from his bedroom.
“Corey, I’ve told you not to do that! Call my brothers home. We have a security issue. Tell them it is an emergency, and to get here as fast as they can. Close up the house. I want to make it look like no one is home. Shut the drapes, lights, and secure all non-essential entrances into the house.”
“Yes, my lord!” Corey dug his cell phone out of his pocket and began dialing. Drake decided he would fill Corey in later, after he made sure Claire was alright. He strode through the kitchen and out into a hallway. At the end of the hallway there was an elevator. He pressed the button and when the doors pinged open, he stepped onto the lift and pushed the top floor button for his private suite.
Drake stepped off the elevator and into a small hallway that was similar to the one at the penthouse, and let himself into his bedroom. He placed Claire in the bed. Then, he climbed in next to her, not caring he was still nudey. He pulled her to his chest, rocking her gently as he began to talk to her.
“Claire, it’s going to be alright. Claire, I need you to answer me. Claire.” He kept his tone even and calm as she began to stutter.
“D..d…dra…g…gon!” she shuttered.
“Yes, Claire. I’m a dragon. I’m not going to hurt you. I promise, I am going to keep you safe. I won’t let anyone else hurt you either. I need you to calm down,” he explained. It took about a half an hour of continued shaking and stuttering before disbelief, shock, and overstimulation faded away. She slowly calmed down enough to stop shaking uncontr
ollably. Then, she fell into a deep sleep, sighing as she curled into his chest. Drake held her through her slumber for a while before he carefully let go and slipped from the bed. He grabbed a pair of pants from his dresser and slipped them on before going to greet his brothers.
His second in command, Crylaine was the first to arrive. “Brother,” he greeted him, and gave him a swift hug before filling him in.
“What has happened? There was a Serpentina circling the house overhead. Arrlien chased her off and will rejoin us in a moment. Scyros is coming in from the shift.” Scyros was still young, and it took him a bit longer to shift back into human form. Another ten minutes when by before they were all seated around the table being served coffee and food by Corey when he finally told them all that happened.
“Isn’t this considered kidnapping?” Scryos asked with a mouthful of roast beef.
All of his brothers were similar to Drake in looks. All dragon warriors had dark hair and amber eyes with tan skin. It was the angles of their faces that differed, as well as their personalities and the way they carried themselves. Arrlien was surly and brooding where Scyros was young, naïve and ostentatious, giving him a lighter appearance than his brothers. Crylaine was a seasoned warrior with a scar running down his own cheek as a result of a nasty wound from one of the Serpentina. The scar made him look evil, but Drake knew he was anything but. He was more militant in his demeanor, and took charge as his second in command when necessary.
“Arrlien, what became of the Serpentina?” Drake asked.
“She still circles overhead. She must have followed you, brother.”
“She did. I am hoping she hasn’t had a chance to report back to her sisters yet. If she has, we can expect a swarm of Serpentina over our heads by tomorrow night. We should go and take care of the threat before tomorrow morning.”
“Won’t her sisters come looking for her when she doesn’t return home tomorrow?” Scyros bit into more roast beef. Drake nodded.