by Amelia Jade
Dragon Desire
Emerald Dragons Book 2
By Amelia Jade
Dragon Desire
Copyright @ 2018 by Amelia Jade
First Electronic Publication: May 2018
Amelia Jade
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.
All sexual activities depicted occur between consenting characters 18 years or older who are not blood related.
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Author’s Note
Hold on!
You should know that while this series can be read independently, it is part of a large world that was started with the Crimson Dragons series. You can continue through, as each book contains a full story arc with happy endings for the characters, but to get the full experience of the Outsiders Universe, you should really start at the beginning with Dragon Temptation.
I hope you enjoy! - Amelia
Crimson Dragons
Dragon Temptation
Dragon Seduction
Dragon Devotion
Onyx Dragons
Dragon Fixation
Dragon Obsession
Dragon Addiction
Ice Dragons
Dragon Eruption
Dragon Redemption
Dragon Rebellion
Emerald Dragons
Dragon Passion
Dragon Desire
Dragon Desire
Chapter One
Lilly
She was desperate.
Every second longer she searched was one second closer to being unable to escape. It had to be somewhere. She just didn’t know where.
“Come on,” she muttered, searching through his drawers with care. Nothing could be left out of place, or else he might know that she’d gone through his things. That would be bad. Not as bad as Damien coming home and realizing what she intended, but it would be close. Lilly would like to avoid both outcomes, so she took her time.
She finally found it stashed in the back of a drawer, under some fancier clothes he never wore anymore. Not since he’d joined his motorcycle club and switched to black graphic T-shirts and jeans. Ugh.
Lilly hit the power button, but nothing happened. It was dead. Damn. She ran back to the bedroom and found the charger. He hadn’t taken that away. Probably because he hadn’t thought of it. Her hands shook as she plugged the phone in, missing the little slot once, then realizing she had the charger upside down. Turning it over, she slotted it home and then tossed the phone down on the bed.
Waiting was going to be the worst part. Her short, chubby legs carried her back and forth across the room she shared with Damien, what was left of the faded beige carpeting rustling underfoot. Like the paint on the walls and everything else in the house, it had fallen into disrepair. Her fiancé no longer cared about anything at home. Including her.
She twisted at the engagement ring on her finger, twirling it around, wondering if she was making a big mistake. Mild irritating pain flared up in her right arm, and she rubbed gently at the bruise there. No, there was no mistake being made tonight. The only mistake she’d made was waiting this long.
“Let’s go. Hurry up,” she said, pleading with her phone to gather enough charge to turn on already. It might all be for nothing if he’d canceled her data plan. She no longer knew the password for the Wi-Fi at home since he’d changed that too.
The phone screen finally blinked on with that annoying power-up music. Lilly leapt at it, smothering it underneath her in an attempt to silence it. Nobody was home, but she was paranoid that somehow someone might hear and let him know what she was up to. Lilly wasn’t sure what would happen if he found out, and she was determined to keep it that way. Even if that meant awkwardly leaping onto the bed to cover her phone with her boobs and smothering its speaker in chest flesh. Oh well.
The phone was on now, and the first thing she did was turn the volume off and dim the screen fully. Then she hunkered down next to the bed, putting it between her and the window.
“Please have your phone on you, Dee. Please,” she whispered, pulling up her texts, ignoring the dozens of unread ones. She ignored all the ones from Dee and started typing, her fingers so shaky she had to erase and start over half a dozen times.
Lilly: Dee, are you there?
She hit Send, her throat constricting tightly. Things had been set in motion now. Things she wasn’t sure she could ever undo. This was the way it had to be though. For her safety, and for someone else’s.
Lilly rubbed at her stomach in slow circles, trying to think calm thoughts. Tears gathered at the edges of her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. Right now she had to be strong for her child. If it were to have a future free from the suffering she now endured, then Lilly would have to face her fears and do whatever was necessary. A mother protected her cubs.
She bared her teeth in a half-snarl half-smile as her phone lit up with a reply.
Dee: Hey! Where have you been? I’ve been trying to talk to you for like two weeks now!
Lilly wasted no time. She literally didn’t have it.
Lilly: I’m in trouble. I need help, and I don’t know who to turn to.
The reply this time was almost instantaneous.
Dee: Where, when, and what do I bring?
Lilly: No. Not you. It’s too dangerous for you to come here. I need out. Can you loan me some money? I’ll meet you somewhere. It’ll be safer that way.
Dee: Lil what’s wrong? Tell me how I can help. Are you in trouble?
Lilly: It’s Damien. He…didn’t take the news so well. Things have been bad. Listen, Dee, I don’t have much time.
This time there was a longer pause, perhaps thirty seconds or so.
Dee: Give me your address. Don’t give me any excuses. Address. Now.
The tears did fall now. She didn’t want to drag her friend into her mess. This was Lilly’s problem, and she was going to solve it on her own. Yet Dee wasn’t about to back down. She knew that tone of voice, even over text. So she gave her the address.
Dee: Okay. How long do you have?
Lilly: An hour. Maybe two at most.
The pause was much longer this time. Perhaps two minutes. She started to freak out. Lights flashed on the far wall and she jumped up to peer out the window at the driveway, terrified that she’d run out of time and he’d come home. But it was just the neighbor across the street backing into his driveway. Nobody was there yet.
Vibrations from the phone in her hand scared her half to death, her nervous yelp echoing off the wall until the little townhouse descended back into silence again. Lilly glanced at her phone.
Dee: Sit tight. Help is on the way. You have thirty minutes to get your ass ready and out that
door. Otherwise you’re leaving involuntarily. Now get moving!!
She stared at the phone, stunned. Who was she sending? It didn’t sound like Dee herself was coming. Lilly had so many questions she wanted to ask and things to tell Dee, but she didn’t have time. Thirty minutes to get ready to go? She needed to pack!
Her heart rate had to be borderline in the red zone as she raced around the house, trying to grab what she would need and things that were valuable to her. Combining everything into one pack proved impossible almost immediately, so she grabbed a second duffel bag and started separating things based on priority. The smaller bag got high priority with things like underwear, bras, clothing, and her mother’s heirloom necklace. Everything else, such as more clothes, the few baby things she’d been able to keep, and some photos she valued tremendously went into the duffel bag.
Eyeing her clothing, she wondered if it were the right choice. Damien would know if she had started to pack away the clothes he allowed her to wear. Which meant that everything going into the bags was of the rather more, um, revealing nature. He’d decided one day that she was only allowed to wear clothing that covered her from neck to elbow and stomach. No cleavage, no exposed back, nothing like that. Now all that sort of clothing was all she could pack without him noticing, in case he came home.
This was a bad idea.
The door bounced in its frame as a heavy hand knocked three times in quick succession on it. Lilly gasped, covering her mouth. Someone was there! Had Damien sent someone to look in on her while he was gone? She wouldn’t put it past him. Horrified at what might happen, she started dragging the oversized duffel bag to the nearest closet. If she could just stuff it in there, he might never know. It wasn’t like he ever did any of the housework.
Again the stranger knocked at the door. The lack of yelling to let him in allowed some doubts to grow in her mind, that maybe it wasn’t one of Damien’s motorcycle club pals. Yet it had to be. Who else would be knocking on her door at eleven thirty at night?
She decided that it would be best if she ignored it. That’s what Damien would want her to do. Stay inside. If he’d sent one of his buddies to “check up” on her, they would have a key and could let themselves inside. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Finishing hiding her big bag, she grabbed the other one and stuffed it into the dryer. Again, Damien would never find it there.
Then she retreated to her bedroom and waited for the person to enter. They would find her watching television, and that was it. Hopefully. Taking a deep breath, she lay back into the comforter and tried to appear relaxed and natural, not scared out of her mind.
That was when whoever it was started to break down the front door.
Chapter Two
Torran
“This is bullshit.”
Rowe didn’t respond. Instead he just slowed his wingbeat and dropped back until he was almost behind Torran. The pair of dragons flew through the night sky over the rural landscape below. Farmers’ fields and untamed forests scrolled by in an endless sequence, the unsettled nature of the land the only thing that let them utilize their nonhuman forms.
He tried again to engage his fellow emerald dragon in conversation. “You know you agree with me.”
The entire trip had been made mostly in silence, flying across the land, circling wide around cities of any size and only in the depths of night. They had just started the day’s journey, which would see them reach their destination shortly. Torran had hoped to be there yesterday, but a late start and an early sunrise had cut short their flying time, leaving them a little over an hour from Palin’s farm.
That was both the end-point of their journey, and also the entire reason for it, if one counted what the building stood for. It was also the source of Torran’s irritation.
“Yes, I agree with you,” Rowe snapped. “Now will you shut up about it? The elders gave us orders, and we’re going to follow them. Is that really that hard?”
Torran wanted to yell at Rowe. Why couldn’t the other dragon just get all upset and angry like him? He just wanted to have a nice venting session before they arrived. Logic and reason were not high on his priority list at the moment.
“It is if I think the orders are stupid.” He sounded like a child and he knew it, but Torran wasn’t entirely sure he gave a shit. The orders were stupid.
Originally the trio, including Palin, had been sent to liaise with the human military. As representatives of the only known enclave of dragon shifters they were to determine the seriousness of the war humans were supposedly fighting with a race of aliens known only as Outsiders. The situation was complicated, but both Rowe and Torran had believed that the humans had all the assistance they needed from a group of dragons awakened from centuries-old sleep.
They didn’t need the help of the enclave. So they’d returned to say just that. Palin had remained, however, against Rowe’s wishes. As the leader of the trio, he had tried to order the unruly dragon to join them. Things had disintegrated from there, eventually resulting in dragon-on-dragon violence.
“The orders aren’t stupid,” Rowe countered. “I disagree with them like you, but I’m wise enough to realize that my view of things is not the only one. The elders are elders for a reason, because they understand how to look at things from different perspectives.”
Torran cursed silently. He hated it when Rowe acted as if he were older and wiser. He was a grand total of thirty-seven months older than Torran. Even to humans that wasn’t considered much. To dragons it was nothing.
“I still can’t believe Palin sent back a report of his own.”
“You can’t?” Rowe sounded skeptical. “What would you have done in his place? It only makes sense. He believes he found his mate in a human. If he’s correct, that could explain a lot of issues the enclave has been having of late.”
Torran fell silent. He knew all about the issues, of dragons pairing up and mating simply to create more dragons, not because they were actually mated to one another. What he didn’t want to acknowledge was that the solution perhaps lay with humans. That was just beyond his ability to accept. Dragons were superior. Period.
“Still getting all worked up over that?” Rowe asked with a soft laugh.
“Fuck you.”
“Maybe not me, but you need to fuck something. Hopefully it would help you unwind a little,” Rowe fired back. “You’re nothing but a whiny hatchling lately, Torran, and I say that as the truth, not to try and insult you. I’m not sure what’s bothering you so much, but you need to deal with it.”
“What’s bothering me is heading home only to be turned around and sent right back out like some sort of errand boy. If the elders are so damned sure about this, why the hell don’t they come out here and inspect it themselves?”
Rowe didn’t have an answer for that one, and Torran knew it. They’d both discussed their thoughts on that early in their return journey.
“I don’t want to live among the humans,” he continued. “I want to go home. To my home. I spent a long time getting it the way I liked. Now I have to go live on a farm, with Palin and whatever other humans are there? No thank you.”
He hit a thermal and spread his wings wide, the huge membranes creaking as warm air filled them, pushing his huge body up higher into the air with little effort. Rowe followed suit, even pulling alongside him as he did.
“I suspect the elders have their reasons,” the other emerald dragon said as a brightly lit homestead came and went below them.
Torran craned his head around behind him, his long neck letting him watch the huge farmhouse fade into the distance, even as he continued to fly alongside Rowe. His wings beat every so often to keep them aloft and headed in the right direction. He had seen plenty of figures moving about inside the house. A big family. He envied those who lived there for that.
“Maybe they think we’ll go crazy like Palin did,” he joked to distract himself, drawing a hissing laugh from Rowe. “Mating a human. I swear during our time with the mi
litary that they were all on crazy pills. You saw how they doted over the fragile human women they had chosen.”
“I did,” Rowe agreed. “And it got me thinking.”
Torran groaned. He hated it when Rowe “got to thinking” as he put it. “I’m not sure I’m up for your reasoned thoughts right now, my friend.”
“Too bad. I’m going to give them anyway, because I cannot seem to unwind this mystery myself.”
“Mystery?”
“The human mates, you dolt. Are you not paying attention to what you’re saying?”
“I am,” he snapped, tossing up a mild cloud of noxious gas in front of Rowe’s flightpath.
The other emerald dragon easily dodged it, banking out and then back in. The gas was meant more as a show of Torran’s indignation than it was to actually hurt Rowe. Not that he wished to tangle with the bigger dragon anyway. Not right now.
“Even you have to admit that most of the dragons we met seemed sane. They didn’t exhibit any characteristics of being crazy.”
“They claimed that they had found mates in human females instead of dragons,” Torran countered. “That’s pretty crazy to me.”
“How is it then that all of them are afflicted by the same disease?”
“Maybe it’s something they’ve been exposed to from the Outsiders.”
Rowe fell silent as he thought that point over. “So you’re saying that something about the Outsiders has messed with their brains?”
“Exactly.”
“So what about the humans then? And what about those dragons who’ve never fought an Outsider, awakened after the Outsiders that were left were killed off? Oh, and look out.”
Torran’s head snapped around just in time to see the radio tower he was headed straight for. Bellowing loudly in surprise, he flicked himself up on his side, then tucked his wings in tight and kept rolling. First thing he had to do was get out of the way of the tower. Then he could worry about the ground that was rushing up at him far too fast.