Dragon Isle Book Bundle 1-3: My Lord and Dragon, The Dragon Fighter, and A Dragon's Bite

by Stern, Sophie

  No, that was what Theodore would do if he got her to a party. He’d strip away all of her inhibitions and then he’d fuck her senseless. He’d tear her down and build her back up and do it all again until he got tired of her.

  “Melissa said you just worked at a clinic. In Ireland.” Ashley couldn’t lie to him. Alan’s eyes went sad when she spoke, but he nodded.

  “I figured it was something like that,” he conceded. “Fucking liars. Does Emerson even know I’m a real doctor? Did he bother to find out when he hired me?”

  “I don’t know,” Ashley shrugged. “You’d have to talk to Penelope about that.” Pen was Emerson’s personal assistant, as well as Theodore’s. Actually, when Ashley thought about it, she wasn’t sure if there were any business dragons on the island that Penny didn’t work for. She was highly trained and highly intelligent. She could get any business organized and running well as quickly as you could ask for it.

  “I’m sorry,” Alan dropped his hand from Ashley’s body. “That fucking dragon has been dead for ages and she’s still haunting me from the grave.”

  Ashley noticed something then. Alan said “fucking.” He didn’t say “bloody” or any other words that would make her think he was a dragon from another country, and he didn’t speak with much of an accent. He didn’t sound like a foreign dragon. He sounded local.

  “You’re American,” she said finally.

  “And?”

  “I thought you were Irish.” He chuckled then. His laugh was hearty and loud and filled Ashley up with happiness. Alan really was a good guy. How was he still single? Then again, how was she? Oh yeah. Fear. If she would stop being so afraid of having a relationship with him, if she would stop being afraid to let herself feel, maybe she’d be able to keep him.

  Maybe she’d be able to have the family she always wanted.

  “No one knows where I’m from because no one has asked,” Alan said. “I’ve been told that I’m from England, Ireland, Scotland, France, and China. Would you like to know the truth?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “I spent a year in Ireland studying dragon medicine. I was already a practicing physician in the United States, but I needed some time to focus more wholly on the care of dragons. Specifically, prenatal care. There aren’t many physicians in the U.S. who can properly care for a pregnant dragon.”

  “But there’s a clan in Ireland?” This was new to her. She had mistakenly assumed they were the only dragon clan.

  “There are clans everywhere, love. The one I stayed with was quite wonderful. They were welcoming and helped me complete my training. I delivered 19 dragon babies that year. That’s a record.”

  “How many are born on Dragon Isle each year?”

  Alan frowned.

  “About six. Sometimes a bit more.”

  She didn’t want to think about the fact that she would never have the chance to birth a dragon baby. Even though she wasn’t a shifter, she knew she was strong. She’d make a good mother to any little shifter child.

  She shouldn’t have lost her chance at having kids. She shouldn’t have. It wasn’t fair and when she thought about it for too long, Ashley’s insides hurt.

  “Are you okay?” Alan asked.

  “No,” Ashley said. She looked up with tears in her eyes. She wondered if she should tell Alan what was wrong. He was a doctor, after all. He wouldn’t be afraid of dealing with an infertile woman. He understood how sad the battle was.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Okay.” Alan just stood there, watching her. He seemed more patient than she had given him credit for. Then again, he dealt with dragons on a daily basis. He had to be patient. Dragons weren’t exactly known for their ability to think rationally while stressed. If anything, they were incredibly irrational and unpleasant to deal with, especially when things were hard.

  “I’m living with Theodore,” she said after a few seconds.

  “Yes,” said Alan.

  “I’m his nanny.”

  “I know.”

  “I really like him.”

  “That’s obvious, sweetheart.”

  Ashley took a deep breath. She could do this. She could be honest and open and vulnerable. After all, it’s not like Alan was going to judge her. He wasn’t going to run and tell her mom on her. He wasn’t going to think she was crazy or weird.

  “I can’t have kids,” she said. Her voice came out in a whisper. As soon as she said the words, she wished she could take them back. It felt like once she said them, they became real. As long as she kept her secret, she could pretend that everything was normal. As long as she kept her secret, she didn’t have to believe that Theodore would actually reject her.

  She didn’t have to think it was real.

  It was just a bad dream.

  “Oh, sweetheart,” Alan reached out and wrapped his big dragon arms around her. He hugged her tight and for the first time that day, Ashley finally relaxed. She allowed herself to melt into Alan’s embrace. She didn’t feel aroused or excited when he touched her.

  No, she didn’t have eyes for anyone but Theodore.

  But she felt safe.

  She felt loved.

  She felt cared for.

  “I’m so sorry,” Alan said. Then he pulled back and searched her eyes for something. “Are you worried he’s not going to want you?”

  She nodded vehemently. The tears began falling before she could stop them, and Alan leaned out and licked them up. Ashley stilled her body as Alan licked her face. His tongue was rough against her skin.

  “Sorry, darling,” he said with a shrug. “I’m a sadist. You can’t expect me to see you crying and not take advantage of those sweet human tears.”

  Dragons were so fucking weird.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I just don’t think Theodore and I can have a future. He’s going to want more kids.”

  “Is he?”

  “Well, yeah. Stuart is going to need a brother or sister. I can’t give him one.”

  Alan looked at her again. His eyes were wary and suspicious.

  “If I had to guess,” he said slowly. “I would guess that you need to talk to Theodore about this before you get all upset over something that’s never going to happen.”

  Right.

  Because he couldn’t possibly want a broken woman.

  Alan growled softly, as if he knew what she was thinking.

  “I-“

  “No, Ashley. You go home now and you tell him what you told me. Then you see what Theodore has to say and you’ll have your answer. Not everything in life is as bad or as horrible as you seem to think it is.”

  Then Alan disappeared down the hall, whistling a bit of a tune she couldn’t recognize. Ashley watched him vanish around a corner, then she was left alone in the empty halls of the clinic. She knew he was right.

  But that didn’t make her any less terrified.

  11

  Theodore wasn’t as stupid as people liked to think he was. He wasn’t a naïve dragon. No, naïve naivety he had enjoyed had vanished when his sister died. Now he was just a grumpy old codger who looked at the world with grimness and frustration.

  Still, many dragons liked to think Theodore didn’t know what was going on.

  He did.

  He knew that Victoria’s restaurant was struggling and that Daniel wanted her to consider other career options. He knew that Kade thought Lindsey worked too much, even though it was for a good cause. He knew Emerson and Janae were trying to have a baby. He knew Anthony was trying to get his secret little dungeon sex club to be more successful.

  And he knew that Ashley was hiding something.

  Oh, she was good at it, to be sure. She was the type of girl who had gotten used to hiding things from everyone around her. She seemed to think that if she was quiet and cautious that no one would notice the secrets she was keeping.

  But Theodore noticed.

  He saw the way she stared at Stuart when no
one was looking, as if nothing else in the world mattered. He saw the way she wistfully looked at their family photos.

  He would guess anything that Ashley had lost someone close to her, that she thought she couldn’t have that again.

  He would be anything that Ashley thought she wasn’t good enough for him and Stuart.

  He would say that she was afraid to love again after what had happened to her.

  So when he decided to find out more about Ashley’s past, Theodore knew he had to be cautious. Ashley was jumpy and she was cautious. If she thought her secrets were threatened or that she would be judged, she wouldn’t be likely to open up.

  Not to Theodore, not to anyone.

  “What brought you to Dragon Isle?” Theodore asked Ashley. He wanted to know about her life before the island, wanted to know what inspired her to join a herd of dragons.

  They were sitting on the back porch, watching Stuart play in the yard. She looked at him hesitantly, then took a deep breath.

  “My husband died,” she said bluntly.

  That was not the answer Theodore was expecting. Ashley had been married. Widowed. She was too young for that. Widows were supposed to be old with long life histories, with years of memories, with lots of kids. They weren’t supposed to be women in their late 20s. They weren’t supposed to be girls like Ashley. It explained a lot about her.

  It shocked the hell out of him that he told her straight up.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “It’s okay.” She shrugged, obviously trying to make it seem less serious. Theodore wouldn’t be fooled. He knew how much it must hurt Ashley to think about, to talk about, especially with her new lover. Fuck. Did she think he was trying to replace her late husband? He wasn’t. “We were high school sweethearts. We got married right after graduation.”

  “Can I ask what happened?”

  Ashley nodded.

  “We were in college. We decided to start a family. We knew that he was going to work for his dad’s company, so it was a secure, stable job. We felt ready.” A tear ran down her cheek. Theodore wanted to run his finger over it, wanted to take away her pain. He was afraid that if he touched her, though, that she would stop talking.

  He had a feeling this was the first time Ashley had really opened up to anyone, except maybe to Lindsey. Then again, it was hard not to open up to Lindsey. Yeah, her relationship with Kade was weird and intense, but they both enjoyed the Master/slave stuff. That wasn’t Theodore’s gig. He liked BDSM as much as the next dragon, but he could live without it. He enjoyed dominating a woman, enjoyed playing in public, enjoyed being watched. He didn’t want to have to tell someone what she could wear, though. That so wasn’t his gig. But despite Lindsey’s unconventional relationship with her husband, she was a good person. She was easy to talk to and she was helpful, unlike some therapists. He didn’t know a single person on the island who didn’t like her.

  “I got pregnant on the first try,” she smiled and touched her belly as she spoke, obviously thinking of the life that once grew there. “We were so happy. We hadn’t told anyone yet because we wanted it to be a graduation surprise. Darin went away with his friends for the weekend to celebrate graduating and I had a girls’ weekend with my literature buddies.”

  Theodore couldn’t help himself. He put his arm around Ashley and pulled her closer to him. He didn’t know much about Ashley, but he knew she didn’t have a child.

  There was only one way this story was going to end.

  “They were attacked by a bear. Nobody knows why. There weren’t supposed to be any wild animals in the area they went camping. Everyone died.” She took a deep breath, bit her lip. Waves of sadness radiated from her. It was almost too much for Theodore to bear. He would do anything to take away Ashley’s pain, anything to cure her sadness. “When they told me, I couldn’t believe it.”

  Stuart played in the yard as Ashley shared the most horrible news of her life with Theodore. He could sense the pain, the anguish, the horror. No longer did sweet Ashley radiate scents of hope and joy. No, now she seemed to be filled with only sadness, only with longing, only with regret of a life she didn’t get to live.

  “You lost the baby,” Theodore filled in. She nodded. The tears were pouring from her cheeks now. He wanted to kiss them away, to lick them. He wanted to make them disappear.

  “I couldn’t stop bleeding. I lost the baby and my uterus. They tried to save it so I would be able to have another kid someday, but the bleeding was too much. They had to take it. I can never be a mom.”

  Theodore reached out and wrapped his arms around Ashley. He couldn’t take being away from her for another second. He pressed her chest to his and held her as she sobbed. He rubbed her back and kissed her hair and just held her.

  “I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” he whispered. She had been shouldering all of this pain by herself. She had been carrying the weight of the world around Dragon Isle and despite their keen sense of smell, not a single dragon had noticed.

  How had that happened?

  Ashley had essentially hid in plain sight. Someone should have noticed her deep sadness.

  Someone.

  Anyone.

  As the server at the local restaurant, she was around dragons constantly. How had no one noticed that this one little human was devastated? How had Theodore not noticed? No wonder Ashley spent so much time with Lindsey. She had a shitload of emotional pain and trauma to deal with.

  And now Theodore had asked her to be around his son: the one thing Ashley wouldn’t get to have.

  “My mom encouraged me to go to graduate school,” Ashley told Theodore, pulling away slightly. She pulled the sleeve of her shirt down over her and used it to wipe her slobbery face and nose. Ashley was definitely not a pretty crier. Some girls looked beautiful when they cried, like sad little dolls. Ashley was not one of them. She was the definition of an ugly crier, but Theodore didn’t care.

  She was his.

  She just didn’t know it yet.

  Ashley looked at him then. She smiled for the first time. “I thought it was a good idea. I figured I could learn how to be a researcher, maybe go into early childhood education or something. I decided to do a research project on Dragon Isle and how the dragons here are educated, so I talked with Emerson and he said I could come.”

  “The clan leader of Lostfallen didn’t have a problem with you coming to research dragons?”

  She grinned.

  “I may have told him I was coming to research plants.” Ashley blushed, just a little bit.

  At that, Theodore laughed. He could picture his little human’s devious plan to convince the grumpy leader to let her come to the island. The private island was known for its discretion and for its desire to stay private. Few humans were allowed to visit. Even fewer were allowed to stay.

  Emerson wasn’t an unfair dragonman, but he was strict when it came to letting people hang out around the island. Ashley must have really charmed him.

  Or, Theodore realized, maybe Ashley hadn’t charmed him, but Emerson had sensed her deep pain.

  Maybe he had tried to help her by allowing her to come to the island.

  Maybe in his own way, Emerson had been looking out for a small, damaged human who had no hope less.

  “And you see Lindsey for therapy?” Theodore asked.

  “Yes. Usually once or twice a week. She’s pretty great. You know she and Kade have a Master/slave relationship?”

  “I know. I’ve seen them at a few parties.”

  Ashley’s eyes went wide. Oh, if she wasn’t the cutest little thing when she was shocked. Theodore wondered how else he would be able to surprise her, what else he could say to make her eyes go wide. Would they do that when they were in bed together? If he brought up something strange or new? Would she be shocked if he wanted to tie her up? Would she be afraid?

  “You’ve been to sex parties?”

  Theodore’s eyes flashed deep amber, and he nodded. This was the part where she would run away. This
was the part where she would realize she was much too good for a broken dragon like him. Theodore was isolated. He had lost his sister, his family, but he hadn’t lost as much as Ashley.

  He hadn’t lost his child.

  In fact, he had gained one. It didn’t seem fair, somehow. It didn’t seem right. Ashley was a good little human. She deserved to be happy. She didn’t deserve to be so broken that she was forced to hide out with dragons who were big and grumpy and mean.

  “I have. How does that make you feel, little one?” He didn’t peg Ashley for the ambitious type. She seemed too sweet to be the type of girl who went wild at dragon sex parties or who wanted to be fucked in front of groups of people. No, Ashley was sunshine and roses and orgasms on warm days. She wasn’t the type of girl he’d get to crazy with.

  “A little horny,” she admitted with a blush, and Theodore’s cock went hard. Rock hard.

  “Is that so?” Well, if she hadn’t completely surprised him. Little Ashley had a naughty streak? Come to think of it, she would be the submissive type. She was always quiet and quick to please the Dominant males on the island. Obviously, Kade and Emerson both knew she was submissive. They would have picked up on it right away.

  Theodore wasn’t as much of a Dom as they were. Yeah, he liked to top a girl, but he didn’t need it to be satisfied.

  Sometimes vanilla was okay with him.

  “I’ve never been to one, but a few dragons have invited me.” That was enough for him. A rush of jealousy pulsed through him. He hated that someone on the island would invite Ashley – his Ashley – to a dungeon party. It’s not that he had a problem with sharing – not usually, anyway – but Ashley was special.

  She was unique.

  She wasn’t the type of girl you could just take to a dungeon party and fuck in front of everyone.

  Not unless you loved her.

  And suddenly, Theodore wondered if that’s what his problem really was. Ashley was a sweet piece of heaven wrapped up in sweetness.