BROGAN_A Steamy WereDragon Romance

by Bonnie Burrows

  In that sinking moment she relived again everything they had done to each other in her guest quarters. Her mind called back the feeling of his kiss, his caress, the licking of his tongue at her sex, the press of his body atop her, the impassioned thrust of his cock. In the dread moments that followed, everything she had enjoyed so much would disappear into his dragon form—and that form would be called upon to battle for its life.

  Brogan looked over at Gabrielle and smiled a faint smile, just for her. It was just like him, she thought, to face a moment so dire and dark with a smile, as if it were all just a lark. It was his way. Gabrielle had no doubt that if he were plunging into the maw of a black hole or facing the end of the universe itself, he would do it with a smile and a laugh.

  The guards escorting Brogan released him one final time from his manacles. One of them handed him a weapon and they all stepped away to one side of the tournament area. Brogan examined what he had been given. It was the gleaming shaft of a powerblade—but not the weapon of a Squire. This was the more ornate powerblade of nothing less than a full-fledged Knight of Lacerta. In a strange way, he felt honored, as hollow as the gesture may have been. He had always been happy as a Squire and had never felt any particular need to be a Knight. Still, if he were to face a battle such as this, the preamble to later battles across so much of space that would throw so many other lives into peril, it might as well be this way, with a Knightly weapon, the weapon of the galaxy’s greatest champions. Someone, someday, might actually remember the day a Squire did battle as a Knight.

  From a portal on one side of the tournament area strode Drakkar Skinner, still in half-dragon form. He walked with an air of supreme assurance, utter confidence, total readiness. In one hand he brandished a Knightly powerblade of his own, no doubt the symbol of his own pride—or his own presumption and arrogance, as the case may be. Or perhaps the symbol of his contempt for everything that the blade and the Knighthood itself represented. He walked up and stopped just several meters away from Brogan. And with the same demonic look that he gave the Squire from across the pool, he spoke.

  “Squire Brogan, I salute you at this moment of our challenge to the death. Now…transform and prepare to defend yourself.”

  With an inhale and a gulp, Brogan morphed from man to half-dragon and unfettered the gleaming energy blade of his weapon. Skinner activated his blade in response. The combatants raised their blades, and it began.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The dueling dragons lunged. Their blades connected. The clashing swords of energy screamed at one another. Sparks flew. Skinner, his reflexes trained by years of simulated combat in simulated environments and computer-generated, mechanically-enabled dragon forms, snarled and hissed, reveling in a moment long desired and finally realized.

  Standing his ground and holding his blade against the swing and press of Skinner’s weapon, Brogan could only think, This maniac is like a man finally getting laid with the woman of his dreams. There’s almost something sexual about this for him, like he’s living out a wet dream that he’s had for years. I can almost believe that if he wins this thing, he’ll come right here in front of everyone. All the more reason to bring him down…

  Skinner’s ferocity was truly shocking. In training for the Corps, Brogan had faced off against fellow cadets who were aggressive, driven, determined, even a bit wild. But the sheer lust for battle and blood that Skinner brought to this duel was far beyond anything that Brogan had ever seen or experienced. With every swing of his blade, the criminal leader hissed the most evil hiss that Brogan had ever heard. With every strike of his weapon against Brogan’s, the transformed crime boss gave a growl or a snarl that spoke of the human soul disappearing completely into the dragon body. Skinner lunged and struck with a dreadful and terrifying speed. There were instants when his blazing sword might well have plunged right into Brogan’s shoulder or chest; seconds when a blinding, burning slash might have gone right across Brogan’s neck. For someone who was trained as neither a Squire nor a Knight, this upstart human battled as if he had been born to the task.

  Brogan harked back to what Skinner said at the pool, that he had been preparing for this moment probably from boyhood. He imagined a scared, hurt little boy coping with a painful childhood by pretending to be a Lacertan. He could see that little boy growing up, setting out on his life of crime, proving himself tougher than all the bullies and thugs and riffraff whose paths he crossed, by unleashing the dragon that he kept inside him. That boy who so immersed himself in everything dragon and Lacertan must have bred himself for the life that he now led as an Alpha reptile whom all must obey and none dared defy.

  What must it have cost him, killing his every tender impulse, smothering everything in himself that was gentle, turning his soul into a cold, scaly, angry thing, the better to lead his violent followers? There was no question in Brogan’s mind that Skinner had made his childhood defense mechanism a way of life, that he had spent a good part of every day since he was a boy turning his youthful pretending into the relentless drilling of a bloodthirsty dragon warrior. And how his journey was complete. Here he stood, fully realized as something very much like the monsters that humans on Earth once thought dragons were…

  …and intent on slaughtering someone who was born to dragonhood; murdering him in the most bloody and violent way he possibly could. And he was loving every second of it.

  Except for the part about his zeal to turn his illicitly gained dragon fury to total mayhem with Brogan as its victim and object, Brogan might almost have pitied this creature who had done so grotesque a thing with his life. As it was, the Squire was spending a little more than half of this duel leaping, ducking, dodging, and parrying to stay alive.

  As if to confirm what had crossed Brogan’s mind about the almost erotic nature of Skinner’s feelings, Skinner began to bellow and roar and moan almost like a man in the throes of sexual abandon. “Yes! YES! Have at me! Fight me! FIGHT me! Don’t back down; give no quarter! Don’t stop! Show me the dragon that you are! Fight me like a dragon! YES! YYYEEESSSSSS…..!”

  In spite of how dire it all was, Brogan still found the dark humor about this tableau of bloodlust. Maybe, he thought, you and I should just get a room.

  Up in the seats, the one with whom the Squire would much rather have a room, and for entirely different purposes, watched in silence, flinching inside at every swing and stab of Skinner’s powerblade at the dragon who while human had held her in his arms. A coldness and a fire came over Gabrielle at once, not from fear or despair, but from an anger of her own that she could not leap down from where she sat, grab up a weapon of her own, and join Brogan in battling this monster.

  The two of them together could put an end to this sick and heinous charade. The two of them as one could finish this Drakkar Skinner and all of his perversion, laying him out in the dragon skin that he had no right to be wearing, and saving who knows how many planets from his depredations. But with the manacles still on her wrists behind her back and the one thug holding tight to her metal leash, Gabrielle could only watch, and listen to the whoops and calls rising up from the other seats around her, the sound of Skinner’s minions cheering their leader, rooting for him to slice the very life from Brogan Holt while they looked on.

  Gabrielle very pointedly did not look at Dr. Samantha Harkins, sitting just a couple of seats away. Harkins was as quiet as Gabrielle herself, which Gabrielle thought was all to the good. This so-called doctor had no right to make a sound now; this woman who had sworn an oath to heal, not hurt, and would now be complicit in whatever happened to Brogan. What the hell kind of doctor was this woman? Gabrielle damned her, and damned Skinner’s minions, and damned Skinner himself. Damn you all. Damn you all…

  Out on the tournament floor, Brogan was growing weary of this joust, and knew that he could not afford to be fatigued. All right, Mr. Dragon Godfather, you want to fight like dragons? We’ll fight just like dragons. You never said the whole duel had to be fought on the floor. When Skinner swiped
hard at him with a slash that would have caught him right between the pecs and the abs, Brogan leapt back and, with hard and fast beats of his wings, into the air.

  Skinner reared up at Brogan, now aloft over his head. He hissed and shrieked at the top of his mutated dragon lungs, not with fury, but with delight. “Yes! YES! Just like a dragon!” He actually laughed an inhuman, reptilian laugh, bounding up from the floor, thrashing his tail and beating his own wings, taking to the air after his foe. “Excellent! This is the way! This is the way!”

  Circling overhead, with the shouts and whoops of the audience rising up to the ceiling beyond him, Brogan watched Skinner slice through the air, up in his direction. That’s right, Skinner. You’ve just got to see whose dicks are the biggest, don’t you?

  Brogan quickly forgot his flippant reference to a dragon’s private anatomy as his foe, with blade raised high, was upon him once again. Skinner was now a missile shooting up at him. To evade the living, scaly projectile, Brogan flipped back in the air, went into a partial dive, and swooped below. Skinner streaked on towards the ceiling until he suddenly banked and turned downward, then beat his wings to go into a hover, searching the air for Brogan.

  He found the Squire in a hover of his own, facing him, ready for another assault. Skinner flew forward and Brogan flew to meet him. This time the two combatants met in mid-air, slashing their blades against one another and making a little burst of fireworks until Brogan pulled back, up, and away. Skinner stayed in place, retracted the energy sword of his weapon, and swiveled it around to aim the other end. Brogan, in mid-flight, suddenly swerved away from an energy bolt coming in at an angle through the air in his path.

  Turning in the air, Brogan frowned to himself. That’s the way you want to play this, then? Fine… And he drew back his own blade and turned his weapon around while bracketed with beams of energy coming in on either side of him, and above and below him. Skinner was trying to lay down a firing pattern to hem him in and strike him from the air. Brogan had no intention of giving him a chance. He fired his own weapon, sending one beam of power right over Skinner’s shoulder—and landing another right on the outstretched membrane of Skinner’s wing. The crime lord in dragon’s skin made a howling roar and plummeted to the floor, making a shocking and terrible crash when he hit.

  For a moment, everything was almost still. Brogan, his wings beating, hung in the air, looking down at the crumpled form of his enemy on the tournament floor. All around him rose the sound of gasps and shouts and curses from the seats. The gathered minions of Drakkar Skinner reacted in anger and outrage at their leader being struck down. Brogan searched the crowd for Gabrielle and found her staring anxiously up at him while the thug guarding her shook his fist at him—and Dr. Harkins trained her eyes on Skinner and clutched her medical kit.

  Then, before Brogan even knew what was happening, another searing energy beam sliced through the space right by his head, making him flinch and start. Another explosion of whoops blasted up from the crowd, and Brogan turned his attention back to the floor. There he saw that Skinner had gotten himself half sitting up and was firing on him again. Another beam from the dragon gangster ripped into the air. Brogan swiveled to one side to avoid it and returned fire.

  Skinner got himself back up to a crouch and leapt away from Brogan’s return volley. He shot again. Brogan swerved in the air and shot back. Again Skinner leapt from where he was crouching; Brogan’s beam hit where the crime boss had been sitting. Skinner sent another shot at the Squire. Brogan climbed in the air to avoid it, and shot back once more. The exchange of fire between floor and air went on. Skinner leapt and dashed from place to place, evading Brogan’s attacks. He fired up again and again, and Brogan, with all the trained and practiced skill of a member of the Corps, swooped and swirled in a ballet of aerial maneuvers, evading each of Skinner’s attacks. It looked as if this impasse would go on forever, until Skinner, who had been nursing the pain in his wing where Brogan shot him, finally mustered his strength and launched himself back into the air, once again coming like a missile for the flying Squire.

  Brogan saw Skinner moving for him with his blade hilt aimed directly forward, meaning to pick the Squire out of the air. Swiftly and surely, Brogan went into a climb, moving up and letting Skinner rocket through the space where Brogan had been—without firing a shot. Why didn’t he fire? Brogan swiveled around to face behind him and see what was amiss. In the same instant, Skinner turned around as well—letting loose a bolt of energy in the same gesture.

  It caught Brogan squarely in the chest. Brogan’s senses turned to a sheet of blinding yellow-white, and the next thing he felt as everything turned to a whirlpool in his eyes was his body spinning downward. Then he felt himself hit the floor with an impact that jarred his bones, and lay there unmoving. The handle of his powerblade rolled away across the floor. His ears were filled with the shouts and cheers and other impassioned cries of the crowd, raucously applauding the way Skinner had cut down the Squire.

  Somewhere in there, Brogan thought he heard Gabrielle screaming.

  The Squire forced himself to focus again. If he couldn’t pull his mind and senses back together, he would be done for any second. When he recovered his clear sight, at first he saw just the tournament room ceiling high above him. Then, he saw the dragon form of Drakkar Skinner looming and towering above him.

  Brogan held his breath as Skinner switched from his energy beam to his blade, making the energy sword glow in the air once again. He held up the blade like a great, deadly spike of power and rumbled, “You fought well, young Squire. You gave my new body and my new power as good a test as I wanted. And now you’re finished. We’ll salute you, Squire Brogan. History will remember you as the first to fall before the weredragon Drakkar Skinner.”

  Brogan braced himself. Skinner clearly meant to bring down his blade hard onto him, ramming it through his chest and impaling him on that sizzling sword of energy. In the split-second left to him, Brogan would have no time to scramble for his weapon that had gone spinning away. The duel was over.

  Skinner’s blade began its damning downward thrust.

  And the next thing to slice through Brogan—and through Skinner, halting his final blow—was the piercing, ripping sound of alarms.

  Pulling back his blade, Skinner looked up and around, his ears assailed by a beating, bleating sound from the asteroid’s audio system. Everyone in the seats reacted in the same manner. Everything else was forgotten in the din of that noise.

  A communications hologram shimmered into view, large enough for the entire tournament room to see. It was Skinner’s pilot, a blond male. He looked as frightened as the gathered group in the tournament room was shocked. “Mr. Skinner,” he haltingly announced, “there’s trouble coming.”

  Retracing and lowering his blade, Skinner stepped away from the fallen Brogan and demanded, “What trouble? What is it?”

  “It’s from Lacerta, Mr. Skinner. The ships—they just came pouring in. The Corps and the Knights. Lernaea is surrounded on all sides. We…we’re being boarded, sir. They’ve over-ridden the locks on all the hatches. They’re coming aboard. Squires and Knights, dozens of them. They’re here, sir. They’re…” He stopped and looked out of view in the direction from which the sounds of firing and shouting now came. He turned back to Skinner, looking pale, and said, “They’re on board…”

  The hologram turned to static and disappeared.

  A moment later, the same sounds of battle raging inside the asteroid started to penetrate the walls of the tournament room, and the place erupted. Skinner’s thugs and minions leapt shouting from their seats, reached for their weapons, and looked to their boss, standing in his dragon form over Brogan, who was now just up on his elbows. Skinner opened his dragon jaws to shout orders to the stands…

  But his orders were cut off in mid-breath by the sudden, hard swipe of a dragon tail across his snout; a fierce and bludgeoning blow that sent the crime boss flying back and spilling onto the floor, away from Brogan,
who leapt back to his feet and half-dashed, half-glided for the weapon that he’d dropped when Skinner shot him out of the air. By the time he was standing up and armed again, Skinner was picking himself up as well, hissing lividly at him.

  “What now, boss?” Brogan taunted him.

  Roaring with blind fury, Skinner let loose a barrage of energy bolts, meaning to blast holes up and down the Squire’s body. Brogan already had his energy sword extended. With a dazzling dance of swings and parries, he caught Skinner’s bolts and deflected them in a shower of sparks. The duel was on again.

  In a fuming rage, Skinner called up to his Goss and Holman, “Defend this area and clear the way outside to the ship! Kill anything in Corps and Knight colors!” He spun around to Brogan again. “Except for you,” he hissed and rumbled. “You’re mine.”

  “Sorry, you’re not my type,” Brogan answered. And Skinner’s bolts came searing at Brogan, to be deflected again by Brogan’s blurring swings.

  At the far side of the room, near where Gabrielle sat, as helpless as ever but growing more alarmed, a door slid open and dragon figures in armor skin uniforms came pouring in, blades glowing and beams firing. Gasping, Gabrielle ducked down in her seat as Dr. Harkins threw herself down onto the floor between rows of chairs and reached into her kit. At the same time, the thug holding Gabrielle’s lead stood up, his free hand clutching a pulse pistol. He began firing at the oncoming forces of the Corps and the Knighthood, a look of murder on his clenched face. Gabrielle wondered whether he would decide to shoot her before being shot by the Lacertan raiding party.