by Lynn Burke
EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ®
www.evernightpublishing.com
Copyright© 2019 Lynn Burke
ISBN: 978-1-77339-905-8
Cover Artist: Jay Aheer
Editor: Karyn White
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
For Sandy, DeAnne, & Gaile
DRAWN BY DRAGONBLOOD
Blood Born, 1
Lynn Burke
Copyright © 2019
Chapter One
Elijah
I caught the heavenly scent of my mate after four centuries of searching. High in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, mere minutes after shedding my scales for my human form, the sweetness of what I had been longing for and never expected to find wafted past my nose in the crisp, late-summer air.
Completely naked and inhaling deeply, I filled my lungs, my heart, and my mind with all that she was, all that the subtle nuances of her floating on the breeze revealed to me. Longer blonde hair, unlike my own jet-black I kept short. Her eyes shimmered between blue and hazel-green—I couldn’t tell exactly which she would see me through once I pinpointed her location and claimed her.
Large breasts, and yet … muscular?
Eyes closed against the picturesque view of mountains hindering my focus, I fought to retain the image her scent brought. Wide, child-bearing hips, yet her thighs and calf muscles spoke of hours in a gym, more like those of a male.
My same six-foot-two height? I frowned, grasping at the shadows of her swirling in my brain. No. Not even five and a half feet tall, the perfect height for me to take her mouth while thrusting deep into her wet heat.
Adrenaline rushed through my body, awakening desire I hadn’t felt since my love had left nearly ten years earlier without even saying goodbye, breaking my heart.
I had searched for five of those years, desperate to find the only other dragonblood shifter I had met in centuries. Finally, I had accepted my fate as the last of my kind. Accepted the lonely years ahead of me and chosen to live a numb existence, focusing on business and money in order to make the earth a better place for the humans and their mundane world.
Tai Chi only helped to re-center my thoughts so much, and I often woke from dreams of my love—the shared breaths, touches, the solidarity of two souls sharing themselves with the other.
I had lived with the numbness for so long, the sudden desire to touch another’s flesh felt foreign to me. Could I remember how to caress and stroke silken skin? Did I even want to? The pain of loving and losing wasn’t something I desired to experience again, but that didn’t keep my cock from swelling to the point of pain and bobbing against my abs.
I opened my eyes and focused on the direction of the wind in my face. Northeast, toward the highest peak. Using my dragon-enhanced sight, I scanned every dip, every valley from my vantage point on my cliff home’s veranda, my heart thrumming the pulse in my ears, but I couldn’t find her.
The idea I wasn’t alone, the fact a dragonblood roamed the earth with me, my mate, flooded through me and took control of my brain, scattering all rational thought.
I threw myself off the veranda as I always did to take flight, shifting mid-fall toward the rocks below. A single flap of my wings caught the current along the cliff face, and I shot upward in a rush of wind, my sole focus on finding what belonged to me.
The scales of my body reflected the sky around me, keeping my true form from human sight. If one stared closely enough, they might catch a bend of reality, of light around a creature who had secretly roamed the earth for generations without detection.
If only my ancestors had evolved their form of cloaking earlier, the knights of the medieval age wouldn’t have taken us to near extinction. My alpha father might still be the leader of our kind—I might not be the last of my line.
I’m not the last of my kind, I reminded myself, my gaze flitting from dip and valley to rock and cliff, the memory of her heavenly scent teasing me as I rushed through the sky, mouth open in hopes of tasting her on the late summer air once more.
She escaped me.
For three hours, I scoured the White Mountains, catching sight of countless hikers, but not one appeared like the vision her scent had brought to me. The sun set to the west, sending streaks of pink and purple through the sky, and once darkness fell, I returned home, disheartened, but not nearly ready to give up.
Inky black coated the land like a heavy blanket, but I stood at the edge of my veranda, arms at my sides listening to Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” filter through the sliding doors I’d left open behind me. I had first heard the piece in November, 1938, by radio broadcast and promptly fell in love with the haunting, passionate piece—and the person who’d sat beside me.
We’d had seventy years together, and still they’d left as though I’d meant nothing.
Breathing deeply, I hoped to fill my lungs with the hints of my true mate’s scent as the orchestra’s music rolled through me, as though recognizing my loneliness, all the years of heartache. She escaped me, the same as my love had done for the previous ten.
I retired around one, crawled naked between my silk sheets, the glide of them over my nakedness reminding me of the softness of another body. Flesh and blood.
My throat tightened. I had been so long without companionship, so long without a gentle touch.
She would be sweet, I knew. A kind-hearted soul I would cherish forever. I would lay the world at her feet, give into her every whim, and she in turn would love me. Remain loyal and never leave.
My mate would have my softer side. She would never experience the darkness my dragon often whispered in my brain. She would be my love, and I would be her protector.
Would she prefer a gentle coupling? Or would she prefer I thrust into her like my darkness desired—wanting to split her in half, my teeth sunk into her neck? Would she ask for more? Beg me to take her harder?
I groaned and wrapped my hand around my hard length with a steely grip. Pre-cum oozed from the crown, slickening my moving palm and fingers. Remembering the hazy images her sweet scent had brought to mind, I continued to stroke myself, my hips lifting to fuck my hand as I imagined her pouty lips parting on a cry of ecstasy.
Hot seed shot from my straining sack, through my aching shaft, and coated my chest in thick, sticky ribbons, but the darkness inside me yearned for more.
****
For two days, I studied the mountains from the sky and on foot, but I failed to find her. Had fate played an evil trick on me? Had I imagined her on the breeze, the black thoughts lurking in the recesses of my mind pushing me toward a release I hadn’t sought out in over three years?
The last human I had allowed myself to enjoy in a sexual way ended up bruised and exhausted because it had been so long since I’d tasted a female that I lost control. Even though I had left a large monetary gift to cover expenses while she healed, I’d yet to rid myself of the guilt.
No more rope and pain play, I had told myself all those years ago. No more humans, no giving into my baser instincts to conquer and plunder. Wrapping myself tightly in numbness had kept others safe thus far.
My mate I had tasted on the breeze would be my treasure, I told myself, not someone to fulfill my baser needs.
A lazy trail of smoke snaked into the sky, pulling my focus a couple m
iles northeast of my veranda that I once more stood upon. The setting sun caressed my left cheek as I blinked, bringing into focus the smoke’s origin. Two people sat beside the small fire, but from the distance, I couldn’t tell their sexes.
The breeze shifted the trees around me, their rustling leaves hiding my cliff-side home from view. I breathed deeply, hoping…
A blast of cooling air hit my face, and my heart stumbled. Her. My blonde goddess.
She wasn’t a dragonblood shifter, but hints of the ancient blood ran in her veins, calling to me.
Mine.
I wanted to shift, shredding my jeans and long-sleeve t-shirt, and roar my savage declaration, but refrained for fear of scaring my precious gem away.
I strode into my house, grabbed a pullover sweatshirt, a small pack, and some water. One of the two hikers was mine, and I would claim her by night’s end.
My strides ate up the land, the rock and moss beneath my feet as I hastened toward my destiny, my mind racing, thoughts filled with the woman I would soon see. The brisk breeze shifted against my back and hinted at the fall to come, but remained warm enough that being outdoors as the sun set wasn’t bothersome. Not that I would have been uncomfortable either way. The dragonblood pumping through my arteries couldn’t be cooled.
Less than an hour later, the wind still at my back, I approached another outcropping perhaps two hundred yards from where I had seen the campfire. I pulled up short as the flickering flames came into view.
Two blond, tousled heads peeked from beneath a double sleeping bag beside the ring-less firepit—two writhing bodies in the throes of passion if their movements and moans my sharp ears made out in the still evening didn’t lie.
I clenched my teeth, hands fisted at my sides, fighting off the need to shift and take what the male had no right to touch.
She’s mine.
Their erotic dance of two souls already connected held me rapt, the scent of their combined arousal lighting a fire within me. The female cried out her release, and the male followed with a groan so sensual, so fulfilled that my heart seized, sending a rush of blood into my shaft, regardless of my jealousy. I palmed my swollen length through my jeans, squeezing away the need to spill my seed inside her.
My mate.
But she loved another.
I fought back my dragon jealousy and gave into the sudden weakness in my legs, sitting on a rock hidden by the growing darkness. Their murmurs reached my ears; however, their words remained indistinct as I fought to accept what I had stumbled upon, what fate had so cruelly dangled in front of me only to snatch away.
The male tossed back the top of their sleeping bag, and the images I’d seen through their combined scent I had tasted on the breeze came into view. Not just her with her blonde hair, large breasts, and lush curves, but his muscular, taller form topped by a mess of similar blond, longer hair, the top portion of which he had pulled back into a short ponytail.
A frown flitted over my brow, but dissipated as my treasure stood, drawing my attention once more. My mouth dried as she tugged on her clothes, hiding her perfect body from me, their joyous laughter reaching across the distance. She smiled at him, the adoration in her hazel-green gaze like a knife to my heart. He caressed her cheek, her hair, his touch gentle on the one I wanted to pamper.
She already belonged to him.
I wanted to race to her, claim my female, but would she want me? Would the bonding energy between mates I had only read about draw her to me, steal her from her male? Mostly human, would she even recognize the connection between us?
The fear of rejection, of being abandoned again sent a knife-like stab through my chest. I had barely survived my love leaving me ten years earlier—nearly burned my home in the mountains to mere ash. How much more pain would being denied my true mate inflict?
Torn, I sat still as the stone beneath me, unmoving and watching as the two lovers prepared a late dinner, their movements in sync as though they had spent centuries together rather than the twenty-something years they appeared to be. I listened to their murmurs, their shared laughter. I studied them as the man banked the fire, and they both crawled back inside their sleeping bag.
I swallowed back my pain and jealousy as they curled together, two warm bodies intertwined, sharing space as only lovers can do.
The long night passed, but I couldn’t bear to leave her. Every cell in my body longed for my mate, and had I been a younger, immature dragon, I would have claimed her without a care for her feelings or her lover’s.
But, how could I inflict on the human male the same pain I had lived with for close to ten years? The heartache, the loneliness of losing the one you love? I hadn’t been given a choice—my love had left without an explanation.
I refused to inflict that on another, but by the time the sun rose, my tortured soul needed something. I needed resolution.
I would give her the chance to choose the mate she should be with or the one she had already attached herself to. It would be her choice—the male’s broken heart her doing, not mine.
My pulse raced and palms grew damp as I drew closer, the delicious aroma of ancient blood in the air flooding my mouth with saliva. I could taste her on my tongue from a hundred yards away. What would it be like once I closed the distance between us? Once I touched her skin? Would the energy crackle the distance between us or pull like a magnet enough to sway my mate into my arms?
Through all my years I never believe in any god, any higher being, but at that moment, I wished for nothing more than to trust in something bigger, something more than mere chance that my mostly-human mate would accept me. Want me.
The closer I drew, the less I cared about the male’s heartache should she choose the one she’d been destined for.
Shouldering a small pack I’d brought along to make it appear I, too, hiked the mountain trail, I moved into sight of the camp, every part of me, my dragon included, determined to have what belonged to me.
The male squatted beside the fire, putting a small pot over the coals.
“Hello,” I called out, not wanting to frighten him.
His blond head jerked up, and as he slowly stood, his blue-eyed gaze meeting mine, the energy I had hoped to share with my female expanded in waves across the short distance and wrapped around me in a connection stronger than I’d ever felt in my life.
I stumbled to a stop as my heart skipped a beat.
My mates. Both of them.
I fought to breathe, to accept what fate had given me. Two of the ancient blood. One male, one female, a bonded pair in need of their third—the necessary trio to create another dragon life.
Chapter Two
Jonathan
I’d never been attracted to a man in my life, but fuck me, the man standing at the edge of our camp made my dick twitch. Couldn’t take my damn eyes off him. Hair black as midnight, eyes so pale, I couldn’t discern their color. Wide shoulders and arms, even with the dark gray sweatshirt encasing them, hinted at muscles twice what I’d managed to build—and I wasn’t exactly skinny.
His hello had rippled my skin with goosebumps, and when he hesitated, pale gaze glued to my face, I became aware of something, some sort of inner buzz like a light switch about to short circuit inside me. Unable to find my voice, I dipped my head in greeting.
He took a few, hesitant steps and paused less than ten feet away from me. “Sorry to intrude,” he said, his voice a deep bass, the kind that women swooned over. I found my legs weakening, and scowled at the desire to drop to my knees in front of him.
The fuck?
Locking my entire body up tight, I cleared my throat in order to find my voice. “National forest is free to all.”
His gaze flitted down over me and back up again as if sizing me up.
I should have been wary. I should have been on edge, but nothing about the stranger threatened me—except my masculinity. I’d always been good at reading people, and even though the man could probably deadlift eight-hundred pounds, nothing about
his demeanor or stance appeared threatening.
Pale eyes like a winter morning sat deep beneath thick, black brows. A thin, yet strong nose overlooked full lips, and a few days’ worth of stubble covered his jawline. Hot enough to be an Abercrombie and Fitch model, rugged enough to win the World’s Strongest Man competition.
Talk about intimidating—and hot as fuck.
We stared at each other a full minute, neither of us moving. His nostrils flared a few times as though breathing the cooler summer air deep into his lungs, bracing himself for something. I swear his body heat emanated over the short distance between us, licking at my bare arms and scruffy face.
Dakota’s familiar humming approached from the boulders she had gone to squat behind, and I pulled my attention away from the stranger to glance over my shoulder. Head down and tucking in her long-sleeve t-shirt, my wife approached.
“Hey, Jon,” she said, lifting her head, “did you—” She pulled up short, her jaw snapping shut as her gaze landed on our visitor. Her pupils dilated, and the pulse in her neck I loved to see throb heightened. Even her nipples tightened beneath the t-shirt she wore tucked into her jeans.
Jealousy should have knifed me in the gut, but I understood all too well her reaction to the dark stranger.
She crossed her arms over her large breasts, and blinking, turned her attention on me.
“This is … uh…” I turned back around toward pretty boy, one eyebrow raised.
“Elijah Tolzman.” He stuck his hand out, and I felt my feet move me forward enough to reach for his offering.
“Jonathan Ebel,” I said. Our hands meshed together, sending a jolt of that buzzing up my arm and straight down to my dick. I’d expected a battle of the manly squeeze, but he merely clasped his long fingers around my hand in a firm, yet unintimidating shake.