The Forbidden Dragon Baby: A Paranormal Shifter Romance (Dragon In My Heart Series Book 3)

by Selene Griffin

  She cried out softly and then bit her lip as he slid into her warm, wet pussy once again. She would never tire of that feeling until the day she died. She felt him grab hold of her hips as he started to pound her with perfect rhythm. It didn’t take long, nor did it take much at this point, for her body to give in and unleash a full orgasm across her entire body. She shuddered, moaning against the plush blanket as her eyes rolled back and her body flooded with pleasure. Her pussy tightened around her husband’s cock as she came, bathing him in a warm wash of her cum as she gasped and sighed in satisfaction. She could tell that her own orgasm was what pushed him over the edge as well, because she heard him gasp and moan in a slightly different pitch. He also grabbed her hips and held her tight against him as he spent himself inside of her.

  Licking her lips, she pushed herself up and leaned her back up against his chest. He kissed her neck, moaning and rumbling as his hands slowly ran across her body. They both gave a collective sigh, which then turned to a soft laugh before they both settled down into the bed and curled up around one another. Santiago pulled the plush covers up over them and planted a tender kiss against her forehead.

  “I love you, Gabriella,” he murmured.

  “I love you, Santiago,” she responded in turn, a warm and satisfied smile across her face. “More than anything.”

  They were quite the cliché sometimes, but Gabriella couldn’t have cared less and quite honestly reveled in it just a bit. How could she not? She truly did believe she had the closest to a perfect husband that any woman could possibly get. Happily, she nestled down against her husband, his arm wrapped about her shoulders and her head against his chest. It took barely a moment for the both of them to fall fast asleep within one another’s arms. For the first time in quite a few weeks, both Gabriella and Santiago were able to sleep deeply and happily. For a moment, their worries seemed to float off in the wind.

  *

  Crying. She heard crying.

  After four children, her instinct to leap from bed the moment the sound of crying hit her ear was strong. Isidora had barely cried out her first full breath and Gabriella had already jumped from the bed. Still very much half-asleep, she slipped into her hotel robe and shuffled through the dark hotel suite from the bedroom out to the living space where little Isidora had been lain to sleep in her bassinet. Gabriella expected to find her darling baby girl wiggling about in her bed, crying and fussing over a full diaper, empty stomach, or both. What she found instead, chilled her blood and froze her body to the very core.

  Her daughter, crying and fussing, was being held in the arms of a stranger. A strange and unwelcome man. He stood dressed in dark clothing, yet he wore no mask to hide his face. He took no care to hide the sharp line of his nose or his startlingly blue eyes. He held the baby gently in his arms, as if he cared for her, yet the grin splayed out across his face was one of malice and a dark humor that held Gabriella frozen.

  They stood that way for what felt like an eternity to Gabriella. Both locked in a staring contest as little Isidora began to amp up her cries to screams. The anguish in her baby’s yowling broke Gabriella from her fear-induced trance and she took a step forward towards the man, reaching out for her daughter.

  “Give me my baby!” she cried, her voice coming out small, cracked and wracked with fear

  “Shhh,” the man said, bringing a gloved finger up to his lips as he whispered in an Italian accent. “We don’t want to wake Papa.”

  The man continued his grinning as he nodded in the direction of the bedroom. Gabriella drew in a breath and froze once more, her hands clenched at her sides, and then she made the split-second decision to call out for her husband. She refused to let Isidora leave her sight at this point…but she needed her husband.

  “Santiago!” she shouted.

  His name had barely left her lips and she felt a gloved hand wrap around her face and yank her backwards. She felt herself tumble back against someone’s chest. Whomever it was held her face with a hand over her mouth and the other slipped through both arms at the elbow behind her back, essentially pinning her and silencing her all in one motion. She struggled, her eyes going wide as she attempted to free herself…her head thrashing to try and dislodge her captor’s silencing hand.

  Thankfully, her call had been enough to wake her husband, who came rushing into the room, nearly naked save for a pair of hastily pulled on boxer shorts, with a look of concern and confusion on his face. That confusion was quickly replaced by fear as he realized what was going on. Gabriella struggled against the man holding her, trying to pull his hand away from her mouth as her eyes shifted wildly between her husband and their daughter.

  She hated seeing Isidora in that stranger’s arms and fought with all of her strength to free herself and save her baby. She saw Santiago move towards the man holding their daughter and felt confident he could and would save Isidora. That slight confidence gave her the strength she needed to break free, though as she struggled and pulled one arm free she saw a horrible scene play out right before her…and there was nothing she could do.

  Santiago lunged towards the man holding onto Isidora, but the stranger moved fast as lightning and stepped out of Santiago’s path right in the last moment. Without missing a beat, the man swept out a leg and tripped Santiago at the knees…causing him to go down to the hardwood floor. Gabriella screamed into her captor’s glove over her mouth, clawing at it with her one free hand as she tried to wrench herself away from him. It was all in vain. She had no choice but to watch in horror as the strange, frightening man holding their daughter reared back and planted a swift and strong kick across her husband’s face.

  Her husband didn’t give up just yet. Santiago started to get up, groaning and swaying…but still moving. It was the worst thing he could have possibly done. The stranger holding Isidora hauled off and kicked him again in the side of the face, harder this time. Gabriella watched as her husband’s head began to bleed while he lay motionless on the floor. The man who held her daughter smiled, looked up from her unconscious husband, and stared her dead in the eyes with a pure cold-blooded malice she had never seen before. It scared her.

  Then, everything went dark.

  Chapter Seven

  His head throbbed in pain as if it had been split wide open. He groaned, moving slowly to get up as every single motion sent another wave of pain through his skull. When he opened his eyes, squinting against the sharp morning light filtering through the window, he realized he had been laying on the floor. Confused, he tried to think back on what had happened.

  All he could remember was pain. The same pain that throbbed through his head right in this moment. He groaned and went to close his eyes again when he noticed the blood. The carpeting he had been laying on was stained a dark crimson color, dry at the edges but still wet. It hadn’t been there long. Reaching up to touch his head, he hissed at the pain and his hand came away stained with red. A sudden wave of fear and worry washed over him and, despite his pain and nausea, he leapt to his feet.

  “Gabriella?!” he called, looking around the entire living space of the suite for his wife. “Gabriella, where are you?”

  There was no answer. A bit off-balance, he moved through the hotel suite looking for his wife and daughter. Isidora’s bassinet was empty, yet her binkie and blanket were still there. His search began simple enough, checking every corner of the suite, but soon enough his efforts turned frantic and he began to tear the place apart…mostly out of frustration than in hopes of finding his wife or daughter.

  When he finally gave up, he was sitting on the floor in the middle of the suite, panting and crying with rage. His wife and daughter were gone. Memories of the previous night came back to him in painful and confusing flashes. His naked and lustful wife. Their daughter crying. Getting kicked in the face.

  He had no idea who had broken into their suite, let alone how. He also had no idea where they had taken Gabriella and Isidora, let alone why. He didn’t know what to
do and for some time, he simply sat there and stared off into oblivion. He had done everything he thought necessary to keep them safe during this trip. He had kept Isidora off the radar to an extent that it had cost him thousands…and yet it had all been for nothing. They were gone.

  Santiago had never felt such a strong sense of anxiety, fear and anger as he did in the hours that followed the loss of his wife and infant daughter. He felt as though an endless blackness had been ripped open in his chest that fed him nothing but pain. He felt a white-hot anger that left him in a boiling rage when the realization hit him that he had no idea what had happened to his wife and child…no idea where they had been taken, or by whom.

  Once he had pushed through that initial shock and flood of anger, he wasted no time in getting all of their things packed and ready to go, not to mention cleaning up the gash across his eyebrow and forehead as best he could. The small bandages in Gabriella’s emergency to-go kit would have to do.

  A lavish tip was left in the room, for the turn-down service that would inevitably wind up handling the mess he had left behind, and he paid the bill at the front desk without a single word. Inside he was seething, teeth clenched and shoulders tight, with rage and determination. He would find what had happened to his wife and daughter and he would do whatever it took to bring them back whole and safe. Alas, he had absolutely no Dragon contacts in Spain, ironically enough, and had little choice but to continue the last leg of their journey to his family in Romania if he wanted the help he knew he was going to need. He only hoped they might know something to point him in the right direction.

  The flight from Spain to Romania was a short one and yet it felt agonizingly the opposite. Santiago sat, alone and in silence, his eyes staring blankly through the port window as tension mounted in his shoulders. Every moment that passed took him further and further from his wife and daughter, yet there was nothing he could do about it but continue forward and hope that his determination to bring them back did just that. The flight crew was ignored the entire trip as his mind whirled with the possibilities of what was happening to his wife and child. Who had taken them? And why?

  Deep down, he knew the answer as to why they were taken, but to admit such a thing would dredge up such a well of fear that it would have drowned him. Subconsciously, he must have known this and kept the thoughts at bay. Instead, he focused on the Who. A question he had not a single solid answer for.

  Fidgety and inpatient, he nearly leapt from his seat the moment they had officially landed. Taking the stairs two at a time, he flew down to the tarmac with a heavy-footed thud, taking a handful of steps before actually paying attention to what was around him.

  A gorgeous, deep crimson Alfa Romero 6C Sport Berlinetta sat idling on the tarmac a dozen or so yards from the plane. Standing beside it, dressed like a proper driver, stood a man who, Santiago guessed, was in his late 50s. The man flagged Santiago down with a simple raise of his hand before moving to open the door and wait for him. Santiago felt the first hint of relief, realizing that his family here in Romania had sent a personal vehicle and driver for him. Of course, they had no idea what had happened in Spain, considering the slightly confused look on the driver’s face when no one else disembarked the plane and joined Santiago in the car. The driver was good, for his part, and chose not to ask about it. He simply closed Santiago’s door for him, got into the car himself and started to drive.

  Santiago road in the back of the vehicle, staring blankly through the window as the world around him rolled by. He registered very little of what he saw, despite the beauty of the landscape around him, as his mind was too entrenched in thoughts of his wife and daughter.

  His plane had landed at the Sibiu International Airport, giving him a glorious view of the Southern Carpathian Mountains as they had descended from flight. His driver then took him along a south-easterly route towards the mountains themselves. Santiago stared blankly at the quiet towns and rolling foothills that passed by out his window, absorbing very little of it even as they began to make the slow climb up the mountains.

  At one point, they passed a sign which stated they were climbing up the Cindrel Mountains, specifically. Something registered within Santiago and he realized that they were nearly to the home of his distant relatives. He began to pull himself back to the reality of the moment, his amber eyes sharp as he watched the road ahead for any signs of the estate.

  His driver turned down a private road that, had they not turned directly onto it, Santiago would have never known was there otherwise. The road was narrow, guarded close by thick forest on both sides as it wound gently up a side-slope of the mountain, and despite Santiago’s efforts he could see little hint of how close the estate actually was. That is, until their car rounded a soft bend and he was suddenly greeted by the sight of a massive and impressive estate built directly into a nearly vertical rise in the mountainside.

  Santiago was impressed as the car pulled up to park in the looped driveway just in front of a rather large and intimidating stone gate. His driver exited and came around to open his door, a move that snapped Santiago out of his haze and prompted him to climb out of the vehicle. The driver gave a subtle gesture for him to go on by himself and then got back into the car before driving around to the hidden side of the stone gates where he and the car seemed to disappear.

  He made his way, unhesitant, towards the main entrance of the estate. The gate had been left open, and despite the dozen-foot-high stone walls surrounding the property, he could still see the main door as if it beckoned to him directly. Even from this distance he could tell it had been carved with intricate detail and he felt the desire to see it up close. The moment he put a single step within the confines of those stone walls, however, he was greeted most unexpectedly.

  A burst of flame, one from either side of the gated entrance, shot out to cross before him and block his path ahead. With a shout of shock, Santiago stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes narrowing against the searing heat. As the flames dissipated, a familiar sound met his ears. The low, ground-rumbling sound of a Dragon’s warning. It was a sound unlike any other. A strange mixture of a lion’s roar, the hiss of a snake, and oddly…the click of a cockroach. It was a sound that stopped him just as much as the fire did. Slowly, he let his eyes shift towards his right.

  The sight he saw was one that would have scared the soul out of the average man…but to Santiago it was a sight that left him with such an overwhelming sense of relief he nearly collapsed. Standing nearly as tall as the stone walls surrounding the estate was a fully-grown Dragon. The beast was a rich, near-golden amber color the same as Santiago’s own eyes. His solid and muscular frame was covered in a thick layer of scales that ran from his snout to the tip of his tail, all of which looked as if someone had taken a delicate, dry, golden paint brush to leaves of solid bronze. Had the Dragon not been breathing, a curl of smoke rising from its maw, Santiago might have thought him a perfect statue.

  A similar hissing growl sounded from his left and Santiago turned towards it. For a moment, he thought he was facing the same Dragon…yet he knew that the first beast still hovered just to his right. When he took a moment to really look, he realized that this second dragon was somewhat darker than the first and just a hint smaller. Instead of a burnished, amber-gold…this second Dragon seemed to be of a rich and chocolatey-brown color…as if someone had taken the first dragon and dipped him in a vat of cocoa. Santiago nearly smiled…until the Amber Dragon to his right smashed a clawed talon down dangerously close and snarled.

  The second Dragon followed suit and gave Santiago no doubt about what was about to happen. They had to know who he was, just as he realized they had to be his relatives, and yet they gave him no leeway or slack. They demanded something of him…and Santiago knew he would have no choice but to oblige and prove himself.

  Rolling his neck to the side, he stretched the muscles until they popped and he cleared his throat. With his eyes kept open, he let the Dragon inside of him take hol
d and bring about the change in him. His bones began to snap and shift, growing in size and length as his skin stretched to contain it all. His neck stretched long and his face followed suit, transforming into the snout of a Dragon, complete with snapping jaws and forked tongue.

  He lurched forward, his hands landing hard against old stone as they stretched and turned to massive claws. As his shoulder blades popped from his back and grew into impressive wings, a burst of scales exploded across his body like ripples in water. They were followed by a change in color across his entire form. What had once been the dark caramel of his skin was replaced by a dark and almost sinister silver color. Given the right light…he could have been made of solid stone or pure metal. An impressive sight, indeed.

  The three Dragons stood their ground against one another for a long moment. The forest around them fell silent with the tension rising between them. Finally, when Santiago began to feel unsure of what would happen, the other two Dragons lowered their massive heads in a show of respect. Santiago reciprocated like his father had taught him all those years ago and lowered his own head, placing it flat against the ground. The move showed his acceptance of their respect yet also his understanding of their dominance in this place. They would welcome him without issue.

  Mere moments later and all three had transformed back into their human selves. Three grown men stood naked as the day they were born, a pile of tattered clothing at Santiago’s bare feet. The other two men, quite obviously brothers based on their shared features, sported welcoming smiles…even if they were small and tight-lipped.