Chapter One
Stay right there…
Slowly, Emily stepped back from the glass pedestal. She waited, waited for an alarm to set off, but to her quick relief none came. Inside the master of Giresun’s Manor’s bedchamber, she felt for the dragon’s egg nestled beneath her dress. Her eyes never leaving the knock off she’d switched in its place.
Almost baby.
Emily took another step back, paying close attention to the bookshelf on the other side of the pedestal. A few years back, she’d encountered one as a trap, sliding aside to reveal an arsenal waiting to escort her to her own wake.
It came as no surprise to find the egg out in the open. Dragons were amongst the vainest supernatural beings she’d ever encountered. Even in their human forms, they were full of themselves.
Which is why this assignment had been so hard for her to refuse.
In a four-hundred-year manor, such as this, she wished she had more time to explore. Soon, the ferry would come for the guests of tonight’s diner party, and she didn’t plan on missing her ride.
If she knew her aunt, she didn’t have much time. This whole charade of her fake pregnancy and Margaret’s revolving art gallery would soon grow old.
Outside, a cluster of clouds drifted across the moon, deepening the shadows below. Any other time, she’d escape through the window. Tonight, she had to go back out the way she came in.
As soon as she was about to make her exit, she heard the door open and whirled around.
Blake? Emily didn’t move for a long moment. She could barely breathe with forty pounds of shelled dragon strapped against her lungs.
She searched his face, wondering if he recognized her after all this time. A part of her wishing he did, another swearing he wouldn’t. Their time together had been brief. Too brief.
Nothing about his dark wheat-colored hair or his clenched jaw struck her as recognition.
Blake stood with his arms crossed, barricading the door. “What are you doing in here?”
His gaze landed on the pendant peeking between the valleys of her breast. Self-conscious, she reached up and covered it with her hand. “There are so many rooms here. I couldn’t tell which door led to the powder room.”
His eyes narrowed. “No. What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know what you mean. I’m a guest. I was invited.” She could hear her cousin, Jacques, laughing at her for getting caught with her skirt up.
“Don’t play coy with me, Emily. If you wanted back in my bed, all you had to do was ask.”
“Your bed?” She needed to get out of here before Blake discovered there was more of her beneath her skirt then what she appeared.
“This is my room.”
“You’re Lord Giresun?” Why hadn’t she known that? Like his dragon-side, he’d kept a lot of things to himself. Not that she, too, had been completely honest with him. But she’d left it in the past, like she’d left him.
And that smile was back on his lips. Slow. Hot. It did crazy things to her stomach. She needed to get away from him.
He took a step in her direction, and she ran her hand down over her skirt to ensure the egg remained nestled in the right spot against her to continue her pregnant charade.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you missed me.”
A dragon. If Blake had gotten back from one of his band’s head banging performances, it would explain why he wasn’t thinking straight. A definite advantage for her.
She walked toward him and the door, his eyes landed on the faux egg on the pedestal behind her. His smile turned upside down. Those eyes, brown, then a flash of gold, narrowed back in on her.
Like fireworks, hot embers exploded in her chest and settled in her womb. She shifted from one foot to the other. “It was one night.”
“Is that why you bailed?”
She shook her head. She could never explain to him in a way he would understand. A mortal, like her, probably, but not him. She came from a long line of dragon keepers. As one of the chosen Keepers, she wasn’t exactly welcomed by dragons, and making the effort wasn’t worth it considering the dragons blamed the Keepers and their ancestors for their curse.
Although, fitting into their human world with the ability to shift and become human or become dragon saved their sorry hides all these centuries. They didn’t see it that way.
Emily never once regretted the price of paying her family’s debt. She would have agreed to anything to spare her mother the kind of death the draconian society had planned for her—even the price of leaving Blake and any ambitions of a singing career behind.
“I should be going. My aunt will wonder what has become of me.” She moved to go past him, reaching for the door.
“Emily.” His hand shot out and grabbed her by the wrist.
“Let me go.”
“Since when have you become a thief?”
She came face to face with his harden expression nor could she deny the look of sheer longing she found in his eyes. She almost backed up. “I’m not the one who took something that didn’t belong to me.”
His pupils turned to narrow slits and his iris turned golden. “I can’t let you go.”
Oh hell, that voice and his accent. She felt it all the way to her toes and every place in between that hadn’t warmed for far longer than she would admit. Not when she had a job to do.
“Is that why you offered to host my aunt’s revolving art gallery here?” Emily tried to jerk her arm from his grasp, but he tightened his hold around her wrist.
“Margaret Moldvan is your aunt?” As stunned as he sounded, she would have almost believed him.
“Now if you’ll excuse me, my absence has no doubt been noted.” She swayed on her feet, her eyes drifting shut as her entire body gone flush.
“Not before you return what is mine.”
She snapped them open a second later. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I think you do.” He laid his other hand against the egg nestled against her abdomen beneath her lace dress.
She didn’t dare take her eyes from his. She took her other hand as any protective mother would and knocked his hand away from her.
“How dare you try to take possession of my….” She tried to pull away from him, but he yanked her closer.
“I can smell you.” He leaned nuzzling her neck. His other hand pressed the small of her back. She pressed her hand against his shoulder, trying to protect the egg between them.
His breath hot against her ear, he whispered, “If it is a hatchling you desire, I am happy to oblige you.”
“I’ve already got one, but thanks,” she held her breath, watching his golden eyes intensified.
“I can’t allow you to leave here.”
“And I can’t allow you to get beneath my skirt.”
His grip loosened on her wrist, as he tilted his head. His gaze fell to her lips. “Are you sure?”
Heat exploded inside her belly, growing and spreading through her lower limbs, from the warmth of the egg pressing against her and not Blake’s lips a breath from hers. She willed herself to pull back from him, but his hand left the egg and cradled her neck. He brought his lips to hers in a searing kiss which jolted her down to her core. She opened to him, his tongue infiltrating between her lips in a dual to conquer.
His hand released her wrist and she clung to him.
He reached up under the folds of her dress and caressed the inside of her bare thigh. Slowly, he pushed her back against the wall. His mouth retreating from its assault and brushing feather light kisses down her neck. Her flesh flushed with heat. She entangled her hands into his hair, as his hand slid further around her thigh.
She felt the clasp of the egg harness snap and she stiffened. He brought his face up; about to reclaim her lips in another kiss when on instinct she brought her knee up. He hissed, clutching his groin as she fled him.