Page 3 of Dragon Cursed
Had she been standing, her knees would have buckled.
Dragon.
Pain.
Wounded.
Dangerous.
Her mind churned sluggishly, her thoughts slow to catch up to the reality in front of her.She’d believed in the stories all her life, but belief was a fragile thing compared to this bone-deep certainty.
The stories.Every whispered warning, every fireside tale, every impossible, mythical creature hidden within the Secret Kingdoms — real.You were feeling the dragon watching.Now you’re feeling his pain.His sorrow.
Somehow, she knew the fearsome creature was male.Heat rolled off him in slow waves, carrying the scent of rain-soaked stone and something metallic beneath it, like sparks struck from iron.
She only remembered to breathe, to drag in ragged lungsful of air, when her oxygen deprived cells screamed in agony and she began to see stars.
The dragon landed on the outcrop above her with a force that shook the ground, his claws gouging deep furrows in the rock.The sound was like grinding stone, sending vibrations through the earth that traveled up her legs.His massive head lowered, nostrils flaring as he scented the air.A low rumble vibrated through the earth — both warning and question.
Was this magnificent creature the guardian of the forest?
Most people would have screamed.Most would have fled in terror.
Poppy simply stared, her fear melting away beneath an overwhelming wave of recognition and compassion.She knew this creature.Not personally — not in any way that made sense — but in her bones, in her blood, in that mysterious part of her that had always felt slightly out of place in the mortal world.
He was magic personified.Mythical.Something she'd feared she would never experience in her life, made real before her eyes.
Dragons were real.The knowledge settled.
"Hello."Her voice was barely a whisper."I'm Poppy.I mean you no harm.Please don't eat me."
The dragon's massive head tilted, those emerald eyes narrowing.For a moment, she thought she saw something flicker in their depths.Surprise, perhaps.Or confusion.
Then the air around him shimmered, twisted, and reformed.
Where the dragon had been, a man stood.
A gloriously naked man.Completely, splendidly, unapologetically naked.
Her heart jumped.She forgot her name.Her eyes widened, and they refused to behave.
He was a living masterpiece; a sculptor could have spent a lifetime and still not fashioned a more perfect specimen.He was tall — impossibly so — with broad shoulders that tapered to a narrow waist and long, powerful legs braced wide on the moss.Sun bronzed skin stretched taut over muscle built for war, not for show.Dark hair dusted a chest carved with lean muscle, then narrowed into a trail that drew her gaze down, lower, lower, to the heavy length of him hanging thick and unashamed between his thighs.
Sweet mercy.
Heat flooded her cheeks.Then lower.A familiar, unwelcome ache bloomed deep in her belly and lower,throbbedthere, slow and insistent.This was wrong.This was dangerous.This man was a dragon, a predator, a creature who could snap her in two without breaking a sweat.
And yet.
She wanted him.Wanted to put her hands on all that muscle.Wanted to taste the hollow of his throat and find out if his pulse beat as hard as hers.Wanted to know what those big, scarred hands would feel like wrapped around her hips, holding her steady while he —
Stop.Stop it right now.
But she couldn't.She wanted him with a desperation that shocked her, a primal need that had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with the way those emerald eyes were devouring her, the way his naked body promised pleasure and ruin in equal measure.
He was magic.Pure, raw magic.A being from the old world somehow hidden away in this ancient forest.His face was all masculine angles and shadowed hollows, his jaw permanently clenched.But his eyes held her captive — the same emerald fire as his dragon form, filled with centuries of weariness and a warning that should have sent her running.
It didn't.
