Dragon's Kiss: A Dragon Guild Novella Read online

  Dragon’s Kiss

  Carina Wilder

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Afterword

  Also by Carina Wilder

  Introduction

  This is a prequel to the Dragon Guild Chronicles Series.

  More from the Dragon Guild Chronicles:

  Dragon Hunter

  Dragon Seeker

  Dragon’s Lover

  Dragon’s Curse

  Dragon’s Bane

  Chapter 1

  July 1

  1947

  The Underground Club

  London

  Flick fondled the hilt of the small dagger tucked into a leather sheath under her well-tailored jacket, reassuring herself with its presence. She could sense from the man’s body language that he was about to talk to her. The ones who had something to say always moved from the shoulders, easing towards their female targets tentatively at first, testing the waters before daring to move their lower half forward. It was an obvious, if unappealing, ritual.

  The bloke was a shifter. Ferret, maybe, or Weasel. Something slithery, devious and unconcerned with physical prowess or appearance. Whatever he was, he’d certainly wasted no time worrying about personal hygiene before popping down to the Underground Club for the evening. The smelly bastard was leaning in far too close for Flick’s taste, polluting her personal space with his awfulness. It didn’t take a scientist to figure out what he wanted.

  But he must have been on some pretty heavy drugs if he thought he’d ever make his way anywhere near her naughty bits.

  “I thought shifters were supposed to be intuitive,” Flick muttered, her middle-class accent barely audible as she turned away from him. It was true; most of their kind knew well enough to stay away from a woman whose body language growled You and my kitty will never be friends. But not this fellow. Apparently he was blessed with the gift of zero self-awareness. His cause wasn’t remotely helped by the crusty mound of hair atop his pasty scalp, or the ill-fitting high waisted trousers that smacked of a failed attempt at fashionable dressing.

  Flick had always wished women had a set of traffic lights attached to their foreheads for situations like this. Life could have been so much simpler if only her sex didn’t have to speak in order to convey their intentions.

  Green would mean Yes please.

  Yellow? Let me think about it for a minute.

  Red, of course, said Bugger right off, you rancid bastard.

  “Well, aren’t you a gorgeous little bird?” the man yelled over the jazz band blasting away on the makeshift stage close by, his thick Cockney accent cutting through the trumpet solo. His rank breath all but cast a foul green cloud in the air between his face and Flick’s.

  She turned to look his way, narrowing her hazel eyes in hostility. Ghastly yellow teeth met her gaze faintly in the dark, a jagged display of the many failures of public dentistry. Under the pale blue of the club’s lights, they shone like dim beacons of warning. I don’t know what toothpaste is, they seemed to whisper even as the creature issued the young woman a grim smile.“Bloody noisy, innit, darlin’?” Mr. Foulness asked when she met him with her narrow-eyed glare.

  A new song, some depressing ballad with a heavy bass beat, vibrated the club’s worn wooden floor, sending waves of nausea rumbling up through Flick’s body.

  Okay, enough of this. She slipped off her barstool, the soles of her buckled shoes hitting the floor hard beneath her. “Yes. Too noisy to talk,” she snarled, “To you, anyway.” She spun around, stepping away from him, but not before claw-like fingers grabbed her wrist in a violent grip. The shifter pulled hard, yanking her back towards him.

  Men had grown bold since the end of the Second World War.

  “Not so fast, sweetness,” he growled. His grip was tightening, fingertips digging in so hard to her skin that his nails all but sliced into her flesh. “I’m not here to talk, anyhow, if you catch my meanin’.”

  He licked his parched upper lip, his tongue a gruesome enough sight to almost send Flick over the edge into vomit-land. Nope, I’m not going to throw up. This one isn’t worth the misery.

  It took only a split second to draw her knife from its sheath and press its blade to his oily throat hard enough that a thin red line began to reveal itself on his skin. “Touch me again, halitosis man, and I’ll bleed you,” she hissed. “I’m in no mood for the company of your ilk.”

  “Beggin’ yer pardon,” he said meekly, his voice squeaking the words out as his body went limp in submission. He released her from his grasp, drawing his hand back. “I suppose I thought you was someone else.”

  “Was?” A dry chuckle rose up in Flick’s throat. “You may want to look into some grammar instruction to go with your much-needed oral hygiene lessons.” She dropped the knife to her side and walked away, her graceful form disappearing into the swaying crowd of massive bodies that stretched like a dense forest through the entire length of the establishment.

  The Underground Club was an enormous, dark gathering place for the seedy underbelly of British society. The unwanted, the fearsome, those who were only part human. The wide serpentine tunnel of stone extended itself like an enormous snake for a half mile far below the city’s bustling streets, hidden away from the humans who wandered oblivious over the sidewalks above. The ceiling, an arched wonder of ancient stone, rose to its peak forty feet above Flick’s head. Far from the ruins of London, the club was a place to escape the grim reminders of death and destruction left in the wake of the Second World War.

  A popular and amusing myth among London’s human population, the Underground was the sort of secret that everyone knew about, but no one believed. The Loch Ness monster of nightclubs. Attractive, alluring and impossible, all at once. Between its stone walls, shifters fought, conspired and occasionally formed alliances.

  Tonight, apparently, there had been some brawling among the masses. The scent of musk, blood and something both frightening and enticing spun through the air about Flick’s head as she slipped between the large bodies, trying and failing to pass inconspicuously among them. No doubt a Wolf pack had gotten into it with a group of Grizzlies, as invariably happened on occasion. It took a good deal to get most shifters drunk, but when they did, their territorial natures kicked in, the feral beasts inside them struggling for an aggressive release. Fights were an inevitability in such a place.

  Humans, on the other hand, were an endangered species between these walls. In particular, human women. Any creature in possession of a set of breasts was bound to be leered at more than once over the course of an evening. Still, Flick felt safer here than she would have on her own in a human-inhabited pub. Most of these men didn’t want to attract negative attention, and were sensible enough to keep their hands off until invited to touch. Any overly-aggressive suitors could be dealt with easily enough with little more than a prick from her knife’s point.

  Most of the shifters were powerful behemoths with strong jaws and handsome faces, dressed in suits, smoking cigarettes, their keen eyes peeking out from under fashionable fedoras. They spoke to one another at close quarters, their voices hushed. Their shoulders were broad, their muscles huge. During her frequent visits, Flick enjoyed observing and admiring the men from a distance. Fantasizing, even, about what it would be like to take one of them to bed with her
.

  Of course it was only a fantasy. She was a good girl…for the most part, at least. She’d had her moments during the war; everyone had. When the potential for death comes into play, sex suddenly begins to seem far less sinful.

  She pressed her back to the wall and studied the faces that conversed quietly under the distant overhead lights. Occasionally a pair of eyes would flash reflexively in her direction, betraying the existence of the creatures who dwelt inside the men.

  “Déors,” they were called. The old English name for the animal halves who shared the bodies and minds of shifters. At any moment a wild beast might have exploded from any of their bodies. These wondrous beings were the hidden shadow dwellers of London, the silent protectors who roamed about, often taking out threats that humans didn’t even know existed.

  Devilishly handsome, almost every one of them. Most shifters were, of course. The particular group assembled in Flick’s line of vision was spectacular. Large, brawny and muscular, too large to be Wolves. Too bulky, too broad.

  Bears, she thought. They have to be.

  When one of them glanced her way for a few seconds, her theory was confirmed. His eyes were dark and rich, shades of honey and bark.

  Flick edged away from her spot, slipping along the wall of the club with her drink in hand. Pulling up a stool to a tall table tucked against the wall, she sat down to observe further, slipping a hand over a wrinkle in the stylish riding breeches that she wore.

  She knew full well that if she wanted sex, she could approach any of these men and seduce him with a word. Their inner animals were wild. Feral beasts, with feral urges. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to get some not-so-tender attention this evening, but the truth was that it frightened her to think of.

  Never had she taken a shifter into her bed, though she’d heard whispers about their mating rituals. Apparently there were two kinds of sex with a shifter: unhinged animalistic fucking, as she’d heard it described in not-so-polite language; and bonding, the pairing of two mates who were meant to find one another. The former sounded painful. The latter sounded too good to be true. They said that when a human bonded with a shifter, the experience surpassed any pleasure on earth.

  But Flick never came to the club looking for mind-shattering sex. She came because it was the only place on earth where she felt she belonged, strange though the thought had always been. She felt out of place among humans, with their frivolous natures and materialistic obsessions. She wanted nothing more than to take part in this strange, secret world, even if it was only from a distance. To remind herself that a species existed that was far more interesting than her own.

  Perhaps most of all, she came to remind herself that there was more to this ruined city than grim reminders of man’s inhumanity to man, woman and child.

  Her job writing articles for the Herald meant that she was naturally inquisitive. Sometimes she wondered if she could have become a wealthy woman, what with her intimate knowledge of this world beneath London. Of course, her work generally entailed chasing down fashion trends and writing about the latest fad in shoes, hats and hairstyles. Had she wanted to, she could probably could have ballooned her career into something bigger. A book contract. Perhaps even radio interviews.

  But never had it seriously crossed her mind to betray the creatures who allowed her to share their space. Never did it occur to her to mar their incredible existence with more human pollution. The Underground Club was a haven, an escape from grim reality. To destroy it would have been a grave sin.

  A slow exhale pushed past her lips as she reminded herself how fortunate she was to be party to the shifters’ secret. She took a swig of her drink and turned her gaze to her right, only to see that a fast-moving, gorgeous beast of a male was walking in her direction, sniffing the air about him discreetly. A distinct tension rendered his body taut, his muscles evident under his well-fitting shirt and jacket.

  The man was even larger than the Grizzlies, taller, more muscular, though not so bulky. He must have been at least six-foot-six, his shoulders enormous and powerful. His hair was jet-black, almost long enough to tie back. A loose strand hung over his right eye, but it didn’t seem to impede his vision. He reminded Flick a little of the sort of pirate rogue that one might see on a film poster. To say that he was alluring was an understatement; her blood was heating just to look at him.

  Whoever he was, this man didn’t adhere entirely to 1940s fashion. No hat adorned his head, and instead of elegant, pointed-toed shoes, he wore what looked like work boots. He looked a little as though he might have stepped out of another century, thrown on a pair of trousers, a jacket that was slightly tight and a fitted white shirt, and said, “That’s quite enough effort.”

  At first Flick thought he hadn’t noticed her. That he would simply stride by, a strange and beautiful mystery for her to decipher in future dreams. But instead, he stopped and turned her way, clearly picking up her very human scent. For the first time, she saw his eyes face-on. They were icy blue, the section of iris around his pupils bright white, giving him an otherworldly look that set fire to her chest.

  He was so far beyond any definition of handsome that Flick didn’t know how to react when their eyes met. An ache set into her core immediately, drawing her senses awake. Something inside her reached for him, an invisible hand beckoning him to come closer.

  The man was trouble. He was perfection.

  Get hold of yourself, she mumbled as she watched him step closer. The shifter was working some spell on her; he had to be. She’d turned away dozens of his kind in her time; she usually knew perfectly well how to resist their charms. But if this one had asked her to strip naked and dance on the tabletop, she’d have done it in a second, regardless of impropriety.

  “You’re human,” the man said unceremoniously when he’d stopped a foot or so away. His voice was deep, gravelly, rich as dark chocolate. It danced around her head just as his scent did, throwing her mind into a confusing array of intertwining fantasies. Erotic, twirling threads of deliciousness stretched through her, touching every erogenous zone at once.

  “You’re not human,” she replied, averting her gaze for a moment in favour of staring at her drink. What the hell are you doing to me, man?

  “You know about our kind?” he asked. For all his brawn and strength, the question seemed sweetly innocent. Charming, even. “Yes, I suppose you must, if you’ve found your way into this place.” He leaned an elbow on the high table top, his look inquisitive.

  Flick nodded. “I’ve known of your kind for years. Ever since my childhood, when my family went for a summer holiday in Scotland. I remember the first time I saw a pack of Wolves through my bedroom window. A mass of dark, furry creatures transforming from animal to human in the blink of an eye.”

  “You know of the Wolves, and you choose to come to their hiding place on a Thursday evening. Interesting pastime for a young lady.”

  “I suppose I like to prove to myself that this place is real,” she said, her eyes moving to look about the room. A few of the Grizzlies were eyeing the strange man nervously, as though he presented some sort of unseen threat. “My parents didn’t believe me when I told them about shifters.”

  “Oh, no? Why do you think that was?” he asked, apparently unconcerned with the attention he was drawing to himself.

  Flick shrugged, her eyes returning to meet those of the dark-haired god. “They said it was a dream, induced by my overly active imagination.”

  “But you knew better, of course.”

  “Yes. I did,” she replied. “There are a few of us about, humans who can identify shifters. Some call us Sniffers, though I think that term makes us sound like hound dogs. There’s probably a better word out there somewhere.”

  “Sniffers, you say?” he stepped closer, smiling, and combed his hair back with his right hand, revealing his entire, perfect face. “Tell me then, Sniffer, what do you smell on me?”

  Well, that was the puzzle. She couldn’t say what he coul
d be, other than raw sexuality and male perfection. He was a desirable, delicious creature, that much was for sure.

  “Sex,” she replied, a sly smile slipping over her lips as she eyed him up and down. He was incredible, his thick hair slightly out of control, his trousers just a little tight, or maybe that was just her imagination at work again. “You smell like sex.”

  “Do I, then?” He eased closer, pressing his palms to the tabletop. “Well, that’s good news. I spent a fortune on a new cologne called Eau de Sex. Glad it didn’t go to waste.”

  Flick laughed. “Are you going to tell me what you are, then, or do I have to guess?” she asked when his face had stopped mere inches from hers. She was having trouble breathing by now, her body caught up in a strange, pulsing desire. This man’s presence was squeezing her lungs tight, inhibiting her oxygen flow with some wonderful, invisible fist.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” he asked, teasing, his lips so close to hers that she could all but taste them.

  “Yes, I would.” God, she wanted to bite that lower lip of his. Would it be a social faux pas?

  Probably.

  “I am one who shouldn’t exist,” he replied, his voice soft and sexy. “One of the Hidden. And I’ll be keeping it that way.” With that, he pulled back abruptly, leaving Flick gasping for air.

  The shifter narrowed his eyes as he examined her. She felt as though he was reading her like a book, assessing her from top to bottom for trustworthiness as he flipped through the pages of her mind. “Tell me—what’s your name?” he asked.

  “Flick,” she said, stunned by the sensation that his mind was latching onto hers.