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Category: Erotica/Erotic Science Fiction/Romance
Description: His beast will have her beauty--but only on his terms. Orion, Book 3 Sirena Blaze has left a string of smiling males across the galaxy--but she's not smiling now. After two attempts to sabotage her ship, it's time to call for backup. Her warriors deserve the best, and that means recruiting a member of the elite Serpentian guard as co-commander. One look at Slyde Stone, and Sirena's smile returns. She sets out to indulge in the sensual delights for which his people are legendary. Slyde would like nothing more than to bed the famous beauty, but a secret binds the hands that burn to take her. He is a half-dragon shifter, a race thought to be nothing more than a myth. He's real, and so is the code he must live by--he can mate only once. Sirena's fury at Slyde's refusal knows no bounds--until saboteurs loose a pair of deadly serpents on board the Orion. And the infuriating man has the gall to make a wager. If she finds them first, she can have him. But if he wins, she must agree to be his alone--for life. Warning: Space cougar on the prowl, a handsome virgin in her sights. Hot love scenes, and even hotter dragon shape-shifting.
eBook Publisher: Samhain Publishing, Ltd., 2010 2010
eBookwise Release Date: August 2010

60 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats: OEBFF Format (IMP) [264 KB]
Words: 56068
Reading time: 160-224 min.

Prologue

Once, long ago, dragons lived among the jagged mountains of the desert planet of Serpentia. When the peaks rang with fierce cries and swift shadows skimmed across the valleys, Serpentians knew the dragons were hunting.

Unlike the huge dragons of myth and legend, Serpentian dragons were compact, the size of a small horse. Those who looked them in the eye and lived never forgot the light of intelligence in their fiery eyes. These dragons hunted not to lay waste, but to eat. They took sparingly from each area, ranging far and wide to feed themselves and their young.

The people of the valleys used great caution when traveling through the mountains. Those who lived close enough to lose livestock were grateful they paid only a tithe to the winged ones and could carry on their livelihood of herding their shaggy hummels.

Descended from explorers who had set out centuries ago from a crowded, polluted Earth I to find new homes, Serpentians had evolved into a people with unique adaptations to their hot, desert planet. They now shared some characteristics with the reptiles that shared their planet--eyes and skin that were impervious to the searing sun, and the deadly quickness of a striking serpent. They learned to coexist with the planet's native inhabitants and treat them with the caution they deserved, for nowhere else in the known galaxy were there so many species of reptiles--including the dragons that lived in lonely splendor, high in the rugged Serpentian mountains.

But legend says that a young woman, a daughter of the valleys, traveled into the mountains with her father. No one knows why they were so foolhardy. Some say he was in search of dragon hoard treasure and she went along to care for him.

Others say she was a creature of great sensuality who had tired of mere men and longed to be taken by a dragon. While her father slept, she slipped from their shelter, or was taken.

Either way, she found herself high in the mountains, in the lair of the prince of all the dragons, a red-gold male magnificent in his fiery glory. When he found her there, she slept on a pile of furs before his hearth, her lovely body nude, her tumbled curls spilling across the furs.

The dragon king had fed well that night. When he returned to his home and caught her woman's scent, it aroused in him a different hunger. His nostrils flared, sending streamers of smoke swirling through the cave, and his eyes glowed with jeweled heat.

He prowled silently around the sleeping woman, admiring her full curves, the lush boldness of her lips. He sang to her a sibilant song of seduction and stroked her skin with his wings.

Instead of screaming in terror, she opened her eyes and smiled at him.

"You have entered my lair," he crooned to her, dark dragon magic in his smoky voice. "Present yourself for me, lovely one."

She was afraid, but aroused to the point of madness by his seduction. Rising onto her hands and knees, she presented herself so that all her feminine secrets were visible to him. He began to make her ready for him, bending his fierce head to inhale the rich scent of her arousal. She trembled and whimpered her pleasure as his hot, leathery tongue trailed up her swollen labia, tormenting and teasing her.

"Taste more of me," she pleaded.

He laughed richly. "Fear not, O Eager One. I will taste all of you--have all of you."

As she arched her back, displaying herself wantonly for his eyes and his touch, he rewarded her with a deeper caress of his tongue, thrusting it into her heat. She cried out to him, pleading for more. When he had driven her nearly mad with his tender whip, he withdrew it.

"And will you have me, woman?" he asked. "Will you be mine?"

"Yes!" she cried, writhing as she hovered on the precipice of joy. "Oh, yes, anything, if only you will go on."

With a laugh of triumph, he caressed her again until she came, pleasure imploding through her, the sound of her soft cries echoing in the vastness of the cave.

"Very pretty," he approved. "You sing your song of surrender most fetchingly. And your pretty sex weeps for joy. You are nearly ready to receive me."

"I am ready now."

He stalked around her, so close that his great, heated body brushed hers and his wings trailed over her, caressing her skin and her face. Rearing up before her, he tipped her face up to his.

"Look at me, woman," he commanded. "Will you receive me as I am?"

Still quivering with her pleasure, she looked up with awe into his molten, jeweled eyes. Her gaze wandered down over his sculpted snout with her cream still on his lips, over his mighty, armor-plated body, to the phallus that thrust out between his loins. It was huge, suffused with blood, quivering with arousal. He was beautiful, savage, the most exciting thing she had ever seen, the stuff of wicked, forbidden dreams.

"Yes," she breathed. "Oh, yes."

"You are certain?" He stroked her face with one jeweled claw, his fiery gaze demanding that she speak her desire.