Loved by the Dragon Collection Read online

Saul shook his head. “Hardly.”

  Am I prying into his business? she wondered. Her smile faded, swept away by her rising uncertainty. Unwilling to bother him any further, she brought her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arm around them. The sleeping bag maintained her sense of modesty.

  “Tell me about you,” Saul said.

  “Me? Not much to tell. I’m a paralegal. We deal mostly with family law and property disputes,” she explained. “But I think I’m ready for a change. Lately…” The job lacked the rewarding qualities she once enjoyed. She wanted something fresh in a new city away from Freddy’s inane insecurities and Malcolm’s egotistical attitude. Chloe and her ex still crossed paths since they worked in the same building.

  Recently, rumors had traveled down the office grapevine about Malcolm’s new wife dumping him and finding a loophole in their supposed ironclad prenuptial agreement. She took him to the bank, and now he was on the prowl for a replacement. She confirmed it as truth when she caught Malcolm slinking around her office floor.

  If the distance of a few hundred miles separated them, maybe she wouldn’t feel compelled to take either loser back the next time one of them slunk into her life. She credited her best friend Marcy’s support for helping her through the last rough breakup. If not for her BFF reminding her of Freddy’s short fuse, she might have caved and allowed him in on her trip.

  Saul was as intuitive as he was attractive. “You are unsatisfied with your work. The clientele, perhaps?”

  “Sometimes. We see a lot of families come in to split up… with kids caught in the middle. Sometimes people use them like currency to hurt the other partner in the relationship. Ten years of watching people fight over things they could work out in marital counseling, and now I’m just plain tired.”

  “A union no longer carries the weight it once held,” he agreed.

  “Are you married?” she asked.

  Saul shook his head. “I remain untethered.”

  “A happy bachelor then?” Chloe asked lightly, putting a smile on her face.

  Her scruffy companion shook his head again. “It is not for lack of interest to find a better half or my failure to conduct a thorough search. She simply does not exist.”

  “Oh…” Crap, change of subject, change of subject! she thought. She admonished herself mentally for prying into the man’s personal affairs, and then quickly leapt into something safely impersonal. “Do you live or work nearby, Saul?”

  He shook his head again. “I work in Drakenstone Studios. Certainly not close by any means. I flew in to enjoy a fortnight away from the city’s filth.”

  The name struck a chord in her memory. A few recent blockbuster film titles flitted through her mind, the sort with lots of action and amazing effects.

  “You’re not an actor though, right? I’d have seen you in something.”

  Saul flashed her a toothy grin. “No. I do not act.”

  Pity… He had the looks for it but the idea of women across the world ogling him made Chloe irritable. The out-of-the-blue surge of jealousy unsettled her.

  As if sensing her discomfort, Saul leapt up to his feet and offered both hands out to her. He had agile moves, like a martial artist or gymnast. “Why have you remained stationary?” he questioned. “Come. You may resume your interrogation shortly. Put your ankle to the test.”

  “I dunno…”

  “What concerns you, Chloe?”

  “Let’s just say that I don’t quite trust a massage to have me up on my feet yet.”

  “You should make the attempt,” he encouraged her.

  “I’m wearing nothing beneath this sleeping bag but a t-shirt and panties, Saul. Are my pants dry?”

  He sighed in exasperation. “No. Would you sunbathe in anything more while on a beach?”

  “Well no, not really.” In fact, her most recent swimsuit purchase consisted of two tiny triangles over the ass and crotch with patterns of bare skin over her hips. At least her hipsters provided full coverage.

  “Then come.”

  With great patience, he took her by the hand and assisted her onto her feet. At first, she felt a vague twinge of fleeting discomfort, but once Chloe set her full weight on it, all became well again. The man had magic hands, or she’d really done less damage than she previously estimated. After rolling the ankle joint, she took a few experimental steps.

  “Wow! It really does feel better. But now I’m starved.” By the time she had walked to her bag, her ankle caused her no further discomfort at all. It was a miracle, as if he’d laid hands on her and cast all of her pains away. “Wanna share some dinner?”

  A big guy like him had to be starving. He was easily six inches taller than her and built like an Olympic athlete. He probably required as much food in one meal as she consumed in an entire day to feed those muscles.

  “You would share your meal with me?”

  “Well I did offer, silly. Do you want any or not?”

  He nodded at her and settled on the ground again, where he waited until she gathered rainwater for the MREs. Once they were heated, she shook up the pouch and offered him two with a plastic spoon.

  “You’re going to want salt and pepper with that,” she cautioned him.

  He ignored her warning and spooned up a mouthful of soggy vegetables in beef-flavored broth. Within a matter of seconds, his inquisitive expression began to change. His mouth turned down, and he swallowed the first bite like she’d fed him pulped paper.

  “This is horrendous,” Saul commented, spooning through the contents of the pouch as if he expected the mirage to fade and reveal a replacement meal in its place. “How could you honestly claim that this passes for sustenance? What is this foul thing?”

  “Meals Ready-to-Eat beef stew,” Chloe replied.

  “I neither see nor taste a crumb of beef in this ill-prepared morsel of cuisine.”

  “It’s more than you had before I came along,” Chloe shot back.

  “Do you also have a preference for meat, or shall this supposed beef stew be your only meal?”

  Chloe sighed wistfully. “I could go for a steak, yeah, but there isn’t an Outback tucked away in this cavern, you know?”

  Saul rose to his feet and offered his unopened pouch and unfinished meal back to her. “Very well. Rest. Drink. I will return shortly with sustenance of a more… edible quality.”

  The man disappeared into the narrow crevice again. Against her better judgment, Chloe tossed their unfinished pouches into the discarded plastic bag and settled down to rest on her side with her phone. The signal bars had forsaken her, but she at least had a good book to read.

  Chapter 2

  The smokey-sweet aroma of roasting meat awakened Chloe from her impromptu nap. While the digital romance novel occupying her phone had been filled with spicy sex and sensual mystery, it couldn’t combat the fatigue inspired by falling into a secret tunnel and meeting her own seductive stranger.

  Yawning, she propped her weight onto an elbow, and opened her eyes to find Saul crouched beside the fire. The flames crackled beneath the fragrant haunch of some animal. A deer or mountain goat maybe.

  “Where did you…?” She didn’t see a lick of hunting equipment in sight. Not even a damned blowgun or quiver.

  “It had broken its leg. Hardly a difficult catch when one is hobbled and incapable of defending itself.” His brows rose, confirming his intended double meaning. It was as if he knew she expected him to be some kind of cannibalistic, mountain-dwelling murderer.

  Chloe’s cheeks flushed again. “Right, but how did you even get to where there was a deer? It’s pitch black and pouring outside still.”

  “As I said, hardly a difficult task. Deer frequent the summit and sometimes s
lip down the slope.”

  “Where’s the rest of it, Saul?” she persisted. Don’t tell me he poached the leg off of that poor creature and wasted the rest.

  His proud smile diminished. “Why do you ask?”

  “You didn’t have to kill something just to feed me its leg.”

  Chloe wasn’t a vegetarian or anything, but the callousness turned her stomach. Her father was an avid huntsman during his prime, and she had memories of him putting practically every inch of the animal’s carcass to use. He’d create art with the antlers and sew gorgeous garments with the pelts, which he gifted to his wife and child. She gained her love of the outdoors from him before her parents split.

  “I eased its suffering. What remained of the unfortunate creature became a meal for some other predator, no doubt.”

  “Some other predator?”

  Saul scoffed. “There are larger and meaner beasts in the vicinity than this buck. Do you honestly believe it to be wasteful when another has benefitted from the kill?”

  He was right, of course. Cougars were opportunistic animals who would enjoy the deceased white-tailed deer no less now that Saul had relieved it of one hind leg. It was better for the buck to be put out of its misery than to await a slow death.

  Shame colored Chloe’s face and forced her to look away. “I’m sorry. It was wrong of me to say that. And ungrateful.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  The meal lacked culinary finesse but Chloe had brought salt, pepper, and enough seasoning for the MREs to give the meat some flavor. They ate together in companionable silence, which led to Chloe comparing Saul and Freddy again. Her ex always blabbered about himself, his job, his clients, and his latest electronics indulgence. He rarely cared to inquire about her days.

  When Saul did speak, it was to inquire about her with genuine curiosity. Where did she come from? Had she enjoyed the mountain prior to her injury? His final unexpected question drew their conversation into awkward territory again.

  “Are you promised to anyone?”

  Such an old-fashioned term. Chloe chuckled and shook her head at him. “No. Not really. The guy I was seeing, well, we sort of fell out right before I came on this weekend getaway.”

  “I am sorry.”

  “It’s alright. He was a dick anyway.” She raised one shoulder in a half shrug and tried to pass him the rest of the haunch. He waved it off politely.

  “Say, would you mind taking a picture with me?”

  “To what purpose?”

  “First time I’ve had a white knight come to my rescue,” she replied, grinning. “I’d like to preserve the memory. Besides, my friend Marcy won’t believe me when I tell her you look like a Disney prince.”

  “Which prince?”

  “The Beast, of course. After he turns human,” she quickly added when her choice placed her on the end of his stare.

  “Ah. Prince Adam.”

  He knows his Disney characters! The discovery whipped a twinge of excitement through her. “Though... I’d have to say you have way prettier hair.”

  “Hardly,” he replied.

  Impulse drove Chloe to touch Saul’s shoulder length waves while suppressing an envious flutter. She didn’t spot a single split end.

  Saul was an enigma. An outdoorsman who knew his way around a mountain and a beauty salon? Come on. Those odds were one in a million.

  “So… can I?” She waved her cellphone at him.

  “I must humbly decline if you intend to duckface.”

  The most unladylike snort-laugh escaped Chloe. She shook her head quickly in denial. “No! I promise that I won’t.”

  The photo came out perfect and just in the nick of time before her battery conked out completely. She got two perfect snaps of them in frame, with her white-blonde hair against his golden strands. She snuck a kiss to his cheek in the second picture.

  Eventually, the conversation topic drifted to even brighter subjects. They spoke of movies, although he would share nothing else about his role with Drakenstone Studios. She made an educated guess that he was obligated by contract to remain silent or part of their legal department. The man had an uncanny knowledge of the law. Was he a lawyer?

  He distracted her swiftly from her line of questions concerning his work by revealing his fondness for psychological thrillers and horror movies, a love they both shared.

  “The mirror was beautiful… I would love to have a piece that beautiful in my home one day,” she remarked fondly. “Maybe a prop replica…”

  “I assume you would prefer it to lack the bevy of murderous ghosts.”

  “Well yes, obviously,” she said with a laugh. “Oh wow, I’m stuffed.”

  “Here, I will prepare you a bed. A good night’s rest will serve you well.”

  Saul didn’t possess as much equipment as she anticipated. His sleeping bag spread out near the fire with the same additional blanket for warmth. She donned her dried clothing and reluctantly accepted it for the night.

  “Are you sure? Honestly, I knew the risks of coming out here, I should have brought my own.”

  He answered with another headshake. “There is enough room to share.” The man was a perplexing mystery.

  For a while Chloe managed to doze, but every pop from the dimming fire startled her. Temperatures fell at night and the damp made it worse. It seeped into her bones, making sleep impossible.

  “You are cold.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement of fact. Saul’s hand rubbed up her arm over the blanket spread over sleeping bag.

  “S-sorry.” Her teeth chattered. The rock beneath the sleeping bag seemed to leech all the warmth away. The fire’s close proximity didn’t help, and hell if she knew how he wasn’t trembling too. Maybe he originated from some northern climate and felt at home.

  “Shall I warm you?”

  Chloe nodded. Once he released the zipper on the sleeping bag, Saul slid right in beside her and snuggled up to her side. He became an oven beside her, a living radiator providing comfort she desperately craved. The shivering promptly ceased, but she became aware of how firm his muscled chest felt against her. A thin layer of cotton separated her breasts from his skin. Suddenly, she hated her walking shorts and tee. Chloe loathed his jeans most of all, and while her feet were also frigid, Saul didn’t complain about her ice cold toes against his ankles.

  The best way to stay warm in cold weather is skin to skin contact, she thought. It’s true. His legs felt wonderful against her feet.

  “I have been told that it is considered appropriate in these circumstances to shed clothing and share body heat.”

  It was as if he read her mind. Chloe didn’t argue his logic and quickly squirmed out of her shorts and panties. She kicked them toward the foot of the sleeping bag, equally eager to remove her shirt and toss it aside onto the cold stone beside them.

  He shoved his jeans off easily and settled beside her again, but with the sleeping bag flap obscuring her view, she saw only a brief flash of skin and a soft golden triangle. That hint was enough to pique her interest. His flaccid penis appeared uncut - again, she wondered if it was a certain sign that Saul originated from Europe - and his pubes were neither immaculately groomed nor wild and unkempt. Freddy liked to wax every inch of his body to silky perfection, and he had once demanded the same of her. She’d told him where he could stuff that idea. Waxing hurt.

  “Thanks,” Chloe muttered. Moving near to Saul was awkward at first, but they settled on their sides while facing each other. He moved one arm over her shoulders and she laid the other against his chest.

  “You’re so warm,” she muttered, turning her cheek against his throat. A personal, human-shaped heating pad for her convenience. She threw her arms around him and burr
owed into the inviting heat of skin to skin contact. Their legs twined, and modesty became a thing of the past. Her tummy pressed against his rock hard abs and she slipped a thigh over his hip. This stranger, this perfect, absolutely sexy stranger, didn’t voice a single complaint.

  What man would? He has a naked woman throwing herself into his arms and we’ve barely known one another for a day, she thought ruefully. Of course Saul wasn’t going to complain. Likewise, she chose not to mention a word about the arousing presence against her lower abdomen. He’d been soft at first, but with every comfort-seeking wriggle that she made to get settled, his cock stiffened a little more.

  But he remained a perfect gentleman.

  “Are the accommodations to your standards?” he asked.

  Chloe didn’t miss the humor coloring his tone. “I find my surroundings to be more than adequate,” she teased back.

  His chuckle sounded like a rumble, so deep and throaty that the genuine attraction produced a natural reaction. Her nipples could have cut glass, but instead, they brushed against his sleek chest when she shifted to press her lips to his cheek.

  “Thank you, Saul.”

  “You are welcome.”

  The fact that he wasn’t behaving like a true creep made him as attractive as his hard body. Did he find her attractive, she wondered?

  Chloe slid her fingers down his brawny shoulder and over his arm. He had thick biceps and the sort of bulky but naturally cut torso that reflected an active lifestyle or laborer’s occupation. Saul hadn’t shaped his body with weights and exercises in front of a gym mirror.

  Taking in a deep breath, she steeled her nerves and ignored the rapid thumping of her heart. She then eased her hand between their bodies and traveled over his chiseled abdomen. She felt every muscle, every ridge, and she boldly wriggled in a little tighter, angled her ass, and encouraged the firming flesh jutting from his pelvis until it hardened even more. His body yielded the desired response. He groaned and squeezed a harsh handful of one plump cheek. He even curved his fingers into the plump curve and grinded her against him. There was no question about it. He wanted her too.