Dragons Need Love, Too (I Like Big Dragons Series Book 2) Read online

  Text copyright ©2016 Lani Lynn Vale

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication

  To my husband, the biggest jerk I know…I may love you like crazy, but you just pissed me off, so this one is to you. (And don’t worry, he does this a lot. We’ve probably made up by now. :P)

  Acknowledgements

  Asli, Danielle, and Kellie. Thank you for making this beauty shine.

  Marisa—thank you for making this cover so beautiful. You did a perfect job!

  Other titles by Lani Lynn Vale:

  The Freebirds

  Boomtown

  Highway Don’t Care

  Another One Bites the Dust

  Last Day of My Life

  Texas Tornado

  I Don’t Dance

  The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC

  Lights To My Siren

  Halligan To My Axe

  Kevlar To My Vest

  Keys To My Cuffs

  Life To My Flight

  Charge To My Line

  Counter To My Intelligence

  Right To My Wrong

  Code 11- KPD SWAT

  Center Mass

  Double Tap

  Bang Switch

  Execution Style

  Charlie Foxtrot

  Kill Shot

  Coup De Grace

  The Uncertain Saints

  Whiskey Neat

  Jack & Coke

  Vodka On The Rocks

  Bad Apple

  Dirty Mother

  Rusty Nail

  The Kilgore Fire Series

  Shock Advised

  Flash Point

  Oxygen Deprived

  Controlled Burn

  Put Out (Winter 2017)

  I Like Big Dragons Series

  I Like Big Dragons and I Cannot Lie

  Dragons Need Love, Too

  Oh, My Dragon (Spring 2017)

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Dirty Mother

  Dragon Prince Nikolai Vassago’s day starts out fairly normal: get up, kick some ass, fondle his beard, take some names.

  One minute he’s participating in a run-of-the-mill mission, and the next minute, he’s rescuing Brooklyn, the woman that is fated to be his, from the clutches of a criminal mastermind.

  Nikolai is quite pleased with his fated mate. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Brooklyn.

  Living in a religious commune for the majority of her life meant Brooklyn wasn’t exposed to all of the outside world’s craziness. The moment she turned eighteen, she was off and running towards whatever new experiences the outside world could give her.

  In her quest to experience it all, she tends to jump into situations without weighing the potential consequences until it’s too late. Brooklyn just wants to be free to make her own decisions and live her life as she pleases. But in her quest to save herself from the limitations of her old commune life, she lands herself in a dangerous situation, and Nikolai swoops in to her rescue, throwing her on the back of his dragon and flying off into the night.

  He’s a man-with-a-plan kind of guy, and she’s a fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants (not on the back of a dragon!) kind of girl.

  Nikolai, however, has fate on his side, and whether she is ready to accept her fate or not, it won’t be denied. Brooklyn’s stubborn, though, and Nikolai will need to use all of his powers to show her that she’s exactly where she needs to be.

  Prologue

  Growing up is when you go from using drugs for fun to using them just to function like a normal human being.

  -Food for Thought

  Nikolai

  Alright, Jean Luc. You know what to do, I said telepathically to my spotter.

  Jean Luc hit the lights and the entire surrounding area went dark.

  I blinked, and then suddenly I was seeing in shades of red, green, blue, yellow, and orange.

  There’s a man in the back room, left corner. Gun. There’s a man on the right side of the front room, in front of the television. Gun on the table. One more on the back porch smoking a cigarette, no gun, I relayed to my men who were surrounding the building.

  10-4, was echoed amongst them, and I started to creep forward on my hands and knees.

  I had no clue what kind of security they had out here, but with my ability to control my body temperature, I hoped that whatever infrared/thermal cameras they had out here would be rendered useless with all the power I was expending.

  Slowly, we all converged at once, moving stealthily through the long grass.

  Perdita was overhead, circling closer and closer, looking at her own version of a thermal heat camera.

  Perdita could do wonderful things, but one of the best things was her ability to manipulate her energy.

  She could appear hot, cold, or even dead. Whatever she wanted you to see is what you saw.

  I also had that gift.

  It was a gift that not even my older brother, the badass King of the Dragon Riders, had.

  I could sense heat like a…well…dragon.

  My bonded dragon, Perdita, was very unique, and from all places, across ‘the pond’, as she put it.

  She was from Ireland, and over eight hundred years old.

  She’d never bonded to anyone but me; something that was the same for most dragons and their bonded dragon riders.

  I had not understood the depth of Perdita’s powers until we’d been bonded for over four years. She’d given me short lessons on how to harness the powers that she’d passed on to me, but I’d not been able to do so at first.

  Mostly because I’d bonded with her at the young age of nineteen, instead of twenty-one.

  I’d still been a boy, and hadn’t really understood the enormity of our connection until my brother had sat me down and explained that not even he had bonded until he was twenty-one.

  So it’d been a wakeup call to realize that Perdita hadn’t been completely honest with me until I’d accidentally used her gift on her.

  Perdita was the queen of illusions and was excellent at appearing harmless.

  And apparently, so had I. I’d finally gotten sick of how she’d been treating me, and had thrown her so far into an illusion that I didn’t know how to get her back out. Mostly because I wasn’t sure how to get her out of it, and partly because I was still mad at her.

  After she managed to get out of it herself, she’d apologized, and then had explained that I’d shown her her worst nightmare. Something in which to this day, she still ha
dn’t told me about.

  Something inside of me stilled, and all my warning receptors started to clang at the same time.

  Ford, Alaric, Jean Luc, Ian, and Dorian stopped when I hissed out a warning the second I saw the first trip wire.

  There’re explosives. Be vigilant, I ordered.

  Do you want me to disable them, Boss? Ian asked.

  Negative. If we have to leave in a hurry, I don’t want them to be able to come for us at a quick pace. It’s best if they think they’re all inactive. It might prove useful later, I explained to the men.

  10-4, Ian confirmed.

  So we kept moving until we had about four feet in between us and the house.

  Alright, Perdita. Do your thing.

  Yes, Sire. You’ve got about ten minutes until I will no longer be able to hold it, Perdita expounded.

  Perdita was so good.

  All Perdita—or me for that matter—had to do was send out what was similar to a movie toward the men in the house.

  However, she was more selective than I was.

  When I wanted to play the mind games, everyone within my immediate area saw the same thing.

  The only ones immune were my brothers.

  And they didn’t even realize things were different before, or after, Perdita and I played our mind games.

  I wasn’t sure what she was showing them, but not one of them reacted as I moved into the house like I owned the place.

  My limited telekinetic abilities enabled me to open the doors without breaking anything, then walk straight up to the first man and take him out with a sleeper hold.

  He never even realized I was there, nor that I was choking off his air supply.

  He stayed pliant in my arms until he passed out from lack of oxygen.

  Then, with the utmost care, I dropped him to the floor at my feet.

  With the first man taken care of, I moved into the main room and started looking around.

  After taking care of two more men, I came to the room where Brooklyn was being held and immediately started to get queasy at the horrid condition she was in.

  She looked like death warmed over, and I wasn’t sure she’d even be alive long enough for Keifer’s mate to see her best friend again with the shape she was in.

  Her hair was in dark clumps of brown around her dirty face.

  She was in a bra and bike shorts that accentuated how skinny she’d gotten since she and Blythe had graduated from nursing school only a few weeks before.

  Bruises ran the length of her arms and legs.

  A cut above her eye looked like it could’ve used stitches when she’d received it.

  Now the only thing that would fix it was plastic surgery of some sort.

  The icing on the cake, however, was the tear streaks that ran the length of her cheeks.

  None of that stopped me from picking her up as carefully as I could into my arms and walking with her out of the house.

  “Let’s go,” I murmured quietly once I reached the front door.

  “You want me to take her?” Alaric asked softly.

  I shook my head, trying to fight down the irrational surge of rage that shot through me at the mere mention of him taking this woman from my arms.

  “Alaric and Jean Luc, follow us home. The rest of you need to stay to make sure we make a clean exit. If I don’t get her to my sister soon, she won’t make it,” I ordered hurriedly as Perdita hovered above us.

  The moment Perdita and I made it a mile away, they would no longer be under her spell.

  And that could possibly spell trouble for us getting away, unless the rest of them stayed to make sure we weren’t followed.

  ***

  Seven days later

  “She had something in her stomach.”

  I watched as Skylar held the USB drive out to Keifer, a sick ball of fear knotting my stomach.

  Taking it like it was a poisonous snake about to attack, Keifer plugged it into the computer and winced when a file popped up.

  “Fuck,” he hissed, clicking on it.

  It was a sound file.

  Short. Sweet. And to the point.

  “I know you, Vassago. I know you better than you know me. I knew you’d come for her. You can’t resist helping the innocent,” Joseph grinned manically on the screen. “Which was why I put a GPS tracker in her. You’ve doomed yourself with your big old heart.”

  Fear clogged my throat as I looked at the woman on the exam table.

  The beaten and broken girl that would never have a normal life again.

  “Find the GPS,” Keifer ordered Skylar. “I’m going to be with my wife.”

  I looked over at him, then back to the computer screen as I repeated the video file.

  Which was why I put a GPS tracker in her.

  Goddammit. Why had I not thought of that?

  I forced myself to watch as Skylar started to X-ray Brooklyn’s body, searching for the elusive GPS tracker.

  “You’ll need to leave…I think I’ve found it,” Skylar said thirty minutes later.

  “Where is it?” I asked, coming closer to the table.

  I wouldn’t comment yet about how all of her injuries had healed so fast…or why my body ached in the very same places she’d been bruised in earlier.

  I also wouldn’t comment on the itching on my side where I could see faint lines and swirls appearing.

  Something was off here.

  I felt something for Brooklyn…a woman I barely knew.

  A woman that was just that…a woman.

  I’d met her a week ago when I’d saved her from that hellhole, and hadn’t even spoken to her yet.

  I had an irrational fear, though.

  I didn’t want anyone to get close to her.

  I hated being away from her.

  It drove me nuts when Carrick, the night nurse who worked alongside Skylar, was responsible for her.

  And I was just plain agitated by…everything.

  “Right here,” Skylar said, pointing to a spot just above Brooklyn’s hip.

  I moved closer, trying to see if I could find any scars, but there were none.

  “What are you going to have to do?” I asked worriedly.

  Skylar glanced at me with concern.

  “Hopefully a small incision…why?” Her head lilted as she snapped on gloves.

  I shook my head.

  “You mind if I stay?” I questioned.

  She shook her head.

  “No,” she added. “But you’ll need to not go all gray in the face when you see the blood.”

  I hated that she was right.

  But I had a phobia of blood.

  My blood. Keifer’s blood. Anybody’s blood, and I was close to losing it.

  It was a deep urge inside of me that pushed at me anytime I saw it.

  It wasn’t so much as getting sick, as much as my body craved it.

  And not in the ‘I want to drink it’ kind of way. More like ‘I want to touch it’ kind of way.

  Which freaked me the fuck out, and explained the grayness to my face as I thought about how much I wanted to touch it.

  But Skylar didn’t know that…nor did Keifer.

  They just thought I had a phobia…a nice, normal phobia.

  Oh, how wrong they were.

  “I’ll be fine,” I hedged.

  And I was.

  All the way up until she removed the tracking device.

  The moment it was removed, my hand found Brooklyn’s unconsciously, and I willed the wound to seal.

  I hated seeing her in pain, even if she wasn’t actually ‘feeling’ it.

  And, before my eyes, it did heal.

  My hip, though, burned.

  And I hissed in response, jerking slightly and pulling my shirt up.

  Skylar had frozen at my inhalation, and she watched in awe as blood started to drip down my hip with a precise incision in the exact same spot as Brooklyn’s h
ad been only moments before.

  Then, as if it were magic, the wound sealed…and the tattoo fully appeared.

  Not just on me, but on Brooklyn, too.

  Chapter 1

  Vegetarians live up to ten years longer than the rest of the world. Ten long, horrible, bacon-less years.

  -Nikolai’s secret thoughts

  Nikolai

  “I need you to stay back. Watch the sanctuary…and Brooklyn,” my brother, Keifer, said to me.

  I blinked.

  “So, let me get this straight…,” I said, turning around in my computer chair to face him. “You’re taking, not just you, but your pregnant mate, our mother, sister, and entire fucking sanctuary, sans two people. Me…and Brooklyn. The girl who had a fucking transmitter pulled out of her stomach that probably told the entire fucking world where we were located…do I have that correct?” I replied carefully.

  My brother gave me a blank stare.

  “Yeah, that’s what I fuckin’ said,” he answered tightly.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose with my fingers as I said, “And what if something happens to Brooklyn? What am I supposed to do with her? I’m not a fucking doctor.”

  “She’ll be fine. I’ve told you over and over again that there’s not a thing wrong with her. I think she’s just…sleeping to sleep. Like her body is keeping her in a dream state because her mind’s so traumatized,” my sister, Skylar, offered her two cents.

  I rolled my eyes.

  She’d told me that before, but I didn’t believe her.

  Nobody stayed in a coma for over two months just because they needed to recover.

  I was fairly sure there was something else going on, but the two of them wouldn’t listen to me.

  Apparently, medical science outranked my gut feeling.

  “Fine,” I snapped. “It’s not like I can really stop you, now can I?”

  Was I pulling off the nonchalant attitude like I was intending to?

  I sure as fuck hoped so.

  Keifer grinned. “It’ll be fun if you’d at least try.”

  Keifer was officially the King of Dragons, as of less than twenty-four hours ago.

  Used to be he was a prince, just like me.