Dragon Prime Read online

  She paced through the rose and cream room, frowning, trying desperately to come up with answers. They couldn’t fail. She didn’t know why this one mission held such personal importance to her. She couldn’t understand the feeling that this job was the most dangerous one she had ever undertaken in her life.

  She was jerked rudely from her thoughts at the low ring of the phone on the small table across from her. Striding quickly across the room, she answered it before it could awaken her client, taking a seat on the small brocade chair beside it.

  “Hello.” It would be one of her brothers, she knew.

  “Lynn, I’m sending you reinforcements.” Lynn closed her eyes tiredly as her brother’s voice seemed to attack her overloaded brain through the receiver of the phone. “Three men are headed in. Dragon, Gryphon, and Phoenix. They’ll help hold down the fort until we figure out what the fuck is going on here.”

  Dragon. She’d dreamed of a dragon. Dreamed of a warrior with wings unfolding as a dragon’s cry echoed around her. She fought to assure herself it was coincidence, nothing more. But she couldn’t still the sudden sense that her life was getting ready to change irrevocably and that, somehow, this job would change it.

  She tried to discount the fear. Tried to push it back where she locked the dreams and images that often tormented her. Dragon. Lynn hoped the code names were a bit more reflective of ability than the last two had been, if nothing else. She had lost three men so far and Blackthorne was getting steadily closer to breaking the shields they had placed around the estate to protect their client.

  “I don’t like this, Zachary.” She held the phone between her ear and shoulder as she glanced back through the open bedroom door to assure herself Ariel St. James was still resting peacefully. “They’re breaking even our most advanced security measures. I had two attempts last night and the last one almost made it to the house. We can’t afford to lose any more men.”

  It was the most concentrated attack against any one person that Lynn had seen out of the terrorist group. Silent, deadly, they moved like wraiths through the night and struck with such fatal intent that the battle to hold them back was taxing the entire force of agents Zachary possessed.

  Breach Control Inc. was designed specifically to protect against even the most technologically advanced covert terrorist attacks. Armed with the latest in weapons and security gadgets, they had never needed more than a handful of the men and women assigned to a job at a time. Their full force was on this one. Over two dozen of the most experienced, well-trained and psychically aware agents they had on the payroll. Each night, the attacks came closer to the house, and each one was more deadly.

  “These three rate off the scales, Lynnie,” her brother promised her. “Dragon is the strongest of the three. He was able to put Blaken, Matthew and me in a hold we couldn’t even attempt to break, all while he was loading the van with supplies by mental force alone. The other two are nearly as strong. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Lynn’s brow lifted in surprise. Such powers weren’t supposed to exist. But then again, the powers Breach Control’s agents normally possessed weren’t supposed to exist, either.

  “What’s their ETA?” she finally asked him with a tentative hope that she could catch a few hours of sleep when they did arrive. If they were that strong, then the rest of this assignment should proceed rather easily.

  Protect the girl until she healed. That was their job. But Lynn worried. If Ariel St. James was strong enough in full health to protect herself, then how had Blackthorne kidnapped her the first time? Not just that, though. How had they inflicted such damage to her that now, weeks after her rescue, she was still so weak she could barely care for herself?

  “Lynn…” A note of warning crept into Zack’s voice.

  Lynn stilled. She knew her brother. Knew that tone of voice and that it didn’t bode well.

  “No…” she moaned tiredly. “No bad news, Zack, please. This assignment is going to kill us all at this rate.”

  A tense silence filled the phone for long seconds.

  “Lynn, they’re Guardian.”

  Shock whipped through her body. The Guardians were the worst sort of help. Aliens. A mysterious group of psychic warriors who worked with only select humans in the war against Blackthorne. They were deceptive, powerful, and often too undependable to count on. She did not need this.

  She wanted to rap the phone on the antique oak desk and tell her brother just how little she was enjoying herself at the moment.

  Guardian. Dammit. Every time she turned around anymore the paranormal aspects of this job were raising their creepy little heads. Aliens. Fucking aliens. Dammit. She didn’t need this any more than she needed a resurgence of the nightmares that had haunted her most of her life.

  “Lynn, you’re not screaming at me.” Zack sounded worried. “Listen, these men are good, sis. I promise. They came with Devlin’s seal of approval and they’re strong. Stronger than anything we’ve ever seen. And they’re willing to help.” Which was rare. The question now was why were they willing to help? Lynn had her own suspicions where the Prime Warriors were concerned and none of them were comforting.

  “Have you ever thought, Zach, that you’re not doing anything but dealing with the same things that head Blackthorne?” she snapped. “Every piece of information I have on Jonar leads back to the Guardians. How the hell do we know we can trust any of them?”

  Years of working with psychic phenomena as a weapon had taught Lynn to gain as much information as possible concerning those she fought against. The files she had accumulated on Jonar and the select group of Guardian warriors were horrifying. Her first meeting with one of the exceptionally beautiful, powerful beings had been enough for her to know that their powers were too similar to the terrorists of the Blackthorne organization that she had come up against that same year.

  “I don’t know, Lynnie,” he snapped back. “All I know is they are the best I’ve ever seen or heard. I called Devlin myself and he approved them. He seemed more than relieved they were coming in. That’s enough for me.”

  Devlin was human, but he wasn’t normal. Lynn had met him only once and her psychic barometer had gone off the scale the moment he stepped into the room. His power alone was exceptional. And it was his warrior, Shanar the Savage, who claimed Ariel as his woman. Devlin had hired Breach Control to protect her until they could make arrangements to do so themselves. That alone made Lynn suspicious.

  If these men her brother was sending her were stronger, then they were in a shit load of trouble if they weren’t the good guys. And Lynn couldn’t be certain they were the good guys.

  “Yeah. Yeah,” she sighed as she pushed her fingers restlessly through her short brown hair. Arguing wouldn’t help. Her brothers trusted Devlin’s word implicitly. “Okay. Devlin trusts them, then we trust them. I know the score, Zack. Who’s in charge?”

  Her question brought a moment of tense, charged silence.

  “Of those three? Dragon is in charge. Of this mission, that hasn’t changed. You’re in charge, Lynn, and he knows it. He didn’t seem to have a problem with it.”

  Most male psychics of the type Breach Control hired had an instinctive problem taking orders from a woman. The whole alpha deal, she snorted silently. As though because she had breasts she didn’t have a brain.

  “Fine. When will they arrive?” She began making a mental note of the best place to put them.

  “I believe we are already here.”

  Lynn stilled in shock as the voice, pitched low and filled with amusement and power, whispered from behind her. She turned slowly in her chair, her eyes widening, her chest tightening with some unfathomable emotion that she couldn’t put a name to.

  “They ride the waves, sis.” Zach’s voice was little more than a murmur in her ear. “And I’ll be damned if they ain’t good at it.”

  The phone clattered to the desk as she rose warily to her feet, staring back at the three huge men. Huge was the only word for it.
Six and a half feet tall or better, with wide chests and bulging arms and thighs. They were dressed in black, hair long and flowing, expressions fierce, faces lean and eyes penetrating.

  “Fuck!” she wheezed out in shock.

  The tallest, his silver eyes glowing, gave her a smile of such sensual threat she felt every nerve ending in her body stand up and scream out in warning.

  “Not yet,” he murmured, his voice so deep, so powerful, it vibrated through her body. “But soon, Lady Lynn. Very, very soon.”

  Chapter Two

  Okay. They rode the dimensional waves. Lynn was still off balance an hour later as she led the men to the bedrooms she had chosen for them on the upper floor of the house, close to Ariel’s. As powerful as she knew they were, she wanted them close by.

  The heightened awareness of danger was shifting inside her even before the arrival of the three aliens. Her chest wasn’t as tight nor her body as wired with the premonitions of attacks, but her fears for her own emotional and mental safety were rising.

  Alyx, Dragon Prime, had claimed her. Standing right there in the sitting room, his silver eyes glowing with promise, he had stated his intentions. As though he had known before arriving that she would be there and that she belonged to him.

  She fought to still the trembling in her body, the instinctive urge to flee the house. She could feel him; literally feel his gaze caressing her back, her buttocks and her thighs as she walked ahead of him. Like ghostly fingers caressing her flesh, sneaking between her legs to lick at the sensitized flesh and causing the slick juices there to pool thickly.

  It was disconcerting. It made her too aware of her body, too aware of the fact that she had never placed any importance on the fact that she was a woman as well as a psychic warrior. Alyx was making her remember that she was a woman.

  “Here’s your room.” It was at the end of the hall away from Ariel’s suite. A large bedroom with dark oak furnishings and a king-sized bed. Big enough for his unusual height with room to play.

  Lynn swallowed tightly. She had no intentions of playing with him. God only knew why something so ridiculous had entered her head.

  She had intended to stand at the door as he entered but a firm hand at her back had her moving forward in surprise. The door closed behind them, leaving them alone within the dim light of the room.

  Heavy shades blocked the sunlight from the large picture window on the far side of the room. The lack of clear light only added to the intimacy that seemed to swirl around them.

  “Very nice.” He didn’t seem to care one way or the other.

  Lynn turned slowly, trying to control the hard thump of her heart as she realized he was indeed staring down at her intently, those strange silver eyes seeming to see into her soul.

  “I’ll let you get settled in then.” Why did she keep imagining the dragon of her dreams unfolding around him?

  “Lynn.” His hand gripped her arm gently when she would have passed, holding her to him as the breath seemed to lock in her throat. “You know me. Do not pretend you don’t.”

  “No,” she gasped. “We’ve never met.”

  She knew she was deliberately evading the meaning. Unfortunately, she had a terrible feeling she did indeed know him. She fought to remind herself that she did not believe in reincarnation. She did not. She would not.

  “Lynn.” The soft, unfamiliar accent of his Guardian birth gave his voice a rough, dark sound. “Do not lie to me. I can see the truth in your eyes each time you gather your courage to meet my gaze. Why deny what we both are aware of?”

  She was breathing harshly now and couldn’t seem to control it. His hand was holding her firmly but she could have easily broken away from him. She wanted to break away from him. Didn’t she?

  “You’re here to do a job, Alyx. Just as I am. Nothing more,” she reminded him, though she fought to accept that information herself. “We aren’t here to play. And I don’t play with Guardians in any way, shape or form. You should remember that.”

  “There was a time when you were willing to play with me,” he whispered.

  The vision swamped her. A shaded forest; she was dressed in unfamiliar clothes. Soft tan leather pants, a tunic of sorts. Her hair was long, unbound, flowing in the breeze as the large warrior held her pinned on her back, her wrists shackled by his. She was lifting to him…

  “Stop this,” she ordered fiercely, jerking away from him and moving several steps into the room to escape the warmth that seemed to emanate from his body and wrap around hers. “I don’t like these mind tricks you’re trying to play. You’re here to do a job, just as I am. Don’t turn it into anything more.”

  “Our jobs are perhaps vastly dissimilar, Lynn,” he said quietly, his voice reflective now. “You are here to protect the woman, while I am here merely to claim what is mine. If helping you complete your job paves the way for my goals, then I will do this.”

  Incredulity seared through her system. “You don’t care if she lives or dies, do you?”

  He swiped his fingers through the long strands of silver hair. It wasn’t the color of middle age, but a rich, vibrant silver, like mercury. Like his eyes.

  “I care if she lives or dies, but I cannot make the choice in her life. I will protect her because I am here, and am bound to her life through yours. I am restricted from interfering in human life or death, Lynn. It is for this reason that Prime Warriors do not aid your people as you have continually requested.”

  “But you are now,” she sneered. “How convenient that you can change the rules as you wish.”

  He sighed in irritation. “I have not changed the rules. You did so when you accepted your destiny in taking this mission. You have come full circle. That circle involves me.”

  Lynn hid her shock, or so she hoped. She had known from the start that something was different about this job, something different about the friendship that emerged between her and Ariel over the weeks. But this was more than she was willing to accept at the moment.

  “Convenient,” she said mockingly. “Too bad I’m not fooled so easily, Alyx. I am not unaware of the Prime Warriors, the Guardians or their link to Jonar. I don’t trust you or your other alien buddies, so that isn’t going to fly with me.”

  A grin tipped his lips. “I never expected you to do so without a fight,” he murmured. “But you will accept the knowledge in time, just as your soul accepted the gifts you now carry during your first life. I have no worries, Lynn. You will accept me now, just as you accepted me before.”

  There was no amusement in his voice as he finished his declaration. There was rather stone-hard purpose.

  “I’ve had enough of this.” She moved to brush past him, to leave the room, to leave the temptation and the questions he represented.

  Once again he caught her. He didn’t just shackle a wrist, though, he jerked her into his harder, taller body, gripping her hips and lifting her to him as her feet left the ground by several inches.

  “Let me go…” She would have torn into him with a furious barrage of orders and insults if his lips hadn’t covered hers.

  If he had taken the kiss with rough demand, she could have fought him. If he had held her with anything less than tenderness, she would have struggled. She was used to being manhandled. It was required in her training when she pitted herself physically and mentally against her brothers as well as the men she worked with. But she wasn’t used to this.

  He kept his eyes open, staring down at her with almost drowsy sensuality as his lips rubbed against hers. The friction sent shards of heat piercing her womb, her pussy. It had her gasping, her lips opening, making way for the wicked, gentle stroke of his tongue against the seam of her lips. And still he watched her.

  Lynn whimpered, gripping his shoulders for balance, her gaze caught and held by his as powerful, destructive pleasure whipped through her. As though the mere joining of lips had set off a quake of major proportions within her body.

  She hadn’t come close to finding a way to combat the
weakening sensations, when he released her. He lifted his head, those strange eyes glowing with heat, and allowed her to slide down his body. From her thighs to her belly she felt the rock hard impression of his erection burning through her clothes.

  “Deny that, little one,” he whispered. “If you can.”

  Chapter Three

  Not good. Not good. The mantra ran through Lynn’s head as she paced the small sitting room outside Ariel St. James’ bedroom days later. The soft rose carpeting beneath her feet muffled her steps as she paced back and forth in the room that was twice the size of the largest room she had in her own home.

  She could feel the added power of the warriors now prowling the outside grounds. The mental force they fought and lived by seemed to settle over every inch of the estate, snaking into the smallest holes, rooting out the most deceptive traps laid. And there had been several.

  Breach Control had known for years that the terrorist network known as Blackthorne wasn’t your run-of-the-mill group. No car bombings, no buildings exploding, no loss of mass populations to make a point.

  Whatever Jonar was after, it wasn’t world domination. At least, not as most groups were after. Jonar was after power. Not monetary power. Not worship. Such men were after a power that was said didn’t exist. A power that would leave Earth decimated, broken, unable to support life if it were stolen. Jonar wanted the powerful heart of the Earth, rumored to be under the protection of the Shadow Warriors, Devlin’s group of four. Guardian-gifted men who fought against Blackthorne.

  Lynn paced to the bedroom door, staring at the woman who still slept peacefully in the king-sized bed of silk and satin. She knew that beneath the linen gown Ariel St. James wore lay the second of four stones that was rumored to be the heart of the Earth. If she died, there would be nothing to stand between Jonar and the theft of it. If she didn’t heal, she would never be strong enough to use it to aid in his defeat.

  Damn. She remembered a time when she believed such plots, such evil, could only exist in the pages of a book. Psychic power was a charlatan’s trick and what little did exist was undependable at best. She had learned differently. Some powers weren’t entirely reliable, unless those possessing it learned to control it. Like her. She still had not learned complete control. She could sense evil, could block it, but she couldn’t find its source. She didn’t have to find its source to fragment its power, though.