Not His Dragon
Not This Series
Book One
Annie Nicholas
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Publisher: Annie Nicholas
Date of Publication: 7/2016
ASIN: B01FP2XSE2
Number of pages: 224
Word Count: 75,000
Cover Artist: Janet Holmes
Tagline: Here be dragons.
Business is taking off for Angie Weldon. She put her freakishly sharp nails to good use when she opened her back-scratching spa in downtown New Port. The local shifter community pounced on her skills and she’s knee-deep in shed fur. By the end of the year, if lucky, she could afford to move out of her crappy apartment.
Dollar signs flash before Angie’s eyes when a dark, brooding stranger books her solid for a week but she notices the possessive fury in his glare. She’s been around enough shifters to know the look, and she won’t go down that road again. Angie is literally swept off her feet by the intense shifter and he wants more from her than she’s willing to give. She figures it’s best to avoid eye contact and back away slowly. Until he changes her life by insisting she’s a dragon.
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Only one block
separated Angie from her workplace. Her lungs burned. No matter how much air
she sucked in, there didn’t seem to be enough oxygen.
A tall, slim man
smoking a cigarette watched her from half a block away.
How did she
notice him in her state of asphyxiation? Because his pale, blue gaze cut across
the distance and met hers with such intense fury that it scorched her retinas.
She slowed her
pace, glancing over her shoulder, but saw no one. Why was she the focus of his
death glare? Maybe he was friends with the jackass in the truck who’d
cat-called her and didn’t appreciate her attempt at sign language? If so, he
could take a number and get in line with all the other things wanting to
destroy her life today.
As Angie jogged
closer, she couldn’t help but notice the brightly colored tats peeking out from
under his long-sleeved dress shirt. His business attire looked out of place
with his shaved head and a cigarette hanging from his lips. He’d never be the
poster boy for GQ Magazine, but he sure fit her bad boy fantasies.
He strode into
her path, blocking her way. “What are you doing here?”
She tried to
brake, but flip-flops weren’t made to stop on a dime. The front ends folded
under and she scraped the tips of her toes along the concrete sidewalk. “Mother
fucker, son of a bitch…” She hopped on one foot to rub her bloody toes, then
repeated the process on the other foot. “What’s wrong with you?” She planted
her hands on his chest and shoved, propelling herself backward.
Pinwheeling her
arms, she caught her balance. Great, a supernatural. She had a better chance of
pushing the Hanover Tower.
He grabbed her
upper arm and yanked her kissing-close. “Don’t do that again.”
Her blood
smeared across his white shirt where she’d laid her dirty hands. She couldn’t
help but notice a small blue symbol tattooed by his left eye. From this angle,
she couldn’t see the design completely.
Try as she
might, she couldn’t jerk her arms free. Her heart hammered. “Let go.” She
glanced around for help, but no one seemed to want to meet her desperate stare.
They crossed the street, gazes glued to the ground. The pedestrian population
thinned out quickly as many of them found stores they just had to enter. The
scent of fear filled the air and only some of it was hers.
“What are you
doing in my city?” His whispered question sent chills down her spine.
“Your city? No
one owns New Port.” Oh God, she couldn’t stop her mouth. All she had to do was
apologize profusely for whatever imagined transgressions and he’d most likely
let her go. Angie stared at the shaved dark stubble on his head, since she
couldn’t take his penetrating glare. He kept his hair cropped real close.
Almost like velvet. She caught her hand before she reached to touch him. Her
senses said he was some sort of shifter, but she couldn’t tell what. She
suspected she had a little supernatural blood in her lineage, so her skills
were limited. Definitely not werewolf. Her ties to the pack were close enough
that she knew them at least by sight.
Unfortunately,
humans didn’t hold the monopoly on criminals. Supernaturals had them too and
Ryota had shown her how to best defend herself. She slid her free hand into her
front pocket. “I said, let me go.” She gave her arm another jerk.
He gave her a
condescending smile that would have frozen the Eastern Ocean. “Or what?”
She withdrew her
hand, aimed at his face, and pulled the trigger on her pepper spray,
remembering at the last moment to close her own eyes and mouth.
He let go and
roared an inhuman sound. The noise rattled the windows. She thanked God that
she’d emptied her bladder before setting the kitchen on fire.
Shit, shit,
shit.
She geared her
ass to holy-shit-it's-going-to-eat-me speed and didn’t think the soles of her
flip-flops hit the ground until she reached the door to her own little
business.
Annie Nicholas writes paranormal romance with bite. She has courted vampires, hunted with shifters, and slain a dragon’s ego all with the might of her pen. Riding the wind of her imagination, she travels beyond the restraints of reality and shares them with anyone wanting to read her stories. Mother, daughter, and wife are some of the other hats she wears while hiking through the hills and dales of her adopted state of Vermont.
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