The Ice Dragon Read online

  The Ice Dragon

  Tianna Xander

  Rose is convinced that no man, let alone a dragon, could possibly want her. When an ice dragon turns on the heat, she does what her instincts scream for her to do. Grabs her sister and heads for the hills with a dragon in cold and calculating pursuit. With her destiny held in a kiss, will she ever let him get close enough to prove their match?

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  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 events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011

  ISBN: 978-1-55487-970-0

  Cover art by Martine Jardin

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Devine Destinies

  An imprint of eXtasy Books

  Look for us online at:

  www.devinedestinies.com

  The Ice Dragon

  Dragon Bound Two

  To my own alpha male. I have no idea why you ask where I get the ideas for my heroes. You should know.

  Chapter One

  Rose couldn’t believe they were moving into a dragon’s house. She knew April, her older sister, fancied herself in love with the brute, but she’d never dreamed they would move in with him! She blamed it on those nude photos. If she ever found out who took them, she would blow them up.

  Pain shot through her chest at the thought. She had killed her own parents that way or, at the very least, she’d turned them into something else.

  Whatever the case, they were gone and had been for a long time. Long enough that she had to believe they were never coming back from it.

  She wanted to believe that if she found her own dragon, that her strange, unwieldy powers would suddenly be put to rights. Who wouldn’t want to believe that? She would love to be like her mother and wave a wand to get everything she wanted.

  Apparently, witches only came into their true power when they met and married their true mate. Whether their mate was a dragon or a mage, 1

  it did the trick. Too bad she didn’t know that before she’d blown up her parents.

  She glared at the box that held her wand. It would stay there forever if she had anything to say about it. But she didn’t. At least once a month her sisters would make her drag it out, dust it off and try to use it. You would think they would have stopped the process once they learned their spells would never work without a mate.

  April was lucky. She knew what her dragon thought every minute of every day. Too bad the rest of them weren’t so lucky. Every time her sister’s mate, Drake, smiled at her, she wondered if it was finally the time he would breathe his fire on her and send her to hell. Sometimes she wondered if her sisters felt the same. Still, here they were, moving into the dragon’s house after knowing him, for what, a week? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  “Come on, Rose.” Her sister, May, yelled from the back of the truck. Help us carry this stuff in.”

  “Why did we hire movers if we’re doing all the work ourselves?”

  She knew the answer to that, too. Her sisters didn’t want the movers handling certain boxes, so they’d rented a do-it-yourself van and moved the more

  sensitive—spell

  related—materials

  themselves. Still, it felt better to complain about it.

  “Just grab your boxes and carry them in,” April 2

  said as she snatched up a few of the ones with her name on them. “You’re lucky Drake has such a huge house. You’ll all get your own bedrooms.

  Sorry, but some of you are going to have to share bathrooms. I can’t do anything about that.”

  Rose looked up at the house for the first time.

  “Holy crap, April, this isn’t a house, it’s a friggin’

  castle.”

  April stopped and looked up at it with a grin.

  “Well, not really, but it sure is big. You have to admit that.” She turned to give Rose a wink. “And it’s almost Tansy proof. The outer walls and the floors are made of stone.”

  “You mean marble, don’t you?”

  “Nope…well, the floors are marble, but not the walls.” She frowned. “At least I don’t think they are.” She looked at the house for a minute longer, shook her head, then continued inside.

  Rose had nothing left to do but grab her boxes and follow her sister in.

  3

  Chapter Two

  Okay, she’d given it a month and the rules were driving her crazy. Rose paced her room. No one could go out without an escort. They even had to have chaperones when they went to work.

  Good grief! She was over twenty-five years old.

  One would think she could go to the mall without a babysitter.

  She was going crazy with all the dragon rules.

  Not to mention the little get together parties her sister kept hosting where they invited every dragon male they could think of. Not one of them tried to stake a claim on any of them. Why didn’t April get the message and stop trying so hard?

  There was another get together tonight, damn it.

  She’d skip it if she had her way, but there was no doubt whomever was assigned to babysit her tonight would have her home and in the drawing room at the correct time. She sighed.

  What in the world made them think that this was a good idea? She looked around her room 4

  with a grimace. What if she had an accident here?

  All of these precious antiques would be lost. She knew she really shouldn’t complain. Her room here was larger than her bedroom at home and she didn’t have to cook! Rose hated cooking. They all did. For one thing, they sucked at it. They would have starved to death if it hadn’t been for restaurants and TV dinners.

  Rose turned her attention back to her room. It was beautiful really. Painted a pale rose, which was ironic, it set off the white trim and the white lace curtains at the large French doors. She strode to the doors, pushed the curtain aside and looked out at the large balcony she shared with her sisters.

  She stepped back, let the curtain fall back into place and examined the antique furniture. She loved the large, hand-carved four-poster bed with its matching dresser and armoire. The dark cherry wood gleamed from repeated polishing.

  Sighing, she flopped down onto the bed and stared up at the lacy canopy. She couldn’t help but wonder what their lives would have been like if she hadn’t blown their parents to smithereens.

  Would she and her sisters even be here?

  “Absolutely not,” she said to the beautiful lace.

  “Mom and Dad would have protected us and April wouldn’t have had to sell herself to a dragon to buy our safety.”

  5

  “Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Rosie.”

  Rose sat up and glared at one of her younger sisters. “The last time I looked, this was my room, Tansy, so get out and mind your own damn business.”

  “My, you’re touchy today. What bug crawled up your butt and bit you?”

  “Just get out!” Rose picked up one of the pillows and threw it at her sister. She love
d Tansy, but the irritating little worm always managed to get on Rose’s last nerve.

  “Come on, lazy bones. We have lots to do to get ready for the party tonight.”

  “Screw the party.”

  “Oh!” Tansy’s eyes widened. “I thought you wanted to find your own dragon.”

  “As if!” Rose snorted. “Like I want to live the rest of my life with some bossy dragon telling me what I can and can’t do. No thank you.”

  Besides, if there was a dragon out there meant for her, she would have found him by now, right?

  After all, she’d met at least eighty over the last few weeks. There couldn’t be anyone left.

  “Come on, lazy bones. We still need your help warming things in the oven and setting up the buffet table.”

  “Drake is rich, why can’t he hire somebody to do that? What are we, his slaves?” Rose sighed after that last outburst. Even she knew that was 6

  uncalled for. Still, it didn’t make it any easier to go downstairs and act like everything was great, when all she wanted to do was come back up here to her room and have a good cry.

  Tansy bounced up and down on her toes. As usual, she was full of energy and smiles. She even wore bright clothes to show everyone she was always in a good mood. It seemed strange, that someone with such a dark and dangerous job like firefighting—that the dragons insisted she quit by the way—would wear such bright colors and be so damned perky. Rose didn’t do perky. In fact, she hated perky with a passion.

  “Good grief, Tansy. Do you have to be so damned happy all the time? It’s disgusting.”

  Tansy just laughed. “I can’t be anything other than what I am.” She skipped over to the bed and sat down next to Rose. “You need to stop blaming yourself. Any one of us could have…” She let her words trail off. “As sucky as we are at casting spells, it’s no wonder something like that hadn’t happened before…or since.”

  That was the problem. Every day Rose worried that she would do something to harm someone else. She wasn’t even safe in harming the dragons now. As much as she hated to admit it, none of them had lifted a finger to hurt her or her sisters.

  Apparently, the dragons weren’t as bad as they had been led to believe all these years.

  7

  Rose wandered around the room and sighed.

  Filled with her sisters, a few of their female cousins and overbearing male dragons looking for mates, the guest list was rather lopsided. It was easily two men to one woman.

  It wasn’t as though she disliked men so much as she just didn’t want one bossing her around for the rest of her life. Rose glanced around the room.

  What difference would it make in the grand scheme of things? Hadn’t a bossy, overbearing male already taken over her life and her sisters’

  lives?

  Having lost what little appetite she had, Rose set her plate down on a convenient sideboard and headed for the French doors leading to the gardens. She needed some fresh air and she needed it before she went mad. The crush of people in here was almost enough to drive her over the edge. She’d never been good in crowds.

  Her signature mid-calf skirt brushed her legs as she walked and she reveled in the decadent feel of velvet as the hem slid over her calves. She glanced down at the deep burgundy skirt and smiled.

  Nothing made her feel better or more feminine than pure velvet.

  She waltzed past the men who meandered about the room eating the food her brother-in-law had provided and dancing with her sisters. Not 8

  one of them had approached her since that creep, Viktor Wolonczech, the ice dragon, tried to force her to kiss him. No one forced this girl to do anything.

  The jerk had been so arrogant he’d actually bent her over his arm and tried to press his lips against hers. The nerve! She didn’t even know him. The ass refused to let her go until she remembered her self-defense classes, stomped on his toes and kneed him in the groin. That was when he’d dropped her, damn him.

  Dragons may be difficult to kill, but apparently, their dangly part was just as sensitive as any human man’s. More so, perhaps. After all, legends had it that dragons felt both physical and emotional pain more acutely than their human counterparts.

  Rose hadn’t seen the arrogant jerk since—not that she missed being manhandled. Still, an invitation to dance once in a while wouldn’t be amiss.

  The cool night breeze hit her as soon as she left the crush of the party. Rose inhaled deeply, loving the scent of the flowers on the perfumed air. She gazed down at the moon-kissed garden, tempted to go for a stroll through the lovely foliage.

  “What are you doing hiding out here?”

  Rose turned to see her oldest sister, April, striding toward her. “What difference does it 9

  make where I go?” she asked with a derisive snort.

  “It’s not like any of those guys give a damn about me.”

  “You brought that on yourself,” April countered with a grin. “After all, you did knee Viktor in the crotch. Some of them have even asked Drake if they should wear a cup around you.”

  Rose laughed aloud at that. She couldn’t help it.

  “Well that explains the rather unrealistic bulges a lot of these guys have.”

  April giggled. “Well, that area is rather sensitive for any man. Since they think of their packages as one of their most valuable possessions—and what man doesn’t?—they take its protection seriously. You know how dragons guard their treasures.”

  Rose didn’t know. Not really. All she knew was what legend told, which was dragons guarded their treasures selfishly.

  “You’re ignoring our guests, my love.” Drake slid up beside April and snaked his arm around her waist. Leaning down, he brushed her hair back and kissed her on the forehead.

  Rose swallowed thickly and looked away. Deep down, she wanted what April had with her dragon. She really did. Yet Rose had no idea how to put up with such an overbearing man.

  “Come back to the party, Rose.” April took her 10

  husband’s hand and turned toward the house.

  “You’ll get a rest from it all this weekend.”

  Looking back over her shoulder, April smiled, a blush covering her cheeks. “We are taking a short honeymoon where Drake will mate me properly.

  It was what we were talking about the day you burst into Drake’s office to complain about Viktor.”

  “Oh, that’s right.” How could she have forgotten that? She had charged into Drake’s office to complain about Viktor’s highhandedness and caught April on his lap actually casting spells that worked. They weren’t even fully mated yet and her sister already had some semblance of control over her magic.

  They didn’t say why they had to leave.

  Apparently, dragon mating was some secret thing no one had made Rose or the other Flowers girls privy to. Whatever the ritual was, afterward, April and Drake would share the same life force and she would live as long as her husband.

  As far as Rose was concerned, the jury was still out on whether or not that was a good thing. After all, it seemed like things would get plenty boring after a few thousand years or so, but what did she know?

  Rose looked past her sister and brother-in-law to the ballroom beyond. She really was in no hurry to go back in there and have the twenty or so male 11

  dragons ignore her again. It was enough to give her a complex.

  She reached out, took her sister’s hand and squeezed her fingers. “I’ll be in. Just give me a minute or two. I need to think.”

  “Okay.” April patted her arm. “Try not to take too long, will you? I don’t want to have to explain to the others why you get to avoid the suitors and they don’t.” She grinned.

  Rose nodded before dropping her sister’s hand and turning to look out over the gardens. She rested her hand on the stone railing in front of her and stared out at the moon-kissed foliage.

  She did need to think. She wanted to cook up a plan to get out of this madhouse and find a place where she could be alone.
All this togetherness was making her sick with worry. Rose never knew if or when her dubious gift to blow people and things to kingdom come would rear its ugly head.

  She had to get out of here before she hurt someone else—including those dratted dragons. That’s all there was to it.

  “Every time I see you, you’re standing alone with a frown on your face. You don’t smile much, do you?”

  Rose jumped and turned, lifting her hand to her throat with a frown. He wouldn’t smile much if he’d killed his parents either. “Stop sneaking up on me. That’s a good way to get yourself kicked 12

  again.” She glowered up at the blond dragon who stood almost a complete head and shoulders taller than her five-foot eight frame.

  “I think I’ll take my chances.” Viktor moved up beside her and rested his hands on the low stone wall.

  Rose felt the heat radiating off his fingers and moved her hand away with a frown. “It’s your funeral.” Closing her eyes, Rose wished that was a joke, but with her gawd-awful powers, anything could happen.

  “Why do you fear me?”

  Rose closed her eyes. What could she say to that? Since she didn’t know how to respond, she stood silent, her body rigid, acutely aware of the man next to her.

  “Surely you have seen that your legends are false. In fact, you and your sisters are deemed the world’s greatest treasures amongst our kind.”

  Why did he have to go and say that? Couldn’t he just leave her alone? Rose blinked back tears of frustration and turned to glare up at him. “I’m not afraid of you or your friends, you big goon!” She pushed away from the wall and began to pace.

  “God, you’re so arrogant that the thought that I don’t like you didn’t even cross your mind, did it?”