Taken by a
Dragon, the seventh book in New York
Times best-seller Felicity Heaton’s hot paranormal romance series, Eternal
Mates, is now available in ebook and paperback. To celebrate the release, she’s
holding a FANTASTIC GIVEAWAY at her website and sharing sneak peeks of the
book.
Find out how to enter the Taken by a Dragon
international giveaway (ends March 22nd) and be in with a shot of winning a $75,
$50 or $25 gift certificate at her website, where you can also download a 5
chapter sample of the novel: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk/taken-by-a-dragon-paranormal-romance-novel.php
Here’s more
about Taken by a Dragon, including an excerpt from this paranormal romance novel.
Taken by a Dragon (Eternal Mates Romance
Series Book 7)
Felicity Heaton
Possessed by a need to save a beautiful Amazon warrior from the vision he witnessed, Loke snatched her from the midst of the battle between the Third and Fifth realm of the demons, and carried her to his home deep in the black mountains of Hell to protect her. But as the fierce little female awakens, he finds she’s anything but grateful, and his dragon instincts roar to life to warn she might be more to him than an enemy—she might be his fated female.
Felicity Heaton
Possessed by a need to save a beautiful Amazon warrior from the vision he witnessed, Loke snatched her from the midst of the battle between the Third and Fifth realm of the demons, and carried her to his home deep in the black mountains of Hell to protect her. But as the fierce little female awakens, he finds she’s anything but grateful, and his dragon instincts roar to life to warn she might be more to him than an enemy—she might be his fated female.
Anais
remembers meeting a handsome warrior in the heat of battle, a man who was her
enemy but who looked at her with eyes that held dark heat and wicked promises.
When she wakes to find that same dragon shifter has taken her captive, desire
is the last thing on her mind, but escaping him to return to Archangel, the
hunter organisation she works for, sounds less than appealing when he reveals
the reason he took her—to stop her from dying.
Can Loke
protect Anais from the dangers of his realm and how far will he go to save her
from the future he keeps witnessing? Can Anais resist the fierce attraction
that burns between them as hot as fire and stay true to Archangel or will her
heart be taken by the dragon?
Taken by a
Dragon is available from Amazon Kindle, Kobo Books, Barnes and Noble Nook,
Apple iBooks stores and other retailers. Also available in paperback. Find the
links to your preferred retailer at: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk/taken-by-a-dragon-paranormal-romance-novel.php
Taken by a Dragon – Excerpt
She eyed Loke. He probably wouldn’t let her
near it anyway. It was clear that he used that one knife for everything.
Shaving. Cutting his incredible blue hair. Cooking. Everything revolved around
that knife.
It was obviously quite precious to him.
If she stole it, would he let her go in
exchange for having it returned?
“It’s a nice knife.” She nodded towards it
and his left hand came down, settling on the spiralling metal grip.
He drew it from the sheath and stared at it
for long seconds, his handsome face turning pensive and his blue eyes filling
with emotions she couldn’t decipher, ones he decoded for her when he spoke, his
deep voice echoing around the cave.
“It was my father’s.”
“I can see it means a lot to you.” She
hadn’t expected it to mean so much though or that just mentioning the knife
would affect him so dramatically. He looked lost as he stared at it, and a
little broken, no longer the strong and determined male he had been just a
moment ago. “Have you lost your father?”
He nodded and his expression shifted, turning
even more sorrowful. “I lost my mother at the same time. The dragon wars took
them both when I was two hundred. My aunt too.”
Anais’s heart went out to him. She couldn’t
imagine what it must have been like to lose so many people who were close to
him at the same time. It must have devastated him. She didn’t know whether two
hundred was young or old for a dragon, but she guessed from his look that he
had been young and that those two hundred years hadn’t been enough time with
his parents.
“I lost my sister.” Those words slipped
quietly from her lips, spoken from her heart to his, born of a need that seized
control of her.
A need to connect with him and show him
that he wasn’t alone in his pain.
They had both experienced loss.
He lifted his head and looked across at
her, a softness in his eyes and his expression that touched her and felt
dangerous. She looked away, unable to keep her gaze on him, because he was
tearing down her defences again. Or maybe she was the one to blame. She had
reached out to him after all. She fought the fierce gravity that tried to pull
her to him and cursed herself for seeking a deeper connection with him. She
didn’t want to get closer to him. She needed to focus on escaping.
Even though she felt certain it was more
dangerous for her out there than it was in the cave with him.
“How?” he whispered and slowly sheathed the
blade.
Anais focused on it, mentally cursing
herself again for raising her sister’s death. She should have known he would
ask about it and would want to know the particulars. It had been a long time
since she had thought about it and even longer since she had spoken to anyone
about what had happened, but it still hurt. The pain of grief was still raw
even after all these years.
“I lost her nine years ago.” She kept her
eyes on the blade sheathed against his left hip, afraid to look at him while
she told him about her sister, letting him into her heart. She didn’t want to
see how he would be looking at her. She didn’t want to see the sympathy in his
rich blue eyes. She didn’t think she could bear it. “I never knew that she was
a member of Archangel. I only found out after she had died. I didn’t even know
the man she had married was a light fae. Christ, I had been so happy for her
when she had brought him to meet me. They had been so in love.”
She closed her eyes and suppressed the sigh
that wanted to leave her lips. Her sister really had been in love with him, the
sort that rarely came around. True love. One that would have lasted forever.
Literally in her case.
“They had a kid… a little girl.” Her throat
closed and she swallowed hard, fighting the tears as she thought about
Annabelle and how she was growing up in a world without her mother. “She was
only a baby when Suzanne, my sister, was killed in an attack on their family
home. Suzy’s husband’s enemies targeted her and the baby. He managed to save
Annabelle, my niece… but my sister… the injuries… he couldn’t—”
She cut herself off as tears filled her
eyes and she couldn’t breathe. Pain consumed her, tearing her heart to pieces
all over again, so strong that it felt as if the attack had happened only
yesterday. It had killed her when she had discovered what had happened to Suzy,
and that they had almost lost Annabelle too.
She had been so angry with Aevys. She had
blamed him for what had happened to her sister. He had come to her and
explained, and she had wanted to hate him, but she hadn’t been able to bring
herself to feel that emotion towards him. He had been devastated by the loss of
his mate. He had been broken.
And he had never recovered.
Whenever she visited him and Annabelle, he
slowly gained a look, one that told her that seeing her pained him, even when
it gave him pleasure too. He had told her once that she looked too much like
Suzy. She didn’t want to hurt him, and she had told him so. She had even
offered to meet with Annabelle elsewhere. He had refused, had hugged her, and
told her that she was always welcome before confessing that he liked seeing
her, because it reminded him of his mate.
Archangel constantly pressed her about him
and she constantly lied and said she had no contact with him or her niece. She
protected them. She had to, in honour of her sister’s memory, and for the sake
of her niece and Aevys.
She wouldn’t let Archangel hurt them and
she feared they would if they found them, shattering her fragile and carefully
constructed image of the organisation that had become like family to her and
was now her home.
“Anais?” Loke whispered softly and she
lifted her head, a little gasp escaping her when she found him standing just
inches from her, his handsome face etched with concern.
“Sorry… I was just thinking about Annabelle
and Aevys.” She scrubbed her hands across her eyes and drew down a deep breath
to steady herself.
“Do you still see them?” he said and she
nodded.
“I pretend not to know where they live
though.”
Loke’s deep blue eyebrows dipped low.
“Why?”
Anais sighed. “Because of Archangel. They
want to study him because he’s one of a rare breed of fae that they don’t have
documented. Annabelle is just like him too.”
He backed off a step and his face darkened.
“Study. It is a nice way of saying capturing, torturing and dissecting.”
She wanted to reassure him that Archangel
wasn’t like that, but she couldn’t bring herself to lie to him again. Her
earlier words to him still haunted her. She had been so quick to defend
Archangel, spouting the lie without flinching, even when she knew they did bad
things as well as good. They actively studied species and he was right, it did
mean capturing them, holding them in cells, and often forcing them to reveal
their abilities. She didn’t condone it, but she couldn’t pretend it didn’t
happen.
Archangel were her family though. It was
her home and it meant the world to her. She couldn’t stop herself from
defending it, even when she knew deep in her heart that they did terrible
things to some of the people they captured, and not all of those people were
guilty of committing a crime against a human or good non-human. There was a
shadier side of Archangel that many of their hunters didn’t know existed
anymore, or perhaps they were like her and turned a blind eye to it because
Archangel was the only family they had and the only place they could call home.
It was the only place where they belonged
and fitted in, a part of something that made sense to them in a world that was
no longer the one they had grown up in. She was sure many hunters felt as she
did, as if Archangel was the only place for her now because she couldn’t turn
back the clock and return to the time when she had been unaware of the
dangerous fae and demons who shared her world.
It was a place where she could be with
others like her, others whose eyes had been opened and whose heart beat with a
need to protect the innocent and unsuspecting humans from the dangerous world
around them.
The light from the fire faded and she
glanced at it. The branches were black, nothing more than ash, threaded with
glowing orange cracks. Loke looked there too and moved away from her. He
gathered more wood from a stack against the side of the cave, placed it onto
the dying fire, and crouched in front of it.
He leaned closer to the stack of wood, shut
his eyes and frowned as he opened his mouth.
Shock rippled through her as he breathed
fire.
It ceased and he raised his head, his eyes
opening and locking on her. “You are surprised. Why?”
She shook herself and shrugged. “I just
didn’t think you’d be able to do such a thing in your current form. Yesterday,
you said you wouldn’t breathe fire… and I sort of figured that meant you
couldn’t… not when you’re not a dragon.”
“You think strangely.” He sat back on his
heels and prodded the fire with a stick, encouraging it to spread to the other
branches. “There is no dragon and no man. There is only me. I am both. Both are
one. I merely have two forms and I am comfortable with both. I do not think,
feel or act any differently depending on my form. My mind and my heart remain
the same. However… it is more difficult to breathe fire as I am now.”
Anais supposed that made sense, even when
her mind rebelled against it. “Archangel teaches us to view the animal
separately from the other form. The animal is always the more dangerous form.”
Loke’s lips curled into a smile that held
no warmth. “From what you have told me, and what I know of your kind, it would
appear the other form is the more dangerous one… the person and not the
animal.”
Anais fell silent and sat down on the furs
near the fire, on the opposite side of it to him. She couldn’t argue with him.
Humans were dangerous. Animals tended to live in a sort of harmony with each
other and their environment. People tried to control their environment and each
other.
She frowned at her knees and then at Loke.
“Your kind are no different though. You mentioned a war.”
“Wars.” He loosed a sigh and tossed the
stick onto the fire, his blue eyes fixed on it as it caught and burned. The
golden light played across his bare torso, highlighting his honed muscles with
accents and shadows, and danced across his face as his expression turned
pensive.
“That’s even worse then.” She didn’t flinch
away when he raised intense eyes to meet hers. She weathered his dark look, not
heeding the warning. She wasn’t going to sit in silence and let him make her
species out to be the more dangerous one when his kind had gone to war many
times. “Your species didn’t learn their lessons. Humans don’t either. We fight
over everything.”
Loke shook his head, causing a slender
thread of blue hair to fall down across his brow. He swept it back into place
and ran his fingers through his hair. “Mortals fight over one thing. Land. The
same as dragons. The wars did their work. Entire clans were wiped out. Our
numbers are few now and our lands no longer crowded. Mortals will end up the
same way if they are not careful.”
Anais couldn’t argue with that either. It
was only a matter of time before humans unleashed Hell on Earth, killing vast
numbers of the world’s population with weapons of mass destruction.
“So dragon numbers are low now?” She leaned
back against the rough black wall of the cave and resisted looking off to her
left towards the huge arched entrance to it. “How many dragons remain?”
Loke shrugged again. “I do not know. In my
clan… perhaps no more than fifty when once there were over three hundred.”
“Does your clan live near here… in another
cave?” Maybe a bigger one. She couldn’t imagine fifty people sharing a cave
like Loke’s one.
He shook his head and shifted position. He
sat on his backside, crossed his legs and leaned back, bracing his palms on the
black ground and showing off his torso. Anais did her best to keep her eyes off
him, but it was difficult. She didn’t want to appear rude, or as if she was
avoiding looking at him. She also didn’t want to end up blatantly staring at
his chest either, and she knew she would if she dared to look at him longer
than a few seconds at a time.
“They live in the village. I have not been
there in many weeks. I prefer it here.”
He looked around his cave and she had to
wonder why he liked it here more than he did down in the village.
“How long have you lived here?” She took in
the cave again. Sparse. Grim. Far from comfortable. The word village conjured
images of homes, structures with roofs and furniture. Maybe even more modern
conveniences.
Like a razor. Perfume. Clean clothes.
Loke tipped his head back and stared at the
ceiling of the cave, his blue gaze distant.
She fought the urge to run her gaze over
him while he was distracted and failed. Her eyes drifted down the strong line
of his neck, lingering on his pronounced Adam’s apple again as he swallowed,
and then wandered over the square slabs of his defined chest and down the thick
ropes of his stomach. Eight pack. She had never seen a man with an eight pack
before. She lost herself in counting each muscle, only stopping when she
reached below his navel. A dusting of dark blue hair led down from it, into the
tight waist of his rich blue leather trousers.
They were laced over the crotch.
Anais’s cheeks heated and a wave of desire
crashed over her, ratcheting her temperature up and making her heart beat
harder.
The intense sensation of Loke’s eyes on her
caused the blush on her cheeks to darken and she dragged her eyes away, pinning
them on the fire instead. She fought for her voice, needing to say something to
dispel the tension in the air, the thick buzz of desire and passion that
stemmed not only from her, but from him too.
“Eight centuries.” His deep voice curled
around her, and her body reacted as if he was speaking low words of seduction
rather than stating facts.
She heated inside, heart fluttering weakly
against her chest, skin prickling with awareness and need, a yearning to feel
his strong callused hands skimming over it and maybe pressing in a little to
give her a glimpse of how powerful he was.
She coughed to clear her throat, battled
her out of control emotions, and focused on what he had said, trying to use it
to distract herself enough that she could rein in her desire.
Eight hundred years.
Anais raised her chin and looked across the
fire at him.
There was heat in his eyes, but something
else too, a feeling that struck a chord within her. Loneliness. He had lived in
a cave, high in a mountain, for eight centuries, and he looked as if it had
taken its toll on him, whether he knew it or not. He was lonely.
A dragon in his mountain.
But he was no longer alone.
She was here with him.
But for how long?
Taken by a
Dragon is available from Amazon Kindle, Kobo Books, Barnes and Noble Nook,
Apple iBooks stores and other retailers. Also available in paperback.
Find all the
links, a fantastic 6 chapter downloadable sample of the book, and also how to
enter the giveaway and be in with a shot of winning a $75, $50 or $25 gift
certificate at her website: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk/taken-by-a-dragon-paranormal-romance-novel.php
Books in the Eternal Mates paranormal romance series:
Book 8: Marked
by an Assassin – Coming in spring 2015!
About Felicity
Heaton:
Felicity Heaton is a New York Times and USA Today
international best-selling author writing passionate paranormal romance books.
In her books, she creates detailed worlds, twisting plots, mind-blowing action,
intense emotion and heart-stopping romances with leading men that vary from
dark deadly vampires to sexy shape-shifters and wicked werewolves, to sinful
angels and hot demons! If you're a fan of paranormal romance authors Lara
Adrian, J R Ward, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Gena Showalter and Christine Feehan then
you will enjoy her books too.
If you love your angels a little dark and
wicked, the best-selling Her Angel series is for you. If you like strong,
powerful, and dark vampires then try the Vampires Realm series or any of her
stand-alone vampire romance books. If you’re looking for vampire romances that
are sinful, passionate and erotic then try the best-selling Vampire Erotic
Theatre series. Or if you prefer huge detailed worlds filled with hot-blooded
alpha males in every species, from elves to demons to dragons to shifters and
angels, then take a look at the new Eternal Mates series.
If you want to know more about Felicity,
or want to get in touch, you can find her at the following places:
Website: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/felicityheaton
Twitter: http://twitter.com/felicityheaton
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/felicityheaton
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