Deal With Her Dragon Read online

  Deal With Her Dragon

  Thor’s Sons Crave Curves, Book 1

  Ruby Sirois

  First Edition

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

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  Copyright © 2020 Ruby Sirois

  Cover copyright © 2020 Nighttime Birds Creative

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  Cover design, interior design, chapter illustrations, book layout by Nighttime Birds Creative

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  Stock photos: rocich / CanstockPhoto.com, outsiderzone / CanstockPhoto.com, stryjek / CanstockPhoto.com, 13UG13th / Depositphotos.com

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  The scanning, uploading, downloading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book including for review purposes, please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  This book is intended for sale to adult audiences only. It may contain substantial sexually explicit scenes and graphic language, which may be considered offensive by some readers. Please store this work where minors cannot access it.

  Blurb

  The only thing this dragon protects more fiercely than his hoard… is his heart.

  * * *

  Forty-something Emelie Odenberg is a divorced mead-making witch with a failing company on the razor’s-edge of bankruptcy. Desperate to save it, she turns to her very last resort: summoning a vicious Nordic dragon for help.

  * * *

  Ragnarr Thoringr loathes witches. He’s despised them for eight hundred years. But there’s something irresistible about the beguiling plus-sized witch who conjures his attention.

  The deal? A handful of wishes to bail out her business, in exchange for immediate payment.

  The currency? A gorgeous dragon pleasuring every lush curve of her body.

  The catch? To take a share of the dragon’s hoard is to become a part of it. His, forever.

  Author’s Note

  Please be advised, Dear Reader, that some parts in this book deal with infertility and miscarriage.

  I have done my best to tread lightly and to treat the subject with empathy and respect.

  However, if this is a trigger for you, please read on with care.

  R.S.

  Contents

  1: Ragnarr

  2: Emelie

  3: Emelie

  4: Emelie

  5: Ragnarr

  6: Emelie

  7: Ragnarr

  8: Ragnarr

  9: Ragnarr

  10: Emelie

  11: Emelie

  12: Ragnarr

  13: Emelie

  14: Emelie

  15: Emelie

  16: Ragnarr

  17: Emelie

  18: Ragnarr

  19: Emelie

  20: Ragnarr

  21: Emelie

  22: Ragnarr

  23: Emelie

  24: Ragnarr

  25: Emelie

  26: Ragnarr

  27: Emelie

  28: Emelie

  29: Ragnarr

  30: Ragnarr

  31: Emelie

  32: Emelie

  33: Emelie

  34: Ragnarr

  A Note from Ruby

  But Wait, There’s More!

  Landing Her Dragon

  Copyright

  Linnea

  Aegir

  Glossary and Swedish Pronunciation Guide

  Also by Ruby Sirois

  What is “A Rousing RubyNesque Romance”™?

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  1: Ragnarr

  Mine.

  * * *

  My dragon instincts scream it as her curves beckon me. When her scent taunts me, when her witch’s spell invokes me. It echoes through my soul, as essential to life and as constant as a heartbeat. It surges through my veins like blood. It pounds through me, hammers through me, drowning out all other sound.

  * * *

  Mine.

  * * *

  At first I see her only through a thick mist, its pearly wisps wreathing her luscious bare curves like scraps of white silk. Her long red-gold hair flutters like a pennant in the damp spring breeze blowing in off the archipelago, her full lips forming the words of a häxjävel’s cursed ritual. Her soft arms are raised in supplication, fingers splayed to the heavens to call down their power.

  I abhor witches—but she is glorious. Irresistible. I can’t help myself. I come closer.

  An aura of singular glamour clings to her, backlighting her limbs and emphasizing the soft, rounded shapes of her. Is she a witch or a goddess? My dragon wants to worship her just to find out. The need to possess her is the need for air, for water, for gold: impossible to withstand.

  * * *

  Mine.

  * * *

  The breeze carries to me my curvy temptress’s scent: wildflower honey and rare herbs, underscored by a tantalizing hint of light feminine musk. I lick my chops in anticipation. I can almost taste the salty-sweet essence of her. Greedy, I swallow it.

  Her body lures me. I am helpless against her power.

  Her ample hips, round and soft and begging to be stroked. Begging to be loved, laved, revered. I picture clawed fingers indenting the silken flesh as I thrust into her. As I make her mine. Again and again.

  Soft round breasts, heavy and full, tipped with nipples as pink and hard as carved coral set in ivory. They beg to be suckled, to be weighed in my cupped hands, teased and tasted.

  The generous mound of her belly, and the fluff of curls below it, red and wild as dragonfire, hiding the tantalizing depths of her most secret treasure.

  I am a dragon. I lust after treasure. Cold bits of gold. The sharp steel of weapons of lore which only have ever known victory. Piles of priceless gems, glittering like shards of ice.

  Glorious treasure. I collect it, count it, guard it. I live for it, kill for it. Once, I almost died for it.

  And yet I’ve found in this instant that I also lust after her.

  A häxjävel. A fucking witch. An abhorrent devil.

  A sweet witch-goddess whose ample curves taunt me, tempt me, draw me out.

  Damn her—I am helpless to resist the siren song of her.

  * * *

  Mine.

  * * *

  I have loathed witches for eight hundred years. I was cruelly wronged once, and I swore then that I would never be tricked again. Never be wronged again. Never be hurt again. The pain was too great, and it almost killed me. I swore then—never again. Hatred has replaced the pain, turning to stone in its wake like the bones of long-dead monstrosities. Through the interminable centuries, my lust for revenge has only been matched by my lust for treasure.

  Throughout the centuries I have accepted feminine trinkets offered me in sacrifice or supplication, selfishly eaten them up and spit out the remains.

  No maiden is safe from a dragon; the legends speak truly on that account. Yet none of them were worthy of my hoard, as lovely or young or noble or rich as any of them had been. They meant nothing to me, those trinkets. They were nothing to me but the gaudy glitter of fool’s gold: a moment’s idle amusement, consumed then quickly discarded. No maiden has ever awoken my dragon’s instincts in this way except that single one, long ago.

  Before I was betrayed. Before I learned better.

  Until now.

  And as my witch’s curves and creamy limbs emerge into view through the thinning scraps of mist, taunting m
e, calling to me, beckoning to me, my rational mind wars with the instincts screaming that I have just found something to lust after. To possess. To protect. To hoard.

  And no one can tell a dragon no.

  * * *

  Mine.

  * * *

  Mine.

  * * *

  Mine.

  2: Emelie

  When I told Linnea I would do anything to save our business, this wasn’t what I’d had in mind. But I’m desperate, and there’s nothing more I can do but press on, complete the spell as best I can, and hope for a real-life miracle.

  I stand shivering in front of an ancient runestone carved with intertwined dragons, the sinewy lines of their bodies stained blood-red by a long-dead Viking’s hand.

  Any witch worth her Himalayan salt lamp knows that skyclad rituals are the most powerful, but even mid-May is cold in the thick ancient growths bordering the rocky sea edges southeast of Stockholm. My skin studs with ripples of gooseflesh, my nipples stand proud and defiant in the intermittent breeze.

  My familiar, Whimsy, twines in a feline figure-eight around my ankles, lending me his strength to focus and aim the magic toward our goal.

  * * *

  “O dragon ancient, I call now thee,

  Son of Thor, appear before me!

  O dragon ancient, I command thee,

  Son of Thor, bow before me!”

  * * *

  After the echoes of my incantations have faded into the cool air, after the sacrifices and libations are made, I wait. Whimsy swishes his tail, impatient.

  Nothing happens.

  I shift my weight, wondering if I’ve done the ritual incorrectly, or if perhaps the herbs and crystals my coven-sisters had so carefully prepared were the wrong ones. All this, and yet it has had no effect. It would almost be funny, if it weren’t so serious.

  I glance at Whimsy, but for once he has no opinion to offer. The big Maine Coon sits, alert, one lynx-tufted ear flicking back and forth to scan for any sound. I run over what I’ve done in my mind, looking for flaws, trying my best not to second-guess myself.

  Standing motionless, I peer at the runestone in rapidly descending twilight, resisting the urge to hug my naked curves against the damp wind cooled by the murky waters of the Baltic Sea.

  Now is the time of gloaming: neither day nor night, a great time of magic and power. A wide horizon slices the sun’s ember in two. The sky is fiery with streaks of vermillion, gold, crimson. Cool earth beneath my bare toes, loamy and thick with fallen needles. Springtime wind rustles the tips of the pines, soughing through the newly green branches, whistles crisply past my ears.

  I still taste the honeyed sweetness of mead on my lips, the libation I’d blessed and shared with the earth. The pad of my left thumb stings where I’d sliced it with the blade of my athame, the drops of blood a sacrifice fed to the runestone as fuel for the spell’s power.

  Whimsy's sooty bottlebrush of a tail blends in amongst the shadows deepening across the forest floor. He gazes sardonically up at me with owlish green-gold eyes. If it weren’t for the imposed silence he’d have something sarcastic to say, I just know it.

  Anxious, I bite my lip. Everything precious to me hangs in the balance, at stake in this moment. Everything that matters most to me: my life, my future, my livelihood. This has to work, or everything I’ve been working for over the past five years is lost.

  I hold my breath, hoping beyond hope, fearing failure—yet also fearing what I might have summoned if I have succeeded.

  My coven-sisters warned me. Tried desperately to dissuade me. But this ritual is my last resort.

  If it fails, there is nothing more I can do to save myself and my precious So Mote It Bee.

  There! What was—?

  “Whimsy! Did you see—” I cut myself off, wary of shattering the sacred power of the cast circle… but can’t help but wonder if it was a flash of reflected sunlight, or if it was just my imagination? I hold my breath.

  Nej, I decide after a long moment. No. The sparks I just saw must have been a final ray of sunlight shimmering off a bit of crystal embedded in the runestone’s matrix. My heart sinks. I exhale. I’m almost ready to give up.

  A noise. I look down. Whimsy stares intently at the stone, large ears pointed at the ancient carvings limned in crimson. I follow his line of sight and choke back a gasp.

  A wisp of golden light, a ray of noontime sun taken on a life of its own, traces the carvings. Serpentine, it coils down around the stone’s mossy base, follows the circumference of the sacred circle I’d cast at the ritual’s start. Details grow, solidifying from the light like flames licking up from a branch catching fire: the flash of cream-gold scales accented with ice-blue markings, a hint of leathery wings, another flash of ice-blue—the glint of one slitted eye. The diamond glitter of needle-sharp teeth. A curl of pale smoke from flared reptilian nostrils.

  The shape grows to the size of an SUV, to the size of a subway car, to the size of a skyscraper, curling around me like a nighttime terror. His maw opens, shooting a massive burst of flame over the treetops into the evening sky. Dwarfing the ancient trees, his display is accompanied by a roar like the deepest bass notes of an erupting volcano. If he’d aimed down, all Whimsy and I would be right now is a pile of ash—along with half the forest.

  Whimsy yowls in terror, dashing off in an inky streak of panic under draconic forelimbs for the cover of the nearby pines.

  Little traitor—not that I blame him.

  I hold my ground only because I’m frozen to the spot. My heartbeat triples, cold sweat beads on my face. I’m on my own.

  Then the dragon’s form begins to shrink and condense, assuming at last a humanoid shape.

  All at once, the dragon is standing there in front of me. I stare at him, mouth dry.

  He is drop-dead gorgeous.

  Tall and thickly muscled without a hint of fat or softness on him, wide shoulders taper in to a narrow waist and flat, ridged stomach. Long hair the color of summer sunlight at noon falls over his left shoulder almost to his navel. On his right shoulder is a tattoo, the same image that’s carved into the runestone: two dragons intertwined, maws agape. His arms are long and powerful, his hands large. He would put a bodybuilder to shame.

  Bare to the waist, the dragon’s legs are encased in skin-tight leather pants tucked into tall boots. The soft leather hugs every taut muscle and sharp angle. I have to force my eyes to skirt over the bulge between his legs, and I feel my cheeks getting hot just at the thought of it. He makes a little sound of amusement, and I wonder if he read my thoughts somehow.

  “Lilla häxan,” he says. Little witch.

  I have to choke back a snort, glancing down at my ample curves and then back up at him, one eyebrow raised. I haven’t been described as little in a very long time. Quite the opposite, in fact.

  I fight to suppress flashbacks of my ex-husband, certain the gorgeous dragon’s already making fun of me in just the same way. Sharp retorts fight for expression. It’s only with an effort and a lip bitten almost bloody that I say nothing.

  Don’t make him angry, Em. The last thing I want is to risk losing his help—or worse, my life.

  If my coven has it right, even my eternal soul is on the line.

  His eyes rake languidly over my bare body from top to toe, and I tamp down the urge to cover myself with my hands. A wave of awkwardness washes over me, along with an urge to conceal myself. Instead, I clench my fists, raising my chin proudly, defiantly, daring the dragon to say more.

  Nej, I promise myself. I have nothing to be ashamed of. I won’t let him get the better of me. Not like Peter. Never again.

  “Lilla häxan, I heard your call.”

  His voice is deep and thickly accented, with a touch of gravel in its deepest bass tones, yet still melodious. The dragon’s eyes are an impossible shade of ice-blue, like the heart of a glacier. There is a sly intelligence in them, a cunning avarice which cuts right through to my core. His face is unearthly beautiful yet
unmistakably masculine, as if chiseled from stone by a master sculptor.

  “But I answer it,” he continues, “only because I wish to do so, from curiosity—I respond not to petty attempts at commanding me.”

  He fixes me with an icy stare, and I have no doubt that I’m out of my depth just as he says.

  “I am Ragnarr Thoringr, son of the god Thor and the forest spirit Sigrid, she who once was the deity of this place. This is my runestone and now, my forest; everything you see around you, along with much that you do not, belongs to me.”

  The dragon rolls his r’s lavishly, primally, gutturally, in a way that modern Swedes have lost.

  “I have no love for witches,” he says.

  Something in the dragon’s voice reveals this is an understatement.