Can She Move Past Who She Is?

In my newest dragon shifter paranormal romance, THE PROTECTOR, I had a ton of fun getting two characters together who had been at odds for years. But especially my heroine...for a few reasons.

Lyndi is a rare female-born dragon. This is the first heroine in the series not to be a human who is turned dragon later, so we get to see one already comfortable in her dragon skin. This makes her pretty badass. 

Unfortunately, female-born dragons struggle because they can't have children. Mates are found amount human women instead. But Lyndi isn't taking that lying down. She's built her own family by taking in orphaned dragons. I based these boys on my own nephews (and even let them pick their endings), which was so much fun.

However, Lyndi has another whammy. She's the cousin of the High King, which makes her a political pawn. Her eventual mating will be to benefit the king. Which is why she's kept Levi, the beta of her brother's team of enforcers, at arm's length so long. But everything is about to change...

I hope you enjoy Lyndi and Levi's story. Here's an excerpt!

Without warning, a thick arm banded around her stomach and yanked her right off her feet and under a different bush. She landed with a grunt she managed to only make in her head, swallowing the sound down.

Levi put his lips to her ear, his whisper barely audible. “Don’t move.”

Barely, she kept from wiggling, going as still as a mouse in the jaws of a cat. Only he didn’t let her go. They sat on the ground, her between his legs, which were bent at the knees on either side of her hips, his arm still solidly around her, his hard-as-steel chest pressed tight against her back.

She never allowed herself to get this close.

Damn if instant heat didn’t swamp her, molten at the junction of her thighs, setting her to pulsing in time to her heartbeat and pushing the pain in her lower back clean out of her head.

No. No. No. No. Now was not the time to let this unspoken, unacknowledged, lethal thing she felt toward him hold sway.

Lyndi forced herself to remain motionless, closing her eyes and reaching for calm. Control.

But his own heat surrounded her along with that sweet scent of cigar smoke and the smoothest brandy, like earlier in the war room, just like his voice. Is that what his skin would taste like?

Not the first time she’d wondered.

“Are you okay?” he husked.

“Fine.” Or she would be as soon as she could get away from him.

Her wound wasn’t her biggest concern right now. All shifters had accelerated healing, part of what allowed them to live so long. By the time Drake gave the all clear, she wouldn’t be lying about that.

A low grunt told her Levi didn’t believe her anyway, but for once he didn’t push her. After a pause, his arm relaxed against her and he uncurled his fisted hand, his fingers flattening against her belly.

“Stay where you are,” Drake ordered. He must still be dragon to be communicating telepathically. Where was he anyway? “I’m going to check whether they’ve gone.”

Against her, Levi’s body eased infinitesimally. She wouldn’t have known if she wasn’t plastered against him. Stiffening, she went to sit away from him, but he tightened his grip. “Hold still.”

He was right. Until Drake gave the okay, she should hold exactly as she was.

“You’re trembling,” he whispered, lips still at her ear, breath tickling. His fingers, which she was horribly aware of, brushed against her lightly. She might as well have been naked the effect that small touch had, sending electric sparks of need hissing through her blood.

“Don’t,” she warned, voice low.

The fingers stopped and he stiffened against her, muscles going rigid.

Guilt, an emotion that had only grown over the years of keeping this man at a distance, overrode common sense. “I’m ticklish,” she lied.

“Since when?”

“You’ve never touched me there, so you wouldn’t have known.” She winced. Wrong choice of words. Way too much inuendo for comfort. Change of subject time. “You know, if you hadn’t been distracting me, that dragon wouldn’t have got so close without me sensing him.”

“I wasn’t distracting you. I was just flying next to you.”

“Go fly next to someone else.”

“Back to the babysitting thing, are we?”

She still didn’t want to talk about that. Lyndi snapped her teeth together, catching her lip, and the metallic taste of blood hit her tongue.

“You know, I try to protect everyone on this team,” he pointed out, with a lingering hint of a chuckle. “It’s my job as beta.”

She should gratefully accept the reprieve and keep her mouth shut. “Are you laughing at me?”

“Not at you.”

“At what, then?”

Levi’s arm tightened around her. “I’m laughing at my own stupidity.”

“Which means what exactly?”

“Apparently no good deed goes unpunished when it comes to you,” he accused. “I’m trying to remind myself of that.”

“I don’t need your good deeds, either.”

A hiss escaped him. A sound of such frustration, so unlike Levi, that she tried to scoot forward slightly only to come up against the iron band of his arm.

“What do you need then?” he asked. “Because I can smell it all over you. Your need…it’s torture.”

The cousin of the High King, Lyndi Chandali has lived with the constant threat of being pawned off as a political prize. A rare, female-born dragon like Lyndi can’t truly mate—not in the way it counts. Which is why she’s kept her distance from a certain sinfully delicious Beta. Instead, she’s built a life for herself giving orphaned dragons in the Americas a home.

As Beta of his team of enforcers, Levi Rowtag is a fighter first, last, and always. His job is to protect—his team, the shifters in his territory, and the stubborn woman hell-bent on fighting with him at every turn. He knows from the moment they first meet what she’ll never accept—they are destined to be mated.

But with the kings at war, the enemy is now coming for Lyndi. Worse, he’s coming for her orphans, too. He’ll have no choice but to defy his king and go rogue if he has any hope of protecting them all…and finally claiming his mate.

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