Dragon's Melody

Dragon's
Melody

Ophelia Bell

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Prologue

D
ragons aren’t monsters. Dragons aren’t monsters,
Melody repeated over and over in her head.

Her five-year-old heart raced with excitement. She hoped the game would prove that dragons weren’t monsters. She knew deep d
own that she wasn’t in danger.

Daddy wasn’t really a monster. He was only pretending. He was pretending not to find her, too, even though she kept peeking out from her hiding place and giggling while he stomped around her room making goofy growling noises and hunching his shoulders. He craned his curly blond head around his huge, flannel-clad shoulders and made his eyes look that wild way he did sometimes—blinking so that the sunshine outside reflected in them, making them look like they glowed gold instead of their normal blue.

He made a loud snuffling noise and said in a gruff, scary voice, “I smell a little girl. Dragons like little girls the best. Especially giggling little girls because we feed on laughter. I hear yummy, yummy laughter.”

Melody pressed her fist to her mouth, struggling not to laugh again and sinking lower behind the clothes hamper. Daddy crouched on all fours and crept closer, still pretending not to find her but getting closer and sniffing like a big, silly dog. She wanted him to find her but didn’t want him to at the same time. He always tickled her when he did, and she both loved and hated being tickled.

But dragons needed laughter to live, especially the gold ones like her daddy pretended to be, and the idea of him starving made her very sad. She had a splendid idea, though. Maybe she could be the dragon for a change and make
him
laugh.

She geared up for it first, building her courage, and then leapt out at him with as big a yell as she could muster.

“Rawr! I’m a dragon!”

His eyes widened and he gasped, falling over onto his back and lying super still, like he was dead. Except she could see his chest rising and falling and his eyelids were cracked.

“Rawr?” She poked him. Then tickled him, wriggling her small fingers into his ribcage. “I’m hungry! You’re supposed to laugh!” She grew impatient and poked him harder. He finally twitched then lurched up and grabbed her.

Melody shrieked as his fingers dug into her sides, torturing her with tickles.

“I need to get my fill before you change the rules!” he said. “And you need to learn how to tickle if you’re going to be a good dragon.”

“Okay, okay!” She let out another breathless giggle. He finally stopped, pulling away and looking at her with a grin.

“Teach me how to be a good dragon?” she asked. She wanted to know how to play the game right, after all.

He sat up, stretched his legs out in front of him on the rug, and patted his lap. Melody affected a hunching, searching form and growled at him, turning her head side-to-side, sniffing like he did, and raking her hands in the air as she prowled toward him. He let out a hearty laugh.

“You’re close, but there are a lot of dragon secrets. I can’t tell you all of them—you have to learn some for yourself—but I can tell you a few.”

Melody frowned. She thought she’d been a terrific dragon just then. But she crawled further up his legs, sitting back on his knees and looking up at him.

“I’ll never tell, Daddy. I promise,” she said, solemnly. Because she knew if someone had a secret and they told you their secret, you should never,
ever
tell.

Daddy furrowed his brow and she realized she’d said the thing she wasn’t supposed to say. She wasn’t supposed to call him “Daddy” because her mom said he wasn’t, but the word just felt right when she said it. And she really, really
wanted
him to be that word.

He chuckled. “I know you wouldn’t, Melonhead. You’re a very special girl. You are so special that just before you were born, a big, gold dragon came and visited your mama and gave you his blessing inside her belly. It means dragons will always be your guardians, forever and ever.”

She knew it was all pretend, but she liked the idea of dragons being
good
creatures who lived on laughter, and not at all like the monsters movies made them out to be.

She scrunched her face up the way her Mom did when she was being very serious, and even crossed her arms, and said, “I’m ready.”

Daddy pressed his lips together and narrowed his eyes. “First of all, if I’m going to tell you the secrets, I need to make absolutely certain you won’t tell anyone else. A promise isn’t enough. I need to give you a magic tattoo, first.”

Melody loved tattoos so she immediately hopped up and found her special markers and brought them back to him. He picked one, studied it, then picked another and shook his head. “What’s your favorite color, Melody?”

She stared down at the collection of markers, trying to decide. She reached for the yellow one at first because it reminded her of him, but that didn’t feel quite right. If she was going to do it, she needed to be truthful about her favorites. She got up again, going back to her activity desk to rummage around some more. When she came back she knew exactly what to tell him. She reached for the blue marker then handed him the glittery silver pen she’d retrieved.

“These,” she said, sure she’d made the best choices. “They’re my favorites.”

“These are very good colors. Strong colors for dragons,” he said. He touched them each with reverence.

She stared at the markers, fascinated. “What do they mean?”

“Well, this one,” he said, holding up the blue one, “is for a dragon who will always know exactly how to make you happy. And this one,” he held up the glitter marker, “is for a dragon who will always protect you the same way I do and who will love you no matter what.”

He looked unhappy at her choices. “Can they both be my favorites?”she asked.

He shook his head and smiled. “Of course, sweetheart. You can have as many favorite colors as you’d like. Here, let’s give you the magic tattoo. We have to put it in a spot your mama can’t see, though. Where do you think it should go?”

She thought for a second and had a grand revelation when she remembered the tattoo she’d caught a glimpse of on his upper arm—an intricate pattern she still didn’t quite understand. She loved knowing the secret of its presence, but most of the time his shirts covered it up.

“Here!” she said, turning her shoulder to him and shoving up her sleeve.

“Ah, good choice,” he said. He tugged her sleeve higher, baring her shoulder, and bent his head, concentrating on the skin. He started tracing a line and she laughed at the feel of the plastic lid digging into her arm.

“You have to take the cap off, silly!”

“Oh!” He smacked his forehead with his hand. He pulled the lids off the blue marker and the silver one, then bent again, slowly tracing a shape on her skin. After studying his artwork for a second, he went over it again with the other marker. It tickled, but she forced herself not to laugh, even though she wanted to let him have the laughter. Instead, she held very still and watched while he drew a tiny pattern into her arm.

When he was done, she crossed her eyes and held her arm up trying to see it. “What is it?”

He laughed and hoisted her up in his arms, carrying her across the hall to the bathroom where they could both look at it in the mirror.

On her arms was a little blue dragon, with silver eyes and a silver tail and a blue and silver circle surrounding it.

“This little dragon will always protect you, my love,” he whispered. “Even when I am gone.”

“But you’ll never be gone, so you can protect me, too.” She wrapped her arms around his neck, safe and loved in his embrace.

PART ONE

Chapter One

T
he late summer heat of the San Fernando Valley threatened to suffocate Melody. It was past sunset and still sweltering. Her air conditioner had strained at the heat all day without providing any relief, so she finally gave it a rest. She couldn’t afford the power bill as it was.

She wandered through her small apartment, opening all the windows and hoping for a decent enough breeze to cool the place off. The aroma of fresh Thai food wafted up from the Boulevard, along with a breeze that was barely even a whisper. She closed her eyes, imagining she was standing on a beach in Thailand with her toes in the sand.

The fantasy only lasted long enough for her brain to trip into wishing mode, then planning mode, making a mental tally of how much money she had in the bank. Even with her new job and a nice bump in salary it would still take six more months of saving like mad before she would have enough to pay for herself and her favorite person—her mother, Julia—to take the trip they’d always dreamed of.

As a testament to her desires, a ragged map of the world graced the only wall in her apartment big enough to accommodate it. Melody had stuck pins in all the places she’d visited so far. The collection was depressingly small, with only a few major U.S. cities sporting colored nubs. As a flight attendant, she’d forced herself to stick to domestic airlines so she could have a solid home base and continue her education in between—something she’d promised her mother she would do.

So far, Los Angeles was the farthest she’d come since leaving the tiny little Appalachian town she’d grown up in. Even that distance had taken her four years, but she’d known back then that she’d never earn the money to fulfill her mother’s dream—
her
dream—if she stayed put.

Once she earned enough, she wouldn’t go back home until she’d traveled far enough west to come full circle. Los Angeles would hopefully be her launching point in a few months. By then she’d be able to buy her mother a ticket to California, and they would leave together. Fly to Hawaii first, then from there, keep going west.

It had been several weeks since she’d spoken to her mother last, which she regretted. Things had been tense between them lately—they always were this time of year. It had been the end of summer when the man she’d thought of as “Daddy” had left them.

Even after almost two decades, her mother still held onto hope that her old lover, Alec, would return.

“Sweetie, when you find a love like ours, you know better than to let go without a fight,” her mother had said.

But it wasn’t much of a fight if the other party forfeited.

The truth was, Melody still missed the only father she’d ever known. She absently rubbed the spot on her shoulder, reminded of the day he’d given her the silly magic tattoo. The sharp scent of her markers was just as fresh in her mind now as they’d been in the air on that day. Almost as vivid was the confusion and despair she’d experienced only a little while later.

Her memory was limited to vague images now—of a phone call during supper, Alec speaking to her mother in a low voice, strained with emotion, followed by her mother’s adamant refusal to accept whatever it was he’d told her.

They’d both looked so sad. Her mother was crying, and it made Melody cry too.

“You shouldn’t wait for me, Julia,” Alec had said when he kissed her goodbye, “but I will be back.”

And then he was gone.

A few years after that, Melody had made her promise to her mother. Alec had always planned to take them traveling around the world when Melody was old enough. She hated him a little for making a promise he couldn’t keep. But she always remembered how dreamy her mother would get, asking about the places he’d been. It seemed like he’d been everywhere, too.

So Melody resolved that she would be the one to give her mother that gift. On her tenth birthday, she’d made the pledge, telling her mother not to buy her a present, but to open a bank account instead, so she could save money to that end.

The kind of trip she wanted to take her mother on had evolved over the years, and the itinerary she’d settled on wasn’t cheap, but she persisted. She became a flight attendant right after high school, believing the job might give her some advantages, allowing her to achieve her goal more easily. The perks were very nice, but mostly it meant fending off the advances of countless men.

Some of the offers she got were tempting—plenty of obviously wealthy passengers took a personal interest in her, but she always demurred as tactfully as possible. Becoming romantically entangled was not part of her plan.

Falling in love just led to abandonment and heartbreak.

Giving up that job had been a mixed blessing. She’d truly enjoyed the job itself, both in spite of and because of the patrons. The catalyst for the change still puzzled her. Even though it had been months since it happened, the day was still etched in her memory.

During her last cross-country flight to Los Angeles, Melody had encountered one first-class passenger who’d grown exceedingly agitated, though the woman tried to hide it. During takeoff, the woman had clutched the armrests so hard Melody swore she’d left permanent finger-shaped dents in them. And every time Melody walked past, she thought she heard the woman’s teeth grinding.

“Ma’am,” she’d whispered, laying a gentle hand on the woman’s shoulder, “if you have an anti-anxiety prescription in overhead, I’d be happy to retrieve it for you once we’re at cruising altitude.”

The woman shook her head and looked at Melody. “No,” she said, voice tense. “Drugs do no good. What’s your name?” She peered up at Melody with a pair of the strangest eyes—gray but flecked with red motes that almost glowed.

Her gaze had latched onto Melody’s so directly it startled her. Something in the woman’s eyes reminded her so starkly of Alec that she nearly blurted out, “Daddy?” She recovered quickly, took a breath, and answered, pointing at her name tag. “Melody.”

The sun shone through the window and into the woman’s eyes at just the right angle to make the red flecks in them glow even brighter.

“What a lovely name. Call me Nancy.”

“Would you like a pair of headphones? Listening to music might help relax you.”

The woman clutched Melody’s hand and squeezed, her grip strong but shaky.

“No, thank you. Just come by and talk when you can. You are a truly blessed young woman, you know.”

Melody went about her business, stopping by to speak with the woman whenever she could steal a moment.

The similarities to Alec lingered, though Melody could never quite put her finger on what it was that captured her attention. The woman looked nothing like Alec, with her long, red hair and pale skin compared to Alec’s tawny mop and ruddy tan.

It wasn’t a visual similarity, Melody had thought, but something in the woman’s bearing. She was almost majestic once the plane was finally at a level altitude, as if Nancy actually took pleasure in flying.

As Nancy disembarked later, she paused, clasping Melody’s hand and thanking her. The woman’s face glowed with some odd light none of the other passengers had and Melody let out a small gasp, tightening her hands on the woman’s fingers.

“You see us, don’t you?” Nancy said. “It isn’t a mirage, if that’s what you thought. Not a hallucination.”

Melody glanced around the cabin. The other patrons seemed to be stalling, as though they were still waiting for the plane to land.

“What are you?” Melody asked.

Nancy shook her head. “That you can’t know yet, but know you are Blessed. You belong in a higher place than the one you’ve found. Here …” She handed Melody a business card that felt way too warm in Melody’s fingers. “There’s a place for you with us, Melody. One meant for you.”

Melody had taken the card, perplexed by the woman’s cryptic words. The card itself was a curiosity, stark black with only the letter “M” in light gray on one side. On the other side were two lines: “Magnus Securities. Los Angeles” followed by a phone number. She’d already considered moving to the west coast, and planned to spend the week before her next flight apartment hunting. But the card distracted her to such an extent that she found herself itching to call the number.

The rest had happened so fast, her mind still spun a little from it. That had all been close to six months ago. She’d been hired as executive assistant to the corporation’s CEO, then eventually promoted to add the duties of personal flight attendant on the rare occasion the CEO, Kol Magnus, needed to take the corporate jet for important business.

That had happened only once, and the aftermath was what ate at her now, threatening to derail her entire plan. The job description itself seemed tailor made for her, the perfect combination of stability and opportunities to travel. She just hadn’t counted on winding up with a boss as sexy and inaccessible as Kol Magnus.

Cursing, Melody turned from the window and headed for the bathroom, peeling off her tank top and shorts on the way. She ran a cool bath, waiting for the tub to fill. When she finally slipped into the water, she sighed. Slowly, her body temperature sank back to a comfortable level, but her thoughts continued to blaze.

Her boss’ face kept springing up. Fucking Kol Magnus. Every inch of the bastard lit her up in so many ways. The worst part was that he was married, and to a woman every bit as scintillating as Kol himself.

His wife, Hallie, wasn’t like the other bombshell trophy brides Melody saw the other executives at the firm flaunt. Hallie was a purely sensual woman: beautiful, intelligent, down-to-earth, and entirely comfortable with her sexuality.

“God, I want to be like her,” Melody muttered.

What she really wanted stayed in her head. Her secret, the thing she’d never speak lest she give credence to a desire that ran counter to her greatest wish. The wish to discover her world before she let herself get attached to a man. It didn’t help that she could never have him—thoughts of Kol still compelled her to slip her fingers down between her thighs and spread her legs a little wider, making her bathwater slosh over the side of the tub.

The fantasies were always just a little different, but in all of them she saw herself as the pet of a man like him—a bird in a gilded cage, kept for his enjoyment. The fantasies rarely involved his face, however. The sheer sexual presence of him was what held sway over her in her mind, but the man who took her in her fantasies could have been anyone, as long as he aroused her passion the way Kol had.

She still filtered in pieces of the memory from the day she’d served as flight attendant on the Magnus private jet only a few weeks earlier. The first time she’d been asked to fulfill that part of her job description.

It had promised to be an easy cross-country flight between Los Angeles and Boston with just Kol and Hallie as passengers. That is, until she’d caught the two of them on the verge of sex even before the plane had taken off.

After working as a flight attendant for years, she wasn’t exactly a stranger to passengers misbehaving. But seeing Kol and Hallie fooling around had been the first time she’d had the urge to join in.

The thick, ropey bulge of Kol’s hard-on had been unmistakable at the front of his trousers when she’d told them to strap in for take-off. She walked away with her mind fixated on getting a glimpse of him in all his glory—he was such a beautiful man. All he had to do was ask, she told herself. He was her boss, after all. The gold pendant she wore at her throat was the symbol of her loyalty to him—and a reward for completing her ninety-day probationary period at his firm. Only a handful of employees were privileged enough to receive one of the gold medallions. Each one had a carved onyx emblem of the company’s serpentine symbol set in the center. It had come with a token raise, too, but she’d promised herself she’d save most of it for her trip with her mother.

Melody gripped the medallion with her free hand while the other did its work between her thighs. She imagined the connection the pendant gave her to him. Her fingers were a poor substitute to Kol’s tongue, but they did the trick. She’d never imagined he would actually ask. But he did. More than that, he had
commanded
her to undress and touch herself in front of him, and then he had
commanded
her to spread her legs across his face.

“I’d like to taste you when you come. To have my tongue on that pretty clit of yours.”

She’d been able to see every glorious inch of his body after Hallie had undressed him. Hallie had been the only one to tend to Kol’s enormous cock, but the mere sight of the massive trunk of flesh between his thighs had been a little intimidating. Not the least bit intimidating to his wife, though. Even as his tongue sank into Melody’s aching pussy, Hallie had taken the thick length of him entirely into her slick and waiting depths, then leaned forward over Kol’s torso to pull Melody into a kiss.

Melody couldn’t pinpoint the moment when she came, only that the sensation of Kol’s tongue between her thighs had changed. He’d slipped the length of it into her, and the pleasure that followed had been so mind-crushingly perfect she’d lost control.

As much as she tried after that, she’d never been able to replicate the sensations, either with other men or with toys. Lying in the tepid bathwater with her fingers desperately working her clit and her feet up on either side of the old, claw-foot tub, all she had was the memory. It was enough for now. She cried out when the spasms took hold and clamped her thighs around her hand, pressing deeper to try to ride out the pleasure for as long as possible.

How could one man’s tongue have ruined her so thoroughly? She needed more of him. Or she needed to get the hell away from him before the proximity drove her mad.