Aroused In Flames (Curse 0f The Dragon Book 1) Read online

  Whoever it was was trespassing in my backyard. I had every right to confront them and find out what they were doing here.

  Before I could let myself hesitate again, I whipped around the shed and collided full tilt into a human body. I bounced off with a cry of surprise even though I already knew someone was there.

  The person spun around to confront me. That was when I realized it was a man—a completely naked man without a stitch on him. In order to make that determination, I had to look at him. Without meaning to, my eyes ran down his body. I spotted his penis and screamed in shock.

  The guy jumped back and yelled, too. His hands flew to his privates. Then he tried to cover his chest and wound up uncovering his package again. For some reason unknown to myself, I couldn’t stop my gaze from going back there no matter how hard I tried to look away. Every time I caught sight of that thing, I screamed again—more from surprise than from sheer horror, you understand.

  When I lunged away, my glasses fell onto my nose. That gave me a perfectly clear, unobstructed view of everything about him I didn’t want to see. I could make out every hair running down his inner thighs.

  I seized my glasses and pushed them up so I wouldn’t see, but when I whirled away again, they fell down. I couldn’t win.

  God, what was wrong with me? I knew what human male anatomy looked like. I just never expected to see it in my backyard at six o’clock in the morning. I tried to spin sideways so I wouldn’t see it, but the guy moved one of his arms again. The flash of white made me wheel around to make sure he wasn’t coming after me.

  I slapped at my bathrobe in a desperate search for my phone to call the Police. Only then did I realize I left it on my desk like a moron. I couldn’t even report this freak.

  At last, he figured out a way to cover his nipples with one arm. He gripped his junk in his other hand. That left the situation safe enough for me to round on him.

  I did my best to sound properly offended that he would dare to intrude on my private property. “What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”

  He took his arm away from his chest to touch his temple and immediately whipped it back in place. “Well, I’m not exactly sure. You see, I was in Dover Castle and then I….”

  “Dover Castle?” I pricked up my ears. “How could you be there and then…. here?” I waved at the yard.

  “That’s the part I don’t rightly understand.” He fingered his goatee again before he remembered to preserve his modesty. “It’s all a little hazy now.”

  He spoke with a strange English accent I never heard before. My curiosity overcame my fright and I took a closer look at him. He wasn’t half bad to look at even if he was naked. Wavy brown hair framed his angular features. His neat, trimmed mustache and beard gave him a distinguished appearance as long as I didn’t look below the neck. When I dared to venture south, I noticed lean muscle defined his arms and chest. His sparkling brown eyes flitted around the yard trying to understand what he was seeing.

  He cocked his head and studied me. “Where exactly am I?”

  “What?” I stammered. “This is…this is Wichita. Don’t you know that?”

  He frowned. “Wichita? Where exactly is that? I have never heard of it. Is it somewhere in Yorkshire…or perhaps Ireland?”

  “Ireland!” I blurted out. “Of course not! It’s in Kansas…..in America.”

  His eyes popped out of his head. “America! That’s impossible.”

  I pulled my head down between my shoulders. “I think I know where the hell I am even if you don’t. Do I sound English to you?”

  He inclined his head the other way. Then he raised both eyebrows. “No, I suppose you don’t. You have that distinct American twang. May I have the honor to know to whom I may be addressing myself?”

  I took a second to understand what he meant. He didn’t talk like anyone I ever met or even any Englishman I ever met. “I’m Allison—Allison Moore. Now you tell me who you are and what you’re doing naked in my yard.”

  “I am Sir Thomas Tierney Shelton, Madam.” He gave a sweeping bow that unfortunately uncovered every scrap of his real estate for me to see. I couldn’t decide whether to gouge out my eyes or run for the house.

  The longer this went on, the more I got over my surprise. This time, I managed to sneak a peek before he realized what he was doing and covered up again.

  When he came back to an upright position, I scrutinized him closer. “What was that you were just saying about Dover Castle?”

  “I came from there, although….” He wrinkled his nose at the yard. “I cannot account for how I got here.”

  “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  He scratched his head making sure to use the hand that covered his nipples. “I was in one of the tunnels, but it looked different. I woke up in a room full of coffins and I…..”

  “Which room?” I interrupted. “If you know about the tunnels, you must know which room you were in.”

  “I was in the second level down near the southern exit facing the coast. I was in the old pump chamber, but it had been converted somehow.”

  I furrowed my brow thinking as fast as I could. “That’s impossible. That level has been lost for nearly sixty years.”

  He cracked a wry grin. “Yes, well, I know the Castle well, young lady, I know where I was. The Castle belonged to my father by Royal Citation. Our family defended Dover from the Franks for generations before…..”

  He trailed off and scowled down at the ground. “Before what?” I prompted.

  I watched the wheels turning in his head. “I…. I can’t remember.”

  Something about him made me curious to find out more, but I couldn’t go near him the way he was. I whipped off my bathrobe and turned aside to hand it to him. “Here. Put this on.”

  I kept my gaze averted until I could look at him without seeing anything scandalous.

  “You may face me now,” he intoned with pompous superiority.

  I cast a scathing glance over my own bathrobe. “I guess you better come inside until we figure out what to do with you.”

  His gaze dropped down my pajamas. I cringed before that look. I hated to think what he saw when he looked at me like that. I wasn’t wearing a bra under my pjs and my glasses still perched on my eyebrows where I left them. I hadn’t brushed my hair from the messy knot into which I twisted it when I got out of bed this morning.

  That annoying sparkle in his eye made me think he might be laughing at me. I jerked away toward the house. “Come on if you’re coming.”

  I barged into my office before I realized I just invited an unidentified streaker into my house. I halted there. Maybe I should call the cops now. I floundered in confusion for a second. My phone sat on my desk right next to the computer.

  The guy—Thomas—came up behind me exactly the way I invited him to. Christ, I was a dope! What was I thinking? I should have told him to stay outside while I called the Police. Now he was inside the house. He could do God knows what to me now.

  In a fit of anxiety, I dove across the office and seized the phone. When I tried to put it in my pocket, I found I didn’t have my bathrobe on anymore. I gave it to this…. this pervert.

  I hustled away from him. I didn’t dare turn around until I got across the room. I smashed my back against the door and waved toward the couch. “You sit there.”

  He dutifully did as I commanded and lowered himself onto it. He tucked the bathrobe between his knees and examined the room. “This is delightful. What is that thing?”

  “That?” I stuttered. “That’s my computer.”

  He inspected it without getting off the couch. Then he shook his head. “What a strange country this is. Then again, so many strange things have happened lately, I don’t really know what to make of it.”

  That distant voice did something to my mind. I softened in spite of myself. “You probably haven’t had breakfast yet. Do you want a cup of….?” I checked myself from asking if he wanted a cup of coffee. “You pr
obably drink tea, don’t you?”

  “Why, yes!” He brightened up. “If you have some, I’d love a cup.”

  I dove out of the office and slammed the door behind me. My heart raced and a cold sweat broke out on my palms. What was I doing, making this guy tea in my office? I had to think. I had to make up my mind what to do. The phone still burned a hole in my hand.

  I raced down the hall to my room and put on another bathrobe. This one had pockets so I stuffed the phone into one. Now I was somewhat safer. I could call the Police anytime I needed to—assuming he didn’t attack me first.

  I rushed to the kitchen and boiled some water. I needed to keep my hands busy so I could think. How could he have been on the second level of Dover Castle? If he was any passing tourist, he shouldn’t even have known the old pump chamber existed.

  I poured the water into a cup and added a tea bag. I dolloped milk into the liquid to a pale muddy brown. I set it on a saucer and added a few gingersnaps for good measure.

  I carried the cup into the office and put it on the table next to the couch. “Here you go.” Then I retreated to the door again where I could flee at a moment’s notice.

  He picked up the cup and sloshed some of the tea into the saucer. He blew on it and sipped it straight out of the saucer.

  I frowned at him again, but he didn’t see. He dipped a gingersnap into the tea and took a bite. His eyebrows shot up. “This is excellent. I didn’t think any Americans appreciated tea.”

  “I’ve spent a lot of time in England.”

  He nodded and took another sip. Everything he did struck me as so odd I couldn’t figure him out. Besides the fact that he was stark naked under my bathrobe, he looked and acted like he just stepped out of some time machine from two hundred years ago.

  “Now tell me what you were saying before about your family defending Dover from the Franks.” The words slipped out before I could stop them. “How did you wind up in Dover Castle?”

  He snorted and shook his head. “My dear lady, I was born there.”

  This guy was off his rocker. “That’s ridiculous. The Castle has been a protected Scheduled Monument for decades. Before that, it was used by the government as a military installation. It’s been open only to visitors. No members of the public have lived there for decades. You’re not old enough to have been born there.”

  “As I said, my dear, I am not a member of the public.” His head spun around and he arched one eyebrow. “How do you know so much about Dover Castle?”

  “I’ve been there twelve times,” I told him. “I studied it as part of my doctoral dissertation on World War 2 and I’ve been back there doing research. I know all about it and I know you couldn’t have been on the second level. It’s been lost for nearly a hundred years.”

  His brows came together in the middle. “World War 2! The guide mentioned that, although I have never heard of it.”

  Now it was my turn to stare. “You’ve never heard of World War 2?”

  All at once, a million tiny fragments slotted together in my head. The way he drank his tea, the way he spoke, the strange things he said—it all started to form a picture.

  Maybe I was losing my mind, but I crossed the room and sat down in front of my computer. I didn’t concentrate on my research, though.

  I faced this strange man. “Tell me everything you remember from the beginning. Don’t leave anything out.”

  At that moment, a deafening chime echoed through the house. I bolted out of my seat and the guy jumped. He spilled his tea all down his front and screamed when the scalding hot liquid sloshed between his legs.

  I charged for the door. “Stay here! It’s only the doorbell.”

  I tore the door off its hinges and rushed out front. When I got to my entrance hall, I discovered a package on my step. The courier was already halfway down the street driving away.

  I picked up the package and returned to my office to find the back door swinging open. The fresh air rushed in, but the guy was gone.

  3

  Thomas

  I crouched behind a fence and stared out at a busy street. Odd carriages floated past my nose drawn by some invisible force I couldn’t understand. A few people crossed my line of sight. They all wore the same abysmal clothing I first saw at the Castle.

  I shrank from the nightmare unfolding before my eyes, but before I could go anywhere, another ghoulish apparatus whined down the street. This one had only two wheels and the most awful creature sat on its back. The fiend looked like some sort of giant insect with one shiny round eye where its head ought to have been.

  Thank the Heavens the thing traveled away from me where I didn’t have to look at it. I could not for the life of me understand this surreal world. This couldn’t be America. It must be some fantasy hallucination brought on by that guard’s weapon.

  I cringed into the undergrowth and made my escape. I ducked into an alley and cast a wary glance around. When I didn’t see anybody around, I emerged from the shrubbery. At least now I could somewhat relax. I needed to take stock of this curious situation in which I found myself.

  If I was in America, I couldn’t precisely recall how I got here. I could only faintly remember that grotesque creature in the mirror and glimpses of flying over the ocean.

  If that thing was me, then I had a serious problem. It looked like some medieval dragon out of a storybook. The wings alone filled the whole room back at the Castle tunnels. A row of spikes traveled down its spine to the tip of its long tail.

  Who was I kidding? After all, why not call a spade a spade, Shelton? No need to beat around the bush about the obvious. A row of spikes traveled down my spine to the tip of my tail. So that was me. I was a dragon, at least some of the time.

  I sauntered as well as I could down some alley in…. what did she call it? Wichita. What a crude and heathen name. I hated it along with the rest of America. The question was how to get out of here.

  I must have flown here. I couldn’t exactly electrocute myself with another one of those miserable guns to get myself transformed back into a dragon to fly back to Dover, now, could I?

  Not that America seemed all that bad—the little of it I’d seen, anyway. This alley, for instance, appeared quite nice as alleys went, all things considered. Greenery surrounded me. Tall board fences blocked me from any prying eyes—which, when I thought about it, was a good thing since all I had on was Allison’s dressing gown.

  Allison. She seemed nice, too, for an American. She made a smashing cup of tea, so perhaps all Americans weren’t uneducated savages the way I always believed.

  She didn’t strike me as nearly so ugly as the people I saw in the tunnels, either. Not even that ridiculous outfit of hers could make her ugly. She obviously just got out of bed this morning and she seemed genuinely curious about where I came from and what happened to me.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have run off the way I did when someone came to the door. She knew an uncommon amount about Dover Castle. I wasn’t expecting that and she knew quite a lot about this World War 2 everyone kept talking about. Maybe she of all people could help me get back there.

  No, I couldn’t trust her or anyone else. If she found out I was that…. that monster, she would scream and attack the same way those soldiers did at the Castle. So here I was back at square one no better off than I was before.

  To make matters worse, I came to the end of what I thought was an alley. Another fence blocked off the end. A door stood open into the most beautiful garden I’d seen in years.

  I crept into it just to look around. A rusty creaking sound attracted me to a clump of trees. When I walked around it, I came upon two chubby children swinging on swings. The seats swayed from some metal contraption, but after so many bizarre encounters with things I didn’t understand, I began to get used to the fact.

  The boy squinted at me. His round cheeks glowed crimson and he pulled a face. “What are you?”

  I glanced behind me just to ascertain that he really was talking to me. “Me? I�
�m a man, of course. Surely you can see that.”

  “You talk funny,” the girl declared.

  I had to smile at their youthful innocence. “I suppose I do, but you sound funny to me, too.”

  “Why do you talk funny?” the girl asked.

  “Because I come from another country,” I told her. “I come from England.”

  “Does everyone in England wear clothes like that?” She aimed a podgy finger at my dressing gown.

  I colored and bowed my head. “No, I’m afraid they don’t.”

  “I like the fairies and unicorns,” she remarked. “They’re pretty.”

  I glanced down at Allison’s dressing gown. I didn’t notice the pattern on it until now. I must look a strange sight in this get-up.

  “Do you belong to the circus?” the boy asked.

  I scoffed in spite of myself. How could they possibly understand everything that happened to me in the last twenty-four hours when I didn’t understand it myself? “No, my good chap. I don’t belong to the circus. I’m just…You could say I’m under a bit of a cloud at the moment.”

  He frowned again. “What does that mean?”

  “It means….” I began and cut it off. Nothing I considered saying would make any sense to these children.

  “What are you doing in our yard?” the girl asked.

  I opened my mouth more than once trying to decide what to say to her. What could I say? “I suppose you could say I’m lost and I don’t know where to go. I was just wandering around and I happened to walk in here.”

  Her eyes snapped open wide—as wide as they could go for her stuffed apple cheeks. “You’re lost? Why didn’t you say so? My mom could give you something to eat. We found a lost kitten and she gave it a bowl of milk on the back porch. She could give you one, too.”

  My chin sank onto my chest and I heaved a broken sigh. If only life could be so simple, I wouldn’t have to worry about walking around a strange town in a strange country wearing a woman’s dressing gown decorated with poor drawings of fairies and unicorns.