Mate Of A Dragon Villain (Skeleton Key) by Skeleton Key, Mandy Rosko Read Free Book Online Page A

"Forgiven. Now hurry up and eat," he said, grabbing two plates for himself. "I want to go to my mate and eat with him in good time."
    The mention of the word mate reminded Amanda of what she really was here. A well-treated prisoner, since Hargreave seemed to think she was his mate. She recalled him calling her “sweet,” how he promised to come back for her, and she shivered.
    The problem was how she couldn’t tell if it was in pleasure or…something else.
    She had to get out of here. She had to find that skeleton key.

    * * *
    H argreave watched and waited . It was something he was normally more skilled at, but now, as he heard the music from the castle, and saw the faded lights that attempted to glow through heavy curtains in small windows, he found he wasn’t as skilled as he would have thought.
    His body still itched. He felt almost as restless as he had back when he’d been a boy in Eldric’s prisons, awaiting a beating, hoping that today would be the day someone threw him an old bit of bread, and that no one would touch him…
    Well, it had been Eldric’s father, Edward, but that was neither here nor there.
    He couldn’t stand this waiting. He needed to get her out of there. He knew which area of the castle she was in. Some of the curtains had been opened when she’d been taken from her cell, allowing Hargreave to follow where they had taken her.
    Once to an area he didn’t know, and the next time to the finer wing of the castle. He just wasn’t entirely sure which room was hers.
    Was Eldric being delicate with her because she had saved his lover? Or because she was of high importance?
    Hargreave prayed she was not allied with Eldric. It would break his heart if she was, but he already knew that such a thing wouldn’t matter.
    She was his. Amanda. He’d never heard such a name before. Which country had it hailed from? Where did a woman who had fallen from the sky hail from?
    That blasted battle! Had it not been for that, and how he’d been forced to return to it, he could properly court her.
    Hargreave scoffed at himself the moment the thought struck him. Not only would he not have been there to save her from falling to her death had the battle not been taking place, but how was he to court a woman such as that? She was obviously a fine lady, and he lived in a destroyed castle with nothing to offer her but war and heartache.
    Still, the truth remained. She belonged to him as much as he did to her, and he could feel her calling out to him. Hargreave felt her need for him, and he intended to answer that call and take her home where she belonged.
    But first, he needed to prepare his men. Hargreave would not be able to do this on his own, and plans were already forming as he spread his wings and flew away into the night.

Chapter 6
    A manda made it her mission to find that damned key. She'd thought about it and thought about it some more, and there was no way in hell that thing had been in her apartment in a drawer and she hadn't known about it.
    It had to have appeared there.
    It wasn't her first thought. The idea that someone could have planted it there and plotted to suck her into this world had occurred to her.
    But at the same time, what were the odds that someone would want to go to the trouble of trapping a romance author in the world she'd created? If she'd created this world at all.
    No. That key opened a closet door and turned it into a portal into this world. That wasn't normal. That was—and Amanda hesitated to use this word—like magic. Magic was fun to play with in her novels, but in real life, it wasn't real.
    It couldn't be. The key had appeared to her for whatever reason, brought her to this world, and if she was going to get back, she had to find it again.
    In the seven days since she'd been given this finer room and nicer clothes, Amanda had looked everywhere.
    She really meant it. Everywhere. She'd pulled up the rugs to look beneath them, searching for trap doors or demonic symbols. She'd