Billionaire Dragon's Mate: BBW Paranormal Shapeshifter Dragon Romance Nove (5 page)

Cillian shook his head, unlocking the door in front of a visibly exhausted, but still completely captivating Ruby.

“Welcome to my humble abode. Make yourself comfortable,” he said, letting her walk in in front of him.

It might have been a gentlemanly thing to do, but in all honesty, he just wanted to sneak a peek at that gorgeous ass of hers.

Nice,
he thought with a dark smirk, closing the door behind him.

The lights flickered on all across the apartment and the curtains rolled out from in front of the windows, activating his morning arrival mode. Somewhere in the distance, the coffee machine whirred to life.

“Wow,” Ruby said bluntly, shrugging off his jacket and hanging it on a hook near the door. “Tres chic, Mister Biker. I would never have guessed.”

She wandered deeper into the apartment, the living room and kitchen all one spacious, almost ridiculously large room, with the master bedroom off to one side of it and his study to the other. It acted as his base of operations while he was away from Emerald Ridge, which had been more and more lately. There was something about the Greenmeadow mansion in Colorado that just didn’t sit right with him at the moment.

But it was no time to be thinking about uncomfortable topics like that when he had a gorgeous redhead in his apartment and, perhaps more importantly, he was slowly bleeding out from a stomach wound.

“Yeah, well, I am full of surprises, Miss Accardo. I hear it’s one of my least impressive qualities,” he said with a wink, kicking off his boots and socks.

His toes dug into the plush white carpet, and he let out a relieved sigh. It was good to be home. Though he loved the job, he hated running around all the time, worrying about other people’s business. Dragons really weren’t meant for hard work, and even though Cillian was decidedly the flag bearer of a new generation of more productive, less lazy dragons, he still would have preferred sleeping his days away on a pile of gold somewhere.

Ruby turned to face him, and the first rays of the sunrise licked at her auburn hair, giving her a bit of a halo. His heart beat faster than it should have. Cillian blamed it on the wounds and the residual adrenaline pounding through his veins, but he couldn’t even fool himself. She was something special, alright. Something special he couldn’t have.

“So I assume my father sent you?” she asked, putting her hands on her hips.

She looked cute like that. Like she really thought she could scold him for saving her from a pack of deranged werewolves.

“You assume correctly,” he agreed, walking through the living room area to the kitchen sink while peeling off his black tee.

He winced as it ripped off of a few wounds, having stuck to them when they were still fresh. Some jerk had given Cable what could be identified as a shank, and the big lug of a man had taken no time in putting it to good use. It was only when Cillian had managed to knock him face-first into a wall and then whack him over the head with a pool cue that the man went down. But that of course meant that Cillian had to deal with his friends. All in all, it had been thanks to his quick legs that he made it out of there in one, mostly complete, piece.

He heard the way Ruby’s breath hitched a little as the tee came off of him, and he smiled privately. So maybe it was because of his wounds, but he’d like to think that it was at least partially the swooning sounds a woman makes when she sees one hell of a man.

“You’re hurt. Badly,” she said, rushing over to him. He had just turned on the tap to try and clean himself a little, but she closed it just as quickly, giving him a stern look. “Do you have an emergency kit? Go lay down on that couch there. You shouldn’t be walking around.”

His bemused smile melted off his lips and now it was his turn to sigh.

“Yes, ma’am,” he agreed, pointing at a cupboard near the sink. “You’re lucky you’re cute,” he remarked sourly, stalking over to the couch and laying down with a plop.

It wasn’t the right decision – the groan that tumbled forth from his lips was sign enough of that.

“Hey, don’t sass me, mister. I barely know your name, and for some reason, you thought it was a good idea to piss off the leader of a gang of werewolf bikers. Really, I think you should be the one counting your lucky stars.”

“It was well worth it,” he remarked with a grin, blowing a kiss to her as she sauntered over to him, med kit in hand.

It must have been the right thing to say, because she blushed a little. It looked good on her. Made her look a little more like the delicate flower he assumed she was under all that makeup and tight clothes. Ruby took a seat next to him and opened the kit, finding some disinfectant, wipes and a needle and thread.

“It’s really not necessary. Most of this will just heal on its own,” Cillian protested mildly, but just enough so he could say that he put up a fight.

She was close to him, and while he could claim that he was doing his job by keeping her nearby, he had much more selfish reasons for doing so. For instance, then he could internalize that sweet lemon and vanilla scent of hers. Or he could sense her pulse racing when she looked at him – all things he and his dragon didn’t mind one bit.

“You’re talking to a medical professional here. Let me be the judge of whether or not you’re okay, hmm?” Ruby spritzed the disinfectant on a few wipes and tapped carefully at the wounds on his abdomen, some piercing right into his sides and abs.

He was lucky that Cable hadn’t got a bigger knife. Then again, Cable should have been thankful that he hadn’t just turned into a dragon and demolished the entire bar in a fit of rage. It was a nice ace to keep up his sleeve. For emergencies and really bad practical jokes. Ruby lifted the pad and looked at it, frowning. She showed it to him, cocking one brow.

“Why is this green?”

“Oh. I’m a dragon. That’s why. Couldn’t you tell by my perfect physique and my daring quest to save you?” he queried, trying to keep from wincing when she cleaned another wound.

“A dragon, huh. I’ve never heard of a dragon shifter. Not too many of you guys, I guess?”

“Most of the Forbes top 50 richest people in the world are dragons, actually. Little known fact. Our Christmas parties are killer,” he joked, getting a little snort out of her in return. “Shouldn’t you be a bit more rattled by all of this? Me being a dragon, Cable, your impromptu engagement…”

Ruby looked at the platinum ring on her finger, and Cillian caught sight of it too. His dragon grumbled with irritation at it. It was only through a modicum of good sense and reminding himself that it was none of his business that he managed to contain the need to pull it off her finger. He didn’t like anyone else’s jewelry on her, which was ridiculous as he really had no claim to her other than the fact that he decided that he really,
really
wanted her.

He exhaled a breath of relief when she took it off herself and set it down on the table, giving it one more stormy look for good measure.

“I should, shouldn’t I,” she agreed. “This is going to sting a little. But you’re such a big, strong man, I’m sure you can handle it,” Ruby said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. He didn’t mind. He liked her with a bit of sass.

“I guess the last month has been so pants on head insane that I find myself thoroughly unimpressed by everything. That, and I think I’m exhausted.”

She pinned the needle into him and started to stitch him up. Blessedly, he could barely feel a thing.

“Are you going to take me back to my father?”

“That was the deal, yes.”

“Oh.” Ruby made a few more stitches with Cillian keeping a keen eye on her. She wouldn’t meet his gaze. “So why didn’t you take me there right away?”

He shrugged, immediately finding that he wasn’t currently in any shape to shrug.

“I figured you deserved a chance to tell me what was going on before I handed you over to someone else. That, and I thought you might need a few hours to yourself. Parents can be… well, they can be.”

She looked up at him, a bit of guilt in her eyes, and her teeth caught her plush lower lip. Fuck. Those lips. The kiss still lingered with him, taunting him with unattainable possibilities. It was as if the juiciest fruit was being dangled right in front of him, and he couldn’t reach out to pluck it. When they’d kissed, everything seemed to float away for a moment. His worries, his problems, the fact that there was a 250-pound man racing to kick his ass… It was hard not to get lost in that.

“Yes, they can,” she agreed softly, finishing one wound and starting on another. She pressed on his ribs gently, and his breath got stuck in his lungs. “These are broken.”

“You’re telling me,” Cillian gasped.

Her hand went to touch another spot on his chiseled abdomen, but he caught her wrist before she could get any further. Touching her sent sparks skittering through him.

“I get it, sugar. I’m broken. I fought a gorilla, and he mopped the floor with me. But I got him back too, and it’s going to be mostly okay by tomorrow, so you can do your little voodoo magic, and we can say I’m all fixed up. Yes? Now, do you want to tell me what you were doing with a punk like him or do I need to duel anyone else to be privy to that information?”

Her hazel eyes were full of surprise, and the color drained from her face. It took real effort to not pull her against him and cradle her soft, curvy body, telling her it was all going to be okay. Because, could he really promise that? And why would he? He barely knew the woman, even though his dragon seemed to think that
she was the one
and
there will be babies in the immediate future
.

Technically, his dragon was never wrong, but he was willing to bet that the redheaded beauty sitting next to him, looking like she was about to burst into tears while holding a big needle wouldn’t agree with his dragon quite so easily.

“Did you win?” she finally asked, after a pause that took years off of Cillian’s life expectancy.

He grinned and flexed his bruised hand, showing off the purple blotches on his knuckles.

“I don’t think we can really say
who
won, but if we count victory through who was conscious at the end and who wasn’t, then yes, I won.”

“Good,” she noted, stabbing him with the needle again.

“Wait, that’s it? No story? So I
do
need to duel someone? Can I at least get the name of the person I need to be on the lookout for?”

“I’ll tell you if I see him. Are you dragons all so nosey?”

“Only when we need to,” he said, falling back on the soft cushions behind him and letting Ruby do her thing.

At least that way he could look at her. That had to count for something. He didn’t want to push her too hard. If she didn’t want to talk, she didn’t want to talk. The least he could do was to respect that.

CHAPTER SIX

Cillian

Hours passed and Ruby had been tucked away under the Egyptian sheets of his bed, while he was still on the couch, trying to sleep with the city waking up below them. That was the one thing he missed about Emerald Ridge and his family’s mansion – it was never, ever loud there. All there was was calm serenity, with him as the noisiest thing around. Just like it ought to be.

His hands were tucked behind his head, and he’d swapped the jeans out for some cotton sweatpants, but everything else was much the same. Except that there was no Ruby to distract him, which meant his mind was free to cause him as much discomfort as it wanted. One after another, everything came to him to pick and scrape at his wounds until he was certain he would never sleep again.

The family fortune was one thing. The Greenmeadow coffers had been in decline for generations – a secret they’d kept closely, but could only cover up so much. These days, no one other than Cillian’s brothers seemed to care. There were far too few dragon families around to be picky, and in any case, lording over vast fortunes wasn’t a viable career option anymore. But that was a point his brothers, who were looking to Cillian to fix everything ASAP, seemed to be hell-bent on ignoring.

The fact that he wasn’t entirely sure what to do with his life was another thing. He’d thought being a fixer would be what he needed. It paid well – well enough to bolster his and his brothers’ ridiculous lifestyles anyway – and it gave him the adrenaline he always wanted, keeping him on his toes. But there were only so many thieves he could track down and deaths he could cover up before that too stopped being fun and started feeling like a chore.