The Billionaire Dragon Shifter Meets His Match: BBW Paranormal Romance (Gray's Hollow Dragon Shifters Book 6) (11 page)

Jane wriggled softly against her mate. His cock was still hard against her, because of course he would deny himself his own pleasure while he saw so thoroughly to hers. She guided the gold dust through the water again, directing it behind her to flow over her mate’s skin where she couldn’t reach with her hands while he still held her against him.

Laurence made a choked little noise when he felt the gold dust gather around his cock, and Jane began to explore, lapping waves of gold against that hard, hot flesh.

“Jane,” he managed, in a choked voice, but it was not at all a protest.

Turnabout is fair play
, Jane told him again.
It’s my turn to give you everything, my lord dragon
.

Laurence groaned and held her closer, and Jane wrapped him up in gold, stroking him with it until he was panting behind her, thrusting against her. He tightened his hands on her hips then, lifting her up in the water. Jane knew what he needed and spread herself wide for him, letting him draw her down onto his cock, taking in him and his sheath of gold all at once. She cried out again as soon as he was inside her, the pleasure exploding instantly.

She felt his cock pushing up deep inside her, gold and her mate both filling her, and then Laurence let out another ragged cry as he came.

Jane felt even more like she was floating, as if the bath were a warm sunlit lake of gold, and she and Laurence might simply drift away in it. Nothing was solid but him, and he floated with her, still joined with her, his hands on her still keeping her in place, his gold still draped all over her.

After a long while, he murmured, “Treasure, I think you have a point about how we ought to spend our time.”

“Mm,” Jane said, smiling as she nestled back into him amidst the liquid warmth. “As long as you mean we should never get out of the bath.”

Laurence laughed softly in her ear, but he didn’t protest.

***

Laurence knew that it could only be temporary, that it didn’t solve anything, but he allowed himself to pass the days that followed in a haze of pleasure. It would all end soon enough, and in the meantime—why not be greedy, just for a little while? Just for his Jane, who was equally greedy for him.

They ate every meal at a different restaurant—or ordered in from a different one—and spent hours wearing more gold than clothes. They made love on every inviting surface in the house as well as a few that made them both thankful for a dragon’s quick healing.

Laurence put the dragonglass back on to sleep, and any time they went out, but now that Jane had drawn his attention to it he felt the struggle of it every time. His scars ached when he picked up the bracelets, and burned while he wore them; he had to work hard to distract himself from the pain until it faded into the normal familiar background.

Luckily, Jane was intent on supplying him with distractions. She seemed completely devoted to the plan to enjoy life and each other just as much as they could, except when she happened to look at her phone.

She kept it away from him, and it was never as bad as that time he’d found her in the kitchen, but each time he felt the misery seize her, even when he was careful not to overhear or catch a glimpse of her texts or emails.

It wasn’t hard to piece together what it must be. Laurence and Jane were occupying a charmed bubble, separate from everything else, most especially including Jane’s real life. On the evening of their first full day together, he’d asked her when she had to go back to work, and she’d given him a determined smile and said, “I’m on vacation for a while. Mating leave. Everyone understands how it is.”

It couldn’t possibly be that simple, though. He was keeping her from her work now, and it wasn’t hard to guess that he might take her from it forever if he killed Farrell. Maybe not only Farrell; if anyone tried to stop him or apprehend him, they would surely be some of Jane’s fellow Georges. If he killed them too—if Jane tried to help him or stop him—

Every way he tried to work it out, it was better for Jane if he died in the fight, and every moment he spent with Jane he could feel his dragon growing more enraged at the thought of losing a moment of the next hundred years he ought to have with her. He kept it under control, drowned in the closeness of his mate and the satisfaction of showering her with gifts. Still, between the knowledge of what was to come and the niggling awareness that Jane
wasn’t
his mate yet, not completely, not forever, there was always a little shadow on their sunny days.

They’d had the better part of a week together when Laurence woke up to an actual shadow: it was dark as dusk outside, rain falling in a steady patter. He lay still for a while, trying to think of nothing but the pleasure of having Jane wrapped around him, a sweet soft counterpoint to the dragonglass at his wrists.

When Jane woke up, slowly, with much yawning and nuzzling and cuddling up, she gave Laurence a sleepy smile, and then her attention was distracted by the gray light coming in through the window, and her smile turned huge and dazzling.

She scrambled to sit up, drawing her phone to her hand eagerly for once, instead of with palpable dread, and her smile only widened when she looked at it. “Laurence! It’s going to rain all day—800 foot ceiling, oh, perfect.”

He raised his eyebrows. “If you wanted an excuse to stay inside all day, treasure, I’m sure we could have made one.”

“Stay inside?” Jane sounded honestly baffled, and then she shook her head. “Enclave, right. We really—”

She stopped short of saying it, and he pretended not to know what she would have said, too excited to think of the impossibility.
We really have to go, I want to see it
.

Jane shook her head, shaking off the unspoken words. “It’s perfect flying weather—the safe zone’s nearly the whole lake today, and we’ve got passes for the treaty flight zone. We can
fly
, Laurence. Safe, within the treaty’s territory, and there’s a system of passes to track who flies where, so we won’t meet any other dragons while we’re flying. Just you and me. Please?”

Laurence winced, closing his left hand over his right wrist.

This was more than just taking the dragonglass off when he was alone with Jane, safe indoors and thoroughly distracted from anything that might make him take his dragon shape. Now she was asking him to shift, out in open territory, knowing that there were dozens—hundreds?—of dragons in the area. A system of passes and treaties and zones was supposed to keep them away from him, ensure that he wouldn’t meet any other dragon but Jane?

“You think Farrell’s going to be stopped by that?”

“Yes,” Jane said firmly. “He’s an asshole, Laurence, but he likes to be right, which means observing the rules exactly. As long as you’re in the treaty zone, he won’t touch you.”

She dropped her gaze as she added, “He’s still determined to draw you out and get you to respond to his challenge.”

Laurence sat up too, pulling Jane close as his dragon roared inside. “Jane, has he been—is that who’s been contacting you?”

“No!” Jane said quickly, but she clung to him in return. “No, it’s... my mom, actually.”

Laurence sat back, searching her face, but Jane still wouldn’t look at him.

“She’s a George—retired, but a George forever,” Jane said, and he could feel the effort she was putting into keeping her voice light and easy. “She’s been trying to get Farrell to back off, or at least keep him too distracted to go looking for any kind of leverage to force your hand. But he’s started complaining about the Corps interfering with his challenge rights, and she’s not going to be able to slow him down much more. And William’s stopped trying to get information out of me about where your family is, which probably means that he’s doing his own digging—”

Laurence’s hands tightened on Jane, and she only pressed closer. “There’s nothing yet—you’d know, wouldn’t you?”

“I sent all my brothers a message, warning them to watch out,” Laurence said quietly. “They’re all staying close to home, keeping the girls indoors. I think Radu’s doing something to make them harder to find electronically, but it’s hard to hide an entire town.”

“You’re sure they’ll listen?” Jane asked. “If they’ve never encountered other dragons...”

Laurence gathered her closer, pressing his face into her hair.

My grandfather had an older brother. He was meant to inherit most of his father’s hoard, become mayor in his turn, all that.

Jane pressed a soft kiss to his chest but didn’t interrupt, even silently.

He discovered his mate when he was twenty-two, but she was human, and too young to mate or marry, even for him to court very attentively.

Unlike Jane, who had been more than happy to be courted. He’d had this, at least.

With his mate near but not properly claimed and his brother also unmated, my grandfather’s brother decided to go away for a time, and hoped that by the time he returned, his mate might be ready to accept him.

Laurence stopped there. The memories, even twice shared, were vivid and violent, and he had to struggle to keep them contained.

“He didn’t come home,” Jane said softly.

Laurence took a breath and drew down a cold wall between his mind and hers, so that the memories at least wouldn’t spill over to her.

“No,” Laurence agreed. “He met another dragon. He was in Europe somewhere, maybe Poland, we’ve never been able to determine exactly. But when the fight went against him he was able to reach his brother through dragon speech, to let him know—and my grandfather didn’t just hear him. He saw—he felt—that fight. He felt his brother die. And in time he told his son the same way, sharing what he remembered through dragon speech. My father told me and each of my brothers what danger was out there waiting for us, should we run afoul of other dragons.”

And still, Laurence had wandered. He’d been determined to keep himself away from his more peaceable brothers, but maybe he’d also been searching for his destiny. Hadn’t he always known it would end this way?

“What was his name?” Jane asked softly. “Your great-uncle?”

Laurence snorted softly. “Laurence, of course. They named me for him.”

He had always known what his own end would look like: the clash of great bodies, the beating of wings turned to weapons, the teeth and talons and the searing fire.

But the end wasn’t here quite yet, and he still had his mate in his arms, courted and claimed even if they hadn’t yet completed their mating fully. If all he could have with her were these few charmed days—if he was never to see Gray’s Hollow again, never to fly under that familiar sky with his brothers—then he had to wring everything he could from the time he had.

Besides, his mate had asked him for a gift, and he could not deny her.

“We’ll go flying,” he murmured. “Come on, let’s not waste a perfect day.”

***

The marina was nearly deserted in the rain. Hardly anyone was going out on the water in this weather, except of course the boats chartered to carry dragons out to their designated flight areas. Jane felt the familiar wave of excitement as they stepped aboard.

She didn’t think about how strange this must be to Laurence until the boat’s mate said politely, glancing back and forth between them, “Won’t be needing a raft, then?”

“Oh!” Jane said, as Laurence looked toward her for explanation. Jane offered him the image through dragon speech: a huge raft unfurled beside the boat, large and buoyant enough to bear an adult dragon’s weight at least briefly, so that the shift between forms could be done on a solid surface.

She couldn’t help also letting him see that she hadn’t used a raft since she was ten years old. That was when she got the hang of jumping from the rail in human shape, shifting in air and taking flight.

“No,” Laurence said firmly. “No raft.”

Are you sure?
Jane asked silently, when the mate had shown them to the passengers’ area and walked away.
If you’ve never done it...

Not shifting fast enough has never been my problem
, Laurence assured her with a little smile, and closed his hand over hers.

They sat together in the enclosed area while the boat maneuvered away from the dock and headed out to their designated coordinates, a couple of miles from shore. Jane laced her fingers between Laurence’s, watching the rain striking the windows, the gray of sky and water blending together for a view that should have been dull. Instead, it was full of mystery and promise. The low clouds shrouding the lake meant refuge and adventure all at once.

Jane let her growing sense of anticipation slip silently to Laurence, and it did not bounce back at her as she half expected. He was sitting very still, staring straight ahead without seeming to see anything. Every few seconds, his hand would tighten a little on hers and then quickly loosen.

She didn’t bother to tell him it was going to be fine; no matter how much he trusted her, he couldn’t possibly believe it until he experienced it. He’d never taken wing anywhere other than in the shelter of his family’s enclave, in the presence of his brothers.

The time seemed both very long and much too short before she felt the boat come to rest. The intercom switched on, and the captain’s voice said the familiar words. “We’ve arrived at our designated destination, ma’am, sir. All crew will be facing shoreward until your return.”