The Billionaire Dragon Shifter Meets His Match: BBW Paranormal Romance (Gray's Hollow Dragon Shifters Book 6) (7 page)

“There’s a
reason for that
,” Jane informed him firmly. “Dragons are greedy—baby dragons are greediest of all, greedy for their parents, greedy for love and attention. Making them share it—share with
five brothers
—is a recipe for disaster. I don’t know what your parents were thinking.”

Laurence scowled. “They loved us, they—it worked fine, all my brothers are normal.”

Jane dug her fingers in over the scars in his side. “This isn’t fine, Laurence. This isn’t
normal
. Your brother had to hurt you, you were driven to hurt
yourself
—”

“I didn’t—”

“No one else gave you these scars, Laurence,” Jane whispered. “No one but you. That’s what you told me. You chose dragonglass.”

Laurence nodded, dropping his gaze. “After, knowing what I could do, what I might have done—my father told me, mothers of dragons are immune to dragon fire, so I wouldn’t have hurt her with that, but then all I could think was all the other ways I could have hurt someone. Any time I shifted, all that anger was so much closer to the surface, and so much easier to
use
. If not my mother, it could have been anyone in town; they all knew us, they were all so happy to see me finally shifting—”

“Wait,” Jane said sharply. “Wait, there’s an
entire town
?”

Laurence froze, studying her for some sign that he’d been wrong to trust her with so much. “You said...”

“I meant it,” Jane assured him quickly. “I’ll protect who you protect, I will. I just... an entire town knows about your family? An entire
human
town?”

“Well,” Laurence said slowly. “Yes. The family—the Grays, or Dragomirs, if you want our old name—we protect them and fund the town. My father was mayor, and then my oldest brother, Gus, until he convinced the twins to come home and take over—they’re co-mayors with their mate, Hannah. She’s human.”

Jane’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times. “Lord Dragon indeed,” she said finally. “You’re straight out of the old feudal traditions. Did you grow up in a castle?”

“No,” Laurence said quickly, and then, realizing that Jane was actually apt to wind up seeing the place eventually, he added, “Not... exactly?”

Jane closed her eyes and blew out a breath. Laurence distracted himself from the question of what she must be thinking—of him, of his family, of Gray’s Hollow—by running his hand up and down her side. Her skin was so lush and soft under his hand, and he wanted to taste and touch every inch, to shower her with gold and never let her go.

He jerked his hand back, shutting down that train of thought.

He couldn’t shut Jane up in a cave or a tower, couldn’t hoard her. He couldn’t even stomach the thought of chaining her down, the way his father had once told him he would want to bind his mate to his hoard—temporarily, his father assured him, except that she would always bear a mark of binding. His mother had had an anklet that she wore always; when she died, his father had fitted it to the statue of her that stood as her monument. Even in death, his father had kept hold of his mate.

“Hey.” Jane caught his hand and brought it back to her hip, pressing it against her skin. “I didn’t mean to push you away, it’s just a lot to take in. I didn’t think we could possibly have an enclave of that size undocumented.”

Her mouth turned up in a wry smile. “You’re an even better catch than I thought—you don’t just bring gold, you bring me a case to investigate. And no one can make me file a report on it, and I
can’t
take any action on it.”

Laurence managed a smile for her in return. “Well, there. That’s something for your hoard, at least.”

Jane frowned again. “Laurence... Laurence
Gray
, Laurentiu Dragomir, you are my mate, and all the hoard I could want. If you were human and offered me nothing but a single gold ring and yourself, I’d still be lucky to have you. All my life I’ve been waiting for you. All my life I wondered how I would explain myself to my mate when I found him—who would want me? A dragon descended from hunters, a George who is also a dragon. All I wanted to do, all my life, was to be a George like my mother, but the Corps makes me wear dragonglass, wrists and ankles, anytime I’m on duty, because an unmated dragon can’t really be trusted—except there are so few Georges left, spread so thin, that they have to accept us
half-breeds
—”

It was Laurence’s turn to hush Jane with a kiss, pulling her tight against him to feel the softness of her breasts and belly against him, at the same time that the strength of one arm and leg wrapped around him.

“Half, nothing,” he murmured. “We Dragomirs have had nothing but human mates for seven generations and we’re still as dragon as anyone.”

“And as human,” Jane pointed out softly. “Laurence, what you’ve been doing... it’s like trying to stop being hungry by starving yourself. You’re a dragon, and you need the things you need. And humans can be just as angry and cruel as dragons when they’re desperate. You’ve been punishing yourself for what you did when you were a child for a very long time, and it hasn’t worked, has it?”

Laurence tilted his head back to meet her eyes, honestly confused by the question. “I haven’t killed anyone, so... it’s worked well enough.”

Jane scowled and shook her head. “Laurence, you’re the only one who’s stopped you from hurting anyone. You’re the one who chooses to put on dragonglass every day—I’ve been doing it myself for years, so I
know
how hard that is, and it’s never bitten me. For you—I don’t know how you keep doing this. It must hurt you even to be near it.”

Laurence blinked, looking down at his marred wrists again. “I... I suppose I’m used to it? I always thought I should add more; I’ve probably built up a tolerance.”

Jane shook her head. “The Corps has studied this, Laurence. I won’t get into the details of
how
, because it was in the old days and therefore
categorically horrifying
, but we know a lot about how dragons react to dragonglass, and it’s more like an allergy than a toxin. Every time you’re hurt by dragonglass it hurts you more.”

She touched the knot of new scarring in his left arm. “This shouldn’t have scarred; dragons normally heal the first few exposures to dragonglass without a trace, the way they do normal injuries. But the scars get worse as the exposures pile up. The actual wound from the dragonglass was tiny, but this scar looks like a proper bullet wound. Most of these,” Jane’s fingers traced up the scars on his arm again, “I’d bet you only really scratched yourself with the dragonglass. The rest was your body’s reaction to being exposed over and over. Even if you’ve learned to ignore it, it’s hurting you just to have it touching your skin.”

“I don’t...” Laurence took a careful breath. Jane thought the best of him; she didn’t understand. “Jane, it’s not safe. I
can’t
just take it off. You said yourself, I’ve never learned control, and my dragon holds all this anger, a lifetime of anger and fire and violence. I only take my dragon shape twice a year, when I’m with my brothers and I know they’ll stop me from hurting anyone.”

He saw Jane’s wince, and tried not to mirror it. She would start to understand now, how much less he could offer her than some ordinary human without a scrap of gold to his name.

“I can’t avoid Farrell forever,” he said quietly. “He doesn’t even have to find my family to get leverage on me, Jane. He just has to get to you, or threaten to, and—”

Jane’s eyes flashed fire. “I can take care of myself, Laurence—”

Laurence let himself snarl a little, rolling over onto her. Jane’s eyes widened, but her legs parted, instinctively offering what they both wanted, and Laurence wasn’t really surprised to realize he was already half hard. He kissed her hard, and barely pulled back to speak.

“That’s
my lord dragon
to you, treasure. It doesn’t matter if he could follow through, or how much you’d hurt him if he tried it. You’re
mine
, and if he doesn’t already know it he will soon. Won’t he?”

Jane closed her eyes and nodded, letting out her breath in a sigh. “Laurence—”

“Ah-ah,” he interrupted.

Jane opened one eye, and he could see fire in it even as she melted a little more under him. “My lord dragon,” Jane murmured. “There’s a little time, at least. You don’t have to face him today, like this. You can take a little time to be ready. Closer to ready.”

Laurence exhaled. “I’m going to kill him, treasure, or die trying. I told you that.”

“But you don’t
want
to, do you?” Jane asked. She wasn’t even really arguing now; she sounded honestly curious. “You know that that’s what your impulse will be, and you don’t expect to be able to control it, but if I ask you—Laurence, do you want to kill him? Does that seem like a good idea?”

Laurence shook his head, looking away. “It’s not... it’s not just an impulse, Jane. It’s who I am,
what
I am. Being a dragon is different for you; you’re like my brothers. But I know what’s going to happen as sure as I know that the sun’s going to come up tomorrow. Anger is all my dragon knows.”

“And you’ve used dragonglass to make yourself be different,” she said quietly. “But you won’t be able to use it when you face Farrell. So you need something else you can use, don’t you? Because I think even if you know you’re not, you’d like to be the kind of dragon who can live a hundred years with me and help me raise our dragonets.”

“Our...” Laurence wanted to roar at the thought at the same time he wanted to freeze. He knew there was already a chance, he knew it was too soon to know anything, and still his hand slid down to the soft curve of Jane’s belly. “I thought it wasn’t a good idea to have more than one?”

“Not too close together,” Jane murmured, arching up into his touch, spreading her legs wider. “But we’re dragons—we have time. One this year or next, the second one fifteen or twenty years later. Maybe another, twenty years after that.”

“Sure,” Laurence murmured, torn between greed at the thought of having children—having
Jane’s
children—and the blank impossibility of imagining still being alive forty years from now. “Twenty years after, of course. I’ll put it on my calendar.”

Jane reached down between them, curling her hand around his cock, which hardened in a rush at her touch; he was suddenly unable to think of anything else. And still—still—

“Jane,” he managed, though he had lost track of what he meant to say to her other than that he wanted her, needed her, needed to be inside her like he needed to breathe. His fingers slid down between her thighs, finding her open and wet for him, her hips tilting up to welcome his touch.

“I need you,” Jane whispered. “My mate—if I can only have you for a little while, I want all of you I can get. Please, Laurence, give me this.”

“Everything,” he whispered, catching her mouth with his. He caught her hand in his, tangling their fingers together as he slid home inside her. “Jane, treasure, I’ll give you everything.”

***

Afterward, when Jane had caught her breath, she found herself lying in her mate’s arms, feeling thoroughly sated, mildly sore, and ravenously hungry.

So,
she murmured to him without bothering to take her mouth from where it was pressed against that alarming scar under his collarbone.
As I was saying...

Her stomach gave a very dragonish growl, which his echoed, and Jane smiled against his skin.

“As you were saying?” Laurence murmured, sounding drowsy and amused, not firmly controlled at all.

As I was saying
, Jane agreed, luxuriating in the ability to speak to him properly.
You need what you need: me, and breakfast, for starters.

I can’t ever get enough of you.
The words weren’t even a romantic exaggeration, barely even a properly dragonish greed. She could feel the resignation behind them. He really didn’t believe that he could keep her, that they could find a way through this that wouldn’t leave him outlawed, subject to the Hunt.

Jane wasn’t going to think about that. Not now, not while he was lying in her arms and she could at least try to save him.

Well, breakfast, then
, Jane prompted.
What’s your favorite thing to have for breakfast? I assume the kitchens in a place like this are at your beck and call.

“Black coffee,” he murmured out loud. “Cold cereal with skim milk.”

She could hear him struggling not to laugh in dragon speech, though.

She snorted. “Well, could you blame me if I believed that?” She poked a finger into the hardness of his abs. “I mean, you look like you get a decent amount of protein, but I don’t see any hint of, mm, stuffed French toast, or freshly made donuts, or peppered bacon...”

“All of that,” he promised. “I wished sometimes I could eat enough to show it—” he slid his palm appreciatively over the generous swell of her backside and down to her thigh. “Just get fat, it’s the one vice left...”

There was a little melody behind the words that leaked through in dragon speech, and Jane drew back to meet his eyes as she tried to place it.