Treasure Lane Dragons: Complete Series (BBW Paranormal Dragon Shapeshifter Romance) (56 page)

He batted his lashes at her, putting on his best puppy dog face, and there it was, a little smile at the very corner of her mouth. Success!

Ares relaxed, his smugness flowing back into him like a tide. Yup, he still had it… As long as he ignored the fact that every muscle and nerve in his body was drawn as tight as a guitar string from having to keep himself at bay, lest he throw her over the counter and fuck her senseless right then and there.

It might be a bit much before their first date, though he certainly wouldn’t mind giving her that kind of ride. Nope. Not one bit.

“You still didn’t tell me what you’re doing here,” Pearl said, looking resigned to her fate and his presence.

Victory through attrition – he’d take it.

“Are you stalking me?” she added, glowering at him.

“Maybe,” he said, shrugging. “I mean, if by
stalking
you mean figuring out where you were moving to from those plentiful location updates you
accidentally
turned on on SassyDate like a week ago, then yes, I am a big old stalker. Grr. Alert the sheriff.”

“I’m pretty sure he’s been alerted already,” Pearl said wryly, pointing her thumb at the main window.

Diesel, the big werepanther shifter, was standing on the sidewalk, glaring into the store through the window. He gave Ares the international sign of ‘I’m watching you and if you do anything I don’t like, I’ll send you back to your family in three different body bags’, before nodding to Pearl in a pleasant manner and heading down the street.

Ares smirked. He was getting on like gangbusters with the locals.

“Nice guy. I’d love to go bowling with him sometime. Now, back to more pressing matters. Date – when?”

Oh, how he loved that look of struggle in her eyes. He knew she wanted him. He could smell it on her. He had to count his blessings that his dragon had decided to desire a human woman and not another shifter, because he was pretty sure he was stanching of pheromones as well. Ares would have to have a cold shower before he came across another shifter in town or they’d be able to smell his lust on him immediately.

And yet, she would say no. He could predict that just as clearly as the fact that eventually he’d wear her down and get a yes out of her. Maybe it was better that way. If he had to chase her, he’d get to enjoy the thrill and all that other good stuff romance novels were always talking about. Maybe if he had to work hard for her, it would be all the more sweet when he got his first bite.

Ares fought the urge to sneer – dragons hated work.

Finally, Pearl shook her head and crossed her arms. It pushed up her tits a little bit and made Ares have to muster up all his self-control to keep from sporting a raging hard-on.

“No, Ares. I don’t have time. I need to set up the store and we’re opening in a few days. Most of the furniture still needs to be arranged, I have trucks arriving tomorrow that need to be unloaded and it’s just me and loverbear back there, who I bet is TEXTING MISSY RIGHT NOW AND TRYING TO GET FIRED!”

“Sorry, Miss Mae,” Dalton yelled, followed by the sounds of scrambling and a phone being shoved into a pocket somewhere deeper in the vacant store.

Ares grinned. He sure did love a woman with an attitude, and Pearl had plenty of that.

“Oh, come on. You practically
begged
me to come and find you. I saw your message from last night. ‘Lonely in the mountains’? I can keep you company all you need, princess. And what’s with this Mae business?”

“I’m trying to start fresh, Ares. And that doesn’t include some playboy bad boy from out of town, okay?”

She could argue with him all she wanted but he saw the smile she was hiding. And he could smell the need on her. She was fighting herself and he was determined to make her give in.

“Okay. Alright. You’re a busy woman, I respect that. Gotta make your own way in life. But,” and he couldn’t resist, ever the gambler as he was, “What you’re telling me is that if this place is ready ahead of time, you could come out with me?”

Her eyes laughed, even if her lips were turned downwards in an annoyed pout that he wanted to kiss away. Those damn pink lips that called to him… Delicious.

She shrugged noncommittally, a strand of hair falling on her forehead. Every little detail about her drove him to the edge of sanity, and he liked that feeling. Teetering on the very precipice of madness had always been to his liking.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Be seeing you soon, princess. Don’t miss me too much.”

He winked at her and twirled around, heading out of the store with long, purposeful strides. On the door, he yelled back over his shoulder, “Be seeing you around, loverbear!” and the grumbly harumpf he got in return made him snicker to himself.

Ah, young love.

But he had more important things to deal with – like figuring out how to get Pearl naked and screaming under him in as little time as possible, or he would really be playing with fire soon.

Luckily, he knew just the bear to see about that.

CHAPTER FOUR

Pearl

“What in the name of all that is… ARES!”

Pearl could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks so fast that it was making her dizzy. She ran across the road, almost getting hit by one of the big lumbering trucks that was preparing to park in front of her store.

Her store.
Her
store! Mae’s General Goods. But it certainly didn’t look like the store she had left just last night.

Countless people were bustling around, loading and unloading boxes from several trucks she hadn’t been expecting for another hour or so. She barely recognized most of the people there, and when she saw a familiar face, she clung to him. Pearl grabbed onto Dalton, who was walking into the store with a big box of whole chicken in his arms, and stopped him mid-step.

“What the hell is going on here!?”

Dalton frowned, looking to the box in his arms and then back to Pearl like she’d lost her damn mind. Did she not see he was carrying things? The anger that had seemed to be such a distant emotion to Pearl just some days ago was becoming more of a staple all of a sudden and she was sure that there was no one other than Ares to blame for it. It had to be him. How could it not?

“I don’t know, Miss Mae. This dragon guy called us last night and told me I had to be at work early, that the trucks were coming sooner and we had some furniture to put together. When I got here, he already had half of Tyler and Trey’s crew working on building new shelves and putting up the storage rooms, and an electrician was fixing the big walk-in freezer in the back. Uncle Deacon said that I shouldn’t trust him, but I dunno… He paid me up front for the day, double, so I’m cool with him. Can I go now?”

There was nothing left to do but nod weakly and let go of the surly polar bear teen. She stared at the hoard of people working on her store, moving ten times as fast as she could have on her own with the one pair of helping hands she could afford. Like a plague of locusts they had descended upon her store, but instead of screwing everything up, they were… making everything better.

“ARES!?” she yelled again, getting over her momentary bout of awe and confusion.

“Princess! How nice of you to join us! I’ve been waiting for you!” a familiar, cocky voice called, making Pearl spin around and look for its source.

When she laid her eyes on him, she felt the oh-so-tempting jolt of desire rush through her and her throat threaten to dry up again. He was shirtless (of course he was shirtless, how else could he be…) wearing a pair of working gloves and sporting that grin she wanted to smack off his face every time she saw him.

Ares was carrying three boxes of cheese and she knew each of them weighed at least forty pounds. He made it look like it was nothing.

“What the hell are you doing!? Who are all these people? What are you…”

She stood right in his path, the crew bustling around them. Pearl had run out of words. There just weren’t any left. Her brain froze over and all she could do was helplessly wait for him to tell her exactly what in tarnation he was doing.

“Why, I’m fixing up your store, of course. Gotta be ready by the grand opening, you know. I hear it’s any day now. Most of these guys are Trey and Tyler’s crew from that big guesthouse mansion they’re building down the road. They’re having some issues with shipments and were more than glad to lend out the crew to me for the day. Such sweethearts. Must be all this mountain air making everyone so pleasant.”

Ares grinned and easily veered past her as if she were some sort of immobile stump in his way. Pearl’s mouth fell open. Phrases like “I never,” and “the nerve of him,” and everything else that could only be said by ladies at least forty years her senior kept coming to her in bouts. After a moment, she finally regained her senses and stomped right after him.

Distantly, Dalton’s words came back to her.

A dragon? Is he a freaking dragon!?

She’d never discussed what kind of shifter he was, and for all the things he so gladly shared, Ares had been surprisingly tight-lipped about his last name and the type of shifter he was. But Ares and dragon made her brain jump to one very obvious conclusion, and it made her stomach sink.

He was Ares Goldplains, of the Gold Dragons, one of the biggest rock bands in the country. Like just about everyone in the world, she’d heard of the Goldplains brothers. Only Ares’s two older brothers were still at the helm of the band, but over the years the younger Goldplains brood had also gone through the band at various times. She wasn’t just dealing with a guy far too self-assured for his own good, she was dealing with a dragon – a
billionaire
dragon.

Which of course didn’t really mean anything to her. He was still a bastard who was screwing with her plans and she wasn’t about to take that lying down, no matter how much she wanted to.

Embarrassingly, the memories of the previous night came back to her at the most inopportune time. She’d spent a good long while imagining all the deliciously devious things Ares would do to her body if she only let him, but instead of getting to enjoy him, she’d had to settle for her vibrator and good, old-fashioned imagination. It was a good thing she was red with anger because otherwise she would have been red with a sudden bout of desire.

And that wouldn’t do at all.

“You can’t do this. This is
my
store,” Pearl said, stomping after the dragon who was now stocking the shelves with cheese.

It had to have been the most ridiculous thing she’d ever seen – a billionaire dragon stocking cheese. The absurdity of it all made her want to laugh out loud.

“Ah, but that is where you are wrong,” Ares said casually, giving her a toothy grin.

Pearl’s eyes went wide.

Oh no.

“What have you done? Ares, you better fucking tell me or I will take one of those cheese wheels and bash that damn grin of yours so far into your face that you can taste your last night’s dinner!”

That got her a few raised eyebrows but Pearl didn’t care. She was mad as hell and it didn’t matter who knew. Ares, of course, just chuckled like she’d made a mildly funny joke.

“Well, I met this delightful werebear by the name of Rhett Dean.”

Color drained from her face.

“Did you know our fathers used to be in the Gilded Beast club together? I didn’t. Apparently Rhett used to drink with my brother Alexander when they were both just getting started on their individual paths to greatness. You meet the weirdest shifters around here.”

All the while, he was hauling one cheese roll after another onto the shelves, his muscles glistening with a thin sheen of sweat that made Pearl’s knees threaten to buckle. When she’d started flirting with him over SassyDate – and lord did she regret it now – she’d never imagined she’d actually have to come face to face with him like this.

Sure, she’d told him all about the fact that she’d one day like to have a family and she’d joked about moving to an old gold rush town and ordering a mail-order mate for herself, but she’d never expected things to play out quite so… literally.

But, there he was, Ares Goldplains in all his gold-tinted glory, making her life hell and her body scream for his touch. It was unfair and her body was totally betraying her, right alongside her heart. What she wouldn’t have given to lick that sweat right off his rock-hard abs…