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

  The Billionaire Dragon Shifter Meets His Match

  By

  Zoe Chant

  Copyright Zoe Chant 2016

  All Rights Reserved

  Jane Curlew occasionally imagined trying to explain to a stranger what it was like being a member of the modern Georgian Corps, a descendant of countless generations of dragon hunters. Her life and duties certainly weren’t anything like a George’s had been a few generations ago, before the Georgian Corps turned from hunting dragons to keeping the peace among them.

  I’m a dragon cop, she imagined saying. And like any cop, mostly I sit around in my uniform and wait for something to go wrong.

  Jane’s uniform wasn’t as obvious as police blues. Tonight she was wearing her favorite flattering-but-comfortable dark wash jeans with sturdy leather boots and a black tunic shirt that draped nicely over her generous curves.

  Her sleeves hid the black bracelets that twined up her wrists nearly to the elbow, and her boots concealed the matching anklets. Those were required when she was on duty, but they weren’t exactly standard for members of the Georgian Corps. Her dark, curly hair was pulled into a knot, and this early in the night it was all still smoothly contained.

  Her uniform, such as it was, resided in the heavy black medallion she wore on a gold chain. It rested in the little space there was between her collarbones and her cleavage.

  She had inherited it from her mother, who had inherited it from hers, going back a dozen generations to a master dragon hunter among their ancestors. The medallion was dragonglass, stone melted by a dragon’s fire to gleaming unbreakable black glass. It represented the damage done by that dragon—and the death of the dragon at her ancestor’s hands.

  It was not an easy uniform for Jane to wear, small as it was, but there had to be some downside to an ancestral destiny that otherwise mostly consisted of waiting for her phone to ring.

  The hard work, most of the time, was done by the dispatcher who sat in a quiet room downtown with a very special map of Chicago and its environs, watching the movement of tiny particles of gold to divine the movements of dragons around the city. No one, least of all Jane, was allowed to be anywhere near a working dispatcher. Jane’s work shift was solitary unless something happened that was so terrible she had to call in backup.

  Generally, though, any one George was supposed to be sufficient to handle any one dragon problem.

  When her phone rang on a cool Friday night in May, she thought she knew what the problem was going to be. Some tourist had gone astray from the city’s neutral areas, and was in danger of trespassing on privately claimed territory. If she was about to have an exceptionally exciting night, the tourist in question was in dragon form, trying to see the fireworks at Navy Pier from above, and was in danger of being seen by humans; there was a half-moon shining in the clear sky tonight, and the current safe flight perimeter was miles out into Lake Michigan.

  “What have I got, Polly?” Jane slipped her Bluetooth earpiece on, picked up her kit, and headed for her car.

  “I’m so sorry,” Polly replied.

  Jane started to run before Polly said any more than that.

  “He’s not showing up properly, but there’s a stranger up in Wilmette—”

  “Seriously?” Jane burst out, already putting her car in gear and heading north at top speed. “He couldn’t be in the city somewhere?”

  “I told you, he’s not showing up properly! There’s something strange about this one.” Polly sounded upset; Jane couldn’t let herself get emotional as well. She had work to do, and it wasn’t going to be easy.

  If the stranger were in the city, the treaties that kept peace among the many dragons within its borders would protect against any blood being shed. Out in a suburb, there was no such protection.

  “What’s a tourist even doing—” Jane stopped talking as she realized the answer to her own half-asked question. She pushed very late through a yellow light and accelerated harder, weaving through traffic. “Polly, no, tell me it’s not—”

  “I don’t know, he’s still moving,” Polly said helplessly. “It could be? He’s not definitely not headed that way.”

  Most of the dragons in Chicago lived packed into a hundred or so acres, west of Lake Shore Drive in the Gold Coast neighborhood. There were a double handful scattered through the rest of the city—dragons who were content to abide by the treaties and accept the density of humans around them, but liked to have some elbow room from other dragons.

  Dragons who moved out to the suburbs did it to get further away from each other, and to get out from under the treaties.

  And of all the suburbs packed in around the city, Wilmette just happened to be home to the dragon with the shortest fuse for miles around. Ray Farrell owned a club there—an exclusive establishment, practically underground for all most people could find out about it. Farrell’s club was virtually a hoard in itself, maybe even the heart of his hoard; he guarded access to it as though the experience of being there spun gold from thin air. The club offered fine drinks, fine foods, imported from all over the world to satisfy the most discriminating tastes.

  And on Friday and Saturday nights, the club hosted concerts in a tiny, intimate venue.

  It was exactly the kind of thing that a dragon with more magic than good sense might try to sneak into—either for the priceless experience, or to tweak another dragon’s nose. But Farrell wasn’t going to take it lightly, and if the intruder was disguising himself in some way, a defense of accidental trespass wasn’t going to hold much water.

  “Tonight’s show starts in twenty-two minutes,” Polly announced, while Jane was weaving through traffic on Sheridan. “And the intruder is still headed toward Ray’s. I think.”

  “Got it,” Jane said. “If Farrell calls, don’t even speak to him, put him straight through to me.”

  “Sure,” Polly said, sounding as dubious as Jane felt about the odds of Farrell calling the proper authorities instead of handling the matter himself.

  Jane touched the black medallion at her neck and pushed down harder on the gas.

  She made it to Farrell’s club with seven minutes to spare before showtime, but it was obvious that the opening act was already in progress. Farrell was standing in the parking lot, facing off against a man she’d never seen before who screamed dragon to her senses despite his human shape.

  The pair of them looked well-matched in stubborn rage, their gazes locked in blazing scowls. They were so absorbed in each other that neither of them noticed her pulling up on the street beside them. Jane could see the flames rising in both their eyes. The stranger seemed to be holding himself steady, but Farrell was snarling in rage, going on about the insult he had been offered.

  She tried to take in the details calmly. The stranger was a little taller than Farrell—over six feet. His dark hair fell almost to his chin in tousled waves. It looked soft, inviting to touch; his dark red sweater and gray wool trousers only strengthened the impression. Still, the body under the clothes radiated a furious dragon’s indomitable strength; as much as he might be wearing a harmless appearance, it was obvious that he wouldn’t back down easily before Farrell’s challenge.

  There wasn’t going to be an easy way to break this up, especially not on a public street with plenty of unknowing humans around. Jane reached into her kit without taking her eyes off the pair, and she only opened the door of her car when she had her weapon firmly in hand.

  “Halt!” Jane shouted as soon as
she was out of the car.

  Farrell didn’t waver, but the stranger’s face turned toward her. His blazing eyes locked with hers at the same time Jane pulled the trigger.

  No.

  Oh, no, no, no!

  Jane was already running toward him before he hit the ground, reaching out for him as she realized who she’d shot.

  He wasn’t just any strange dragon passing through town. He was her mate.

  ***

  Laurence wasn’t entirely awake until he touched his wrist and found it bare. He froze then, barely even breathing, as he struggled for control of himself. Without the bracelets nothing would stop him from shifting, and his dragon was a beast made of rage and fire. He couldn’t let it loose.

  He was always careful to keep his bracelets on, not to put himself in a position where anyone else could take them off him. For a few seconds he couldn’t remember how this could have happened, and then the memory came crashing back.

  He’d run into another dragon, and it had all been playing out with a surreal inevitability. The other had recognized him, challenged him right there on the street, accused Laurence of trespassing on his territory. Laurence had felt rage boil up, his dragon rising to the challenge. He had struggled fiercely to keep it under control even though a part of him was thinking, This is it. Finally.

  Before Laurence had a chance to find out what the moment he’d been waiting for his whole life would unfold into, a car had pulled up and a woman’s voice yanked him away from his frozen focus on the other dragon.

  For an instant, as he looked at her, nothing else existed. She was more than beautiful; somehow he knew the instant he saw her that she was more precious than gold.

  And then she’d shot him.

  He was in a quiet room now, on a bed that felt faintly warm and oddly comforting under him despite being entirely unfamiliar. He risked opening his eyes as he curled onto his side, touching his fingers tentatively to his left arm, where the bullet had struck in a stunning blaze of pain.

  “Sorry about that,” said a voice he’d barely heard before, and never in that warm, gentle tone.

  Laurence scrambled instinctively away, pressing himself into the corner of the walls at the head of the bed. He barely noticed the golden glitter of the sheet he’d been lying on; all his attention was taken up by the woman sitting on a straight-backed chair on the other side of the room. It was not a large room. She was barely ten feet away.

  “It’s all right, you’re safe here,” she said quickly. “I’m sorry about shooting you, but it was the quickest way to get you away from Farrell. I had no idea you’d be so sensitive to dragonglass—though I could see why, as soon as I got your shirt off to mend your arm.”

  Laurence couldn’t help crossing his arms over his bare chest, trying to hide his whole upper body behind his raised knees at the same time. The absence of his bracelets was just barely worse than the absence of his shirt.

  She said dragonglass so casually, and there was gold in the sheets. The gold had helped him recover, and between healing and the embrace of gold he had slept deeply, especially without his bracelets.

  She knew what he was. She knew what she had done by removing his bracelets. She knew and she was still here, telling him he was safe here.

  “Get out.” His voice emerged as a hoarse whisper, but he didn’t need much volume to reach her.

  She looked startled, hurt. She must feel the pull, the reciprocal need that went deeper than desire, but she couldn’t possibly understand.

  “You’re not safe here,” he insisted more strongly, though he thought another dragonglass bullet would hurt less than seeing her leave. It had to be done. “Go, get out.”

  “Well,” she said, giving him a crooked smile. “I’d consider it, but...”

  She gestured to the door, and he realized that there was no handle on this side. There was no metal in it at all; he could sense that as soon as he thought about it. There was nothing a dragon could manipulate, and no way the woman could leave. She was locked in with him—a sacrifice to the dragon, like it had been in the old country his eight-times great-grandfather had fled to found Gray’s Hollow.

  He hadn’t thought there could be such barbarism still practiced now, in America, but perhaps he should have known. Dragons were dragons everywhere.

  “My name is Jane,” she added. “And you are...?”

  He hadn’t carried any identification, only a locked phone and some cash. Nothing that could be used to track him back to his brothers, their wives, his little nieces. He kept away from all of them to keep them safe, and he would never allow any other dragon to find them through him. One by one he’d watched his brothers gain a control he could barely believe over the dragons within them—but then he’d always known he wasn’t quite like them. Perhaps just having a mate was enough for them.

  But not for Laurence. He’d always thought that would be so, and now, at last, he knew for sure. There she was in front of him: his mate. Jane.

  She wore a soft black shirt and snug blue jeans that showed him every full curve of her generously proportioned body: lush breasts, round belly and hips, soft thighs. Her cheeks and chin were round and soft, all lustrous pale skin, sharply contrasting the dark curls that fell down around her face, escaping whatever restraint she had imposed on them. She was blushing a little now, probably because he was staring; she was smiling, too. He let his eyes dart up again to meet hers, and she looked back unhesitatingly at him. Her eyes were a rich brown, and at the center of each the black was ringed in gold.

  She was his; he couldn’t escape the recognition any more than he could doubt that his own scarred arms belonged to him. And when he looked at her his dragon roared within him, wanting to take, claim, own, hoard, keep.

  He would burn down the world for her, and he would never let her go. If he’d known what she was a few seconds earlier, he’d have taken his dragon form and done his level best to kill the dragon he’d met tonight, heedless of secrets or danger or sanity.

  He couldn’t control his dragon by giving it what it wanted.

  He shook his head. “I’m a dragon, that’s all you need to know.”

  “Oh, no,” Jane said, getting to her feet. Laurence put all his strength into containing his dragon, which wanted to leap up and take her into his arms. He wanted to take her.

  “That’s not all I need to know at all.” Jane sat down again on the furthest corner of the bed, her hand playing idly over the gold-flecked sheets. He could feel the mattress move under him with her movement. He dug his fingers into his sides, seeking out the old scars there to remind himself.

  “I need to know who’s been forcing you to wear dragonglass,” she said quietly. “I need to know where you come from, that you didn’t know better than to go blundering into privately held territory. I need to know where you come from, period, because I haven’t been able to find any information on you, and I can’t leave dragons running around unaccounted for.”

  Laurence stared at her, uncomprehending, and she reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a black dragonglass medallion on a gold chain. “Jane Curlew, Georgian Corps.”

  Laurence tilted his head a little. She said it like it should mean something to him, with utter certainty. She had shot him, after all, even though he couldn’t see any weapons close enough to protect her now.

  “Is that... some kind of police force?”

  She stared back. He had a feeling he’d asked her if the sky was sometimes a color somewhere between green and purple.

  “Yeah,” she said after a moment. “Yeah, that’s the easiest way to put it.”

  He’d never known there was such a thing; if he had, he might have gone to them a long time ago and turned himself in. They clearly had put some thought into how to subdue and control dragons.

  But he couldn’t answer her questions about the rest. He couldn’t let some quasi-police corps who named themselves after history’s most famous dragon-hunter find Gray’s Hollow. His brothers would
protect their mates and children, but the whole town would be caught in the crossfire; what would the Georgian Corps make of humans who protected the secrets of dragons the way everyone in their town protected the Gray family?

  Jane tossed the medallion over her shoulder, and it hit the wall and dropped in a jingle of gold to rest in the furthest corner of the room from the one Laurence had crammed himself into. “But I’m not really here in my professional capacity. I’m curious about all that stuff because it’s what I’ve been trained to be curious about, but that’s not why I’m locked in here with you, and it’s not why I really want to know. You know that, right? You feel it?”

  Her gaze dropped to sweep over his body, and he saw the desire in her again. If she knew of dragons, she would know what that pull meant, and it was obvious she was more interested in following it than in keeping herself safe.

  “You’re my mate,” Laurence said quietly.

  She smiled crookedly and said, “Well. That’s how it looks to you, obviously. But you see—”

  Her eyes flashed with a dragon’s fire.

  “You’re mine, too.”

  ***

  Jane’s mate sat speechless, staring at her. He uncurled from his defensive position a little. Jane didn’t let herself be distracted by the sight of his bare chest, or the tracing of scars that quietly testified to what he’d been through before they found each other.

  “Now will you tell me your name?” Jane prompted.

  “Laurentiu,” he said, dazed, and the sound of his own name made him shake his head. “Laurence. My name is Laurence.”

  He sounded American, but the name suggested Eastern European origin. A refugee, brought over at a young age? If a human parent had smuggled him into the country he might have grown up as an isolate, perhaps even believing he was the last of the dragons. There were enough stories in the Georgian Corps archives of dragons with those sorts of beliefs.

  But whoever forced him into dragonglass must have put an end to that notion. And he still hadn’t given her his last name.