The Billionaire Dragon Shifter Meets His Match: BBW Paranormal Romance (Gray's Hollow Dragon Shifters Book 6) (12 page)

Laurence raised his eyebrows as Jane jumped up, tugging him to his feet after her. “Shoreward?”

Jane stopped by the bench nearest the door out to the deck and started getting out of her clothes. “It means they won’t see us naked, or shifting. It’s just good manners.”

“Ah,” Laurence said, but he started getting out of his own clothes too, lining up his shoes beside Jane’s on the deck and folding his things beside hers on the bench. In a moment they were both naked but for jewelry, and Jane hesitated, deciding what she could put back exactly the same after bringing it along to dragon size, and what she should leave off. She unfastened two of her necklaces and slipped out of a ring, and Laurence gently laid down his new watch beside them.

The dragonglass bracelets were still two black lines around his wrists.

He stood for a moment, still hesitating, and Jane closed her hands around his wrists, covering scars and glass. “Let me?”

She saw the muscle of his jaw tense as he gritted his teeth, but he nodded. Jane let her own touch part the gold beads, and loosened her grip just far enough to let the bracelets fall away to coil up in Laurence’s shoe, well away from the lovely gold of their jewelry.

With her hands still resting on his wrists, she went up on tiptoe to kiss him. The delicious slide of their soft human bodies was sweeter for knowing that they would soon take forms that weren’t meant for kissing or cuddling.

You can do this,
Jane told him silently.
I believe in you.

Then she gave him a little shove away from the door and bolted out into the rain as she yelled, “Last one to five thousand feet’s a rotten egg!”

Laurence let out a yell that was almost a roar, and she barely heard him take two steps on the wet deck before his arms closed hard around her. He lifted her, carrying her one running stride before he leaped up onto the rail, and she already felt his shape changing around her.

It was the most natural thing in the world to let her own shape change with his, her dragon self flowing outward to give her scales instead of soft skin, long neck and lashing tail, sharp teeth and talons. She pushed away from her mate to let her own wings spread wide when his were already lifting them into the thick, wet air.

She caught only a glimpse of the deep red of his tail disappearing into the thick white of clouds, and she beat her wings rapidly, climbing after him. Even when all around her was shrouded in cloud, she realized she knew exactly where he was—not from reading the swirling currents of the clouds, but in the same way she knew up from down, the way that gold called to her.

Heart of my hoard, I’ll never lose you
.

Then she burst through the cloud top into the clear light of the sky, and saw him properly for the first time.

Laurence, as a dragon, was a powerful creature, his wings spreading wide and vivid against the pale blue sky. His dark red scales gleamed in the sun, and the sun struck glittering reflections from the thin chain of gold that remained around his long, graceful neck.

He was flying higher as she followed him, and she turned her own trajectory to a flat arc, swinging low over the tops of the clouds so that she could watch him. Her mate was magnificent, and she would never get enough of watching him fly free as he was meant to. He didn’t speak to her, but she could feel his joy unfurling cautiously between them in dragon speech.

She was so taken up in watching him, and in the pleasure of flight, that she didn’t notice how close they were to the beacons marking the boundary line until another dragon burst out of the clouds and barreled right into her, sending her tumbling through the air.

***

Laurence roared as he dove toward his mate. He had been flying high, showing off, and now he was an agonizing distance away as he watched her wings beating wildly. The clouds were swirled into wild patterns as Jane struggled, tumbled by the blue dragon who had struck her from nowhere.

And in the next second—almost as soon as he roared, and well before he reached them—Jane was the only dragon stirring the clouds. In the blue dragon’s place was someone human-shaped and very small, screaming as they fell.

Laurence didn’t think, and barely noticed the fire of rage blinking out. He was already diving at a new angle as Jane’s wings caught the air, and in another second he made his catch and dove lower yet. They were low enough to be actually rained on, not merely wet from the surrounding cloud, the choppy iron-gray surface of the lake visible below them, when Jane and a deep turquoise dragon both appeared.

Laurence roared again reflexively at the sight of another male dragon. The child held carefully in his talons shrieked again, out loud and through dragon speech at the same time. He winced and looked down at her, shifting his grip so he could see her face.

She had big brown eyes. Her hair was too wet for him to tell the color of it, and she couldn’t be more than six years old.

You’re in our patch!
She sounded indignant, completely unafraid of the strange dragon who had snatched her out of the air as she fell, who held her now, delicately caged between wickedly sharp talons.
Let me go, I can’t shift back when you’re holding me so tight.

We’re at the boundary, honey,
the turquoise dragon corrected her.
And you flew right into his mate and knocked her over. Apologize, please.

Oh.
She sounded shamefaced, and she tugged something off from around her head, offering a tiny gold necklace.
Sorry, mister. Sorry, ma’am.

As if hypnotized, Laurence loosened his grip enough for her to move; taking it for invitation, she draped the necklace over a talon and shaped it quickly into a dragon-sized ring. Then she pushed herself up and jumped fearlessly from Laurence’s grip, still two hundred feet above the lake.

She didn’t even begin to fall before she had taken the shape of a bright blue dragon, fluttering madly against the rain as she rushed back to her father, who flew out to meet her, adding,
Sorry, she’s still learning. We don’t get to come out on the lake much.

It’s fine,
Jane put in, and Laurence didn’t know if the strangers could feel as clearly as he could how Jane had been bracing for disaster, holding herself carefully silent, until just then.
It happens to everyone. I went through a dozen apologies in a single summer when I was her age.

Laurence looked down at the childishly-formed ring on his talon as the pair flew away and Jane came closer to him. She was moving perfectly easily; she really was unharmed.

Come on,
she told him.
We should get away from the boundary.

Now that she mentioned it, he could feel a certain something—not gold, not dragonglass, but oddly like both of them at once—hanging in the air despite the rain.

What is that?

Jane’s surprise was wordless for a second.
You’ve never...?

He could feel Jane’s effort to pull herself together and explain something even more taken for granted than the offer of a raft.
It’s a boundary. It’s how we divide territory, even temporary flying territory. Corps witches set the public ones—with maps, luckily, because all the ones I know get terribly seasick. Polly doesn’t even like
looking
at water too much.

He flew higher, following her up through the heavy wet clouds and away from the weird prickle of the boundary, and he remembered the last time he’d felt something like that. It had felt alluring and familiar, and he’d walked closer to it, deeper in, trying to pin down the sensation.

Farrell has those around his place, doesn’t he?

And you didn’t even recognize what you were trespassing on
, Jane agreed.
God, I wish that helped.

I don’t suppose I could...
But Laurence couldn’t get the rest of the words out even silently. He was no child, to offer an apology-ransom of gold to a strange adult; he would kill his enemy before willingly giving him so much as a single gold bead from his hoard.

No
, Jane agreed.
Not an option
.

They burst out into the bright clear sky again, and Laurence looked back toward the boundary just in time to see two flashes of blue popping out of the clouds on the other side of it. The small one flew a wing-waggling loop-de-loop and he heard, faintly,
Sorry, mister! Sorry, ma’am!

Jane had said she had a dozen run-ins like that in a summer when she was a child; even if she’d been exaggerating for politeness, it must be within the bounds of reason. He wondered for a wistful moment what it would have been like to grow up among so many other dragons, and to be so fearless of them.

He wondered what it would have been like if his father had had time to spare—between being the mayor, being madly in love with his wife, grooming Gus as his heir, and all the rest—to take Laurence flying and patiently tell him when he’d made a mistake. His brothers’ children might be able to grow up like that, at least, among their uncles and cousins...

That will be our dragonet, in eight or ten years
, Jane thought, jerking his attention back to her. She was a lovely rich ruby shade in this shape, strong and graceful.

Would their dragonet be the same? Would the little one tint a bit more orange, looking like a living flame, or a touch toward pink or purple?

You’ll just have to stick around and find out
, Jane told him, with a flirtatious little flip of her wings before she dove through the clouds again. Laurence gave chase, and she led him on such a merry dance that he barely had time to think again for hours.

***

Shifting back into human shape at just the right height above the boat’s deck was obviously going to require practice. Laurence stumbled into Jane as he landed, but she stood steady, helping him catch himself.

Nobody gets the hang of
that
part right away
, Jane assured him, but he barely noticed the warm amusement in her voice compared to the press of her skin against his, slippery wet from the rain but as hot from exertion as his was. She was all silky-soft human curves now, and he could take her into his arms again. There was no need to keep far enough away not to foul each other’s wings or disrupt each other’s currents, and Laurence pulled her tight against him.

He kissed her, and his human shape felt solid and sure around him at the touch of her tongue against his. It was like flying all over again, in an entirely different way this time. He wanted to take her to altogether different heights, wanted to go every inch of the way there with her.

The feel of the deck under his feet changed with the rumble of the boat’s engine starting up. Laurence pulled back from kissing Jane to see her looking up at him, her eyes as hungry as his own must be, shot through with dragon flames. But there was water falling down all around them, and two humans at the other end of the boat who might have to interrupt them for some nautical reason at any moment.

Cabin?
Laurence asked.

Jane nodded and showed him the way through wordless dragon speech at the same time she turned and led him to the door back inside the enclosed area of the boat. Neither of them so much as glanced toward their clothes, or the little heap of gold lying with them; they had a much more important treasure in mind. There was a narrow curling staircase leading down below. At the bottom, an open doorway led onto a low-ceilinged space with a wide, inviting bed under the narrow windows.

Laurence paused only to slide the door shut and make sure it was latched against intrusions before he tumbled down to the bed with Jane. The bed rocked gently under them, but Laurence needed no prompting and neither did Jane, pressing herself close as eagerly as he held her. They only kissed and touched for a long dizzy time, feeling their way back into their human bodies and all the possibilities they offered.

God, you’re magnificent
, Jane told him, her hands stroking greedily over his skin, scarred and marked all over and still, somehow, as precious to her as every smooth, full curve of her was to him.
Want to lick you all over, want to taste you.

It occurred to him how they could both satisfy that greed at once, and the picture of it slipped out in dragon speech before he could wonder whether it was something he ought to suggest, whether she would like the idea, or—

Ohh, yes, yes, my darling, yes
, Jane responded instantly.
How should we...?

Sides,
Laurence directed decisively.
I’ll just...
He turned to lie with his head to the other end of the bed, sliding his hand between her thighs to show her how to prop one leg up, opening herself to him, while he did the same. He could nuzzle into the curly hair covering her sex, then, while she could wrap her hand around his cock, flicking out her tongue to taste it.

He groaned out loud, and realized it was the first sound either of them had made without using dragon speech. It made him want to coax sounds out of Jane to match, and he pressed closer, stroking his fingertips across her folds as he teased her with nose and lips.