The Billionaire Dragon Shifter's Mate: BBW Paranormal Dragon Shifter Romance Read online

“You’re going to put your back against that so you can hop up on my back,” Gus told her. “It’s easier to carry you that way if I’m going to take you all the way home. Like this you’re going to get branches in your face.”

  “Okay,” Cara said, just because Gus sounded so confident that that was going to work. “Yeah, sure.”

  Gus grinned. “It’ll work, trust me.”

  It did work, though. Cara’s feet barely touched the tilting ground before she was wrapping her arms around Gus’s shoulders and her legs around his waist. Gus straightened up under her and started jogging, then running through the trees. He moved like they were on level ground and she weighed no more than a toddler.

  “Oh my God,” Cara gasped into his ear. She was soon laughing helplessly at the speed of their run.

  She heard barking behind them and realized that Mouse was following them, a low gray blur along the ground.

  Gus laughed and started running faster, in bounding strides that somehow found all the clear spaces among the trees. They landed so lightly with each step that it felt like flying. Cara whooped like she was on a roller coaster and held on tight.

  In no time at all they were bursting out of the trees onto a gentle grassy slope, and a huge house was looming up before them. It looked almost like a castle, an edifice of stone with an actual tower on one corner and steeply slanting roofs that met at various angles. She could just see a railing where there must be a walkway at the top of the tower’s roof.

  Gus bounded right up onto the porch, spinning around and making her laugh harder. Cara raised one arm in the air and whooped in triumph, like they’d just won a race.

  It was only when Gus stopped that she saw Mouse again. He was running away across the lawn, back toward the trees.

  “Oh!” Cara said, feeling a little dizzy as Gus let her slip back to her feet. “Mouse—”

  “He’s fine,” Gus assured her, grinning and seeming not even out of breath. “This whole side of the mountain is his backyard, he won’t get lost.”

  Cara opened her mouth to say more, but then she saw the wet patch on Gus’s shoulder. She felt a weird instinctive bolt of fear, thinking Gus was hurt, and then she realized. She had bled through the handkerchief and onto his shirt.

  “Oh, Gus,” she touched his shoulder and winced at the tacky wetness of blood. “I’m sorry.”

  Gus glanced over at it and shook his head. “Don’t worry about that, let’s just get you patched up.”

  Gus took her hand and led her around to the front doors. There was a name carved in stone above them: Dragomir.

  “Dragomir? Is that your last name?”

  “Uh,” Gus said, rubbing his free hand over his hair before opening the door left-handed and tugging her inside. “Sort of. Legally it’s been Gray for about eight generations—I’m Gus Gray, nice to meet you—”

  “Cara Linley,” Cara offered, wondering just how old this house was, if Gus’s family had changed their name eight generations ago. Cara didn’t have a house to go home to back in Iowa that went back one generation.

  Then she remembered the signs that she’d driven past, pointing her toward the little town in the valley, which she had bypassed in favor of the scenic overlook.

  “Wait, Gray as in Gray’s Hollow?”

  “Like I said, everyone in town knows me,” Gus said, sounding actually apologetic.

  He tugged Cara through the foyer of the huge house. Her eyes skipped over the rich rugs underfoot, the gleaming wood of the floor and the staircase, the art on the walls and the little sculptures on side tables.

  Gus led her to sit down on a padded bench at one side of the stairs and ducked into a door beside it that led to a bathroom.

  “I’m also the mayor,” he explained. He reappeared holding a first aid kit and perched on the bench beside her. She raised her arm so that he could get at the cut. He kept his eyes on that as he spoke.

  “I’m the fourteenth Mayor Gray in a row. It’s kind of feudal, but people keep writing me in on the ballot and my brother Radu refuses to come home and run against me, so. It’s the least I can do.”

  “Radu,” Cara repeated.

  Gus unwound the chain and dropped it into her right hand. The handkerchief he put somewhere out of sight.

  “Legally Raymond,” Gus explained, and she thought he was trying to distract her as he swabbed the cut with alcohol wipes. “But he refuses to use his English name—Ray Gray, I agree, it’s terrible. His twin is Sorin, but everyone calls him Sunny.”

  “Sunny Gray,” Cara said.

  She closed her hand on the gold chain as she tried to ignore the sting of the cut under Gus’s hands. Gus seemed to falter for a second.

  “There’s a contradiction,” Cara added, trying to show that she was all right.

  “Well, that’s Radu and Sunny for you,” Gus said, getting back to it. He tore open a gauze pad.

  “That picture over there, that’s me and all my brothers, can you see it?”

  Cara looked up and quickly spotted the one he meant. She realized after a second that it wasn’t a photo with a fancy matte finish but a painting.

  “We had it done about three years ago,” Gus said. He was taping the bandage in place now. “After our dad passed and it was just us boys.”

  The picture showed five men standing side by side, all in gorgeously tailored suits. There was a little gap between Gus, who stood at the left, and the next brother. The twins, on the other hand, stood so close it was like they were trying to merge into a single person. There was another brother between them and Gus, who stood with his hands in his pockets, one elbow projecting into the empty space that separated Gus from the rest. At the end of the row, the youngest brother had his head tipped onto the happier-looking twin’s shoulder.

  It looked like they were standing near the house, on the green lawn: the background showed the forest slopes rising behind them.

  “There,” Gus said, patting her arm, and she realized he was done bandaging her up.

  She stood up cautiously, but she didn’t get dizzy this time, and she took a few steps to look more closely at the portrait.

  “That’s me,” Gus said unnecessarily, following her over to point to his own image.

  “And the boys: Laurence, who visits exactly twice a year for no more than three days at a time, so we had to schedule this around him—Radu and Sunny, the twins, and Teddy. Teo. He insists he’s all grown up and we should call him Teo now.”

  “What a handsome family,” Cara said, to keep herself from asking about that little gap, and the fact that the big house was perfectly quiet around them and even Mouse didn’t seem to live here with Gus.

  “But I’m the handsomest,” Gus insisted, smiling brightly. “Aren’t I?”

  “Of course,” Cara agreed, and she realized as she reached out to touch him that she was still holding the chain in her right hand. “Oh—here.”

  She held it out to him, opening her hand to give it back, and his bright smile suddenly dimmed. He looked down at it like she was offering him a bloody piece of bandage.

  “Did I,” she said uncertainly, still holding it out. Had it gotten damaged somehow? Should she offer to replace it? How could she replace anything that belonged to the man who owned this house?

  “No, it’s—” Gus shook his head sharply. “It’s fine.”

  He took it gingerly from her hand, shook his head again as if it felt fuzzy, and then said, “I—I should go change my shirt. Excuse me. If you want a phone or a computer or anything, the office is that door. Use anything you need.”

  And just like that Gus turned away and all but ran up the stairs, leaving Cara standing alone in his beautiful home.

  ***

  Stupid, Gus thought, stupid, stupid, stupid. Of course she gave it back. She didn’t even know it was a gift.

  Cara was human, and not a human acquainted with dragons. She wouldn’t know what it meant for him to let a piece of his most personal hoard leave his body, how special a gift it was.<
br />
  She’d had no idea how much it pleased his dragon to see her adorned with a piece of his gold. Gold that was not only adorning her but protecting her.

  And she’d given it back.

  His dragon was torn between hurt and rage. How could his mate reject a gift of gold so sweetly, so carelessly?

  Gus knew better than Cara see him reacting that way. He couldn’t scare her away. He couldn’t. She had to know him better before she found out about his dragon. She had to trust him, so that she would believe that his dragon would never hurt her.

  His swallowed down his instinctive reactions, pushing away the rage, struggling to be human. Even if she knew what it meant, it’s her choice to make. She gave it back. That’s all.

  But when Gus opened his hand, the chain she’d handed back to him was nothing but sparkling dust.

  ***

  After a moment staring in the direction Gus had gone, Cara walked down to the door he’d pointed out. The office had shades drawn over the windows and bookcases lining the dark green walls. There was a desk with a shiny new computer, a sleek new smartphone lying beside it.

  She sat down gingerly in the leather desk chair, but it turned out to be sinfully comfortable, and Cara rocked back the few degrees it moved, reveling in it. She would have killed for ergonomics this good back at the firm where she’d worked as a paralegal.

  She picked up the phone curiously, assuming she wouldn’t get any further than the lock screen, but it opened right up. She was tempted to look through Gus’s contacts or text messages, but she settled for opening up a browser and googling him.

  Gus really was the mayor Gray’s Hollow, so that checked out. He was also, according to a couple of uninformative articles attached to stuff like annual lists of the world’s richest people, an intensely private billionaire.

  Cara looked around the room again, wide-eyed. She’d realized somebody with a house like this must be rich, but Gus apparently had an inherited family fortune no one could really guess the size of. Except the billionaire part.

  “Okay,” Cara muttered, setting the phone down gingerly. “Okay, don’t freak out.”

  “Funny,” Gus said, and Cara looked up, startled. He was standing in the doorway. His new shirt was a soft blue that made his eyes look even brighter.

  “I was just telling myself that,” Gus said. Whatever sudden distance there had been in his expression before was gone now, and she felt that pull toward him again.

  “You were?” Cara asked. What on earth did Gus have to freak out about? He had everything.

  He stepped into the office and then came over to where she was sitting and offered her his hand. She took it and he helped her up, and they were standing so close they were almost touching, and she ached suddenly to be even closer.

  “Yeah,” Gus said softly. “I was telling myself, okay, you really want this woman to like you, and you think maybe she does, but try to play it cool for a minute.”

  “We, uh,” Cara said, her gaze dropping to his mouth. She licked her lips. “We did just meet.”

  “Exactly,” Gus said. “So I thought—dinner?”

  Cara blinked and looked up at him.

  Gus was smiling a little, almost shyly. Hopefully. As if he were offering a lot more than dinner.

  “Sure,” Cara said. Her stomach growled, and she was startled into a laugh.

  Gus’s smile widened. “With no delay. Come on, the kitchen’s stocked with at least three things I know how to cook.”

  ***

  The kitchen was on the same scale as the rest of the house, a huge high-ceilinged room. The sun had gone down fully now, but when Gus turned on the lights it somehow still felt like a kitchen, warm and comfortable. Cara perched on a stool while Gus assembled the makings of a stir-fry.

  Gus casually apologized for not having an actual cook on hand to cook for her. “I don’t bother when it’s just me in the house.”

  He had said that one of his brothers only visited twice a year—Radu? No, Radu was a twin. Laurence. But Radu refused to come live here either; she didn’t see any evidence of any of his brothers living in the house.

  Except—hadn’t he called Mouse his brother’s dog?

  “Who does Mouse belong to?”

  “Oh,” Gus said. “Um. He’s Ilie’s. Ilie always wanted a dog when we were kids—” and before Cara could remember which one Ilie was out of the tumble of double names he’d told her, Gus launched into a story about Ilie and Gus’s misadventures in “rescuing” a raccoon. It didn’t take long before she was laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe.

  “What about you?” Gus asked. “Any pets? Or siblings?”

  “Only child,” Cara said, shaking her head and feeling the pang she felt sometimes when people talked about their siblings the way Gus did. It was like having built-in friends who never moved away—well, not until they were grown, apparently, although Ilie must live somewhere nearby if Mouse was his.

  Gus was waiting for her to tell him about herself, though.

  “We did have a dog when I was growing up,” Cara said. “Sadie—she was one of those big sheepdogs, like Nana in Peter Pan, you know?”

  Gus nodded. “Did she look after you?”

  “I usually wasn’t much of a challenge, I liked sitting in my room reading books—if I was really adventurous I’d go outside and read books, and Sadie would sit next to me.”

  Gus smiled. “Very loyal.”

  “Oh yeah,” Cara agreed. “But one time, when I was nine, I decided to run away from home.”

  She and Sadie had made it maybe half a mile before Sadie sat down and refused to go further. Cara had still been standing there arguing with the dog when her parents found her.

  She told the story the way she always told it, so it was funny—the image of nine-year-old Cara trying to reason with a dog—and Gus laughed at all the right parts. But sitting there with Gus, Cara was more aware than ever of the truth behind the story. She’d never been brave enough to just run off on her own—not until Sadie was gone, her parents had move to another state, and there was nobody to tell her to stay anymore.

  So she’d finally taken off running, and here she was. And now what?

  ***

  Gus told her more stories as he cooked and as they ate, and she told her share back. His stories were all about growing up in a big, boisterous, close-knit family, in a town full of people who had known him since he was born. Hers seemed pale and lonely in comparison. She had grown up in a suburb where no one knew her outside of her block, and her parents had sold that house as soon as she left for college.

  Still, Gus listened intently. He never interrupted her, never jumped in to tell his own, better story before she was finished with hers.

  And all the time she was aware of being drawn to him. She wanted him, in a physical way that she had rarely wanted anyone. For once she felt sure that he wanted her too. He leaned in, closer and closer, as they ate. Not like a guy trying to crowd or intimidate her. It was just like he couldn’t stand to be too far away.

  Finally, when they’d been sitting and talking over empty plates for a while, he said, “So, dessert?”

  “Gus,” Cara said. There was only one thing she wanted for dessert, and it wasn’t anything in the kitchen cupboards.

  She saw Gus’s eyes go dark and hungry, and he leaned across the table to take her hand. The contact jolted through her like electricity.

  They were both on their feet suddenly, and Gus’s arms went around her. His hand slid into her hair as she tilted her head back to look up at him and his mouth lowered to hers.

  Cara had never really understood what people meant about kisses setting off fireworks, but this one definitely lit a fire. She felt her whole body heat up at the first touch of his lips, and she opened up shamelessly to him, letting Gus’s tongue plunder her mouth. She was barely aware that she was holding on tight to him, pressing as close as she could get, until she realized that she could feel his cock pressing against her through the layers
of their clothes.

  That was enough to make her pull back a little, panting. Gus’s eyes searched her, and he gave her another kiss, just a light touch.

  “Maybe I should…show you the rest of the house.” Gus murmured, stepping back and taking her hand.

  He led her toward the front of the house. Cara’s heart was beating fast, excited and aroused and still disbelieving a little what she was about to do.

  She did her best not to be distracted again by the contents of his house, but her eye caught on glittering brightness as they passed an open door. She tugged against Gus’s grip to look.

  “Oh,” Gus said. “That’s…”

  Cara towed him after her as she stepped up to the doorway of the room. There were lights on in the room, and the curtains were open, so it was probably bathed in sunlight during the day, which must make it shine even brighter. Tapestries with gold and silver threads shining among the rich colors hung side-by-side with children’s paintings doused liberally in glitter and paintings in gilt frames. The rest of the room held low shelves displaying everything from popsicle-stick sculpture coated in gold glitter to an actual tiara on a stand.

  Cara turned and looked up at Gus, her mouth open on a wordless question.

  He smiled sheepishly. “We call it the treasure room. It’s—there’s this tradition, people in town give the mayor gifts every year. Usually…shiny gifts. And they’re displayed in the house for a while after they’re given. There are crates of this stuff in the attics, we never get rid of any of the gifts.”

  “Hoarder,” Cara diagnosed fondly, looking around the room full of sparkling things again.

  Gus made a weird little choking noise behind her.

  She looked back at him and smiled. “Oh, no, you’re rich, aren’t you. Rich people aren’t hoarders, they’re collectors. Right?”

  “I might,” Gus murmured, dropping a kiss on the back of her neck that made her shiver, “be a little bit of a hoarder, actually.”

  “Well, the first step is acknowledging that you have a problem,” Cara told him, trying to keep her voice steady.