The Billionaire Dragon Shifter's Mate: BBW Paranormal Dragon Shifter Romance (3 page)

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.

“Come on, let’s continue the tour,” Gus said, and this time Cara didn’t resist as he led her to the stairs.

She wanted his lips on her again. Not just on the back of her neck.
Everywhere
.

“Second floor,” Gus announced as they reached the top of the flight of stairs and he led her immediately around to the next. “Not very interesting—art, guest rooms.”

Cara caught a few glimpses of yet more opulent rich-people furnishings, but Gus was already hustling her up to the third floor.

“The boys’ rooms are up here,” Gus said, leading her down a hallway. “None of them are home, so also not very interesting, but…”

Gus opened the door at the end of the hall. “This is me.”

The space revealed was a long open room, cluttered but bright, lined with windows that reflected back the room, hiding the darkness outside.

“We could stop here,” Gus murmured, gesturing to a comfortable sofa tucked in among the tables and shelves. “Or—if you wanted to continue the tour…”

Cara knew what he meant. They could try to hold back from this. He wouldn’t push her, even though he felt the same connection she felt, and the same desire.

She’d been looking for an adventure, hadn’t she? Here it was. The dashing stranger, the whirlwind romance.

“Let’s go all the way,” Cara said, reaching for his hand, and then she added mischievously, “upstairs, I mean.”

Gus laughed a little and kissed her softly again, holding her hand tight. She melted a little under it, but he pulled away enough to speak much too soon. “All the way, then. You’ve got it.”

They wound through the crowded room—there were all sorts of tables and shelves, piled with books and little boxes and yet more assorted artworks of polished metal and delicate ceramics and gorgeous colored glass and crystal that caught the last of the light. There were also some chairs and couches in amongst them, so Cara could see how this was, theoretically, a living room.

A narrow staircase at the end of the room led up to the next floor, which Cara realized must be in the square tower at the corner of the house.

The room at the top of the stairs was utterly empty, with windows on all four sides. It was a strange sight; Cara felt as if she must have suddenly gone blind, or if she’d stepped into a whole other world from the rest of the house below them.

“What…?”

“This room isn’t needed right now,” Gus said hastily.

He tugged her toward the stairs without meeting her eyes.

He led her up another flight to the top of the tower, which turned out to be his bedroom, once again full of shiny clutter and sumptuous fabrics. There were more tapestries here, hung between the windows, and another portrait that looked like it contained parents as well as a crowd of young boys. Gus didn’t give her a chance to look at it, nor at the huge wood-framed bed piled with pillows and soft, dark fabrics.

There was a spiral staircase in one corner of the room. Gus grinned and led her toward it, gesturing for her to go first as he finally let go of her hand.