Romance: Bought by the Dragon: BBW Dragon Shifter Romance Standalone (Paranormal Romance) (Studly Shifters Book 2) (2 page)

Jenna stared at him, her last hope dwindling. Then slowly, she felt herself crumble. Humiliated but unable to stop, she started to sob. She buried her face in her hands and wept. “Please...please let me go!”

The King made a disgusted noise. “Why does every human woman assume that males will capitulate to them the moment they pour water from their eyes? Pull yourself together, woman. It’s not the end of the bloody world. It won’t take but a year or two out of your life to do your job here, and then you can go do whatever you want with yourself.”

Grimald spoke up, his voice gentle and hesitant. “Miss...Taran isn’t cruel. He won’t hurt you.”

“Is that supposed to reassure me?” she gulped and let out another sob.

“Well...point is, things could be a great deal worse….”

“Enough of this!” The King crouched down to stare Jenna in the eyes. “You will comply. We will see the two of you married, you will go to my son’s bedchamber and you will lie with him until you fall pregnant. You will carry to term, and should it live and be male, you will be set free. Otherwise you will try again until we have what we need.

And in the meantime, you are never to tell my idiot son that you were forced into the matter. He will refuse otherwise, and I’ll be forced to continue this ridiculous search for a proper mate for him. If that happens…” His eyes flashed again. “I’ll have you walled into your cell and fed through a slit for the next fifty years.”

3: Taran

The next few hours blurred past as Jenna sank deeper and deeper into despair. She was washed by two women (dragon or human, she couldn’t tell; they seemed as coldly indifferent to her plight as everyone else but Grimald) in scented water, dressed in a filmy white gown and veil, and bedecked with gold jewelry and multicolored flowers.

She was brought before an aged, gray-silver dragon with tattered wings, who trumpeted some sort of hymn and then chanted over her in a language that she didn’t understand. A ring, in the same dragon-wing design as the King’s crown, was shoved onto her finger.

The whole time, she stared at the marble-mosaic floor, tears slowly drying, but only because she was going completely numb.
No way out,
she thought dully as a pair of scaled acolytes slithered around her bearing massive, smoking censers.
I’ll have to go through with it. A year, maybe more, of hell.

The one thing that comforted her, the one thing that gave her any resolve at all to survive, was that possibility of freedom at the end of it.
I’m going to get through this. I’m going to come out the other side, no matter how I manage it, and then I’m going to go back home to my aunt and make good on my promise. She’s as good as dead. If I can’t get my revenge on this monster King and his subjects, I’ll take it out on her for getting me into this mess.

They were leading her down another hallway. The chains were gone, but the cream-colored dragon walked behind her, and nudged her (with surprising gentleness) when she hesitated. He had stayed quiet almost this entire time since returning with the key ring.

But he seemed to be watching her closely, and his strange, saurian eyes looked as troubled as Grimald’s. Finally, she came to what seemed to be the right door: an immense carved-wood affair, fancier and larger than those around it. The dragon laid his paw against the door and held it open for her. “You shall await him here,” he said, and she heard a sort of sad resignation in his voice.

She walked through, into a bedchamber out of a Medieval legend. A suit of scale-armor hung on a rack beside one of the multi-paned, ceiling-height windows; tall bookshelves full of every description of book lined the stone walls between hanging tapestries; a wardrobe that could have held a car crouched beside a dressing screen.

Beyond it lay the bed: massive, built with whole logs, wide and low, its canopy stretching up to dominate a quarter of the room. It was piled with furs and velvet blankets, and she tried to imagine the creature who might sleep their nights.

If he was anything like his father...no, no, she couldn’t think about that. She was already terrified, already fighting surges of grief and rage. She had to hide her loathing of the whole affair from this prince, or she would end up living in a bricked-up tomb.

She heard voices outside and froze, listening hard. One was the voice of the beast that had stood guard over her. The other sounded more human: deep, authoritative and a little cold.

“The girl is here, then?”

“Yes, Highness. She is...quite extraordinary. It is the King’s hope that you will like her.”

A derisive snort. “This has nothing to do with what I like or do not like, Ranald my friend. I’m to get a child on this human, and I have no say in the matter. I expect not to see her again once the deed is done.” He sounded so disgusted with the whole affair that Jenna felt an unexpected rush of shame.

Ranald left out a soft sigh.

The other paused. “Hmm? What is this, Ranald? Do you like her? Would you like to take my place in this bedchamber? It matters not to me. My father won’t even notice as long as someone fills up her belly with an egg.”

An egg? Oh Hell no.
What was she, a duck? Fucking some strange human against her will and having their kid was one thing, but ending up laying an egg? What kind of insane crap was this?

Another sigh. Ranald rumbled softly, a note of sadness in his voice. “You will see, Highness. She is...memorable. If I dared, I would….”

“You would, wouldn’t you?” The voice chuckled in a derisive tone that reminded her of the King. “I’d offer you seconds, but once the Mark is set, she cannot have another or we both die.”

Jenna froze.
What?

“Yes, Highness, I know.” Ranald hesitated. “Then you will take her and then keep celibate for the rest of your life? It does not sound like a happy circumstance for any man, especially one of our nature.”

“It does not matter.” Bitterness overflowed the man’s voice. “After Andrea’s betrayal, I want nothing to do with women. I’d rather live with the frustration than return to the bed of a woman I wouldn’t touch were it not for my father’s requirements.”

“It is the kingdom’s requirement, Highness.”

“Bah. That old sadist is the one who makes the rules. Ever since the Plague took most of our females and left the rest sterile, we have had to breed with mortals. Other men among us, yourself included, can afford to love them, if you can find one worth loving.” His bitter tone indicated that he found that doubtful. “But for me, there is no love. There is only duty.”

Jenna’s heart sank, and she felt a trickle of sympathy for the owner of that voice. In his own way he was just as trapped as she. The difference, of course, that his duties ended with an orgasm or two. Hers…

An egg. I am to carry and birth an egg for them. And what comes out of that egg won’t be mine. Not a baby for me to love, but an heir to secure a dynasty. I probably won’t even get to hold him.

If she started crying again, she would smear her makeup, and he would know. She swallowed her tears and took several deep, steadying breaths. If he didn’t want any part of this, at least she could bet that the sex part would be over with as fast as he could manage.

I just hope that some day, when all of this is behind me, I can find a lover who can drown out these memories with his body and his love. Someone who isn’t going to take my virginity as part of a transaction that lines my aunt’s pockets. Someone who wants me with him, and will work hard to keep me. Someone capable of tenderness...not one of these monsters that sometimes pretend to be men.

“Well, I may as well get this over with. Guard the door, Ranald, if the old bastard checks to see that I’m actually fucking her I’ll flame him until his armor melts off.”

“I’ll...make certain there are no intrusions.” Now Ranald sounded positively miserable. Jenna wondered...who was he, and why did he seem so bothered by all of this? Did he pity her? And if so, why?

The door flew open, and in strode a man. She turned to look at him--and froze, her breath catching. Taran, the vicious King’s eldest son, looked as little like him as Grimald resembled him. He was just as tall and powerfully built, his dark purple silk shirt clinging to his muscular chest and his breeches straining over his thighs, but the rest of him was….

Beautiful. He’s beautiful.
Grimald had been good-looking, but Taran looked like an artist had created him. His skin was very pale, almost colorless, contrasting sharply with the wavy jet black hair that flowed to his shoulders.

His eyes were a distinctive light green, large and hooded; his features were narrow and well-shaped, with a Cupid’s bow mouth held now in a grim line. He wore a sword at his hip that was likely for show; what would a man who could become a fire-breathing monster need with a length of sharpened steel? He tossed his head as he walked in, looked around...and then his eyes fell on her, and he stopped dead.

Jenna blinked back at him, astonished as his grimness slowly softened, and a gleam came to his eyes. She could feel the weight of his gaze like a hand sliding over her body. Jenna, who had endured pinch marks every night at her waitressing job but had never had a single man back home ask her out, didn’t know what to do with his open stare. He almost looked like he liked looking at her.

Her with her too-robust curves, her with the soft belly beneath the swell of her breasts and an ass sized too big for normal lingerie...Jenna, ignored by every human man she had ever run across, wilted a little in the face of his open fascination.

He hesitated a moment longer, then lifted his chin, seeming to force the grim expression back onto his face like a mask. “Well then. So you’re the one my father bought for me.”

He approached her, sneering slightly with disdain even as his gaze kept sweeping hungrily over her body. “Nothing to say for yourself? Good. I don’t particularly want to hear it. This whole arrangement goes against my grain, and I’d rather just get it over with.” He walked around her, just as his father had done, and reached out to touch her wavy hair, like a farmer testing grain-heads for ripeness.

He unclipped the jeweled combs holding her hair in place and pulled them free, letting her hair tumble down her back. She shivered, but held still and kept her mouth shut. He leaned down to speak in her ear. “I hope you’re not expecting romance. I don’t do that. Besides, you’re a stranger--and a glorified whore, to boot.”

She gritted her teeth behind her lips and started to shake.
I’m not a whore. My aunt is selling me like one, your father is buying me like one, but I never asked for any of this. Stop saying that! I’m not a whore!

“Such a pretty face...you must have broken a lot of hearts back in whatever town they found you in.” He brushed her chin with his finger and she had to press her lips together to keep them from trembling. “I wonder if those smitten mortal boys knew you were the sort who will offer her body up for money. I doubt they would have bothered with you, had they known.”

She started shaking. Part of her wanted to knee him in the balls for his insulting manner; part of her wanted to beg for her freedom no matter what the consequence; part of her just wanted to run for one of those high windows and throw herself through it.
I don’t want this. Stop touching me and saying these horrible things. You don’t know what’s really going on!

He paused, head tilting slightly as his green eyes fixed on her face. “You’re trembling,” he said in wonder...and with the tiniest touch of concern. “You are aware of what you are here for, correct? You know that you’ve been sold off as my wife?”

She nodded mutely, not trusting her voice to hide her pain. But she just couldn’t look at him any more. Somehow having him disgusted with her humiliated her worse than being reduced to an object by his father and her aunt.

He sighed. “Fine, then. I can’t imagine what kind of woman would sell herself off to be bred, but at least you’re pretty enough.” He took her wrist, leading her over to the bed, his manner businesslike and cold.

4: Escape

He did not kiss her. In fact, as he lifted her and settled her amid the furs and blankets, he ignored her mouth, and didn’t look her in the eyes. Instead, he simply reached down and smoothed his hands over her shoulders through the filmy silk. “Try to relax. You are fortunate; I’m not a brute like my father.” He was trying to avoid showing her the gleam still in his eyes; he was trying to pretend disinterest. But as he started to explore her body through the cloth, she felt his hands tremble a little bit, and heard his breath catch.

How strange; he wanted her. His eyes, though hooded and cut away from hers, shimmered with growing lust as he ran his hands over her. It confused her enough that a little of her fear trickled away.

Did dragon-men like their women big? The two who had helped her bathe had been built like particularly busty Amazons. And thinking back...even the King had looked at her with interest. Now, Taran, leaning down to unfasten the brooch that held the silk together at her throat, had a little shake in his breathing.

He set the brooch aside and smoothed the fabric back, exposing her lush, heavy breasts to the air. Her nipples tightened in the cool of the room, and his eyes lit up as he stared down at them. “...maybe this won’t be so terrible,” he speculated, before unbuttoning his own shirt.

He slipped the aubergine fabric off his shoulders, exposing a body even more heavily muscled than it had appeared when dressed. His smooth white skin gleamed over his powerful body, hairless and without flaw. As he crawled onto the bed with her, eyes fixed on her breasts, she realized that his breeches strained over his groin as well as his thighs now.

His hands, rough with callus, slid up over her breasts, cupping them and kneading them with surprising gentleness. A jolt went through her, which she couldn’t enjoy; the fact that neither of them wanted this, and that he held her in contempt for pretending she did, sucked all the pleasure out of what her nerves were telling her.

Even when his mouth closed over her nipple, she could hear herself whimpering, but stood outside her body, its trembling responses somehow just not reaching her mind. He tongued her breasts, nudged her back into the pillows, and clambered over her, his hands busy baring the rest of her skin. Her golden girdle clattered to the floor; he untied the silk sash beneath and tossed it aside, then opened the dress and looked down at her.

She squirmed a little, self-conscious on top of everything else, and he blinked at her, eyes searching her face. “Are you actually shy?” he asked, blackly amused--and then the amusement fled his expression as she blushed and nodded. “How can you be shy? You sold yourself off!”

She almost cried right then, her lips trembling as she stared up at him.
I didn’t. I swear I didn’t. I wish I could tell you the truth, but your father will imprison me for the rest of my life if I say one word!

Taran blinked, and tilted his head slightly. “You
are
here of your free will, aren’t you?”

She barely held herself together then, her breath shaking in her throat.
No! No, I’m not. Please don’t do this to me. I don’t want my first time to be like this! And they said you don’t want someone who is here against her will. Help me!
But she couldn’t say a single thing aloud. She didn’t dare. She forced a tiny nod.

He shrugged, then. “No point in being shy, anyway. This isn’t exactly a white wedding, I suspect.”

Her anguish swelled up again and she started trembling.
Yes it is. That’s what makes this all the more horrible. You think I’m some money-grabbing whore opening her legs to you because it will profit me. But I’ve barely even been kissed, and now you’re...you’re going to….

He started nuzzling her neck, running his tongue over her skin and then nipping gently at her pulse point. It should have felt good. Her body responded as if it did, shivering and arching, her mouth making a little sound of pleasure...but she seemed to stand outside herself, numbly apart from the sensations.

His hands slid over her skin, exploring every part of her now that she was bare: her back, her thighs, her breasts again, kneading and caressing. He would not kiss her; didn’t even try. She stared at the underside of the canopy, feeling her body jerk and tremble in response to his attentions.

Her hands clung to muscled shoulders that she would have happily caressed if only...if only they were there willing, if only this wasn’t being forced...on both of them. That reason alone kept her from hating him as he reached down to unbuckle his belt and slide off his breeches.

He was huge, she realized with a little jolt of fear: even half-erect, what brushed against the inside of her thigh was as big around as her wrist. His breath had gone heavy and shaky, and he reached down to caress her mound with his long fingers, kneading and rubbing. She heard a soft moan come from her lips, but she was still numb from the neck down. Her responses were nothing but reflex.

He took his time with her, rolling her over on the bed, nipping and tonguing his way up and down her spine, running his teeth against her hips, kneading her ass while making small appreciative sounds.

The sunlight started to slant and redden more and more, then faded entirely, leaving them in near darkness. Candles flickered on his bed-stand, lighting his face and catching in his shimmering eyes as he tried to ready her body for him dispassionately, but instead slowly gave in to naked and unapologetic lust.

At least one of us will enjoy this,
she thought bleakly as she felt his now fully erect organ throbbing against her.
I hope it doesn’t hurt too much.

He was moaning low in his throat by now, having restrained himself for hours until his lust overcame his own resistance. Maybe he was thinking of other women; this Andrea, for example. As he parted her thighs with his hands and positioned herself over her, she tried her best to relax. Relax and comply.
He can’t last long after all of that. It will be over with soon. Maybe I’ll even be lucky and get pregnant on the first try.

But even as he started to push in on her, a sudden wave of anguish and despair undid her, and her eyes brimmed over, tears spilling down the side of her face.

He froze, the haze of lust clearing from his eyes. “You’re...crying?”

She tried to stop herself. Thought of everything she could: that this would be done with soon, that she could go home eventually, that she could then hack off her aunt’s head with a butcher knife. But the shock on his face undid her, and she started to sob.

His erection wilted immediately as a look of horror crossed his face. “What is this…?” he asked breathlessly. Then he grabbed her by the shoulders and stared her in the face. “You--girl! What is this? Why are you crying? Aren’t you here willingly? Why are you so frightened?” He reached down between her thighs and felt her sex, and his eyes widened. “You’re dry. Two hours of preparing you and you’re dry as a bone. Tell me the truth--what is going on here?”

She knew she was doomed now. Through her gulping sobs, she finally came out with it, thinking
At least this way the King won’t get what he wants!
“I...they kidnapped me! My aunt sold me off without my agreeing, or even knowing, and then they drugged me and I woke up in a dungeon...and then he had me dragged out to him, that horrible old bastard, and he...he told me...he told me that I had to do this or I’d never be free, and that if--if--if I told you the truth, he’d have me walled into my cell….”

His eyes widened gradually as her story spilled out of her, and the horror peaked--and caught fire into rage. A feral snarl vibrated his throat, and he leaped off of her, landing crouched on all fours as he started to change. A moment later, a dragon the size of a city bus crouched there, tail lashing, black scales gleaming like obsidian, his pale green eyes glowing with anger.

“Get your clothes on,” the beast demanded. “He will answer for this atrocity.
I am not a rapist! I will not become one for his pride, or even for the kingdom!”

She hastily grabbed up the pieces of her outfit and did her best to put it all back together, still sobbing--but this time, it was mostly in relief. He might be an asshole, but he had a basic decency that his father lacked. He had spared her. Her first time wouldn’t be a rape for some king’s convenience. Taran wouldn’t allow it.

A few minutes later, Taran burst into the throne room with her hurrying along behind him, careful to avoid his angrily lashing tail. The cream-scaled door guard trailed after them, his expression troubled.

The prince changed back into man-form as he moved, now dressed in black scale-armor, his white face set in lines of rage. The King looked up in confused annoyance from a chess game with the gray priest, and glanced between his son and herself. “What precisely is the meaning of this?”

“I warned you,” Taran growled as he stomped over and swept the pieces off the board with one hand. “I warned you not to try and trick me. This girl is a captive! She came here in chains! Do you think that I wouldn’t find out? Do you think that I wouldn’t discover that you tried to make a rapist of me?”

The King stiffened, his eyes fixing on Jenna in an expression of cold anger. “So, you didn’t take my warning seriously, and told him. I see.” He raised his head and called out to one of the green-liveried servants. “Fetch the stonemason and the dungeon-keeper both! I’ll have her walled in within the hour.”

She almost fainted--but Taran wasn’t done. He stepped up to his father, his face twisted with what could only be called blood-lust. “I should kill you for what you’ve tried to do to me. And to her!”

Jenna stared at Taran in shock, for his voice shook as he mentioned her, and she suddenly realized that some of his anger was on her behalf. He confirmed it a moment later, hissing to his father, “You may have found nothing wrong with what you did to our mother.

But we are the ones who had to go on once she killed herself. I won’t do that or see it done to another woman! I warned you!” He took Jenna’s arm and drew her forward.

“I want her returned to her homeland, compensated, and set free. Otherwise, I will legitimize my rule by
beating you down.
You won’t have to wait for that illness to kill you--I will do it myself!”

The King stayed cold and focused in the face of his son’s homicidal fury. “Nonsense. If you won’t do your duty, I’ll simply have you replaced as heir.” He looked up at the door guard. “Ranald, inform Grimald that he is now the heir apparent. I’ll have her taken to his chambers and impregnated instead. If it takes, I’ll let her out of her cell long enough for her to give birth.”

A wail of horror escaped Jenna as she realized that she wouldn’t escape rape even though she’d chosen imprisonment over it.

The sound didn’t stir the King one bit, but he was not the only one in the room. Ranald winced, a pained sound escaping his throat. The gray elder’s brow ridges drew together in a look of troubled concern. And Taran?

The prince let out a roar and changed again; she stumbled back as his body swelled into its other form and he turned on the advancing guards. The five creatures hesitated in the face of his fury; he swatted aside one of them and snapped at another, driving the blue-green creature backward in fear.

The King started to get the idea that he perhaps wasn’t safe, and backed off alongside the elder, getting the throne between himself and the growing battle. Taran had blood on his teeth now, and one of the guards, a smaller gray one, limped away with his shoulder bleeding.

Ranald didn’t move. He didn’t lay a paw on her, he didn’t make a single gesture toward her, and he didn’t join the fight. She had no idea what his plans were until a charcoal-colored guard slipped past the furious prince and tried to reach for her. A cream-colored tail lashed out and tripped him surreptitiously, and he went over on his nose and slid several feet.

More guards were coming; she could hear shouts and growls, hear running feet and slithering sounds. Taran looked around--and then at one of the ceiling-length windows. He turned to look at her. “On my back, now!”

She ran past Ranald, who made no attempt to catch her, and leaped onto Taran’s back, gripping the crest on the back of his skull and wrapping her legs around the base of his neck. He ran straight for the window, and she ducked down behind the crest. Glass shattered.

They were falling into space. Then he unfurled his wings and they glided upward in a long arc. He flapped once and then banked, darting away toward the open sky.

She caught a glimpse of moonlight over the sea, and high cliffs, and the massive spire of the tower blocking out half the moon. Then he climbed higher, flapping powerfully, quickly leaving his few pursuers behind.