Romance: Bought by the Dragon: BBW Dragon Shifter Romance Standalone (Paranormal Romance) (Studly Shifters Book 2) (3 page)

5: Hideaway

Jenna woke slowly, her mind a jumble of strange memories. Lying nude under a powerfully-built figure who caressed her dispassionately...or pretended dispassion, anyway. The truth lay in his eyes...those pale green eyes, growing bright with suppressed desire.

And then Taran’s rage at discovering his father’s deception. The argument with the King...the battle, the escape...and then just a dim memory of black scales under moonlight.
I must have fainted,
she realized with a twinge of embarrassment.

She opened her eyes, and looked around. She lay on a pile of furs inside a decent-sized cave, dry and from the sky outside, very high up on the sea-cliffs. The cave had been converted into a rude one-room home, complete with bed, a table and chairs, a fire pit, a few lamps, and a stack of books.

She got up, wobbly and with her head stinging from thirst. A steel decanter sat on the table, and she crossed to it, uncorking it and sniffing. Water. She drank the contents down in a few gulps, then set it down and looked around carefully. “Taran?” She didn’t see him anywhere.

She walked over to the cave mouth, which was scored heavily with claw marks, and looked out over the sea. Clouds scudded across the sky as a sharp cool wind blew; the waves rumbled far below her, and the blue of the ocean stretched to the horizon. No ships, no planes, nothing aside from a few gulls showed signs of life outside. As she looked along the curve of the cliff face, she saw, very far off, a few spires: another cliff-side tower city.

Shivering, she took one of the furs off the bed and wrapped herself in it, covering the thin silk of the gown she had been offered to Taran in. She shuddered, remembering. Not because of him; God knew that if the circumstances hadn’t been completely crazy she would have found him ridiculously attractive.

But they had been forced at each other, and even his talented hands and animal attractiveness hadn’t been able to overcome her outrage and terror. And in the end...he was probably glad of that. She realized that that was the reason for his arrogance and bitterness; in his own way, he had been forced as well.

She felt a surge of sympathy for this strange dragon-man, who had rescued her (and himself) from a terrible fate. She would have to thank him when he returned. Even if he felt violated and angry, he needed to know that at least one person thought his defiance of his father was justified...if not downright heroic.

Soon enough, the sound of wings approached, and a shadow fell over the cave mouth. Taran landed, already transforming, and walked in with an armful of wood and a large, fresh-caught fish of some kind she didn’t recognize. He looked troubled, but wiped the expression off his face when he saw her up and looking at her. “You’re awake.”

“Yes. I’m sorry, I must have fainted.”

He sniffed, dumping the pile of wood into the fire pit and then shoving the spit above it down the fish’s throat. He replaced the loaded spit and rearranged the wood into a neater stack. “It’s understandable. What is your name?”

“Jenna. I um...I wanted to thank you. I didn’t think anyone there would listen to me. He seems to have complete control over everyone, and I couldn’t get away without help.”

He stared at her for a moment, expression coldly measuring, then turned to the fire pit. He spat out a thin stream of fire, setting the wood alight and starting the fish cooking. She jumped and went quiet. He looked at her again, and then said simply, “I have no interest in human women. I complied with my father’s wishes for an heir on the condition that she be aware and willing. When he failed even to provide that, honor demanded that I act. You heard me. I am no rapist.”

She remembered the light of lust in his eyes and knew that he was lying about his disinterest--perhaps even to himself. But she didn’t comment on that. Instead she asked, “Why do you even need human women for that in the first place? Aren’t there any...girl dragons...around?”

He stared at her, the firelight reflecting in his eyes and his mouth its usual guarded line. “No.”

That confused her. “What? Why?”

He walked over to the cave mouth, his back to her and his arms folded. “You must think that my father is a great monster. If only that were true, it would be so much simpler. But my father is not a monster. He behaves monstrously, because he is broken.”

She moved up behind him, stopping a few feet away. He glanced back over his shoulder at her, but did not react otherwise to her approach. “What do you mean?”

Taran sighed. “Thirty years ago, before I was born, there were female dragons, as many as the males. We could still mate with humans, and some of us gladly took human wives or husbands, and lived among you. Some of us still do. But this place, this island is our homeland, and where many of us still live and keep to the old traditions.

“Dragons are...not immortal. We are very long-lived, but we do age eventually and weaken, and certain things can kill us. Certain weapons, certain poisons...certain illnesses. At that time, a sickness was being discovered, brought back unknowingly by dragons hunting from far off, or returning from the mainland.

This sickness was plaguing humans too, but to them it is a crippling illness instead of a deadly one. Not so for dragons. This new sickness was carried by the ticks that can trouble us as badly as humans or other warm-blooded things. The difference was that this illness was developed by humans, as a weapon of war against other humans.”

“Lyme Disease.” She had heard the stories of Plum Island, of the waves of illness that had been spreading across the country from the East Coast for decades. “It kills dragons?”

“Correction. It kills
female
dragons. The fevers it brings causes their fire to rage out of control, killing or sterilizing them. My father was there when it happened.” His voice started to shake a little. “Within three years, dragonkind’s numbers were almost halved.

He witnessed his mother, his sisters, his wife and many of his subjects simply...fall from the sky, burning from within.” Taran squared his shoulders, but his imposing shape didn’t fool her. She knew that if he turned around she would see the pain in his eyes--and that was why he wouldn’t turn around.

She moved up closer to him, fighting the urge to lay a comforting hand on his back. “His wife died too. Your mother?”

“Oh no.” He let out a bitter laugh. “My mother was human.”  He paused, drew a somewhat shaky breath, and went on. “My father issued a decree, that as many of the survivors as possible take human wives in order to repopulate the island. Most of these women were simply kidnapped.

You see, when we learned that this horrible illness had been engineered by humans, many of us came to hate your race. And none hated you more bitterly than my father.” He turned around and looked at her, and she saw the grief behind his mask-like composure. “He lost his heart that day, you see. The day his beloved burned. Every cruel thing he does to humans, he does because he cannot ever forget, cannot ever forgive.”

Her heart was beating fast. She tried to imagine the King, that cold, dispassionate sociopath, watching in grief and horror as his wife, and all his female kin, died one after the other. And the terrible thing was, she could do it.

The image of the King in her head, doubled over, not in pain from his illness but with the pain of a torn heart, screaming silently, unable even to weep lest he show weakness to his subjects.
I will feel nothing from now on,
the shade of him whispered in his voice inside her.
I will feel nothing, so that I never ever have to feel this again.

Taran looked at her, startled. Then he reached out, and touched her now-wet cheek. A wry little ghost of a smile quirked his lips. “You must have a very big heart, to find some pity for him in it after what he tried to do to you.”

Jenna swallowed and looked down. “Some things I can’t wish on anyone.”

“I wonder how long your pity will last when you hear the rest of the story,” he mused quietly. He went back to the fire pit and turned the spit over, then rose up again. “When the decree was issued, my father was childless. He took the initiative, snatching my mother off of a racing boat she was practicing in and flying off with her. She was furious, of course, and fought him, and tried to escape many times in the first year. But then...I was born. And suddenly, despite hating my father, she had a reason to stay.”

She actually smiled a little, thinking of that. But his expression didn’t change. “Did they ever get along?”

“Oh no. In fact, she spent most of her time imprisoned, to ensure that she would not try again to escape. You saw the cells where the nobles’ women were kept in those days.”

Jenna shuddered. “Oh God. No wonder he had no problem with my having been caged.”

“Yes. Indeed. It used to be quite common in the years after the Plague. And I spent the first five years of my life thinking that that was normal. But then...something happened which changed my mind.”

He turned the spit again, and she came to stand beside him, hugging herself under the fur wrap. “May I ask what?”

He looked at her, then shook his head. “My mother fell in love.”

“And not with your father.”

He laughed. “Oh no. My mother was a lesbian. This whole time she had been forced to engage in a form of sex that was completely unnatural to her. I don’t know if my father knew, but I know that if he did, he didn’t care. His treatment of her was just another way for him to get back at humanity. But anyway, I was five, and Grimald was two, and my mother fell in love with one of the other kidnapped humans. Ranald’s mother, in fact.”

“The one who helped you rescue me.”

“Oh yes. I hope no one caught that, or he’s going to end up in chains himself. Ranald has more nobility in his wingtip than my father has in all his form.” He sighed. “These days, at least.

“The two adored each other, and spent as much time as they could together. My father allowed it because it made my mother more tractable. And because he knew that their relationship could go absolutely nowhere. Both women had been Marked, you see, and so they could never make love.”

Jenna’s brow knit as she looked at him. “I don’t understand. Marked?”

Taran barked a laugh. “Oh, of course he didn’t tell you.” He reached over absently and toyed with a few wavy strands of his hair, seeming unaware that he was doing it. “When a human and a dragon mate, their essences mingle, and they become in certain ways, one being. It changes them, creates a bond which cannot be broken. If I had mated with you last night, you and I would have been thus bound. If either one of us should make love with another person, and betray the bond, both of us would die.”

Jenna stared at him, heart pounding.
The King knew this. He knew and he lied. He said I’d be free to do what I wanted after giving him his damned heir. Is there no end to his cruelty?

Taran nodded gravely. “When my mother and her beloved discovered this cruelty, they found themselves caught in a terrible dilemma. They could not be together, not even once. My mother cared not if my father died with her, but Ranald’s father was and is a good man, just as his son--and one who adored and doted on Ranald. My mother's beloved could not take his father from her little boy. And so the two lovers were forever separated, not even able to spend the one night together that would kill them.”

Jenna swallowed and looked down, her eyes brimming over again. God, it embarrassed her how much she was crying lately. But it wasn’t as if she didn’t have reasons. “What happened?”

“They threw themselves from the cliffs,” Taran replied in a soft, bleak voice.

“Oh God.” This time she did reach out and touch him, just lightly on his oak-hard arm. He blinked at her, but didn’t move away. He merely seemed...confused. “I’m so sorry, Taran. You didn’t...see her do it, did you?”

He shook his head. “But Ranald’s father did. He has never recovered. He despises my father for this; blames him completely. He exiled himself from the island as soon as Ranald was old enough to take his place in the castle guard.”

She didn’t move her hand. She suddenly, keenly wanted to hug him. Not so much him, but that small boy, with his mother’s jet-black hair, who suddenly had no mother because of his father’s cruelty and a strange quirk of dragon magic. But there was only this huge, muscular figure in the cave with her, and she looked at him with tender sadness, wondering if such an act of comfort would offend him.

His eyes widened slightly, and his expression softened. “Do not weep for me, Jenna. Nor for us. We were to be your captors and I your rapist, remember?”

“You wouldn’t have, you already proved that. I couldn’t even hide it from you.” She rubbed her hand up and down his arm; he blinked rapidly, but stayed where he was.

“You aren’t frightened of me?”

She smiled up at him, and then did hug him, very lightly, her awareness of his warm, superb body against hers a huge contrast to last night’s numbness. “You saved me from that horrible situation, even though you must be in a ton of trouble for it.”

He didn’t seem to know what to do. His hands stayed at his sides for a moment, and then drifted up slowly, very lightly brushing against her back. She felt that strange jolt again--but that reminded her too much of last night, and she stepped back a little awkwardly.