by Starla Night
Onyx Dragons: Jasper
7 Virgin Brides for 7 Weredragon Billionaires
Starla Night
Copyright © 2020 Starla Night
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Earthly Charms.
Created with Vellum
Contents
Special Thanks
Jasper
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
What’s Next?
Also by Starla Night
About the Author
Special Thanks
Thanks to Kristin Smith, Kate Downs, and Allison Walker for reading Jasper and Rose’s story!
Blurb
He’s the peace-keeping Onyx brother, but there’s unrest in his own heart.
Billionaire dragon shifter, Jasper, can have everything he wants.
Everything, except for her.
Rose is his employee.
The woman who makes him breathe fire.
Her life is a mess, so she has Jasper tidied away into the just-friends box.
It’s where he needs to stay for the sake of the Dragon Empire.
Except that he doesn’t want to.
Now, Jasper’s got a decision to make.
Loving Rose will cost him everything,
But it will also be his ultimate salvation.
Jasper
Various names are applied to the different coloured varieties of chalcedony… Jasper is opaque chalcedony and is generally red but yellow, brown, green, and grey-blue varieties occur. Jasper is rarely uniformly coloured, the colour is often distributed in spots or bands.
~ From the Larousse Guide to Minerals, Rocks and Fossils [1977] by Hamilton, Woolley, and Bishop.
Chapter One
Rose Owens affixed her Cleaning, Please Wait sign to the door and pushed her cart into the top floor women’s bathroom.
The door swung closed behind her. Keyboard clacking, telephone ringing, shouts across the open cubicles, and hubbub of an intergalactic corporation sealed off like the closing of an airlock on a spaceship, leaving only whisper silence.
Bathrooms were the same across the entire universe. That’s what she’d gathered from working for the dragon shifters.
Except for one thing.
A too-big glug sounded deep within the bowels of the bathroom.
Ugh. Women’s today.
Rose set the brake and checked her supplies. She tucked her week-old dreadlocks under her denim bandana and pulled waterproof gloves over every inch of exposed copper-brown skin.
There were three connected parts to this top floor restroom: a richly carpeted lounge with plush couches and low tables; a trio of marble handwashing stations on jewel-tone mosaic tile; and the line of stalls. The walls were dark blue, and the lighting throughout was a moody gold.
A questionable stink curdled in her nose.
She shook the bottle of odor control spray. Almost empty. It would have to be enough.
Rose crept to the line of stalls and nudged the doors in. Smudged white porcelain, flakes of toilet paper, and women’s products. All normal. She poked the last stall.
The door eased open. She suppressed her groan.
A ball of green-black moss bobbed in the center of the clogged bowl. Long swathes of expensive ply and sewage bubbled in a nasty slurry. Brackish water drooled down the stained bowl and pooled on the tile. A bubble erupted with a huge glug and more water-filth mixture spilled out.
She plugged her nose.
This floor had a hell toilet.
And it had to be stopped.
Rose tiptoed back to her cart, donned her eye-protection goggles, and extended the toilet cleaning wand to max length. She clicked the power button. A sanitizing laser played across the ceiling. Excellent. She turned the laser off, narrowed the beam to a lethal ray, and cranked the power to maximum.
The bathroom door banged open.
Rose’s heart jumped into her throat. She swung the wand at the intruder. “We’re closed! Use the fifth floor…”
Cheryl, the shy intern-turned-CEO’s-wife, clutched her belly with pure fear.
It was an emergency.
Rose’s heartbeat slowed. She lowered the toilet wand and waved Cheryl in. “Go ahead.”
“I-it’s an emergency,” Cheryl stuttered as she raced past.
“Yep.”
Cheryl raced for the last stall, probably trying to get as far away as possible from Rose.
“Not that one!”
Cheryl pushed in, squeaked, and backed out of the stall. She dove into the next one.
Rose busied herself with her usual tasks. She emptied the trash and linens, restocked embroidered handkerchiefs, and swiped over the counters and polished faucets. The gold curved metal spoke of luxury a thousand times her salary. She erased water droplets from the octagonal crystal mirrors.
Cheryl slunk out and washed her hands. Color returned to her now-red embarrassed cheeks. “Thanks. I’m sorry. This pregnancy…”
“I get it,” Rose said, even though she didn’t.
Why a nice, quiet girl like Cheryl would volunteer to marry and then get impregnated by the grouchiest, growliest, most intimidating alien male in a building full of grouchy, growly, intimidating alien males was none of her business. Cleaning up after them was her business.
Of course, not all the dragons were terrible. Her direct boss, Jasper, was almost reasonable.
Cheryl dried her hands on the thick towel, left it on the marble counter, and then glanced back at the last stall and shuddered. “Boy, you guys have a hard job.”
Rose walked her to the door, let her out, and turned the lock with a click. She murmured in the silence, “You have no idea.”
Then, Rose grabbed the toilet bowl wand again, strode to the final toilet, and threw open the door.
The mass was gone.
The swirling paper and unflushed sewage had disappeared. Pristine water remained. Streaks and puddles mocked her.
Rose cursed under her breath and checked the other stalls.
The alien moss monster had haunted the sixth-floor toilets for months. That kind of thing happened when you built an office out of old spaceship parts. The sewage treatment plant beneath the building was filled with methane and moss, and they had to constantly scrub the pipes to control the infestation. The moss burst into flame when it contacted oxygen. If it overran the pipes, it could turn the office into a smoking crater.
Rose had discovered a missed link during the normal cleaning routine, and they’d been chasing lumps of moss through the waste system ever since. A large chunk had drifted up the water lines and become stranded in th
is section of pipes, unable to go any higher without contacting oxygen and bursting into flame, but also unwilling—if moss had a will—to go back down.
Rose adjusted the toilet wand laser to a wide-spectrum, much less harmful bleach/sanitize setting, and played its blue light over the white porcelain.
Stains disappeared, puddles vaporized, and any germs were decontaminated to oblivion.
Rose finished sterilizing the toilets, released the vacuuming robot to catch any particles, and ran sudsy water into her yellow wheeled bucket. She dunked in her self-wringing mop and washed the floor on the trail of the smart vacuum, then put away her supplies, dumped the water, and put out her wet floor warning cone.
The moss monster did not return.
It would become tomorrow’s problem. Or the day after that. Or another six months, when she surprised it or it surprised someone else.
This wasn’t the first time she’d had the moss in her sights and lost it. Rose had even brought in an experimental concoction from home to draw it out again, but Jasper had told her no. Using it now would incite his temper.
And when dragon shifters lost their temper, well, their humanity was next to go. Soon they were all covered in scales, roaring and slashing. Tables got broken, rooms got smashed, and she had job security.
Rose turned to the couches and fine tables in the lounge. By the time she finished the lounge, the tile was dry. She packed up her cart and—
Glug.
Oh, son of a—!
Rose lifted her foot off the brake release and listened.
Glug. Splish. Glug.
She stormed to the last stall.
The door hung open as though offended by the belches coming up from inside.
The moss monster had not returned to the surface. It was angry and sending up offenses. Turds floated in the bowl, strangled by the tough toilet paper, and other unmentionable things turning the toilet a hellish red. The monster lurked inside beyond her reach, ruining her good work, and would continue to do so until she did something about it.
“Forget this.” Rose returned to the cart and grabbed her bottle of toilet fragrance spray. The mixture of rubbing alcohol, essential oils, and blue dye coated the water and trapped any biological matter that fell into it. A person used three or four sprays.
Rose dumped in the whole bottle.
The blue dye spread out over the top of the bowl in a thick coating. She stepped back and waited.
Nothing happened.
Could the moss sense her movement? Vibrations?
Rose waited, waited, waited, and waited.
Nothing.
She checked her watch. A quarter past. Time was ticking. She didn’t have all day, and this was a bust.
Rose returned the empty spray bottle to her cart. Something caught the corner of her eye—a big water droplet right in the middle of the mirrors she’d cleaned. How? Well, that didn’t matter. She grabbed a drying cloth to polish it and any missed fixtures, before…
She stopped half-way to the fixtures.
A blue streak led out of the far bathroom stall, past her, and around behind her toward—
She turned and came face-to-face with…well, with a bizarre, string-thin` green moss man.
Rose stumbled back.
The moss creature collapsed into ooze and slithered for her ankles.
She shrieked.
The moss swiped at her.
She crab-walked backward.
It slither-slither-slithered leaving a weird slug trail of blue.
If it touched her when the blue wore off it would erupt into a fire and light her up, too.
The door banged. “Rose! Rose? Rose!”
“Help,” she said.
“The door’s locked. Unlock the door!”
She backed up against the wall and then raced around the creature.
It slithered after her.
She almost reached her cart and the toilet laser.
Moss string wrapped around her rubber boot.
She dropped like a sack of rocks and flipped over. The moss burned her rubber boot but the stench was tinted with nice like lavender and cardamom.
She kicked the moss.
It recoiled, made a popping noise, and gathered itself to spring.
The door smashed open.
A fierce brown dragon dove between her and the moss creature.
“Jasper!” she shouted.
He slashed the creature with his claws.
The mass separated into five pieces. Each reformed into a smaller creature. All five turned on her.
She scrambled for the laser. “I’ll get them!”
Jasper sheltered her with his huge wings. His voice rumbled low within his scale-covered chest. “They are already exposed.”
The diminished creatures slithered forward, but the places Jasper’s claws had shredded them smoldered and turned black. They continued coming as though they felt nothing. A fire ignited and each went up like a five-part torch. A loud pop erased the evidence. If they’d been any larger, it would have caused an explosion instead of a pop, but because his claws had separated them, they didn’t even trigger the fire alarm.
Whew.
Jasper straightened and retracted his wings, uncovering her. He examined the mess with his claws.
She sagged with relief and hugged the cart to keep her upright.
“Are you okay?” Jasper asked quietly.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll give you a moment to recover yourself.”
“That’d be great.” Rose reached for a clean towel.
Her coworkers did not give her a moment. The trio poured in—big marshmallow Shawn, petite goth girl Elle, supportive elder Patty—and crowded around in celebration.
“You did it!” Patty squeezed her forearms. Her youthful vigor belied her gray-streaked brown hair. “You’ve rid us from the hell toilet. Shawn was taking bets.”
“You took bets over whether I would survive?”
“No, on whether you’d call us for backup.”
“Oh.” Fear echoed in Rose’s shaking limbs. She mopped her sweaty face and scrubbed the black-blue marks on her rubber boots. Jasper had sheltered her from anything worse.
Shawn patted his large belly. “I bet on backup.”
“I knew you’d do it alone.” Elle’s purple lipstick gleamed as she smiled wide. “You don’t need anyone’s help to kick alien moss monster butt.”
“I also bet on no backup but was ready to jump in and help.” Patty hugged her coworkers. “We went into Jasper’s office to watch.”
“Oh, yeah?” Rose took a deep breath, straightened, and tossed the dirty towel. “You were all watching me on the monitors, huh?”
Her coworkers nodded.
“Since the bathrooms are a camera-restricted zone, we needed Jasper’s approval. We’ve been waiting for you to clean sixth all day, and we still almost missed you.” Patty lifted celebratory fists. “Months of work, done in one! Good job, fearless Rose.”
Elle rested her hand on her heart. “I won.”
“Even Jasper put in a bet,” Shawn said.
Rose eyed the brown dragon with foreboding.
Jasper shifted to human form. His scales sank beneath his skin and his body retracted into gorgeous, hard plains of tanned muscle, rippled and corded.
Her heart began beating harder and harder. Sweet relief flushed into carnal hunger. “What, uh…what did he bet?”
Jasper rose, nude, and brushed his brown hair out of his chiseled face. “That you would join me in my office for a mandatory safety training meeting.”
Rose yanked her gaze away. “I can explain.”
“Do so in my office.”
Even though she was untouched, nasty blue water spattered the bathroom. All her work was undone. And she was about to get in trouble.
Again.
Rose edged around her cart. “I’ll just finish up here…”
“Your ebullient coworkers will finish up for you.”
Ner
ves twinged in her belly. “I can’t pawn off my messes on them. And besides, you’re still naked.”
Jasper reached out a hand. “Shawn?”
Shawn draped Jasper with a clean towel.
He cinched it around his honed waist and gave the implacable order that made her melt and worry all at once. “Come with me. Now.”
Chapter Two
Rose followed her boss into his top floor VIP office, stood outside while he changed from a towel into a new suit, and then followed him down the hall and into the elevator.
Guilt weighed on her. “I know you told me to tell someone before I tried the spray, and I should have.”
“It sounds as if you did tell someone.” He pressed the button for the lower floor. The doors closed, trapping them in the elevator together. His gorgeous profile in the fitted brown suit with chocolate stitching stole the oxygen.
“You’re not mad?”
“My orders should have been more specific. That is not a poor reflection on you.”
“Well…I guess I could have been in real trouble…”
“Yes, if the full mass had attached to your body when it erupted, it could have blown you into a fine mist, and we would not be having this conversation.” His jaw tightened, and he glanced at her sideways.
Her heart throbbed and her thighs squeezed.
She tugged at her coveralls. “I’ll be smarter next time.”
“You are very smart. Intelligence is not your problem.” The doors opened, and he stepped out onto the operations floor.
