Light His Fire: Paranormal BBW Dragon Shifter Mail-Order Bride Romance

by Anya Nowlan

“Dalton!”

  “Sorry. She’s been in a foul mood for a few days and I dunno what it is. She better knock it off though or there ain’t gonna be anyone here for the opening. No one wants to deal with a storekeeper who looks like she’ll snap someone’s neck.”

  Pearl snorted to herself. She was going to have to have a stern talk with Dalton later. He had a right to his opinion – No way I’ve been that bad! – but he was going to have to keep his big mouth shut if he was going to be talking to her future clients! She twisted one of the cans around on the stack absently and the whole pile came tumbling down with a clatter.

  “Motherfucker!” Pearl bellowed over the store.

  That got a chuckle out of a werebear that was setting up some of the lamps near the dairy freezers, but he shut up real quick when Pearl tossed him an earth-scorching glare.

  “Sorry, Miss Mae,” he said, having picked up Dalton’s mannerisms.

  The man scuttled down off his ladder and disappeared somewhere where her glares couldn’t make the gates of hell open up beneath his feet – nothing like a woman scorned. Pearl sunk down onto her knees and started gathering the cans, muttering choice curses under her breath.

  How could you be so dumb! You knew he was just a player. Just one date? My ass! Never trust a dragon you meet on a dating site!

  Thoughts rattled through her head and she was so immersed in her personal angry pity party that she didn’t even notice that Danni had come and started helping her pick up the cans. When they both reached for the same one and their hands brushed, Pearl jumped back with a start.

  “Hell! Danni, you scared me!” Pearl said, clutching her chest.

  “You okay? Dalton’s worried about you,” Danni said, her imploring eyes seemingly staring right into the depths of Pearl’s bruised soul.

  Bile burned in her throat and Pearl nodded quickly, turning her eyes down to the floor again.

  “Yes, I’m fine. Just a bit on edge about the store opening, is all.”

  She jumped up and kicked a few cans into the haphazard pile they had built. She’d get to stack that again – joy. Danni gave her a look that told volumes.

  “Shit. It’s that obvious, huh?” Pearl asked, smoothing a hand through her hair.

  Danni just nodded in confirmation and took Pearl’s hand in hers, squeezing it. Human contact was right on the border of being painful. It reminded her far too much of being in Ares’s arms that night a few days ago. She pulled her hand away carefully and motioned for Danni to follow her.

  They walked through the store, already crowded with merchandise, and through the small storage area right next to the sales floor. There wasn’t a lot of room to play with and Pearl couldn’t afford big freezers yet anyway, so she’d placed most of the goods out and made a little office nook for herself behind the stacked boxes and crates. It was complete with two secondhand leather chairs that may or may not have been a rich burgundy color at one point. Pearl slumped into one of the chairs and Danni took the other.

  “What happened?” Danni asked.

  “It’s silly.”

  “It doesn’t look silly.”

  Pearl huffed. It was silly – her reaction to it anyway. Wasn’t she a little too old to be having tantrums just because a boy didn’t call her? She certainly felt too old for it. This was something she would have expected from Dalton and his girlfriend Missy – tears and bad moods and doors slamming. But she was far past her teenage years and, yet, here she was, sulking like the best of them.

  “He didn’t call.”

  “He didn’t call?”

  “Or text. Or reply to my message on SassyDate. Or show up at the store. Or show up at all, for that matter. I haven’t seen or heard from him in days. It’s like he disappeared.”

  “I assume we’re talking about Ares?” Danni asked, tying her fingers in her lap like she was settling in for a long session with an unhappy client.

  “Yes. That bastard dragon didn’t even have the decency to tell me he just wanted to get laid and then leave. I can’t believe I let him fool me like that! I mean, how stupid do you have to be to think that a womanizing asshat like that guy wants something more than a night of fucking around?”

  “Okay, reel it back a bit. What happened exactly?” Danni asked, her brows furrowing into a small frown.

  There was something so entirely soft and soothing about her voice that Pearl could feel herself relaxing just a tiny bit. Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that she’d been dying to bitch and moan about all of this to someone other than herself? Either-or, the words started coming out of her and she couldn’t stop them even if she’d wanted to.

  “We went on a date. And I know I’m being melodramatic about this because I told him it was just one date. I was entirely prepared for just one date. But then it happened and…”

  “And you want more than one date?” Danni offered gently.

  “And I want more than one date, yes. I can’t believe I’m so stupid to want more with that guy. Him! Of all the men in the world! Of all the men in Shifter Grove, for that matter! I bet you I couldn’t find another guy here who was as big of an asshole as Ares Goldplains. No, the shifters around here are good, decent, salt of the earth men who wouldn’t ignore a text for three straight days.”

  “Probably…”

  She could hear herself, and she could tell that she was on the verge of taking something and smashing it against the wall, but that didn’t help any. Pearl was upset at herself for getting so attached in the first place, and at him for letting her think that there was more there than just one night of fucking – an amazing, mind-blowing, toe-curling night of sex that she would never forget and never expect to match.

  Which just made it worse, right?

  It had to be good. It just had to.

  “He couldn’t have had a small dick, right? It had to be huge! It had to be perfect. And he had to know just what to do with it. I swear, that man… I want to strangle him. I want to straddle him and then strangle him. Maybe both. God, I’m stupid.”

  Pearl hid her face in her hands, feeling her cheeks burn with a blush. She was never so crass and never shared so eagerly, but it had been chewing her up inside and if she didn’t get some of it out, it was just going to take her to her grave. And she had a store to open, so there was absolutely no time for the grave.

  “You’re not stupid,” Danni said, thankfully ignoring the whole part about Ares’s cock. “You had a good date and you thought he shared the sentiment. That’s not stupid. Do you have any idea why he isn’t answering you? Maybe he was supposed to leave town or work or something?”

  Pearl shook her head. She hated feeling miserable like that. Her fingers instinctively went to the stone hanging from a chain around her neck. Despite her anger at him, she couldn’t bring herself to taking it off. It was hidden under the fabric of her shirt, but she’d found herself holding onto it more and more often.

  “No. At least he didn’t say anything about it. We spent the whole night talking and well… what I said before. And not once did I get the feeling that he was just going to poof, fucking disappear. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted him. And now I’m business partners with him.”

  Her teeth gritted together and the sharp sound it made was a welcome distraction. After a moment she looked up and found Danni eyeing her with compassion.

  “Well, we can’t help men being dumb, can we?” she offered with a mild smile.

  Pearl laughed, “Nope, that’s one thing we’re yet to cure, yes.”

  “So just forget about it. If you told yourself it was just going to be one night, appreciate it for what it was. One great night with a man who didn’t turn out to be so great after all. But that doesn’t mean the night was worth any less, you know? Just get your mind off of him. Do something fun. We can go out, get a few drinks with Cerise. She’s great when it comes to bitching about men and getting sweet and heavily alcohol-laced drinks in you!”

  Pearl sighed, her shoulders slumping. She knew Dann
i was right. She should let it go, the sooner the better, and just refocus on her work. And it had been one hell of a night. Just, did it have to be so damn hard!? Why couldn’t she be the one who wasn’t interested anymore? It gnawed at her that she’d let him so close and loved having him there as much as she had, and now he was nowhere to be found.

  “I think you’re right. I can’t go drinking, though. Having a hangover for one day would kill my productivity. But I can go do something fun. I haven’t been climbing in a while. I think I need to make time for that. That always clears my head. But… rain check on the drinks?”

  Pearl smiled weakly and Danni beamed back at her. The relief went both ways. Pearl felt better for getting some of the things swimming around in her head out and Danni must have been glad to see that at least some progress had been made without anything breaking or any shifters running for their dear lives.

  Though Pearl had every intention of making Ares Goldplains regret leaving her in the lurch if he ever dared to show his snout around her store again.

  She let go of the necklace and got up, Danni following her lead.

  “Right, time to get back to work!”

  But words could only do so much and as much as she didn’t want to feel that way, she still sort of hoped to see Ares walk through the door any minute… If for no other reason than to whack him over the head with a hard, solid object – like his ego.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Ares

  His phone was burning a hole right through his pocket. Pearl hadn’t left him a message in more than a day and he knew why it was. She was far too proud to keep asking him where the hell he was. And it wasn’t like he could really tell her, either.

  How does a dragon tell a woman he’s been hunting down that he isn’t good enough for her? Especially after spending a fantastic night with her?

  It wasn’t something Ares had ever prepared for. In fact, it sounded so ridiculous when he said it out loud that he had to keep from breaking out in hysterical laughter. But there it was, and in his heart of hearts he knew it to be true. He just wasn’t good enough for her – not yet. And stringing her along while he knew he couldn’t live up to her expectations would be worse than not answering, right?

  Ares wasn’t sure, but what he did know was that either way, he was currently living through a very personal version of hell. He’d been camped out on Sleeping Dragon Hill ever since he took Pearl back home. It was angled away from Shifter Grove, which meant that no one had heard him drilling into the side of the mountain all day and night. Otherwise, Ares was sure that at least Diesel would have been up there already, giving him a citation for disturbing everyone’s sleep.

  He hadn’t been out of his dragon form for more than it took to check his phone every few hours, not expecting to hear from Pearl but powerless against checking anyway. He sat on the wide planes of pure rock he had created, quietly considering his next steps. There weren’t many options other than what direction to continue breaking the mountain in and how fast.

  There was gold there and he was going to get it.

  He had already come across small streams of it, the hint of gold making his dragon work more and more feverishly. Ares knew it wouldn’t be long until he had to take a more methodical approach to what he was doing – instead of just ramming through solid rock – and get crews working on extracting the gold from the boulders he had torn out of the side of the mountain. But for now, all he could do was wrestle his way through Sleeping Dragon Hill until he found the bounty he was looking for.

  His body ached and protested. It was an unfortunate reminder of how little dragons were really cut out for other than looking threatening and pouncing on unsuspecting fools who came too close to their hoard. Ares had no doubt that none of his forefathers had ever sunken to the level of trying to carve out their own riches. It was simply a ridiculous notion – and yet, there he was, doing it.

  As much as it hurt and irked him physically, he hadn’t felt more at peace with himself in a long time. The only thing that could really compare was when he was on the stage with his brothers, creating the music that ran in all of their veins as thickly and surely as gold streaked through Sleeping Dragon Hill.

  Okay, perhaps those weren’t the only times he felt good.

  Ares’s face contorted in a grimace and his heart constricted in his chest. Being away from Pearl was slowly driving him out of his mind, even more so now that he was spending most of his time in his dragon form. His dragon had to physically force himself to work and look away from the direction he knew Pearl to be in, lest he turn around and go to her straight away.

  He was sure that at least part of the physical pain he was experiencing was because of his distance from Pearl. It was maddening being away from his mate. Ares was sure that she was the one he was meant to be with and staying away from one’s mate had killed many a dragon better than him.

  She wants a man she can depend on. Someone who knows what he’s doing, who has achieved his goals and can help her reach hers. Are you that man? Ares asked himself, the critical words scorching through his mind.

  He didn’t think he was. It wasn’t a case of simply feeling bad about himself – dragons had far too much ego to waste time on silliness like that – no, he knew. Deep down in his bones, he felt inadequate, not up to par. How could a dragon without a hoard and without direction take a mate and promise to make her better?

  He had to build himself up before he could dream of adding Pearl into his life. He had to be… better.

  The plan had only been loosely formulated in his mind. He’d find the gold he was sure was hidden deep within Sleeping Dragon Hill. He’d get crews to extract it from the rock – under strict supervision. He would build a lair near Shifter Grove to keep his riches in and then… he would bring home his bride. If she’d let him and if the distance between them and the separation didn’t kill him before.

  Ares’s lips curled back in a wordless snarl and he jumped up on his feet, determination driving him back to work. He checked the phone quickly and was somewhat relieved to see no new messages from her. There were only so many he could take before he’d forget all about his convictions and crawl back to her, still only half a man, and beg her to let him in her arms again. Being with her had felt better than any pile of gold, but he knew he couldn’t truly have one without the other.

  Then he let the shift take him again. Power surged through him, elongating and widening him until he could barely fit on the outcrop he had carved for himself on the side of the mountain. Boulders and piles of loose rock shuddered around him as he let out a loud, bellowing roar, the sound echoing back from the nearby mountains and reverbing through him and the surrounding areas. Ares could hear heavy stones roll down the mountainside in the distance somewhere, taking part of the ground with them.

  This was a dragon’s territory now and he could shape it as he pleased.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Pearl

  Pearl had given up on checking her phone. It had been far too long now to think that Ares had just got caught up in something and forgotten to let her know. Her cheeks still burned red with humiliation every time she thought back to the fact that she’d truly believed he’d felt something for her. How silly could she be?

  Naïve dreams and just pure stupidity on your part, Pearl.

  She huffed, straightening a strap on her harness. The grand opening of her store was to take place the following day and she had done everything in the store she could possibly think of. Well, she’d done it, redone it, re-redone it and when she’d gone to fix the same damn things for the fourth time, Dalton and Danni had combined forces to kick her out of the store.

  Pearl didn’t like the eagerness with which they removed her from her store, but she did appreciate the motivations behind it. She had to go out and relax before her head exploded. So she did what she always did when she couldn’t clear her mind – went climbing. Except that there weren’t any bouldering walls or indoor climbing facilities in Shifter Grov
e.

  Who needs plastic walls when you have the real thing, she thought with a grin.

  It was her third hour climbing up a challenging but not impossible sheet of rock on the side of a mountain not far from Shifter Grove. She’d lovingly come to know it as Lying Dragon Peak, named after a particular dragon who had just wanted to get into her pants and then disappear without a word.

  Carefully, she inserted another climbing device into the rock, determined to stay alive during this climb and maybe make the ascent another time as well. She’d been an avid climber for many years but had only taken to more daring, experimental climbing in the last year. There hadn’t been that many options for it in Delaware, after all.

  Pearl had left her phone home and, for all it was worth, thought she was better off that way. At least then she’d stop checking the damn thing every few minutes, right? Wouldn’t do to be clinging to her phone when on her tiptoes, keeling precariously over some gorge, now would it? She had told Dalton where she was going, but Pearl seriously doubted whether the young werebear had paid any notice to it between texting his girlfriend and pretending to know what was going on in the store. Sweet kid but, damn, teenagers were tough to work with sometimes.

  As much as Pearl was completely annoyed with herself and Ares, she couldn’t deny that her life was certainly looking up. She was beginning to cultivate friends who cared about her, and people in Shifter Grove genuinely needed her to set up the store, so completely failing wasn’t all that likely. Living so close to nature felt much better than Delaware ever had and she felt like she was really making strides towards becoming the kind of person she wanted to be.

  Now if only that pesky dragon would get out of her thoughts already.

  Pearl grumbled to herself as she heaved her body up another few feet of solid rock. She glanced downwards, tracking the path a pebble made as it bounced against the rock and then skittered lower until she couldn’t see it anymore. She was a long, long way up, but that just made her grin and take another step. Pearl loved the danger, the slight uncertainty that came with every climb.