Hollywood Dragon: BBW Dragon Shifter Paranormal Romance

by Chant, Zoe

  When JP left, Jan felt as if the light had gone out of the world.

  “Let’s see if I can find the way back through all these gardens,” Shelley said cheerfully, and started out at her usual Valkyrie pace.

  Jan scurried after her, glad to follow because maybe now she could do a mental reality check. She was the sidekick to Shelley’s romance. But as they passed back through the Shakespeare garden, her eyes zoomed to the spot where she had crashed into JP. She looked away again, her skin sensitive, nerves supercharged at the memory.

  Every sense was alive. Her heels ticked on the flagstones, and she scowled down at them. She was an idiot to only bring the spike-heeled Manolos—she would have been better off with her scruffy waitress sandals. At least in those she wouldn’t be fumbling all over like a drunken sailor.

  But oh, the brain-frying hotness of his arms locked around her. That long, hard body! Her nipples tightened again, and she gulped air, and forced herself to stage breathing. She would not think about how her breasts had felt squeezed against his ribs, or the swell of his muscular arms around her, or the press of his cock against the hollow spot between her thighs—and how she had pressed her hips into him.

  Yow. Her hands flexed when she remembered how very close she had come to putting her hand down there to feel him.

  It.

  Stop thinking about his dick!

  And there went the blush again, ten times worse than before. She wondered if smoke was boiling out of her ears, as Shelley’s phone rang again.

  Thank God, Jan thought as Shelley exclaimed in exasperation, “Mom, of course your phone is running out of batteries, because you keep calling! No, the map app isn’t broken. As soon as you hang up, go back to the map and press Resume. I promise it will zoom right to where you are. Okay. Okay . . .”

  As Shelley finished dealing with her mother, Jan managed to pull herself together and get her stage face on. And just in time.

  When they reached the parking lot again, JP was waiting for them.

  Shelley said, “My clan is about half an hour out, as far as I can tell. Where’s Mick?”

  “Running an errand,” JP said.

  “Oh.” Shelley looked up and away. Her tone was the same one Jan had first heard when Shelley made a joke about pelts.

  And yes, again that morning, over breakfast. This isn’t the third wheel thing. Town politics? Really? Jan thought.

  But Shelley looked as uncomfortable as Jan felt, as she said, “We’ll go back to the Volkovs’, so I can get my family settled at the motel.”

  “We’ll meet at the barbecue place,” JP promised, and to Jan, “I’ll see you tonight?”

  “Sure,” Jan said, trying to sound like she hadn’t just been fantasizing about his cock.

  There went the damn blush again—but at least he was walking back to the house, and Shelley was busy unlocking the door of her car.

  Jan got inside, and Shelley gave her a puzzled glance. “Are you okay?”

  Jan said, waving her hand in front of her face, “It’s just the heat.”

  “Air conditioning in ten seconds,” Shelley said cheerfully, and Jan didn’t say what kind of heat she meant.

  The Willis clan showed up in a caravan—Dad, Mom, grandma, four brothers, the wives of the married brothers, and a swarm of kids. The rest of the day was spent in a cacophony of loud masculine voices, punctuated by the shrill sounds of Shelley’s nieces and nephews. The motel that Jan had had to herself was now full to bursting.

  By the time everyone got situated, it was time to get ready for dinner, which was at a barbeque place, once again tucked somewhere inside the town among all the warehouses and machine and tractor shops.

  Mick showed up with Dennis in tow, meeting them in the parking lot. Jan felt like a mouse among the elephants, as she always did when she met the Willises. Mick and Dennis were, if anything, even bigger.

  She liked Shelley’s family, who were always friendly, but she couldn’t help the heart-sinking feeling when they walked into the restaurant, with its gigantic TVs on every wall showing different sports events. The Willises whooped with pleasure—this was their kind of place—and promptly began talking louder.

  Two long tables had been reserved for them. Jan headed for the spot farthest from the booming TV. She was about to sit when she felt her chair smoothly pulled out for her. That was not a Willis thing. Startled, she glanced up, and hear flared again when her eyes met JP’s.

  He smiled down at her, and she felt her responding smile scorching her right down to her painted toes in their expensive sandals as he took the chair adjacent to hers.

  * * *

  He had meant to stay only long enough to say hello to the Willises and then get back to the long list of things to do but when he drove up and saw Jan’s bright head lost among the towering Willises, and the way her shoulders hitched tightly when they entered the god-awful noise of the barbeque place, he jettisoned his plans.

  He was determined to somehow make it up to Jan for his awful blunders.

  He pulled out Jan’s chair for her, and the smile she gave him nearly buckled his knees.

  He dropped into the next chair. “Not into the sports scene?” he asked, and gesturing to the big TV behind her. Inane much? he thought, wincing inwardly. He could hand out commands rapid-fire to any number of professional people, but with Jan he was somehow reduced to high school awkwardness.

  But she gave him one of those sweet smiles as if he’d said the most brilliant thing ever heard. “About as much as they’re into opera.” And chuckled, low in her throat.

  His dick tightened. “I can’t tell you how many times I heard ‘Did your parents make you do it?’ when I told people I studied piano, growing up. In my turn I can’t understand how few people hear the greatness of classical music.”

  “Oh, yes,” she breathed, and then in a lighter voice—as if she were afraid to be too serious, too intense—“Do you like other kinds of music?”

  “Everything,” he said.

  “Even rap?” She grinned a challenge.

  “Especially rap. The best of them remind me of the Viking skalds. Can’t you just see rap artists declaiming in some castle before the long table of big bearded guys with their weapons on the table?”

  Her lips parted. “True. So much of it is about violence, and honor, and loyalty, as well as love lost and found. Just like those old epic poems.”

  “How about you?” he asked. “Any kind of music you don’t like?”

  “Death metal is pretty hard on the ears,” she admitted. “And polka is pretty obnoxious unless you’re actually on stage doing the actual dance.”

  “Okay, I have to admit I would probably not be first in line for a polka concert,” he said, and a sense of buoyancy filled him at the quiet, running-stream sound of her chuckle.

  As the food was ordered, delivered, and eaten all around them they dove deep into a discussion of music. It was so good to talk music again that he felt heady, almost delirious as their words tumbled over each other’s, she apparently as eager as he was to exclaim, compare tastes, and debate good and bad composers or pieces.

  The noise around them steadily increased, which drew them closer together, until he could smell the fresh scent of her tea tree shampoo, and see tiny reflections of one of the distant TVs in her pupils, pinpoints of color. There was absolutely no sense of time passing—he would have sworn it was five minutes—when the sound of a wailing child drowned everything else, and here was Shelley.

  “The kids are getting cranky. It’s pretty late.”

  Jan’s face lengthened in dismay. Then smoothed into politeness as she got to her feet. “I’m ready anytime you are,” she said courteously. But he saw the reluctance in the glance she cast back at him.

  “Thank you,” he said. He wanted to add more—I could talk to you forever heading the list—but a second child added its wail to the first, and Shelley sighed. “We better leave before they kick us out.”

  JP confined himself to,
“See you tomorrow.”

  And got Jan’s answering smile. “Hope so!”

  * * *

  Jan walked out behind Shelley wishing she and JP could have gone somewhere quiet and kept talking. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a chance to talk music. Or been around a guy whose mere glance could heat her up so deeply. The combination nearly made her dizzy.

  They reached the motel. Through her closed door Jan heard the muffled noise of the Willises watching TV, so took her ear buds and iPod to listen to soothing music while she took a bath.

  When she came out, the place was quiet again. It was almost midnight. And once again she was not tired enough to sleep.

  Restless, her mind ranged over the entire conversation, lingering on little details: the lock of fine black hair that had fallen on his forehead. The swell of his forearm and bicep hinted at by his jacket sleeve when he leaned over to hear her better, and how was it that she found those hints of the body beneath the expensive fabric ten times sexier than those shirtless kilted men at Shelley’s bridal shower?

  She thought about JP’s sunny music room. Would she feel his presence there if he was absent himself? She knew she was going first thing in the morning.

  She turned out the lights, lay down . . . and her eyes stayed open.

  She got up and moved to the window. The motel had turned off the exterior lights so she could see pale shapes in the blue-white moonlight. She adjusted the blinds a fraction, so she could look out to see if there were any fireflies.

  She glimpsed movement in the darkness. Alarm spiked through her as the huge shadow pacing by not fifteen yards away resolved into the biggest dog she had ever seen—more like a wolf.

  It paused, sniffed the air, then its head began to turn. She ducked back instinctively, then remembered that the room around her was totally dark, and there were the slitted blinds. It couldn’t possibly see her.

  The muzzle lifted, and her heart stuttered when red eyes glimmered briefly, the way dogs’ eyes sometimes did at night. The animal didn’t growl, or look like it was ready to attack.

  Instead it paced around the corner. Curious, Jan moved to the adjacent window and cracked the blinds just enough so she could peer out.

  The wolf-dog had walked away from the parking area to the empty lot. It was barely visible against the background. Its edges blurred. She blinked, and next thing she knew, the silhouette was not a canine shape, but that of a man. Two legs, human shoulders.

  The man approached an even bigger masculine silhouette. They stood close together, and one gestured outward. Then they parted. Within five steps one blurred into a dog, and the other shortened and broadened into a—

  Bear?

  What?

  She looked down at herself, barely visible in the dark. She pinched her thigh hard. Still awake. When she looked out again, the two were gone.

  She flung herself on the bed and lay there stiffly as her heartbeat thundered.

  She struggled mentally, feeling that it was her duty as an adult to talk herself out of believing what she had seen. There had to be some mundane explanation, because modern life scoffed at anything out of the ordinary. What it didn’t see it didn’t believe, but she had always believed in . . . go ahead and call it the paranormal, even if only in the privacy of her own head.

  Because she thought the world far more interesting if it was full of Japanese spirits like the yōkai. And the fae. And shapeshifters. And djinn and even demons, as long as there were vigilant angels to guard against them. Opera was full of the supernatural world, as music had been from ancient times.

  You could not touch or taste music, and yet it had the power to open the heart and mind, which was a magic of its own. In spite of the fact that so far her life had been pretty much that of the luckless sidekick, Jan had still hoped that one day she would step past a corner, or gaze into a fog bank, and there would be the veil between the everyday and the possible, ready for her to grasp and rip asunder.

  It seemed tonight she had.

  * * *

  She finally fell asleep, and woke to the yell of a little kid that sounded like it was directly outside her window. She blinked at the strips of early morning sunlight painting thin stripes on the bed through the slats in the blinds. It was going to be a very hot day—and there was that formal tea late in the afternoon.

  But this morning, she had JP’s music room.

  She took a fast shower, ran a comb through her damp hair, put on one of her floaty Art Nouveau tunic-dresses and her new sandals. She wouldn’t let herself hope to see him, when he had made such a big deal about her having the place to herself.

  But a girl can hope.

  She pulled her music out of her suitcase, grabbed her motel key, and slipped out the door. Looking around for any signs of mysterious dogs or bears—had that really been a bear?—she crossed the asphalt parking area into the barren vacant lot, and then to the meadow beyond.

  She saw no one out at all she headed toward the line of eucalyptus, their scent distinctive in the heavy morning air. A faint fog lingered in silvery wisps over the sloping lawn that two nights ago had been impenetrable darkness. When she passed the trees, she gazed beyond—and made out the grove of oaks surrounding the performance shell, and beyond that the back end of the LaFleurs’ house, just as JP had said.

  She hadn’t realized how very large the house was. Was that really the home of only two people? Or one and a half, as she remembered JP mentioning his house in Hollywood. No, wait. There had to be an army of servants.

  As she crossed under the sheltering branches of an oak, she spotted movement beyond the lacework of rose trellises off to the left, on the side of the house that she had never seen. She veered sideways so whoever it was wouldn’t see her. She had been invited to the music room, but she would rather avoid awkward meetings with people she didn’t know.

  Still, her path took her along the roses, through which she glimpsed a silhouette in black moving with stylized grace. The mist lingered more thickly here, drifting in a slow swirl that did not quite obscure someone performing martial arts kata with double sticks that whirled through the air.

  Somehow—somehow—she knew it was him.

  She remembered Shelley doing morning workouts in the dormitory common room before anyone else was awake. Shelley had been pretty good, but nothing like the leashed power JP’s silhouette revealed.

  She watched until his kata took him around three sides, but when he was about to face her way she quickly ducked back. She remembered that Shelley didn't like being broken out of her concentration, and besides, she hated the thought of JP looking up and finding her lurking like some kind of stalker.

  So she backed away and retreated to the Shakespeare herb garden—pausing to glance at That Spot—and up to the house.

  The door was open, the air beyond quiet and undisturbed.

  She quickly let herself into the music room and made sure the door was firmly shut. Trusting to the sound baffles, she sat down at the piano, looking down at the keys that JP’s fingers had touched. She spread her hands, wondering what his touch would feel like on her skin . . .

  He was so cool, so elegant, so beautifully put together. He was even cool and collected while doing kata. She was seized by an intense desire to see him utterly undone.

  Oof. Heat pooled deep in her, and she expelled her breath sharply. Talk about useless daydreams!

  She hit middle C, and began her vocal warm-ups.

  When she was finished with those, she pulled out the music for Shelley’s aria. Five times through it, and she knew she had it down.

  She looked around the room, wishing that the walls had captured the sounds of JP’s piano music, and that she could somehow move back in time to see and hear him play. What did he express through his music? Was he always so cool and controlled?

  She let herself out, quietly shutting the doors again, and began to pace through the garden when she looked aside at the shell. The temptation to test the sound was so s
trong. She had been too embarrassed the day before because her voice was cold. But that was no longer true, and she was even alone.

  So she turned left instead of right, and slipped past the rose border into the secluded dell, then onto the stage.

  For a moment she breathed, listening to the faint, slow whisper of air. She listened to her soft footfalls until she knew she was at the perfect spot, then she closed her eyes, lifted her face, and sang.

  * * *

  The only way JP could stay awake after a night of aerial patrol in his phoenix form was to do a full set of kata.

  He finished and headed back to the house for his shower. He had a long day ahead, beginning with a strategy meeting. Not that they could do much until they found out who they were dealing with.

  Instinct—the metal detectors—that awareness he had sensed in his flight two nights ago—it all pointed to another dragon, one who had sensed the LaFleur hoard.

  You can want it, but you’re not going to get it, he thought. And his mind ran ahead, sorting the day. He knew that Shelley’s family had arrived, and he had promised his help in wrangling the Willis males, but at the same time, his mother and the Consejo insisted on a meeting to go over what little they knew.

  Two steps, and he stopped and swayed, caught by a river of brilliant sound so compelling that he was pulled around by an invisible force as powerful as steel.

  It was her voice, soaring up and up, in the aria “Ruhe Sanft” —sleep in peace—the extraordinarily poignant love aria from Zaide.

  The beauty of Jan’s voice coming so suddenly in the cool hush of early morning was so exquisite it was nearly anguish. The sound shell amplified it perfectly, carrying the soaring notes softly through the still air.

  JP was not aware of his steps until he reached the top of the rise, and looked down into the grassy shelter of the bowl before the stage. She stood alone, papers clutched in one hand as she sang.

  Slowly he approached, drawn almost against his will. He knew he should make a noise—announce his presence—because he was fairly certain she thought she was alone. He loathed men who stalked women for whatever reason, and yet his breath froze in his throat. He could not interrupt that cascade of captivating song.