by Anya Nowlan
“What the hell is going on here!?”
Dalton frowned, looking to the box in his arms and then back to Pearl like she’d lost her damn mind. Did she not see he was carrying things? The anger that had seemed to be such a distant emotion to Pearl just some days ago was becoming more of a staple all of a sudden and she was sure that there was no one other than Ares to blame for it. It had to be him. How could it not?
“I don’t know, Miss Mae. This dragon guy called us last night and told me I had to be at work early, that the trucks were coming sooner and we had some furniture to put together. When I got here, he already had half of Tyler and Trey’s crew working on building new shelves and putting up the storage rooms, and an electrician was fixing the big walk-in freezer in the back. Uncle Deacon said that I shouldn’t trust him, but I dunno… He paid me up front for the day, double, so I’m cool with him. Can I go now?”
There was nothing left to do but nod weakly and let go of the surly polar bear teen. She stared at the hoard of people working on her store, moving ten times as fast as she could have on her own with the one pair of helping hands she could afford. Like a plague of locusts they had descended upon her store, but instead of screwing everything up, they were… making everything better.
“ARES!?” she yelled again, getting over her momentary bout of awe and confusion.
“Princess! How nice of you to join us! I’ve been waiting for you!” a familiar, cocky voice called, making Pearl spin around and look for its source.
When she laid her eyes on him, she felt the oh-so-tempting jolt of desire rush through her and her throat threaten to dry up again. He was shirtless (of course he was shirtless, how else could he be…) wearing a pair of working gloves and sporting that grin she wanted to smack off his face every time she saw him.
Ares was carrying three boxes of cheese and she knew each of them weighed at least forty pounds. He made it look like it was nothing.
“What the hell are you doing!? Who are all these people? What are you…”
She stood right in his path, the crew bustling around them. Pearl had run out of words. There just weren’t any left. Her brain froze over and all she could do was helplessly wait for him to tell her exactly what in tarnation he was doing.
“Why, I’m fixing up your store, of course. Gotta be ready by the grand opening, you know. I hear it’s any day now. Most of these guys are Trey and Tyler’s crew from that big guesthouse mansion they’re building down the road. They’re having some issues with shipments and were more than glad to lend out the crew to me for the day. Such sweethearts. Must be all this mountain air making everyone so pleasant.”
Ares grinned and easily veered past her as if she were some sort of immobile stump in his way. Pearl’s mouth fell open. Phrases like “I never,” and “the nerve of him,” and everything else that could only be said by ladies at least forty years her senior kept coming to her in bouts. After a moment, she finally regained her senses and stomped right after him.
Distantly, Dalton’s words came back to her.
A dragon? Is he a freaking dragon!?
She’d never discussed what kind of shifter he was, and for all the things he so gladly shared, Ares had been surprisingly tight-lipped about his last name and the type of shifter he was. But Ares and dragon made her brain jump to one very obvious conclusion, and it made her stomach sink.
He was Ares Goldplains, of the Gold Dragons, one of the biggest rock bands in the country. Like just about everyone in the world, she’d heard of the Goldplains brothers. Only Ares’s two older brothers were still at the helm of the band, but over the years the younger Goldplains brood had also gone through the band at various times. She wasn’t just dealing with a guy far too self-assured for his own good, she was dealing with a dragon – a billionaire dragon.
Which of course didn’t really mean anything to her. He was still a bastard who was screwing with her plans and she wasn’t about to take that lying down, no matter how much she wanted to.
Embarrassingly, the memories of the previous night came back to her at the most inopportune time. She’d spent a good long while imagining all the deliciously devious things Ares would do to her body if she only let him, but instead of getting to enjoy him, she’d had to settle for her vibrator and good, old-fashioned imagination. It was a good thing she was red with anger because otherwise she would have been red with a sudden bout of desire.
And that wouldn’t do at all.
“You can’t do this. This is my store,” Pearl said, stomping after the dragon who was now stocking the shelves with cheese.
It had to have been the most ridiculous thing she’d ever seen – a billionaire dragon stocking cheese. The absurdity of it all made her want to laugh out loud.
“Ah, but that is where you are wrong,” Ares said casually, giving her a toothy grin.
Pearl’s eyes went wide.
Oh no.
“What have you done? Ares, you better fucking tell me or I will take one of those cheese wheels and bash that damn grin of yours so far into your face that you can taste your last night’s dinner!”
That got her a few raised eyebrows but Pearl didn’t care. She was mad as hell and it didn’t matter who knew. Ares, of course, just chuckled like she’d made a mildly funny joke.
“Well, I met this delightful werebear by the name of Rhett Dean.”
Color drained from her face.
“Did you know our fathers used to be in the Gilded Beast club together? I didn’t. Apparently Rhett used to drink with my brother Alexander when they were both just getting started on their individual paths to greatness. You meet the weirdest shifters around here.”
All the while, he was hauling one cheese roll after another onto the shelves, his muscles glistening with a thin sheen of sweat that made Pearl’s knees threaten to buckle. When she’d started flirting with him over SassyDate – and lord did she regret it now – she’d never imagined she’d actually have to come face to face with him like this.
Sure, she’d told him all about the fact that she’d one day like to have a family and she’d joked about moving to an old gold rush town and ordering a mail-order mate for herself, but she’d never expected things to play out quite so… literally.
But, there he was, Ares Goldplains in all his gold-tinted glory, making her life hell and her body scream for his touch. It was unfair and her body was totally betraying her, right alongside her heart. What she wouldn’t have given to lick that sweat right off his rock-hard abs…
Freaking hell, Pearl. Snap out of it.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Oh, it hardly does. But I did end up buying the building from Rhett… and his stake in the store. So, I guess you can call us partners now. He was glad to hear we knew each other from way back. Nice guy. We’re going out for beers tomorrow.”
Pearl’s world came crashing down around her. Now she really was tongue-tied.
All her carefully laid-out plans had been stomped on in a matter of less than a day by a dragon who just wouldn’t take no for an answer. In all honesty, he might have taken no for an answer, but she hadn’t really found the heart to say no to him. It kept being ‘maybe’ and ‘perhaps’ and ‘could be’ until she’d maybed her way right into a mess so big she couldn’t tell which end to start unraveling it from.
Feeling dizzy, she sat down on an overturned wooden box. Ares put away another humongous block of cheese and paused. He scraped off the gloves and kneeled in front of her, catching her gaze with his dazzling, mischievous eyes.
He really did have nice eyes. She had never been able to tell what color they really were from the muddled pictures he kept on his profile or the very short meeting they’d had at The Top Hat Bulldog, but they were sort of mesmerizing in their gold and blue shimmer.
Ares took her hands in his and she had to stifle a gasp as a feeling of impossible heat passed through her, starting from where he touched her and gathering at the pit of her stomach.
&
nbsp; “Hey, relax. I’m going to be a silent partner. Quiet as a mouse, as long as you give me some cheese. Rhett told me about your deal and I promised to honor it. I’m a man of my word. When you’re ready, you can buy me out. And I figured if I can get this place in tip-top shape, then you won’t have any reason to say no to going out with me. By the way we’re going, I think we’ll be done with everything by noon and you’ll have plenty of time to tidy up whatever you’re not happy with before your big launch. Okay? Breathe, Pearl.”
Through a haze, she nodded. The only thing real was the way they were looking at each other and how he touched her; everything else seemed to fade away into the background. There was worry in his eyes, and she could feel the way his thumbs rubbed over her skin, making small circles. It ignited a fire in her and it wasn’t a bad kind of burning. It was the kind of fire that made her feel warm and safe, momentarily eclipsing the anger that had been gnawing at her from the inside.
This was one of the good moments. When he dropped the pretense, the attitude, the bad boy veneer and was real for a moment. She’d seen it a few times in their conversations, but it damn near blew her away in person. Of course she couldn’t agree with his methods, but she had to hand it to the man, he certainly was determined. And when he wasn’t being a complete pain, well… he was sort of irresistible.
“Are you feeling better?” Ares asked, and it snapped her out of her reverie.
Like a movie panning back into the scene, the bustle that was going on around them came back to her fast and hard. People were running back and forth, and she could hear the sounds of drills buzzing and saws roaring and people joking amongst one another as they set up her store.
“Lookin’ good, Mae,” a wolf shifter she’d seen around town a few times said, patting her on the shoulder as he passed by with an armful of bags.
Ares huffed lightly.
“I still prefer Pearl. Mae makes you sound like you’re an old lady.”
“Mae is approachable,” Pearl objected, though she’d been getting the same vibe herself.
Perhaps not one of her most enlightened decisions ever.
“Pearl is sexy.”
“Pearl’s an old lady name too,” she said, a giggle bubbling up inside of her.
“Not to a dragon it isn’t,” Ares said with a sly smirk that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
“So it’s true, you’re a dragon?”
“Ah, nosy!”
Ares stood up, pulling her to her feet as well. She almost toppled over but he caught her in his arms and, for a second, she could feel what it meant to be so close to a dragon that she could hear his heart pounding inside his chest.
I wonder if it always beats so fast…
Or maybe it was just her? With a blush, she backed away from him a small step, wishing to all things holy that her composure would somehow return to her. It had been rather annoyingly absent so far.
“If you want to know more, you have to agree to come on a date with me. Just one. You can call it a business meeting if it suits you better. We can discuss growth ratios and investment options and how to get you out of those clothes… You know, all the important stuff?”
He winked at her and she wanted to both slap him and kiss him with equal measures of force.
“You’re not going to give up, are you?” she asked, resigning herself to the inevitable.
“Don’t intend to, nope.”
Biting her lip, she nodded finally.
“Fine. Just one date. ONE! Hey, put me down!” Pearl yelped as Ares unceremoniously grabbed her by the waist and spun her around as if she were a ragdoll and he caught in some Disney movie.
When he did finally release her from his impossibly strong yet gentle grasp, Pearl couldn’t hide the laughter anymore. He was a bastard alright, but maybe there was something to him, like Andrei had said. Maybe he wasn’t a completely horrible choice to spend her time with?
Careful, Pearl… she reminded herself.
He was a dragon. And as little as she knew about dragons, she was sure that trusting one blindly was not the smartest thing to do.
“I’ll pick you up tomorrow. From here, seven o’clock. Wear as little as possible. And now, go command your troops. I’m pretty sure one of the bears is making faces at your honey pot and I don’t mean the one between your legs.”
There it was again. That desire to smack him and kiss him at the same time. How does one deal with that?
Can’t wait to find out!
CHAPTER FIVE
Ares
Dragging himself away from Shifter Grove was like walking through nails barefooted, all the while getting whipped and flogged by a million invisible belts. Every mile away meant being further from Pearl and that was the absolute last thing he wanted. Ares gritted his teeth, parking his big rental truck at the end of a narrow road that had been nigh impenetrable for the last three miles. And no wonder, considering that it was heading up one of the tallest peaks in the area, Sleeping Dragon Hill.
Of course, it was no hill. It was a proper mountain, and his second reason for coming to Shifter Grove. Contrary to what every single person and shifter in the town seemed to want, Ares Goldplains was not looking for the simple life. He didn’t want to retire in the midst of some thick woods and raise his children to run wild and free in a mecca of peace.
Nope, he wanted adventure – had always wanted it and would always want it. He couldn’t see it ever changing. His definition of adventure, maybe, but not the desire for the thrill itself.
He wasn’t the kind of man to settle down in a rocking chair and strum the guitar while fireflies buzzed around him. No, he wanted to play to packed arenas of screaming fans, girls throwing their bras at him and guys screaming their lungs out as he laid down a sick solo.
And he didn’t want to breathe in the fresh mountain air and enjoy the view. He wanted to rip that mountain apart and find what it was hiding.
Ares inhaled deeply, and the scent was unmistakable.
“Gold,” he said to himself, smiling broadly.
The scent had been just at the edge of his consciousness since he arrived in the area. From the moment he settled down on that clearing and every second since then, it had been following him around, enticing him and telling him to come seek out his fortune. Pearl was more inviting still, but now that he had talked her into spending an evening with him, he could finally chase down the other mistress that had been eluding him so skillfully.
Wealth, power, treasure – he was a dragon, alright, and he loved his gold.
Cursing under his breath, Ares began scaling the nearly upright wall with catlike ease. He could have shifted and just flown right to the top, but he was sure that it would have garnered too much unwanted attention, as well as given too much power to his dragon. Although he trusted the dragon to do the right thing, eventually, Ares was pretty bloody sure that the damn beast would fly straight back to Pearl and not leave her side until she agreed to wear a piece of his hoard.
That thought brought along another snort. His hoard? What a joke.
The Goldplains hoard, more like it. As far as Ares was concerned, the life of the younger brood of dragons had always been one of rather crippling depression. If you were the firstborn, or part of an Alpha twins pair, the world was your oyster. The family hoard was yours to lord over and your dragon and man could coexist happily side-by-side. But when you weren’t the Alpha and just a younger sibling, well, things got a lot bleaker.
Ares had been keeping an eye on the main treasure for years while his other brothers were scattered around the world, guarding the smaller piles. It made sense – he was the eldest after Alexander and Apollo, after all. But now that his brothers had returned home with their new bride, spending much more time in Colorado than on the road, Ares had suddenly become redundant. And there were no other hoards to lord over.
So, there he was, a dragon without riches. A broken beast without a place to go. Of course, he could return home, but he didn’t f
eel like there was much room there for him. Not with Jade and the little ones fluttering about, anyway. And too many dragons around one pile of gold… Well, they were all brothers, but it could get ugly, fast.
What’s a dragon to do?
He’d decided on the unspeakable. The unthinkable. The unfathomable!
Creating his own hoard.
Ares grinned at the thought. Ah yes, his own hoard. His very own treasure throve to guard and revel in, full of gold and diamonds and all things sparkly. That sounded fantastic, especially if he could also get a particular redheaded minx to be his mate.
But there was one notable downside to it – it required him to work.
As progressive as the Goldplains were, it was never really in the blood of dragons to work for anything. Cillian Greenmeadow was a notable exception, and Ares and his brothers had played music for money for as long as they could remember, but there was a big difference between strumming the guitar and breaking apart a mountain with the sole purpose of digging out gold.
“If Cillian can do it, you can do it,” Ares muttered under his breath, hauling himself up on an outcropping and catching his breath.
He’d driven as far as he could and now, after having climbed for much longer than he was comfortable with, he was given the most magnificent view of the valley Shifter Grove was nestled in. It was a gorgeous little speck of life in the middle of towering mountains and thick, plush forests. Ares cocked his head to the side, considering it quietly. He could see what the locals saw in it, but for him, it wasn’t enough. He needed more. Perhaps to the tune of a large pile of gold?
Yes, that would do. With gold by his side, and a woman in his arms, he could tolerate any manner of drudgery – welcome it, even. Hell, who knew, perhaps he would even get that rocking chair!
Chuckling to himself, Ares hauled himself up on his feet and wandered along the treacherous mountainside. He was quick on his feet, but sometimes even he found it difficult to keep his balance. There were plenty of loose rocks and precarious ledges that would have crumbled to dust underneath the feet of a less agile person.