Romance: Bought by the Dragon: BBW Dragon Shifter Romance Standalone (Paranormal Romance) (Studly Shifters Book 2) by Ashley Hunter Read Free Book Online

sit at the table.”
    A slab of spit-roasted fish wasn’t her usual idea of breakfast, but Jenna didn’t complain when it was set on her plate. She managed to tuck in slowly, despite her churning stomach. He had taken three-quarters of the fish for himself; she wondered if filling his human-shape stomach would be enough for his needs.
    He was done with half his meal by the time she had taken her fourth bite, and his brows drew together as he looked at her. “You eat like a mouse. You’ll lose your figure if you keep that up.” He made an encouraging gesture at her, and she blushed and took another bite.
    “Losing my figure is why I’ve been on diets most of my life.” She pulled a bone out of the slab and set it aside. “I was supposed to.”
     
    His expression quirked with baffled distaste, one eyebrow and the corner of his mouth going up. “That sounds ridiculous.”
    “It’s expected.” Her voice shook a little bit and she kept her eyes down. “My aunt especially expected me to find a way to be what your father termed a ‘fashionable twig’. And men back home, well, lots of them figured I was hot enough to grab a handful of when I passed them, but not hot enough to date or...anything.”
    Both his eyebrows went up. “I went to college in the States, and I saw some of how very small women became the fashion, but...I never understood the reasoning behind it. Women come in all sorts of sizes, and only some are naturally thin. Nor does every man want someone so much smaller than he that he risks breaking her in bed.”
    She blushed and glanced down at her meal, taking another bite as her mind flashed back to last night. The smell of his skin, his warm breath, the gleam in his eyes. Then, it had been a horror, because it was forced on both of them. But now...now she wondered. What if it wasn’t? “Humans pressure each other a lot. If a man is with a bigger girl, often his friends will laugh at him. For a lot of people, you stick with what’s expected of you because if you don’t, people reject you.”
    He had stopped eating, and looked at her with a strange sadness. “I know. Humanity’s fear of difference can make them...xenophobic. Even against those they loved when they thought I was just like her.” A brief cough. “I mean, thought they were just like them.”
    She had caught that. She watched him quietly as he nibbled on his food, taking a few more bites herself, but mostly keeping a troubled eye on him. “Taran?”
    “Hm?” He glanced at her distractedly.
    “You don’t...actually...dislike human women, do you?”
    His cold, defensive stare lasted but a few moments before softening as she looked him in the eyes. She saw a flicker of pain and loss in their green depths, and then he looked down at the tabletop. “No.”
    “Then why do you pretend to have such disdain for us?”
    He set down his fork. For a moment he hesitated, seeming on the verge of admitting something. But then he simply rose and stepped away from the table. “Finish your meal,” he said in a flat, tired voice. “I must get a message out to Ranald.”
    The dragons used messenger-birds: a strange sort of pigeon with violet and green feathers. She watched him write on the tiny scroll and fasten it to the creature’s leg as she nibbled on her fish.
    She had offended him, she worried. Yet he seemed calm; just worn out, somehow, and sad. She knew that further queries would only deepen his brooding, so she left him to it for the moment.
    Eventually, he went out to soar over the waves for a while, probably just to be by himself. She started fretting, wondering if she had touched a particularly sensitive nerve. But when he returned--carrying a gallon jug of fresh water--she forced herself to address him with something that couldn’t be sensitive. Something pleasant. “What is it like to fly?” she asked, having been genuinely curious for a while.
    He blinked at her, then smirked. “Well, you’d know, if you hadn’t passed