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

gossip and snide remarks. How she hadn’t been allowed to learn to drive because of her aunt’s strange obsession with her being “too good” for any sort of real work--yet not good enough for the family because of her less than purely Anglo Saxon heritage.
    And somehow, now that she was away from the whole imprisoning mess, she found the humor in some of it. Aunt Margaret was a small, dull person on the inside, insulated from the world by her cash, obsessed with manners while lacking them herself, and with no endurance for any experience outside of her narrow, cloistered little life.  
    She would have screamed and fainted at the sight of even a small dragon. She probably would have died outright if Taran had shown up with Jenna on his back. “Seriously, her head would just explode. I’d pay cash to see that.”
    Taran chuckled. “I could probably be talked into it, provided we made certain that my appearance was neither recorded nor witnessed by others.”
    Jenna’s eyebrows rose. “Seriously? You’d do that?”
    He snorted. “Please, the woman violated your consent even more than my father did. Given the proper precautions, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”
    “...Wow.” That made her feel better--and warm to him even more. He understood. He sympathized. And best of all...under the surface grumpiness he had a sense of mischief as wicked as her own.
    They talked on, relaxing as the evening’s candles slowly burned down. He described his college days, where he had double majored in history and anthropology to study human society more closely. He stumbled a little in some of the stories, as if rewriting them in his head to omit certain details. She wondered why, but kept her curiosity mostly in check, still feeling a little shy.
    “I had decided to go as far as my doctorate. It struck me as important to understand the race we share the planet with, and whom we depend on now for mates.” He looked up, touching his lower lip with a fingertip. “I received my bachelor’s degree with honors three years ago. But after that, I could not stay.”
    She sat forward in her chair, unable to resist asking. “Did your father call you back?”
    He hesitated. She squirmed slightly with curiosity and an awkward sense that she had once again touched a particularly sensitive nerve. But eventually...he surprised her. “No. I returned to the island for...personal reasons.”
    She opened her mouth to ask what, but then closed it and looked down. “Oh.”
    He snorted. “Not going to pry for details? You’re normally so curious.”
    “I--I….” she hesitated, then looked up to meet his steady gaze. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
    He blinked a few times, then looked back down. “Big-hearted, again. I’m not sure what to think of you. You’re nothing like the human girls I’ve been forced to interact with before.”
    “How so?”
    His lips twisted, and he kept quiet for another interval. But then he seemed to brace himself, and said, “I left college because I had found the woman I wanted to marry. But I couldn’t simply mark her and fly off with her. That is wrong. I never agreed with my father’s methods. So I...I told her.”
    “You told her you’re a dragon?” Jenna tried to imagine what would happen if she had gotten infatuated with this spectacularly beautiful man during college, dated him, fallen for him, and then learned that he was actually a big scaly fellow who breathed fire and only really took a human appearance to appeal to potential human mates. Yes, she would be shocked. But….
    “I told her, and then I showed her. Andrea….” he paused, his eyes flickering with grief, and then looked away from her entirely. “Andrea was frightened and angry.
    She called me a monster. She threw things. She swore I had tricked her and that she could never love me--and neither would any other woman. She threatened to tell everyone, and when I pointed out that they would think her insane, she fled. I