Torn: A Dragon Shifter BBW Menage Serial (Seeking Her Mates Book 1) Read online

  Gwynne, her mother, had come of age in the twenty-first century. Women were experienced here; they had sex before marriage and experimented in various ways, some of which were downright shocking. Not to mention the fact that their marriages and pairings weren’t arranged by others, except in some cultures she’d heard of, in far-off lands. Lily was to be mated, essentially as an animal would at a stud farm, and it was the animal within her that dictated this need, even more than the rules of her species did.

  Of course, her inner animal was pleased. Shifters’ non-human selves, known in old English as déors, invariably responded enthusiastically to the idea that they would find their way to a mate, or in her case two. She had no doubt that sexual pleasure was a probability—how could sex with two men be anything but?—But the question was whether she would care for the men. Would there be love? Even a guarantee of attraction would be nice, promising. But ultimately it would come down to suitability, and that was no guarantee of happiness; only a guarantee that their offspring would exhibit powers greater than her mother’s, and even greater than those of her twin, Rohan, and herself.

  * * *

  Lily realized that she was still sitting, staring into the distance, a veil of worry coating her mind when she was brought back to earth.

  “You have the most interesting face I’ve ever seen.”

  The man’s deep voice served to break her out of the hold her mind had taken, and she turned towards the source of the words. To her delight and horror, the young man from the corner was standing next to her, an amused expression replacing the previous intensity of his stare.

  “I did notice that you seemed to be enjoying gawking at my ‘interesting face’ and making me self-conscious,” she said. “But you know, there’s a very good portrait gallery not far from here. I suspect that you’d find much better faces there…”

  With that she turned away to pack her small bag. Best, she told herself, to keep up the trend that she’d begun months back and not develop friendships with strange men in this place; in fact, she’d made an effort not to befriend anyone, male or female. Intimacy was dangerous for a time traveler, not to mention impractical.

  “I cannot imagine a better face,” he said. “Or why I’d want to look at anyone’s but yours.” She looked up at him again, searching for irony in his expression. He hadn’t moved from the spot he occupied, and she realized that he was blocking her escape route.

  “Thank you for the compliment,” Lily replied. His forwardness, which from some men might have felt incredibly off-putting, was causing an unexpected chemical reaction within her. She felt nerve endings pulse in places where she’d never realized she had nerve endings. “Excuse me, please,” she said, looking up once again. He was still staring at her, his eyes back to their former penetrating selves. Lily felt certain that he was trying very hard to see inside her soul. “I…need to get home,” she added.

  The stranger stood to the side, allowing her to pass and so she rose, intending to make her way quickly up the stairs and out of the room. It was his scent that caused her to freeze for a moment, her legs resisting her brain, wishing to remain where they were and to allow her body to take it in.

  No, she told herself. This mischief came from her her déor, her dragon, who was attempting to take control. For too long she’d forced it to remain inside her human form and now it was growing excited within her at the prospect of a sexy man in its vicinity.

  But soon she’d be home and able to let it loose to fly, to roam free without fear of discovery. For now, she reminded it that inhaling the scent of attractive men was a terrible plan. So she walked by him at last, trying to ignore the look of amusement on his face as she did so. It seemed to Lily that he’d figured out exactly what she was thinking—that he was something she’d like to eat.

  She walked towards the hallway, her satchel clasped under folded arms which served to cover her chest. As she made her way towards the door, she turned back to look at him.

  Why did I do that? she asked herself a split-second later as she caught him staring at her once again, amusement transformed to something approaching desire.

  But as she assessed him it was he who turned and walked away, leaving the classroom via another exit and leaving Lily stunned at what had just occurred.

  * * *

  3

  In spite of an internal, repeated insistence that she had no interest in the stranger with the deep eyes and pouty lips, Lily found herself strangely upset when he failed to show up to class the following week. It was unreasonable, she knew, to feel as though he’d somehow behaved disloyally by not appearing in his corner to stare at her once again, but something inside her took it as a personal slight.

  She told herself that he was a typical man—albeit a very handsome one—and he’d most likely forgotten her as soon as he’d walked out of the classroom the previous week and she would do well to forget him, too.

  Yes, that was the best plan. The guy had simply toyed with her for a moment, issuing unsolicited compliments and feigning interest where there obviously was none. He probably made a habit of roaming the university’s lecture halls, looking for easy victims of his charm. Well, she’d been anything but, and besides, he’d proven his unworthiness by giving up so easily.

  And good riddance to him. She would be home soon, far away from this place and time, and he, whatever his name was, would simply remain a moderately interesting memory with good hair and nice teeth. That he happened to smell like walking sex wasn’t her problem. Besides which, a man who looked like that would never find a woman of her sort sexy.

  She was, shall we say, more voluptuous than your regular run of the mill twenty-year-old, and in her experience with modern times, that was not a trait that men sought in a woman. Rather it seemed that something known as “heroin chic” was a trend; women with “thigh gaps” (whatever those were), who wore size zero clothing. Didn’t size zero imply that one’s body didn’t even exist? What was that? The whole thing made Lily glad to come from a place where her clothing was custom made and not assigned a numeric value.

  In her own world and time, Lily was considered normal for a female shifter—if anything she was exceptionally beautiful, even. She had meat on her bones; hips that curved outwards more than was ideal in modern London. She knew that if she made an appearance at some aristocrat’s party in 2015, the upper class women would mock her mercilessly once her back was turned. She’d lived in the twenty-first century enough to know how things went; it was somehow considered sinful to eat more in a day than two carrots and a celery stalk. She wondered how these women would react to Dundurn Castle’s feasts in which deer, boars and other large animals were roasted for all to share.

  All of it caused her a sort of self-consciousness which was proving an entirely new experience. She’d lived among shifters, after all; her kind often wandered around naked when one of the dire wolves needed to transform into its human form. Lily had seen it all. But, truth be told, she was one of the few females around, not to mention daughter to the alphas, which meant that she was generally modest.

  The males of the pack looked at her with a different eye—she was a rarity, a gem. And they enjoyed the appearance of a voluptuous woman. To them she exuded sexuality, fertility. And she knew it, though she had always kept a distance from them, knowing that none of them was meant for her. She was waiting, preserving herself for her potential mates, and so there was an innocence in her in spite of the worldliness that came with time travel.

  In her classes in this strange era, she’d been simply an unremarkable face in the crowd, or so she’d convinced herself until the handsome stranger had approached her. Something in him reminded her of the men she knew back home. There was a hunger in his eyes. Even when she’d turned back to look….

  “Lilliana.”

  It was the professor’s voice, and clearly he’d asked a question that she hadn’t heard. Big surprise.

  “1066,” she said, guessing. He’d been reviewing the history
of William the Conqueror, so with some luck it would be the right answer.

  “That’s right.” He was glaring at her as if to say, “I’ve got my eye on you.” He turned to his next victim and Lily breathed a sigh of relief.

  No more thoughts of handsome men, she told herself, fixing her eyes on Professor Boringpants, PhD.

  * * *

  Lily’s flat was situated in central London, and its price, for most students, would have been an insurmountable expense. But Lily had the advantage of hundreds of years’ worth of investments, stashed in a bank account that had been passed down from generation to generation within her family. In this new century she was incredibly wealthy, which only provided her with yet another reason not to form bonds with strangers. How could she possibly have explained her riches to anyone? And how could she trust someone who knew of all the money not to have ulterior motives?

  The flat, though quite enormous, was only sparsely decorated. Tasteful furnishings occupied all of the appropriate corners, a comfortable couch and a makeshift coffee table providing her with a place to relax and to study when she wasn’t cooking or sleeping. When she returned to Dundurn Castle, the place would no doubt remain vacant for some time, until she or another member of her family required the space.

  During her term in London she’d often found herself resisting the urge to leap back home, to travel through time, which she could have done on the spur of the moment, to see her parents and gain that sense of familiarity that came with being surrounded by the people one knew and loved so well.

  But this isolated period of life, she reminded herself, was meant as a sort of coming of age ritual. Tearing herself from family and friends in order to prove her own independence—just before becoming permanently tied to two other shifters. This was her moment to discover her own inner workings before settling into another life.

  Lily adored her parents: her strong, brave mother, Gwynne, known as the “Dragon Queen” for all the right reasons. Her two fathers, who were polar opposites in so many ways. Rauth was tough as nails, but she’d found a softness in him when she was a child and had always striven to please him, to earn his respect. Lachlan was different—she knew that she had his unwavering affection. But the thought of letting him down hurt her.

  And so she’d persisted and stayed away to prove her own strength, more to herself in the end than to anyone else.

  She slouched down onto the couch and put her feet up on the antique chest which served as a coffee table. Thrusting her head back into a welcoming cushion, she took her notebook in hand. She had only a few days to review before the exam.

  “It’s not bloody easy to memorize so many damn wrong facts,” she muttered as she perused notes about her family’s era. But then, her family had been largely responsible for ensuring that shifters wouldn’t be written into history books and so she was ultimately grateful not to have made an appearance on the course’s curriculum.

  The truce between the shifters and the humans who surrounded their lands consisted largely of an agreement to keep things permanently secret. Cornwall’s human residents knew that the shifters had their best interests at heart and would protect them from any threat—well, most of them, anyhow. And the shifters knew that modern society would have a difficult time accepting them into the fold. Becoming undetectable had all but become an art form.

  Lily had worked for an hour or so at highlighting important notes when a knock sounded: three gentle thuds on the door. She wasn’t expecting anyone, and her inner instincts leapt before her human ones did, telling her to be wary.

  “Who is it?” she said as she approached the door.

  “If I tell you that, you’ll be confused,” said the voice. “So I’ll just say ‘someone you’ve begun to know.’”

  Lily looked through the peephole and to her surprise saw the handsome, thick-haired, square-jawed, perfect young man from history class.

  She quickly glanced in the mirror on the wall, straightening her hair. There wasn’t much to be done about her face or clothes without giving him the satisfaction of knowing she’d done so on his account.

  “One second,” she said before opening the door, which she did with a deliberate slowness in order to seem less than eager.

  “Hello, Lilliana,” his low voice let out, brushing the air with a velvety texture which seemed to caress Lily herself.

  “It’s you,” she said, unable to come up with anything more clever.

  “Yes, as you knew perfectly well. I saw you glance through the wee hole in your door, you see.”

  Lily felt herself blush, angry at her human body for showing evidence of any embarrassment.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked irritably, more annoyed with herself than with him. “I mean, I don’t even know your name.” This last sentence filled her with a temporary satisfaction. At least she could pretend to be uninterested in him.

  “I missed class today.” His eyes scanned the flat. He’d seen it before in his mind, but now all was clear; hardwood floors, French doors, tall windows which allowed natural light to flow in. Perfection for such a lovely woman.

  “I noticed,” she stammered as she watched his eyes take in everything but her. Was he casing the joint for an intended robbery? If so, he’d be sorely disappointed to find nothing of value. “I mean, the professor noticed. Where were you?”

  “I had some family business to attend to,” he replied vaguely. She couldn’t discern whether he was lying or not; the statement had been as unreadable as everything else about him.

  “I hope it was nothing serious,” Lily said, slightly remorseful about her tone. “But I have to ask—how did you get my address?” She’d been so secretive, private, in an attempt to protect her identity and to shield herself from close bonds with people she’d only have to leave.

  “Oh, that. I have my ways,” he said, smiling, a sly glint in his handsome eyes.

  “You’re fortunate to be so good-looking or that would’ve come off as entirely stalker-creepy,” said Lily, basking in the awareness that she still hadn’t invited him in.

  “So, you find me attractive?” he asked, finally looking her in the eye.

  “I didn’t say that. Good-looking and attractive are not necessarily one and the same. Let’s say that I see why other young ladies might enjoy looking at you.”

  “And you? Do you enjoy it?” It seemed with this question as though he leaned forward, his body easing towards hers.

  “I’m not like other young ladies.”

  Finally Lily relinquished a little control and backed away from the door to let him pass. There was after all nothing this man could do that would hurt her; the dragon inside her could take him down in seconds if he tried anything untoward.

  “Like I said, I don’t know your name,” she said as he walked through her flat, casually examining the furniture.

  “That’s because I haven’t told you what it is.”

  “And because you never participate in class. Everyone knows my bloody name—the professor calls on me far too often.”

  “Yes, Lilliana. That’s because you look as though you’re not paying attention. Conor,” he said. “Conor is my name.”

  It was a nice moniker for him. Masculine and yet lovely, much like his outer shell.

  “Well, Conor,” she replied, her voice taking on a stubborn shade, “I do pay attention. Enough to know how many historical facts our esteemed professor butchers.” Lily felt her cheeks go hot, as though she were on the losing side of a debate that wasn’t taking place.

  “Does he now?” Conor eased himself onto the couch, making himself more comfortable than his hostess would have liked. “And what sorts of facts does he butcher, then?”

  “Never mind,” said Lily, who remained in a standing position across the large sitting room, unwilling to demonstrate any friendly body language. Whether this was for her sake or his, she wasn’t yet certain. “So listen, you never explained why you’re here, other than to attempt to trick me into admittin
g that you’re irresistible.”

  “Ah, so you admit it.”

  “I do no such thing. I’m merely trying to figure out why you’re now sitting on my couch instead of studying at home.”

  “I suppose I was hoping that we could study together,” said Conor, “And that you had notes from today’s class that I could look over.”

  At last, an explanation that makes some sort of sense, thought Lily. “I do,” she said. “You’re welcome to look at them, though it was really just a lot of review.”

  “Right, that’s fine. I just need to see if I missed anything.”

  Lily picked up the worn notebook from the coffee table and handed it to Conor, who flipped through it, looking for the latest entry.

  “Old school, you are,” he laughed, noting her penmanship, which bore a sort of antiquated quality. Her handwriting was more like calligraphy than printing or cursive, and it looked almost as though she’d used a quill to write. Perhaps her fountain pen had an internal feather that remained hidden.

  But he stopped when he came to a few red markings on one page. The notes read:

  People of Cornwall dead in plague: 100,000.

  In red, Lily had written “Wrong. The entire population was only around 90,000. The deaths were primarily only in areas inhabited by humans—our kind was impervious.”

  “What’s this?” asked Conor.

  Lily froze for a moment, realizing what he’d seen. If he figured out what he was looking at it could raise a lot of questions…

  Before two seconds had passed, she’d snatched the book from his hands. “It’s nothing,” she said. “I was thinking of writing a novel about ancient Cornwall. Fiction, of course. Completely. Science fiction, even.”

  “Relax,” said Conor, smiling once again. “I was only teasing you. Your notes are your own, Lilliana.”