Billionaire Dragons' Fated: BBW Paranormal Dragon Shifter Menage Romance (3 page)

Jade

What are you so damn nervous about? You’re just going to go to two dragons, who happen to be the biggest rock stars on the planet, and tell them you know exactly what they are. It’s not like they’re going to breathe fire on you and make you disappear.

Jade gulped.

She was hanging on to the strap of her bass guitar’s case, letting her hands nervously wrung its fine stitches. Casting a look around herself, she quickly determined that she was one of maybe two women in the veritable sea of men, all toying with their literal and figurative instruments and waiting to be called in for their audition. This was the biggest thing that had happened to the Texas rock scene in… well, maybe forever, and anyone capable of stringing a bass had gathered for their chance at becoming a member of the Gold Dragons.

The news of the open audition had come somewhat abruptly after a killer concert held in San Antonio just the night before. Jade had also been at the show, and the only thing that had dampened her enjoyment, other than the fact that she was in the process of running away from some very powerful people, was the occasional beat missed by the band’s bassist. In retrospect, she had to be thankful for it.

She’d just needed to see them one more time before she dared approach the enigmatic Goldplains twins with her somewhat whacky tale and confronting them on being ancient shifters with magical powers.

The more she thought about it, the more ridiculous it sounded, but she knew in her heart that she was on to something. She’d seen their golden wave the night before, and it wasn’t the first time she’d seen magic like that. In fact, that was the whole reason she was there – knowing a tiny bit too much.

A thin line of sweat trickled down her neck and made the hairs on her back stand up. There was another killer heat wave going through Texas, and it was no joke trying to sit around for hours on end in a cramped, musty waiting room with a hundred rockers, who smelled like various stages of not giving a fuck. She wasn’t even that bothered by the smell or the closeness of the bodies, having had to sit through plenty of auditions in her day, but this one was going to be different. She was sure this one would either make or break her.

Jasmine van der Kamp – better known as Jade in a small circle of mostly progressive rock artists, who bothered to know a few more people than just the singers and guitarists – was in deep shit. There was no better way of putting it. She had to physically restrain herself from glancing over her shoulder every few seconds, as if the big bad wolves that were after her would just suddenly show up in a packed audition hall and drag her off.

Dragons,
she corrected herself darkly, reaching into a side pocket on her guitar case and taking out a pick.

She flicked it between her fingers, the matte black pick looping gracefully over her pale skin. Her jet black hair was pulled back into a loose pony tail, and she wore whitewashed blue jeans, Converse sneakers and a ragged AC/DC tee that had served as her lucky shirt through most of her auditions. Of course, that didn’t mean that she got past the first round most of the time, but she was willing to take all the help she could get – even if that meant trying to leech some magic from Brian Johnson.

She watched idly as another tall and gangly bassist stalked out of the room the Gold Dragons were holding the auditions in, raucous laughter that she could recognize as Apollo’s following him all the way until the door slammed shut behind him. He didn’t seem half as amused as Apollo. Jade cringed a bit in commiseration. He wasn’t the first one to leave in a hurry, ridiculed by the loud and almost always difficult Apollo Goldplains.

She knew that the Goldplains had always been very picky with choosing their band mates, resulting in more than one heated and very public fallout. Jade wasn’t entirely certain that some of them hadn’t been more for show than anything else. After all, everybody loved some good dramatics every now and then, right?

“Jade van der Kamp,” a familiar, small but strict looking woman called, teetering at the doorway.

Jade recognized her instantly as Michelle Ferren, the architect behind the success of not only the Gold Dragons, but a plethora of other bands all too awesome to name. She hesitated for a moment, fumbling the guitar pick and having to dive on the floor to find it.

“Jade?” Michelle called again, an obvious hint of annoyance in her voice.

“Coming, coming!” Jade yelped, scrambling up on her feet and grabbing her bass, almost knocking a fellow rocker over in the process.

No time to waste! She had an ass to make of herself, and the looks she was getting from the rest of the grizzled crowd told her that they were expecting her to do just that.

“About time,” Michelle murmured as Jade pushed past her, feeling awkwardly commonplace next to the casual but completely in control Michelle.

Jade stepped into the big audition room, leather couches lined up in front of a small raised stage, sporting a mess of gear that must have been piled there from the previous night’s concert. There was also one separate speaker and volume controls she could plug her bass into. But that wasn’t what stopped her dead in her tracks.

Fuck,
she thought, feeling like a deer caught in the headlights.
I knew they were hot, but did they have to be
so
hot!?

Her gaze travelled from one Grecian God of a man to the other, the Goldplains brothers sprawled out on the couches and looking somewhat worn by the whole process.

Alexander, the older of the two and the lead guitarist of the band, was dressed in a white button-up and light-colored slacks, giving him an almost effortless look that still accentuated his wide shoulders and chiseled body. Apollo, the lead singer and the wilder of the two, looked like he had just stepped off the stage a second ago, his lion’s mane of hair falling to his shoulders and his blue eyes considering her with primal interest.

Jade felt rooted in place, like the ground had opened up and latched down around her legs, making her unable to move. It wasn’t easy facing rock royalty, especially when she knew that they were hiding a secret no one would expect, and they were her only ticket to safety.

Well, the fact that they were both really,
really
fucking hot didn’t help any bit either.

“Come on, girl, show us what you’ve got. We don’t have all day,” Michelle said, nudging her towards the stage.

Just then, Alexander looked up, and Jade’s eyes met with his, her cool greens and his warm blues locking for a second that seemed to go on forever. Something stirred inside of her, making her knees weak and her breath catch in her throat. When her eyes drifted to Apollo, she thought she’d just collapse to the floor and ask them both to take her right there and then.

Apollo’s gaze burned through her, making her wet and wanting within a fraction of a second. Suddenly, she understood all of those fan girls who were willing to go through fire and ice just to be at one of the Gold Dragons’ shows. How couldn’t she? They’d only have to ask and she might just throw herself at them.

Snap out of it. Play it cool, dammit! Or at least play
something
!

Jade averted her eyes and took a few determined steps towards the raised platform. She had been planning on having some witty banter with the brothers, exchanging jokes and maybe complimenting them on their show last night, but she couldn’t do it. The words just wouldn’t come. She’d watched them all night, but somewhere far from the center of the crowd, undulating back and forth with the adoring masses and feeling every bit as taken by their powerful sound as the people around her.

But she’d been too far to make out their faces or see the miniscule details of their body language – the way Alexander’s chin squared as he leant back in the seat or how Apollo’s eyes twinkled with mischief as he exchanged a look with his brother before his attention centered on her again.

It was like being caught between twin beams, both pulling her with equal force, and she wasn’t entirely sure she could withstand the pressure.

“Quiet one, isn’t she,” Michelle commented.

Jade loosely noted that the older woman sat down on the armrest of one of the couches, flipping through the sheets of paper in her arms.

“I like them a bit quiet,” Apollo noted with laughter in his voice.

Jade couldn’t help but grin a little at that. He wasn’t making fun of her, and she appreciated the banter. She fished her heavy bass out of the case and set it aside. Plugging it in, she made a few experimental plucks and fiddled with the levels until she had them where she wanted them.

“What are you going to play for us?” Michelle asked, sounding a bit impatient.

Jade looked up at her and smiled, feeling like she had stepped into a force field now that the bass was around her neck and her hands safely on the strings. Whatever happened, she could deal with it now.

“Whatever you want,” she said confidently, not letting her determined expression falter for a second.

Michelle was about to bite back with a comment but Alexander spoke up first.

“Do
Late Night Road
,” he said, his deep voice seeming to make the walls shudder a little.

She couldn’t blame the walls – she felt that delicious vibration all through her, right down to her core.

Damn. He should sing more,
she thought to herself, while her hands were already going to work.

She knew every single one of their songs by heart. Gold Dragons had started when she was still a teen. In fact, she had picked up her first instrument – a guitar – after listening through their first album,
Double Trouble.
It escalated until her parents threatened to take away her laptop if she didn’t stop blasting the damned angsty rock all over the house. But that just meant she shelled out the money she’d earned over the summer for a pair of headphones – right after she’d booked her very first guitar lesson that is.

She’d ditched the guitar for the earthier bass quickly enough and hadn’t regretted it for a second, even if most of her contemporaries never understood the appeal of the relatively simple instrument. To Jade, it was exactly what she needed. A way to enjoy music, to control its tides and turns without getting into the foreground where she may have been subject to more immediate attention than she was willing to handle.

Her fingers plucked the chords smoothly, and she closed her eyes, letting the music suck her into its own little world. Honestly, it may have had a little to do with the fact that she didn’t want to focus on the Goldplains brothers and that they were damn hard to look past. For now, she just had to give it her best.

When the small solo part came up – a rarity in the Gold Dragons’ repertoire – Jade’s shoulder slumped forward a bit and her teeth grazed over her lower lip, feeling the vibrations of the chords reverberate through her. She loved that song. When she plucked the last chords and let the long echo of the bass fizzle out, she finally opened her eyes again and the serenity she’d just felt evaporated within a moment’s notice.

Apollo was staring at her with that primal gaze of his, like he could peel every stitch of clothing off of her with just his eyes, and Alexander looked at her like he’d just seen an apparition and he wasn’t sure what to make of it.

“Not too bad,” Michelle said, cracking an uncharacteristic smile.

Jade relaxed a bit, unplugging the lead from the amplifier and bunching up the chord in an effort to do something, anything, but getting lost in the golden-hued oases that were the Goldplains brothers.

“When can you start,” Alexander said abruptly.

She could feel his blue eyes considering her, trying to make up his mind about her, and she wasn’t sure what he was hoping to find. What she did know, though, was that she’d been given an opportunity, and she wasn’t about to squander it.

“Right now. I’ve got my gear in my car.”

“Good. We leave for Albuquerque in an hour. Michelle will get you hooked up,” Alexander said, giving her a pleasant, if a bit distant smile, and nudging his brother to join him.

“Wha… Okay,” Apollo started and then quickly quieted, hopping up.

He shared a look with Michelle, and Jade could almost see both of them mentally shrugging, before Apollo turned towards her again.

He strode across the room and stopped in front of the stage, reaching out a hand to her. She grabbed it, and they shook hands, his touch sending a thousand fire bolts skittering through her veins and lighting up her body from the inside out.

“Welcome to the Gold Dragons, Jade,” Apollo said, flashing her a private smile that told her that he was more than glad to have her join.

She gulped again, not finding the words to reply. When he let go of her hand, she couldn’t shake the immediate feeling of loss that went with it. Though they’d hardly touched at all, it almost felt like she’d have to give up a part of herself now that he’d gone.

Straight into the lair of the beast. Well played, Jade,
she thought numbly, watching the Goldplains brothers leave.
How the hell am I going to tell them why I’m really here?

Jade

Michelle was a whirlwind of action. Jade had serious trouble keeping up with the small, spritely woman as she blew through the Gold Dragons crew, directing what gear should be packed where for their departure, while also holding a conversation with Jade. With her guitar over her back and both hands loaded with suitcases, holding all her worldly possessions in messily packed containers, Jade kept bumping and piling into the rushing roadies as she tried to keep up.

“Alexander must really like you,” Michelle said, sounding a bit terse. “Hey, those do
NOT
go there. I’ve told you a million times, Jimmy. Unless you want Clay to smack you over the head with one of his percussion drums, you’re going to stop separating his stuff, or so help me god, you’re going to have to deal with me.”

“I guess so,” Jade said with a small voice, ducking as two microphone stands whished by far too close to her head.

“Anyway, we got the contract signed, so now it’s all legal. You’re part of the Gold Dragons, and girl, you better keep things clean. No getting off your ass drunk, no funny business. We work hard, and we play harder, but only when we’ve earned it. You understand?” Michelle asked, all the while giving an evil eye to some hired local help who were making a mess of the elaborate set designs they needed to fit into the countless trucks that made up the Gold Dragons’ Great Expectations tour convoy.

“I understand,” Jade said, relieved when Michelle came to a stop in front of one of the big tour busses.

“This one will be yours. Clay, the drummer, and Tayo, the second guitarist, are in there as well, along with some of the assistants and production crew. I got you the back bunk, right above Shelly. I bet you know her – she’s the Amazonian-looking back-up singer.”

Oh yeah, everybody knew Shelly. She, along with Maya and Phoenix, made up the Gold Dragons’ back-up singers. At least for now, as the trio seemed to change quite often, except for Shelly, who seemed to be a semi-permanent fixture. All Jade knew was that the back-up singers were always picture perfect, thin, long-legged and beyond gorgeous. Nothing like her if she had to judge – Jade was on the shorter side and had curves that were lush and proud, but not exactly Cosmo cover worthy by conventional standards.

“If you need anything, let me know. I’d rather deal with your bullshit before you fuck up, rather than after, either way it’s usually my time that you’re wasting. And treat this like a job, not something that’s rightfully yours – Alexander may like you, but if you fuck up during one of the shows, you’re out of here as fast as the last guy. Capiche?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jade answered.

Michelle snorted, but thankfully enough more good-naturedly than anything else.

“Look at you. You’re shuddering like a leaf. It’s okay, they have that effect on everyone who meets them. You get used to the ‘Goldplains’ charms’ after a while,” Michelle said, making air quotes.

Jade cracked a smile. They were awfully charming, yes.

“I’ll leave you to it. You’ve got my cell if you need anything. For the love of all that is holy, I’m going to shove my foot so hard up your ass you’re going to taste the puke I walked through last night, Jimmy!” Michelle yelled, shifting from perfectly pleasant to scary in less time than it took Jade to blink.

Note to self, don’t piss Michelle off.

Jade looked at the big bus painted in the Gold Dragons’ white and gold, with their trademark swirls of two dragons flowing and weaving past one another. It didn’t take much from her to figure out where the inspiration for the illustration came from. Smiling to herself, Jade angled herself through the door of the bus, turning sideways so she and the big luggage she was carrying would fit in at all.

Hauling the bags and guitar up, she had to stop at the entrance.

“Wow,” she muttered.

The bus was spectacular. Gleamingly clean, decked out with wide chairs and counters in the Dragons’ colors, looking like it had every amenity she could ever wish for. On a bus!

“Nice, right?” a chuckling voice called, revealing itself to belong to Clay Anderson, who was lounging on one of the wide couches that ran down the side of the bus.

He was flipping through some kind of magazine. Jade returned his smile, and when he reached out a hand in greeting, she dropped one of the suitcases to grab hold. He was handsome with his big arms and boyish grin, but when their hands touched, she didn’t feel anything near what she’d felt when she’d touched Apollo.

Hot and hot came in different variations, it seemed.

“I’m Clay. And you must be the new bassist. Let me help you with that,” he said, grabbing both of her suitcases and easily navigating the tight space of the huge tour bus.

“I’m Jade. And yup, that’s me.”

“Another lamb for the slaughter,” a spiky-haired man said sullenly, giving her a slight nod as she and Clay passed.

“Don’t mind Tayo. He’s just pissy because he can’t play an instrument to save his life, so he has to do backup guitar to one of the best guitarists in the world. Sad life, really,” Clay teased, getting a noncommittal snort out of Tayo.

Jade’s stomach was in knots. Sure, she’d been in big bands before, or at least relatively big, but this was the Gold Dragons. The best of the best, and somehow she’d been allowed to join them – insane!

“Oh, I know what the Dragons do to their bassists if they’re no good. I have no intention of being just another discarded guitar,” Jade said as they came to a stop at the very end of the sleeping bunks.

“That’s the spirit. Apollo’s all flare, no flame, so he isn’t usually the one to worry about. Just look out for Alexander. He’s the one really calling the shots. But don’t tell him I told you that.” Clay winked and Jade could do little else but nod awkwardly.

She didn’t want to end up on the bad side of either of the Dragons, and she’d try her damndest to keep that from happening.

“We’re heading out in five minutes, by the way,” Tayo called.

“Well, that’s my cue then. Need to make sure they haven’t fucked with my drums. Once, half of them got shipped to Idaho while we went to Wyoming. Not funny, man.” Clay’s face twisted in irritation and he spun around, heading out of the bus with fast strides.

Jade let out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding in, her hands shaking a little as she shoved her suitcases into the compartments between the bunks. With a thankful sigh, she sunk onto one of the beds, propping the fresh pillow under her head and enjoying the moment of calm.

And that was what it was, calm – a snippet in time when she didn’t have to worry. Her hands got clammy and cold just at the thought of what, or more accurately, who she was running from.

Colt and Cameron Blackscale of Death Wing, the band she had been part of for less than a year before she’d snuck away from them a few nights ago, taking only what she could grab. She’d originally got the gig through a friend of hers, Jim, who booked her an audition when they were short a bassist. Apparently, there was something about her that appealed to dragons, and Cameron had hired her on the spot after hearing her play one song – not unlike Alexander.

At that point, Jade had been on top of the world – Death Wing was one of the biggest names in hard rock, and the fact that they’d even consider a female bassist was wild. It wasn’t exactly her scene, but she needed the money, and a great opportunity was not something to let slip between her fingers.

She’d learned their repertoire, and the first few months had been fine enough. That was until their first big single,
Her Blood Tears
, hit it out of the park, igniting a major tour across the country. Colt and Cameron were intense to a fault, almost scarily so, and it didn’t take long for Jade to figure out why. Their arena shows had a similar vibe to the Gold Dragons’ shows; only, where the Dragons elevated their listeners, Death Wing pulled them down, making them angry, aggravated and a dangerous, foul-minded squad all around.

Like the Gold Dragons’, Death Wing’s shows also had a wave splay over the crowd, but theirs was black as ink, undulating over the fans like some sickly mass of darkness that made them all fall into the music and lose themselves to the dark message.

She never liked the way the fans got during their shows. They obviously adored Death Wing and were willing to do whatever they were told, and Colt and Cameron took advantage of it. Often, they would tell their fans to go out and get wild, lose themselves after the show, and they would do just that. It wasn’t a rarity for a Death Wing show to turn into a bit of a riot. In the beginning, Jade had thought it just went with the fans of that particular type of music, but after seeing otherwise nice people turn into raving madmen after some of their shows, she got second thoughts.

Not only that, she could feel the darkness taking root within herself as well, seeping into her pores and making her just as dark and twisted as the crowd. Whenever the effects wore off, she could never really explain to herself why she did what she did during or immediately after the shows.

That was, until that one night in Arizona. Death Wing had played to a full house, and the crowd that left the packed arena had set fire to a number of cars and broken into a few local businesses on their way. Jade had tried to go to sleep after the exhausting concert but found it hard to rest after the negative vibe she’d got from the entire thing. For the umpteenth time, she wondered if playing for Death Wing was really her thing.

So, she got up in the middle of the night and returned to the arena to pack up her bass and store away her gear. When she got there, though, she witnessed something she knew she shouldn’t have.

Cameron and Colt had been swigging whiskey straight from the bottle and laughing about something in the middle of the still filthy arena, riddled with cans and wrappers. Something kept Jade from going forward, and it was then that it happened – the two brothers she knew as the charismatic leaders of the band shifted. The transformation was so fluid that for a moment, Jade wasn’t sure what she was seeing.

Colt went first, his wide shoulders expanding and his whole body following suit. His head got longer and thicker, two horns sprouting from the top of his head and smaller ones down along his cheekbones. His body was covered in black scales that barely caught the light of the full moon; so matte were they in color that he could have been a part of the night sky.

His wings unfolded just as his brother’s shift caught up with him, and when the two beasts stood up, Jade’s stomach dropped. They were both bigger than a house, and when Cameron breathed fire across the arena, scorching the faux grass coverings, Jade was sure she’d pass out right then and there. Instead, she stepped back further into the shadows of the stage, shuddering as she watched the brothers take flight.

They were magnificent to behold, cutting through the sky like hot knives through butter. But the red gleam of their eyes and the horrific screeching sounds they let out left Jade no doubt that the evil presence she’d felt during the concerts was those two.

After that, it wasn’t hard to put two and two together and figure out that the Gold Dragons had to be dragons as well, as ridiculous as that sounded. Having been to their concerts before, Jade remembered the soothing, healing feeling she always got when they played – their music brought a smile to her lips while Death Wing only brought snarls. She wasn’t sure why, but a deep-seated feeling in her told her that if Death Wing ever found out that she knew their secret, she wouldn’t be safe.

Dragons like that wouldn’t want to be exposed. While shifters were a bit of a public secret, Jade had never before heard of actual dragon shifters. Presumably anyone as large and as powerful as that had the capabilities of making sure their secrets didn’t get out, and Jade was not keen on finding out how they managed that.

With a shudder, Jade tucked her hands under her head and exhaled as the bus rumbled to life and took off with a lurch a moment later.

I need to tell Apollo and Alexander what I know… But what if they don’t want anyone to know either? After all, you’re only guessing that they’re the good guys.

Jade’s face contorted in worry, and her hands turned into fists. Somehow, she couldn’t imagine Alexander making some teenager wreck a car or Apollo beat someone up. But she’d been part of Death Wing for almost a year, so was she really the one to judge anyone’s character?