Mated To The Dragon Of Manhattan (A BBW Paranormal Romance Book 1)

MATED TO THE

DRAGON OF MANHATTAN

A BBW Paranormal Shifter Romance

AMIRA RAIN

Copyright
©2014 by Amira Rain

All rights reserved.

About This Book

Curvy bank teller Brette Morgan has lived in New York City most of her life and she thinks she has seen it all.

That is until one day she stumbles upon something she shouldn't have and she finds herself kidnapped and handed over to Lord Truman Stone, a devilishly handsome dragon shifter.

He claims there is a whole different side to New York City that she does not know about and that it is he who truly rules Manhattan. However, now that she has discovered he exists he suggests he has no choice but to kill her.

That is, unless she can prove she is worthy of being his mate...

ALSO BY AMIRA RAIN....

HER LION GUARD (LION SHIFTER ROMANCE)

After stumbling upon an underground community of shifters within an abandoned warehouse, Mary-Lou knows she has to run for her life. They smell blood and they are coming after her.
She runs and runs right into the arms of the strong and handsome Jonas. Jonas has the ability to shift into 500 pounds worth of lion and he insists he is there to protect her curvy frame.
He tells her that she has something that they want, and they will stop at nothing till they get it. If she wants to survive she must to allow him to become her Lion Guard...
 

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**

A BURDEN TO BEAR

When Sarah meets the man of her dreams she feels that everything is finally going right. Wilson is perfect for her in every way and, most importantly, he loves her curvy frame. His stunning good looks make it easy to understand why any woman would fall head over heels for a man like him.
However, Sarah's best friend Douglas feels like something is not quite right about Wilson and his suspicions lead him into discovering the dark secret that Wilson is hiding. A secret so dark it could mean Sarah's life is in danger.
Only problem is, in order to save her Douglas must also reveal
SHOCKING
secrets of his own.....

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CHAPTER ONE

C
HAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

  
It had been a pretty typical day. Which was to say, boring. Uneventful. Painfully dull, even. I'd come to not expect anything different. I was twenty-seven years old; I was single; and I'd worked as a bank teller at the same Manhattan bank for eight straight years. I hardly even went out since my best friend had passed away from cancer a year earlier. Work, home, sleep. That was pretty much it. And so, suffice it to say, my life wasn't exactly crackling with excitement. Even my last relationship had ended with more of a fizzle than a bang. Eddie hadn't been a real passionate type of guy. On any level.

However, ten minutes or so after the bank's closing on this particular Friday in August, all this was about to change. And I didn't have a clue. I didn't even have the hint of a clue.

Marianne, the bank manager, had been swamped all that day, and now she was in a rush to get out the door to pick up her daughter from ballet day camp. She was late the day before, and by the time she'd finally arrived, her daughter had been crying.

Now, her expression pleading, Marianne flew over to me with two heavy bags of cash and practically shoved them into my arms. "Please, Brette. Can you do the vault drop? I just can't be late again; I just can't. Maddy thought I'd forgotten about her yesterday."

Marianne was a nice, kindly boss so I never minded doing favors for her, and of course, I didn't want Maddy to be worried or crying while waiting for her mother.  So, despite the fact that I'd already counted my drawer and was about to head out myself, purse already hanging off my shoulder, I wrapped my arms around the cash bags, nodding.

"Of course I'll do the vault drop. You just go get Maddy."

After a few fervent thank yous, she hurriedly told me how and exactly where to deposit the money into the vault. "Oh, and the code to get in is thirty-six, thirty-three, thirteen, eleven. And maybe you should repeat those numbers back to me, because they're only written down at corporate."

"Thirty-six, thirty-three, thirteen, eleven. Got it."

She dashed toward the bank's front entrance, her navy blue high heels clicking on the tiled floor, and waved at me."Thanks again! I owe you!"

I waved back while the last remaining security guard, an older man named Dave, let her out and then relocked the main door. Now, he would just be waiting for
me
to leave so that
he
could go home. Sure that depositing the money into the proper various lock boxes in the vault would only take me ten or fifteen minutes if I hurried, I strode down the long corridor of teller windows and down to the vault.

It was only once I was standing in front of it, that I realized I'd momentarily let the code Marianne gave me to open it, slip from my mind. I broke out in a light sweat, flustered, not wanting to have to call her at the tail end of what I was sure had been an incredibly stressful day for her.

Maybe twenty or thirty feet to my left, beyond the teller windows, I heard Dave close Marianne's office door and then lock it.

Staring at the keypad on the right-hand side of the vault's massive steel door, I thought hard. "Thirty-six, thirty-three, thirteen...ah, dammit. What was the last one?"

After setting the money bags on the floor to free up my hands, I grabbed the steel door handle and gave it a tug, as if the door might have actually been left unlocked, which was so unlikely as to be ridiculous that I'd forgotten the fairly simple vault keypad code mere moments after it had been told to me. And after I'd recited it back.

Silently berating myself, I gave the steel door handle another futile tug, desperation clearly driving me more than reason, rationality,
or
common sense. I realized I was letting embarrassment and rattled nerves get the better of me. As I often did. I didn't have what anyone would likely describe as "nerves of steel."

I released the door handle and closed my eyes after a quick glance to make sure Dave wasn't looking at me. And he wasn't. Peering out one of the tall glass windows near the bank's front entrance, he seemed to be studying a long line of yellow cabs inching down the street in the rain.

Taking a deep breath, I attempted to gather my wits about me. Remembering the final number of the keypad code wouldn't be that hard, I figured, once I relaxed a little. And it wasn't. After I'd taken a few more deep breaths, my eyes still closed, while recalling Marianne's and my conversation, my voice came out in a whisper.

"Thirty six, thirty-three, thirteen...eleven."

Right away, I knew I'd remembered all the numbers correctly. Pretty pleased with myself, I opened my eyes and extended a hand, ready to key them into the keypad. But the keypad wasn't there. It wasn't right in front of me, where it should have been. Nor was the vault door. Nor was the thick steel frame surrounding it. Nor was anything.

What
was
in front of my face was a tall, lush, jewel-green fern in a large, dove-gray, marble planter. Maybe twenty or thirty feet beyond it, water gurgled in a gray marble fountain. Which I could see through the leaves of the fern.

Literally dizzy with bewilderment, I staggered out from behind the fern, calling for Dave.  "Where's the bank, Dave? Where are
you
? What's...what's happening?"

I was in what looked like the lobby of a very upscale hotel. The flooring was made up of squares of black and white marble. Several crystal chandeliers hung from the vaulted ceiling at various places. Other jewel-green plants in marble planters lined walls decorated with velvet tapestries and oil paintings. Behind me, or, what had
been
behind me when I'd first opened my eyes and had seen the fern, was a white marble staircase with what looked like an elevator bay beside it. Turning my head in all directions, I tried to make sense of it all. I tried to make sense of, well,
anything
.

But there was no making sense of having just opened my eyes to see a place that was clearly
not
the bank. Where I'd been just seconds earlier when I'd closed my eyes to think of the vault keypad numbers. Though I didn't have long to spend trying to fathom what on earth might have happened.

Because when I'd called out for Dave, I'd gotten the attention of two men standing by massive glass doors with gilded handles at what seemed to be the main entrance of the lobby-looking place. Like Dave, they seemed to be security guards. Though unlike Dave, they weren't wearing bank security uniforms. They were both dressed head-to-toe in black, each of them wearing black collared shirts, black cargo pants, and black boots. They both had guns and knives holstered in the utility belts they both wore. And now, they were both heading right for me, pulling their guns out and shouting at me to put my hands up.

Gasping, I did. "Don't shoot! Please don't shoot! I'm not here to rob this place or anything, I'm just...I'm lost!"

I honestly wasn't yet sure
what
exactly I was, still didn't even yet have a clue, but
lost
was the first thing that had popped into my mind.

The guards reached me and holstered their guns. One of them, the taller of the two, snatched my purse, which I realized was somehow still hanging from my shoulder, where I’
d
put it when I'd been preparing to leave the bank. Before whatever crazy thing that had just happened, had happened.

            The other of the guards, a shorter blond man, gathered my wrists behind my back and slapped a pair of handcuffs on them. "These are more symbolic, of course, than anything. We realize you could shift and break them in a second. Though, just know that if you do, we can and will shoot you with our guns. And we're quite aware that this won't kill you in shifted form, though it
will
stun you for a minute or two, of course, and when you come to, you'll be dealt with more harshly than if you'd just cooperated. So, do not shift. Do not break your handcuffs."

I stared at the stocky blond man, more bewildered than I'd ever been in my life. The words he'd spoken to me had only barely seemed like English.

I gave my head a slight shake, my dizziness increasing. "I don't think I could break these handcuffs." I gave them the slightest of discrete tugs. "They feel...they feel like pretty sturdy metal."

Before the blond man could give me any kind of response, the other guard, a man with dark brown hair, zipped my purse closed, having finished rifling through it.

"Nothing in here." He shifted his gaze from the blond man to me. "Now, we don't make it a habit to frisk women, but if you have any weapons on your person...guns, knives, anything...now's the time to tell us. Because if you make any attempts at pulling a weapon later, as with shifting, you'll be dealt with more harshly. Understand?"

I didn't understand anything. I didn't understand a single thing about what was happening.

But, knowing it would probably behoove me to cooperate, I moved my head in a nod. "I don't have any weapons. And I...I really don't understand what's happening right now. Is this like...some sort of a joke that's being played on me? Or...."

With my head spinning, I couldn't think of what else it could be. And it seemed awfully elaborate for a joke. And not only elaborate, but
impossible
.

The dark-haired man looked at me, frowning. "How can you not understand what's happening? Clearly, you've been arrested for trespassing. And, if my suspicions are correct, you'll be serving time later for spying as well."

"But...wait, what?"

I was so far past bewilderment and confusion, I felt like I was in a dream. Or a nightmare.

The dark-haired man frowned even harder, actually almost scowling at me. "They probably thought with a pretty face like yours, you'd be able to sweet-talk your way past any guards if you were caught. Well, when you return, if you
can
even return, after however long a prison sentence Lord Truman imposes on you, you'd do well to tell them that pretty faces don't work on the royal guards."

I stared at him, slowly blinking, thinking that with each blink, the bank vault just might come back into focus. Desperately
hoping
that it would. "Who's 'they?' And who's Lord Truman?"

The dark-haired guard scoffed. "Lord Truman Stone? Does that ring a bell? The man you were most likely sent to spy on and maybe even assassinate?
That
Lord Truman. Though you, not being one of our people, should address him with the more formal title of Lord Stone. Spies don't get the luxury of uttering his first name. Remember that. And now...we'll take you to stand before him in the throne room. Where, if you confess your crimes immediately, he might even deliver your sentence yet today. So, come with us. And no shifting. No breaking of handcuffs."

Clutching my purse in one hand, he began directing me over to the elevator bay with his other hand on my shoulder. I didn't resist or fight; I couldn't. I could barely even think. The blond man walked alongside us.

When we reached the elevator bay, the dark-haired man punched in the button marked sixty-five out of a row of buttons numbered all the way up to seventy-seven.

And then, while we waited for the elevator, he glanced at me. "What I'd like to know, is how one of you were finally able to cross over. And once you did, how did you slip past us at the main door? Are you one of their shifters who can turn invisible for a few seconds at a time? That's how I could tell you were a shifter, by the way. After you sneaked past us, I instantly realized you must be one of those shifters with invisibility powers."

"But I didn't-"

“Oh, don’t even try saying you're a visitor or a worker who just wandered down from upstairs after 'getting lost.' See, for one thing, we've been on shift all day and don't remember you coming in. And for another thing, we have another guard post on the second floor, where the elevator stops before continuing again, and those guards radio us whenever someone is coming down, and we radio them whenever someone is going up. And they didn't radio us. So don't even try."

I decided it was best that I didn't.

"And besides, we'll see exactly what you did when we watch the surveillance tapes later."