Matched with the Dragon: A Shifter Dating Agency Romance Page 6

  If he couldn’t even treat women like more than accessories, what made Lila believe this man was mature enough and had enough foresight to protect Briana or assist with her protection should something take a turn for the worst on their date! Darian began to feel heat rise in his chest as his mind began to wander towards more personal topics, like the kind of man he personally felt would be right for Briana. Darian was quick to put a stop to his rising temperature and wandering thoughts, though. He hastily refocused himself on finding out what else made this man unfit to date Briana.

  Running a large IT security company was not a choice Darian had made because of the proven success and health of the IT industry, nor was it because Darian felt it would be the most lucrative. No, Darian had chosen to open specifically an IT company because, in truth, he was a wizard on the dark web and had always maintained an affinity for computer science.

  He had started his enterprise as nothing more than a small private consulting firm, and he himself had been a hard working software engineer prior to promoting himself up and out of the working force within his own company. It had been a long while since Darian had personally ran a background check on someone. In an attempt to keep his temper under control, Darian decided that his best option for uncovering as much about Brad James as possible while still not losing him temper would be to compile all the finding before reviewing them. This way Darian decided he could take the information home with him and keep any temper flare-ups private.

  Diving back into his computer, Darian searched bank records, personal search history from Brad’s own internet searches, purchase history, Darian was even able to pull Brad’s birth certificate off the web. Admittedly, it was more excessive than the typical background check, but he figured in a case like this no precaution was too much. Darian mused to himself that pulling all of this man’s dirty laundry together was one of the easiest things he had done in a while. And from the looks of it, there was lots of dirty laundry.

  Gathering all of the files he had obtained onto a drive, Darian headed back to his apartment to review the information. It was as Darian rode the elevator back up to his penthouse that he had an idea. He lived in arguably the nicest building in the city, which also came with a Michelin-star restaurant just a few floors below his own living quarter. He decided there was no reason why Briana and Mr. James would be unable to attend dinner there. If anything were to go horribly wrong with Briana’s date, the safest place she could end up would be his apartment.

  With a renewed sense of professionalism, Darian felt relieved that he was able to make an official decision on the restaurant based off of logical and sound judgment. He sent Lila a text message on his preferred dinner location before sitting down at his personal computer to view the various files.

  As he began to search through the information he had compiled, Darian was immediately concerned about what he saw. The man was wealthy and financially stable, but the quantity of off-shore accounts he appeared to maintain was concerning. Darian also saw that his various financial investments were heavily dependent on the economy and therefore utterly unstable.

  It got worse as Darian continued into dissecting the man’s life, too. He had uncovered numerous dating site profiles under multiple names, saw numerous text correspondence between Brad and several different women, with each conversation indicated exclusivity yet all conversations had occurred at once, and Darian even saw images that women had sent him that were very graphic. By the time Darian had managed to sort through all the information, he was shaking with rage.

  The man was nothing more than a base rake with excessive spending habits! Darian was horrified that Lila had thought that this man was a good fit for Briana. He had spent the past several hours reviewing Brad’s personal habits, whether it was talking to women like they were sexual objects or running up bar tabs, Darian had developed a firm opinion on Brad, and it was an opinion that labeled him as a low life.

  The distaste for Brad had welled up in Darian’s heart slowly, a burning sensation flashing beneath his skin with each bit of ugly information. It was a slow and steady disturbance that had gotten to Darian, one that had distracted him away from a focus on the physical happenings of his own body and had drawn him deep into his own thoughts, where his feelings and sensibilities ran wild. It was after Darian had viewed the last of his files on Brad that he finally became aware of what was going on externally, and he let out a deep, sooty gasp when he looked down and saw that he had silver scales showing on his skin beneath singed holes in his suit. Groaning as he stood up, Darian felt his soft leather chair crack beneath him. Turning, he saw that he had burned large holes into the back of his suit and crisped the leather chair into a charred mess in large patches.

  How he had managed to let his feelings escape from him to the point where he had been sitting in his own slow burn for an extended period of time, and without noticing, was beyond Darian. He realized that he was too far gone to try and keep the dragon contained, and he rushed out to his balcony as his body began to pulse with its changing form.

  Bursting out of his suit and falling to the ground as his figure expanded outward, Darian’s figure disappeared into a gleaming mass of silver tinted with copper. His large wings expanded out across the length of his private outdoor space, knocking over all of his patio furniture and breaking various space heaters and outdoor televisions he had installed.

  His became cloaked into invisibility in his fully transformed state, and Darian used his long-talloned feet to push away from his balcony. Even in his dragon form Darian winced at the crushing of materials he heard as he left his loft for the sky. He could only imagine what the damage would be now.

  Once in the sky, he carefully listened out for his brothers. When he encountered nothing but silence, he dropped nearly immediately into contemplative thought. How he had managed to destroy nearly half his apartment in less than a day was beyond him. Even after setting his mind onto keeping his interactions with Briana professional, he had completely lost control.

  He tried to tell himself that his obsession with Briana was just that—an obsession. He tried to tell himself that once the job was done, his life would go back to normal and the dragon inside would go back into hibernation. He tried to tell himself that he didn’t know this woman, and that even if he wanted to, he would never be able to share a life with her. But he knew that telling himself these things was futile. He had somehow fallen in love with her. He finally admitted it to himself, and suddenly the heat that had been ravaging his body nearly instantly settled into a soothing glow. It was a glow like the one he had remembered characterizing his shift into a dragon as a youth.

  As absurd as it was that Darian had managed to become so emotionally invested in a woman he had never even interacted with, he knew that there was more to it. He knew that his love for Briana was more than what he saw externally. There was something in her heart calling to him, there was a part of her that needed him the way he felt like he needed her. And his dragon form called out to her, bursting out from inside him at any opportunity, begging to protect her, begging to cherish her.

  As Darian accepted these facts that had been suppressed in his heart, he felt the power of his dragon form running through him in euphoric waves, comforting and soothing the out of control burn that had caused him to lose control and burst into his current state.

  Whirling through the air, Darian flexed his densely scaled legs and spread his wings out wide, allowing himself to glide through the sky. He had never felt anything like this before, a moment where he was so at peace with the creature inside him. The power and intelligence of the dragon felt like it had perfectly molded with his human nature, creating a clarity of thought and confidence of body Darian had never experienced as a person or dragon, and that was impressive considering the assured nature he conducted himself with.

  His entire life, Darian had felt at odds with his dragon-self. He had felt like the dragon had always been one, and the man he usually wa
s acted as another. He felt at times ashamed and afraid of the dragon, paranoid the power would bring his downfall, whether that meant losing control to the beast or being discovered by the rest of humanity. Now, he felt confident and in control in all ways. The feeling of his scales, tough and metallic and coating his body, now felt more like how a mother’s embrace feels to a child; rather than the heavy and cumbersome feeling his scales usually maintained, they offered comfort and strength, as well as a sense of infallibility.

  Taking in deep gasps of air, Darian was surprised to see that he was no longer spewing black smoke from his lungs. Instead, his body seemed to have become equalized as he now released hot, steamy breathes into the cool, high-altitude air. Reflecting inward, Darian didn’t feel the discomfort of the dragon’s demands creeping into his mind and heart. In fact, despite the fact that he was in a dragon form, he didn’t feel the angry and confrontational tendencies of the monster struggling to overpower all of his other sensibilities. It was like a demon that Darian had been fighting had been excised from his body. The fact that it came directly on the heels of his admission to himself of his feeling for Briana was no coincidence.

  “She’s your treasure, brother,” Darian was startled to hear Brett’s voice invade his mind.

  “Brett, how long have you been listening in?” Darian asked defensively.

  “Long enough.”

  “How were you able to hide your thoughts from me?”

  “I use mediation to keep my thoughts private, but it usually doesn’t work if we’re being honest. I think you were just very deep in your own thoughts,” Brett replied casually.

  “What did you mean by saying that Briana is ‘my treasure’?”

  “C’mon brother! You taught me some of this! I’m surprised you haven’t figured it out!” Brett chuckled.

  “Brett, just explain, please,” Darian impatiently demanded, forgetting Brett had no choice but to heed his call.

  “You aren’t any fun! Okay, so dragons were created many years ago as protectors of the earth’s most precious things. This included royal women and children, gold, or loot, valuable structures or churches—“

  “Brett, I know these things, what does this have to do with me?”

  “If you would let me finish! I have to start from the beginning and tie all the pieces together for you!” Brett sighed. “Anyways, dragons were developed in order to protect said valuable things when a wealthy king paid a powerful witch to allow his eldest son the ability to transform into the beast. She made a potion, and suddenly the son could burst into dragon form in the same ways we do. But, there was a catch. The dragon inside had to find value in what he was protecting. Now, dragons on their own, without a human side, are actually lazy and gluttonous beasts. Unless the dragon finds high value in what needs protecting, it will fight the human nature of the man that becomes the beast, desiring to remain a dragon and be free from seemingly meaningless responsibilities.

  “The human side provides the drive and motivation, which means the most perfect union of a dragon’s powers with it’s human counterpart is when both sides find value in what is being protected. This also ensures that the object of value is actually valuable. The witch had done this to prevent the use of the dragon for selfish, greedy, or violent means.

  “In her doing so, the witch had done something even she had not intended. The dragon resists the human form until they both may agree on something worth protecting. It seems to me, the outburst of the dragon were due to its desire to protect and your desire to remain calm and professional. The calm you are now feeling is because you and the dragon have finally agreed on the treasure you are destined to guard, and you and your dragon are now one.”

  “…I don’t understand how I didn’t know this,” Darian finally stated after an extended silence.

  “Relax, Darian, the worst is over.”

  “But I don’t understand how I did not know this and how you kept it from me. All these years grappling with this monster inside! All these years of confusion, Brett!”

  “These are things that you can’t know until the day they happen, Darian. To tell a shifter the key to stability before their time will drive them insane. I have seen shifters who have been told this truth before discovering their treasure, and in their haste to find it, they lose their minds to the beast inside.”

  “But that means that Briana is my treasure!” Darian repeated what Brett had already told him. He couldn’t believe it, any of it. He couldn’t believe the story, or the chaos his life had been thrown into. With his mind racing, he was overwhelmed as he tried to interpret the meaning of this new information.

  “Wow, Darian, calm down,” he heard Brett interrupt, remembering that Brett could experience all of Darian’s own thoughts.

  “Get out of my head!” Darian shot back in his frustration, forgetting that Brett would have no choice but to obey. When the space around him went silent, Darian immediately felt guilty that he had ejected his brother from his dragon form after he had provided so much information and clarity.

  For a moment, Darian stopped to consider what his newfound knowledge of his feelings for Briana meant. He had been performing security detail on her for a couple weeks, and in that entire time they had not exchanged so much as a word. He had seen her looking at him, but he was certain that to her he was nothing more than a spectator in her crowd of admirers.

  She was going out on a date with another man, she was using a dating service to find love, she had never even spoken to him, and yet Darian found himself supernaturally bound to her. He wished that he had stayed composed enough to ask Brett more questions. Questions like, would he only ever encounter a single treasure? Could he have multiples? If Briana did not love Darian the same way, would he find another woman to love? Would he go insane if he was unable to obtain Briana’s affections? Would he be cursed to roam the skies and guard her?

  He had so many anxieties and fears in his mind that he hadn’t even noticed the direction he had begun to head as he flew through the sky. Darian had found himself outside of Briana’s apartment, flowing back and forth outside of her windows. As he enjoyed the feeling of the cool evening air brushing past his large, warm body, he looked through the glass walls that lined her apartment, seeing her sleeping on the couch.

  She had a strange look on her face as she slept. It was peaceful, but also like someone was disturbing her dreams. Darian realized that he was slightly worried as he watched her. She was fully dressed in her day clothing, and it appeared that she had fallen asleep on her couch by accident. It was near night, leading Darian to believe that she must have fallen asleep a while ago. Listening in on her heartbeat, Darian could here that she was sleeping deeply, only backing up his assumption. What had led her to be exhausted enough to sleep her afternoon away so deeply?

  Through the couple weeks Darian had been watching her, she had been alert and social, happy with life it seemed, but Darian had begun to notice something changing. She seemed to have become lethargic and withdrawn, going out less and calling Lila less. He wondered whether it was because of the pending threat of the Russian beginning to weigh on her.

  Regardless, Darian was not pleased to see Briana sleeping her afternoons away in a seemingly disturbed state. As he swooped back and forth in front of her window, he watched her chest rise and fall with her soft breathes, her full and rounded hips arching up and falling softly into her long, shapely legs intoxicated his mind.

  Shifting his large head, he heaved out steamy breaths trying to relax his mind away from Briana’s perfect body splayed out on the couch. Her thick black hair fell from the edge of the cushion, dropping like a waterfall towards the floor. Her lean arms rested under her heart-shaped face, and her full breasts pressed against each other from her resting side position, allowing creamy-skinned cleavage to spill from the top of her blouse.

  Darian closed his fiery eyes, allowing his instincts to guide him around the windows as his mind ran wild with images
of Briana. He was imagining her on a beach, beautiful and sitting in clean, white sand. He imagined standing over her, her hands grasping his hips and she looked up at him longingly. He felt his large body quake with desire as he imagined her full lips parting to take in his thick manhood, her tongue gently caressing his throbbing tip as he dug his hands deep into her silky hair. Were Darian in his human form, the fantasy would have drawn a gasp from his chest, but now, transformed as a dragon, Darian’s gasp was instead a physical experience. His scales’ copper color glowed on his body, and were he completely visible to the human eye it would have been a brilliant display of beauty and color.

  Darian had been lost in the story he was creating in his mind when he was called back to reality by the sound of Briana moving in her apartment. He was alarmed to open his eyes and see Briana on the ground between her couch and coffee table. He wondered if she had fallen off the couch, but when he listed in to her elevated heart rate, he realized that it was the all too familiar rhythm of fear pulsing in her veins.

  Immediately worried over what would cause her to cower on her apartment floor, Darian focused in on the building, listening for any sound of disturbance. Hearing nothing more than other occupants of the building going about their evening activities, Darian was baffled by Briana’s behavior.

  It was only when Darian began to examine Briana’s expression that he felt a sinking sensation develop in his stomach. As she lay on the floor, he realized that she was staring out the window intensely, as though searching for something. Beginning to panic, Darian wondered whether she had somehow seen him or caught a glimpse. He knew there was nothing else outside the window that would be interesting enough to give her such a searching stare, but the probability that his dragon form had flashed before her was also highly unlikely.

  Darian felt paranoid that he was missing something and that Briana could in fact be in danger. It was this feeling that creeped up his spine that inspired him to do something that he had avoided until now: he was going to go talk to her. He had to make sure that she was okay, and he had to make sure that she had not seen anything she wasn’t supposed to. Before he could do any of this, he knew that he would have to get dressed, but he didn’t want to leave her alone. He decided that while he went back to his apartment to change, he would call Brett to watch her.