Page 12 of The Dragon's Mate Proposal

Oh, my.

Brilliant eyes more copper than brown stared back at me, while golden-blond hair that matched his scales fell in free waves down to his shoulders. My head barely came to his shoulders, leaving me to look up at him. Which wasn’t the worst.

“What are you looking at?” he asked as I watched how his speaking moved the very Nordic-like jawline he possessed.

Strong but not overly wide, it was well defined, up to and including his cheekbones. Like most blonds, he didn’t possess an overabundance of facial hair, but that was fine. The stubble around his mouth and chin suited him perfectly.

“I’m trying to figure you out,” I replied.

And maybe trying to check you out some more. If I’m honest. Wow.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked a bit gruffly.

“Well,” I said, ticking off my fingers as I spoke. “You’ve been quite rude to me from the start. Barely talking, not telling me anything, expecting me to know things I have no reason to have known, etcetera. But then the first thing you do is take me clothes shopping?”

“Okay?” he said. “I’m confused.”

“Me, too. Which man are you?”

He shook his head. “I’m a dragon.”

I poked him hard in the chest—although my finger barely dented his rock-like skin—without thinking. “You know what I mean!”

“All right,” he said slowly, crossing his arms over that huge barrel-like chest. “Please, do tell. Explain to me what type of man I am. What has your thirty seconds of judgment shown you, hmm? Because if it’s anything like your initial judgment of my people, then this ought to be good.”

My eyes shot open at his caustic sarcasm. “What the hell does that mean?”

“When we first arrived here and landed,” he said. “Have you forgotten already? So typical. Very well, I shall elaborate. You said, and I quote, ‘I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this.’ Do you remember now?”

I glared at him as he pitched his voice high in obviously mimicry of me.

“Wipe that look off your face,” he said with more than a little growl. “You know as well as I do you expected us to be savages, living in the wild. Too primitive to be capable of anything you might call civilization. Don’t bother to try to deny it either.”

Although I wanted to do just that, protest his accusation, the truth was he had me dead to rights. That was what I’d expected of him and his people, and he’d called me out on it right away.

“Okay,” I said calmly. “You’re right. I did think you and your people were more beast than man.”

He snorted. “I lived among you for years. With your elite. Trust me, if there’s a bad batch out there, it’s among your people. Not mine.”

I bit my tongue, not wanting to continue the argument. But I certainly noted his lack of self-awareness at what it meant by him having lived among those same elite he disparaged. If they were that bad, why had he spent years with them?

“Okay,” I said, deciding to try to undo some of the damage. “Let’s start this again, perhaps?”

He cocked his head slightly in question.

“Hi, my name is Samantha,” I said, sticking out a hand.

A ghost of a smile tugged at his lips. “Cade,” he replied, taking my hand and shaking it.

I inhaled sharply at the firm touch of his skin on mine, shocked by the sudden heat surging up my arm and through my body from a simple handshake.

Cade. An interesting name.

“Come,” the dragon-man said, pulling his hand back but not before I saw a strange look cross his face.

Had he felt it, too?

“Where to?” I asked, eager to change the subject.

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