Page 58 of Gemini Kings
I smirk at him and dive in to steal a quick kiss before he can elude me.
He’s not normally one for public displays of affection (to put it mildly), but he’s so thankful I’ve agreed to his wretched improvement plan that he permits it, his delicious mouth all hot and yielding. Our lips fuse together, my tongue sliding into his mouth to unfurl over his palate and wrap around his fangs. His tongue spears against mine in a heated promise that he’ll fight me like hell before he bends for me tonight.
This promising exchange is interrupted by the scornful snort that emanates from the shadowy depths of the vestibule, coupled with a hateful voice whose guttural cadence clenches my gut in a vise.
“Romanov, truly, you have not changed. Is there no man living who is safe from your unnatural lusts?”
A current of icy shock spills through me like a bolt of Zara’s lightning. My head snaps up to glare over Lucius’ shoulder at this intruder who’s polluting my doorstep with his obnoxious and offensive presence.
Good God.
It’s that fucking dragon.
My enemy.
My enemy has invaded my home.
Aggression floods through me and a growl surges up my throat. A filthy curse rips out of Ronin, who’s thankfully standing with Zara behind me, well beyond the creature’s grasp. Subtly I gesture to keep both of them safely where they are.
To be honest, I hardly expect Zara to heed me.
I glare straight across the room at the loathsome wretch. I burn to incinerate Maxim Rasputin with my eyes. Regrettably, that’s an extinct gift (as far as we know), so the villain just keeps standing there in our home as though he has every right to be here.
At least this time he’s wearing clothes. Even if he looks thoroughly disreputable lurking there, nearly as tall as I, lean and hungry-looking in a scuffed leather motorcycle jacket, ripped jeans that cling to his wiry hips, and battered shitkickers dripping snow all over our nice dry floor. His pale hair is raked back in a braid that bares every savage line and angle in his cold Slavic face. In those freakish eyes now locked on mine, his uncanny pupils slit narrow with menace.
“Truly,” the fool persists, “is there no man living you will not despoil?”
I eye the prick with real dislike. “Well,obviously, Maximka. There’s you.”
At this point, I fully expect some sort of classic homophobic fusillade. Well, bring it on. I truly hope he will expose to Zara and all of them just what sort of creature this flying Godzilla with his narrow-minded Orthodox upbringing truly is.
However, to my disappointment, the dragon doesn’t utter a single word.
For some reason, he actually looks a tad… distracted… by my little zinger.
“Damnation,” Lucius sighs. “Mr. Rasputin, I asked you to wait quietly in the hall until I summoned you. Apparently, even that was too much to ask.”
The dragon’s shoulders square and his mouth hardens in a familiar stubborn line. “I have every right to be here in this house. The same right that this one does.”
Bythis one, of course, he means me.
Rage courses through my blood. The rush of my Mogadon pheromones floods the air like a lethal gas. He’s my enemy, he’s insidemyhome, and he’s here for Zara, I know he is.
What I simply cannot fathom is why on earth they’ve allowed this felon past the Academy wards.
Until he swings a battered backpack from his shoulder to the floor. A backpack which looks suspiciously loaded with… books.
Textbooks.
My soul erupts in an absolute volcano of rebellion.
“For fuck’s sake, Lucius,” I hiss, so livid I can barely speak. “He’s, what, a student here now? Are you absolutely insane?”
I’d like to roll my eyes at the outrageous suspicions now racing through my brain, except I don’t dare let that crocodile out of my sight.
Not even for an eyeroll.
Instead, I bare my horrid shifter fangs at the creature in an intimidation display that’s pure instinct and entirely beyond my control.
