Page 13 of Dragon Bodyguard
“You didn’t want me,” he said. “You didn’t think I was good enough for you. Well, I’m practically one of the family now. So, you don’t get to come into my home, hissing and spitting like some feral cat.” She drew a breath to protest that description, but he didn’t let her, continuing, “You don’t get to raise your hand to me. Ever.”
“Let me go,” she grumbled, her cheeks beginning to burn hot with the soft shame he was producing.
She couldn’t believe she’d hit him.
“Are you going to apologize to me?” he asked.
She clenched her jaws, tilted her chin up.
“No.”
“Then I guess we’re stuck here,” he said, pulling on her wrists as if to underline how he wasn’t going to do what she wanted, only succeeding in making her lean forward.
Their chests connected; his mouth suddenly so close she almost felt his lips brush the tip of her nose. She drew a soft breath in surprise. She hadn’t expected the shot of electricity at the sudden anticipation that ran through her. An instant yearning for him to dip his head down, have his lips searching for hers.
He could tell.
His pupils dilated, he drew in a soft breath, his glare morphing into something questioning.
For one brief second, time seemed to slow to a standstill.
Then his mouth claimed hers, making her give a soft noise of contrition mixed with exaltation as one of his arms went around her waist.
He pulled her against him, one hand still grasping one of her wrists and she tugged herself free. Thinking briefly of how he was now distracted, and how this meant she could push him away.
But his lips were as gentle as they had ever been, and when he parted them, she didn’t pull away. Instead, she met the deepening kiss with another soft noise, this one mostly encouraging.
Her arms wrapped around his neck, goosebumps spreading up her arms and down her back. He tasted like lazy summer days in the shade of the big oak tree in her father’s garden. He tasted like good memories and hopes for her future and the thrill of feeling loved.
But then she remembered.
And she broke the kiss, doing what she should have done from the start, putting her hands against his chest and shoving him.
This time he took a couple of steps back. Mostly because it was the right thing to do, she had no doubt. He’d always been so protective of his sense of honor. He had the strength to wrestle her to the ground and have his way with her, but he wasn’t that kind of man. He wasn’t that sort of dragon.
“You’re delusional if you think it was all my fault, how it ended between us,” she shook her head.
“And you’re an idiot if you think I didn’t love you.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, still catching her breath, trying to decide on what her next move should be.
Hehadn’tloved her.
But why had her stepmother come to see him?
“What did she say?” she asked. “Caroline. When she came to see you.”
He stared at her for a moment, then replied, “That you’d finally come to your senses.”
She stared at him, trying to see if he was lying to her, thinking that perhaps he was simply trying to keep the upper hand over her.
But her father and stepmother wouldn’t do that, would they?
Why would they have cared enough to step between her and Misha when she’d never mattered back then? She’d barely been acknowledged in the house, let alone as a member of the family. It had taken years for her to not get sneers from her half-sisters, jeers from her other half-brothers, though Aleksander had mostly been kind to her. It didn’t add up.
“I don’t believe you,” she said.
“I really don’t care if you believe it or not,” Misha stated. “It’s the truth.”
