Page 27 of Dragon Bodyguard
“I’m just asking.”
“Yes,” she agreed, not elaborating further.
“So, you’re not okay?”
He should have gone with her to her room. She’d asked to see him, but he’d been so rattled by the dinner invitation that he’d skulked off to his room to have a shower and a shave. Make sure his better suit was presentable. It had been, thankfully.
When he got that text that she wanted to meet with him, he’d felt like an idiot for going on patrol. He’d run away, hadn’t he? He’d found a reason to stay away from her because all he’d wanted to do was stay in the room with her. Preferably, he’d spend the night at the foot of her goddamn bed to make sure she slept all right.
He was so fucked.
“What do you care?” she asked, but it wasn’t pointed. She seemed genuinely curious, turning to face him, her expression unreadable. Then she reached up and gently corrected his tie.
He couldn’t help but stare at her.
What was she doing?
“I don’tcare,” he said.
“Right,” she nodded. “That’s why you kissed me.”
His fingers began to itch to touch her. He curled them into fists at his side.
“Really, you’re bringing that up now?” he asked.
“Well, if you’d just come to see me when I asked you to,” she raised her eyebrows. “We could’ve already talked about it.”
“That’s what you wanted to talk about?”
“No,” she admitted slowly, glancing at the door before sliding her hands off his tie and down his chest, letting them fall along her sides though he got the feeling she wanted to reach out and let them take his. “I wanted to thank you. For looking out for me.”
“It’s my job,” he shrugged, feeling stupid for not accepting whatever invitation she was throwing at him.
He wanted to accept it.
But he couldn’t.
There were rules to these things. Regulations. He couldn’t just go around kissing guests. Right? Dmitri wouldn’t approve, surely.
“Right,” she repeated, eyes not leaving his. “That’s why you kissed me.”
“Would you stop that?”
She smiled then, a cheeky thing that reached her eyes in ways that could stir winds. “No,” she said simply.
There were voices coming down the hallway, so she moved away from him as though she hadn’t just poked at that thing sleeping between them with the sharpest stick. His eyes trailed her, thoughts a blur. He’d better get a hold of himself or excuse himself from the dinner entirely.
He opted to get a hold of himself.
Dmitri, Ilya, and Aleksander entered the room. Aleksander walked up to claim the seat next to Kristina, putting an arm around her shoulders in a half-hug, knocking their heads together. It made her smile. Misha knew Aleksander had arrived back at the house later than Ilya and Dmitri due to some trouble with the car and had spent the few hours leading up to dinner with his half-sister. They seemed closer than he would have expected. He remembered their relationship as good but tenuous back in the day.
Aleksander had known they were sleeping together, but Misha wondered if he’d ever considered it could be more than that. He was a good friend, but he’d always adhered to the strict hierarchy the life prescribed and had made a point of guarding his status within it. Would he even have approved of the match if Misha had sought Kristina for a mate?
Aleksander had mentioned something about having found someone to form a mating bond with, hadn’t he? Perhaps he was maturing enough to consider relationships forming outside of what one’s status within the fabric of society prescribed.
Misha waited to see where everyone else wanted to sit, being left with the choice between the chair opposite Kristina or the one opposite Aleksander. He chose the one opposite Kristina even though everything in him told him it was a bad idea.
He didn’t want to make eye contact all night so made a point of fixing his gaze on the row of glasses by his plate. He knew which drink went in which glass. Red wine, white wine, aperitif… And the uses for all the different cutlery placed neatly on either side of the plate as well. He’d sat at a table such as this one enough times to be familiar with the basics. That didn’t faze him. What fazed him was the woman who granted him a small smile when their eyes—against his most sincere attempts to avoid it—met across the table.
