Page 3 of Dragon Bodyguard
And yet, the way she’d felt underneath his hands… the way she’d sighed his name…
He blinked, clearing his throat. He thought he saw the ghost of a smile on her mouth before she said, “Of course. Hello, Misha. How are you?”
She sounded like an automaton at an amusement park.
“I’m very well, thank you,” he responded as stiffly. “And I trust you’re well?”
“Very well, thank you.”
Aleksander stared at them, then furrowed his brow at the awkwardness.
“Okay,” he said slowly. “Great that that’s out of the way, right? We’re all… friends here?”
“Of course,” Kristina said, a bright smile spreading on her mouth in a way that didn’t seem entirely false, and yet not entirely genuine. “All friends here.”
In contradiction to the hint of warmth in that smile, the statement didn’t sound true at all. In fact, there was a sharpness to the word ‘friends’ that made him think they were anything but.
Of course, her poor attitude might have nothing to do with their shared past. Was it her newfound confidence that made her feel like a block of ice next to him? Was it quiet superiority that was coming off her like wafts of chilly air? He concluded scornfully that only a shiftless could pull off making another dragon feel like that.
Dragons naturally ranhot.
He wanted to find out why she seemed so offput by his presence. He had a sneaking feeling he shouldn’t poke at it, but also knew that he wouldn’t be able to leave it alone. Those answers would be found. Part of him wanted to confront her, make her tell him everything she’d been up to in the past thirty odd years, because whatever he’d been told about her clearly wasn’t the whole truth.
“There’s something different about you,” he couldn’t stop himself from commenting., checking that Ilya was nowhere nearby. He wasn’t. “Don’t tell me…” Misha continued. “You did something to your hair?”
She smiled, the coolness of her expression remaining. It was quite the thing to behold. Had she practiced it in the mirror? How had she become this… other?
“I grew up,” she said curtly. There was a pause and he was about to turn away when she added, “I hear grand things about you.”
He was surprised by the comment. He hadn’t expected her to take the bait quite so easily. Perhaps her attitude had everything to do with their past after all.
“Semi-grand,” he said. “Not one to brag.”
“Right,” she said, nodding. “You’re all about keeping your head down and getting the job done.”
What the hell was that supposed to mean?
Aleksander was listening in on one ear, but Misha couldn’t keep himself from nibbling at the bait as well. “Is there anything wrong with that?” he asked.
“No, nothing wrong with it at all,” she said, shrugging. “If that’s all you want life to be. And since it’s always been all you’ve wanted life to be…”
Strangely enough, this was beginning to feel like the continuation of a conversation they’d never had. Not once. Why was he getting so riled up?
“And isthisall you really wanted life to be?” he bit back. “Swanning into a grand house at your father’s side?”
He knew he’d overstepped by the raised eyebrows on Aleksander, who knew there was history between them, but not quite how deep that history went.
“I’m sorry,” Misha said, stepping down. “That was out of line.”
“Was it?” she asked. “Maybe it’s long overdue,” she raised her eyebrows.
Why did she look so calm? Because she’d mentally prepared herself for this conversation. She’d known they were coming her for however long and now she was going to make his life miserable. He just had no idea what her reason was.
Shehad lefthim. Even though she should have seen him as a proper catch, a way out from under her father’s thumb, she hadn’t. And she had sent someone else to break it off with him so that she could remain with the asshole who had only taken her in because he wanted to feel good about himself. This stranger who never gave her the time of day once she was in his house. Cold and distant and not a father to her.
She had told him once after they’d made love, head sleepy on her pillow, that her mother wasn’t recognized as a legitimate consort of Ilya’s and that he only agreed to have her stay with him because her mother was poor. And he took that as a personal afront. No child of his was going to grow up in poverty, even if she was a shiftless.
Shifter children weren’t born with the ability to shift, the power would be too unwieldy, but rather they grew into it and would go through their first transition at around six years of age. The shiftless were different to halflings, which were born to couples with one shifter and one human parent. A halfling might never shift either, their human side outweighing their shifter side. But a shiftless was an abomination as, for some reason, their true nature was unable to manifest.
