Page 42 of Fated to the Grumpy Dragon
I shrugged, feeling breathless. “I don’t know. Why are you kissing me?”
“I don’t know,” he rumbled. “I just …”
At a loss for words, he kissed me again. His hands slid down my back and gripped my ass firmly, pulling me close. Before I could react, he easily lifted me and placed me on a railing, so our heights better lined up. I tried my hardest, but I still let out the tiniest little moan at being so casually moved around.
My legs spread as he came closer. I could feel his cock in his shorts pressed against my leg. I wanted to touch it. To run my hands across the bulge and feel it stiffen.
This is insane. You hate each other. Why are you kissing him? And why is it sohot?
There were no answers. Rhyse, for his part, didn’t seem to have any interest in stopping to discuss it either. His fingers were busy reaching for the back of my bikini top, inching closer with every kiss we shared. He was giving me plenty of time to say no, to make him stop.
I almost did. I almost placed my hands on his chest and pushed him back. But I didn’t want to. I wanted—
A long, loud blast of a horn startled us both. I yelped and jerked so hard I overbalanced and started to fall backward off the railing.
“Gotcha,” Rhyse said, hauling me back over and onto my feet, my chest pressed to his side as we both located the source of the sound.
“Oh, sorry about that!” a leering face called from the boat holding just off our right side. “I didn’t interrupt, did I?”
“Killian,” Rhyse growled, his fingers curling into a fist.
I tried to move away from his side, to be able to see, but a deep warning rumble sounded in Rhyse’s chest as he moved to stand in front of me protectively.
Things were going south. Fast.
Chapter Eighteen
Rhyse
The instant I heard Killian’s voice, I knew there was going to be trouble.
“Move on, Killian,” I said, automatically moving to put myself between him and Emma, blocking his line of sight while I turned my head to whisper to her. “Go below and put some clothes on if you don’t want to be ogled at.”
“Ew,” Emma muttered, going to do just that.
“And where should I move on to, Rhyse? It seems like you’ve snapped up all the good bits.” Killian sneered at me from under his massive brow.
I bared my teeth. “What do you want?”
The other dragon laughed. “I want whatever brought you out here. To this random speck of ocean. That’s a good start.”
“You want … water?” It was my turn to laugh. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but take a look around if you can, Gorillian. There’splentyof water to go around. And then some.”
He seethed at my use of his hated nickname, drawing attention to the prominence of his brow and how it made himlook nearly Neanderthalic. Not my finest diplomatic moment, but I didn’t care.
“You talk a big game for being a coward who’s too scared to fight,” he fired back, thinking he could call me out.
I laughed in his face. “You don’t know shit to the point your ignorance is actually bordering on painful to witness.”
Killian’s face turned red with anger. So far, his brown-nosers had stayed out of it, but I wasn’t letting myself forget about them either. In the end, I was still outnumbered three to one. On top of that, Emma’s well-being had to be considered as well. Picking a fight wasn’t the wisest of courses for us.
“All I know is that when we went off to fight and defend our kingdom, you stayed home. Like a coward. Too afraid.”
“We’ve been over this,” I said, tiring of the only argument he had against my character. There were more, but this was the one he seemed focused on. “You weren’t ‘fighting’ the humans in some glorious battle. They can’t hurt us. You were in no danger, so stop trying to pretend like you’re some brave hero who should be applauded everywhere you go. It’s a pathetic cry for attention and even someone as dense as you should have figured out it isn’t going to work on me.”
“Is he still whining?” Emma asked, coming back upstairs from below, my big sweatshirt now covering all but the lower part of her legs.
I snickered. “He doesn’t know how to do much else, truth be told.”
