Page 64 of To Match A Dragon's Fire

I was never good at taking orders.

“Sorry to disturb you, Master Kieran.” Fredrick kept his eyes averted as if he didn’t want to look at me.

I glanced down at my bare legs. Kieran’s shirt was long enough to cover all my lady-bits, but yeah… awkward.

“Why don’t you sit down and finish eating?” Kieran turned, stopping me in my tracks. “I want you fed and happy. Give me a minute to handle this.”

The smile he gave sent all sorts of fluttering through my body. My toes curled and I buried deeper into his shirt, smelling his delicious scent.

The door closed, leaving me alone in the dining hall.

What is wrong with me?I shook my head to clear the cotton from my brain. You’d think I’d never had an orgasm in my life with the way I’d gone all dopey at his masculine, protective tone.

I wasn’t some impressionable little girl, and I was not about to be man—dragon—handled that way. If something was wrong on my property, I needed to know about it.

I shimmied into my shorts, leaving Kieran’s shirt on because I couldn’t find my bra. The fabric smelled too good to take it off anyway.

Barefoot, I marched across the cool stone tiles.

The wood doors were heavier than they looked. I broke a sweat pulling one open enough to slip through.

A high-pitched female voice echoed down the hall. My eyes narrowed at the sound. The past came crashing back in a flurry. A screaming cheerleader at Tony’s football games in high school. The junior homecoming queen our senior year and the speech she made at the dance.

Her moans in my apartment that day when I came home early from work.

Hillary-freaking-Hartford.

Or I guess it was Roberts now.

The last name I’d scrubbed from my accounts and social security card after degrading myself with it for almost three years.

She could have it.

But I wanted to know what the hell she was doing here at Kieran’s house right after we…

No.

The color drained from my face, but I kept my chin raised as I walked down the massive hall.

Hillary still looked the same. She hadn’t aged at all. Her long brown hair and her bony, slender body were the same as they had been when—I wasn’t going back there again.

She stood in the foyer of Kieran’s home, but my anger started to dissipate as I moved closer. Tear streaks lined her face. She was worried about something, begging Kieran to listen.

And she wasn’t here alone.

I passed a window, blinded by the row of truck lights shining at Kieran’s house.

Fergus and a few other men that used to be boys I knew stood on the front porch with rifles in their hands. My heart started beating hard again as anxiety squeezed my chest.

This couldn’t be happening.

I didn’t think they’d come all the way out here just to scare me off, but maybe I’d underestimated how much they hated me.

If this was a lynching party, Kieran’s house was the only thing standing between them and my cabin.

I needed to get out of here… to get back to my friends and make sure they were safe.

“Just tell me where he is,” Hillary cried. “Is he dead?”

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