Page 21 of Deven and the Dragon
A slow, wicked smile spread across Deven’s face. “Secret messages? You really do have an inflated idea of how enterprising I am, Lord Fiora. And who’s going to be keeping an eye on me, hmm? You?”
“No, of course not,” Fiora snapped. Definitely not.Absolutelynot. The books might not arrive for hours, hours of a warm, lazy night spent doing nothing but…keeping an eye on Deven.
“Well, then I won’t write the note.” Deven folded his arms across his chest and looked horribly smug. “You keep an eye on me, or no one does. I’m sure as hell not sitting with Andrei for the next two or three hours.”
Fiora sniffed, grumbled, bowed to the inevitable, and headed for the stairs, Deven following along with a low laugh that sent shivers down Fiora’s spine.
Once in Fiora’s study, Deven paused by the table and eyed the cake with longing. “The note first, and then cake,” Fiora said. “You need motivation.”
Fiora lit the candles on the sideboard and the table, and moved one candelabrum from the sideboard to his desk. Deven took up a pen off Fiora’s desk, snagged a sheet of paper, and said, “Well? What am I writing to my aunt?”
“My most beloved aunt,” Fiora began. “My best wishes for your continued health and well-being. I most humbly beg you to perform a small favor for me, for which I will be eternally grateful. My apologies for any inconvenience that may —”
“Nope, that’s not going to do at all,” Deven said. “Look, that may be how you write to your aunts, but mine would think I’d lost my wits if I sent her something like that. Just let me do it. You can read it after.”
He scribbled for a few moments, nodded, and then handed the letter to Fiora.
Aunt Phina, Fiora read.Give the fellow who brings this my box of books, please. Tell Uncle George I say hello, and remind him to fix that broken latch on the back door of the tack room. I’ll visit soon. Love, Deven.
Fiora blinked at it. Could the bit about the latch be some sort of code? “That’s all?” he asked dubiously. “How have you not been disowned by now for disregarding the proper courtesies?”
“That’s how commoners talk to each other, Lord Fiora,” Deven said, his voice a little gruff. “Sorry if that offends your noble sensibilities.”
Fiora opened his mouth, but for once he shut it again without spitting out the first indignant reply to spring to his tongue. He was a dragon, not a human, and tended to see himself as separate from human society. The way he’d been gawked at and whispered about most of his life, when outside his family’s small domain, had only strengthened that feeling. But to a human — well, Fiora lived in a castle, had human servants, ate expensive and luxurious human food, wore silk and velvet…what was the difference, really, between Fiora and someone like the castle’s previous owner? It cast every interaction Fiora had had with humans outside of his immediate circle into a whole new light, a stunning reorganization of his view of the world, and he wasn’t sure he liked it.
Was it his curse and his blue skin and his dragon form that set him apart from people, made him different, or was he simply another wealthy idiot cocooned in his fine wines and grand library and well-groomed rose garden, unable to relate to anyone outside? What did Fiora have left, anyway, if he didn’t have the proud, bittersweet pleasure of being uniquely set apart from the world by his own nature and his curse?
Fiora pulled the bell rope and folded up the note, turning it over and over in his hands as he tried to formulate some kind of answer that wouldn’t sound condescending. As he tried, really, to formulate his own thoughts.
He glanced up at Deven from under his eyelashes. Deven was watching him, his usually smiling lips a flat line.
“I’m not actually a snob,” Fiora said, his voice small, and hoping it was true. “I didn’t — I didn’t mean to sound like one. Did I? Sound like one, I mean?”
Deven shrugged. “A little. I mean, who talks about being disowned? Disowning isn’t really something normal people do, Lord Fiora.” He sighed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. You can’t help it, can you? And there’s nothing wrong with being the way you are,” he added, sounding sincere enough. “I’m sure your relatives appreciate your respect. Aunt Phina might like it if I talked to her that way, I guess, once she got over wondering what was wrong with me.”
Fiora mulled that over for a moment. “Does your uncle really fix things in the stable himself? I mean, there’s not…someone to do that for him?”
“Me,” Deven said flatly. “Ifix things in the stable. And I whitewash the beams, and muck out the stalls when we’re busy with guests, and do all kinds of other things. Only I’m not there right now.”
“Oh,” Fiora said absently. So that was how Deven had acquired all those muscles. The mental image forming in his head, of a shirtless, sweaty Deven wielding a…whatever tool one would use to muck something out, was terribly distracting.Wouldhe take off his shirt to do that? Yes, Fiora decided. Definitely yes.
“Yes, oh,” Deven said, with even less inflection than before, making Fiora start guiltily. “Look, you were right. I ought to go downstairs and wait with Andrei, or someone. Fred. I can sit by the front door with Fred. I don’t need to take up your time while we wait, Lord Fiora.”
Fiora shook his head, reluctantly abandoning the picture he’d formed of an imaginary Deven in order to focus on the very real, very clothed Deven standing before him. “What?” And then Deven’s words really penetrated the fog in his brain. “What? No!” No, that was the opposite of what he wanted! “We can take a glass of wine together. And eat cake.” Oh, bother, that made him sound like even more of a ponce. He had to make up for it somehow. “You should call me Fiora,” he said impulsively.
Deven slowly rounded the desk, advancing on Fiora in a way he tried not to find wonderfully exciting. Devenprowled, and Fiora, though technically a very large and pointy predator himself, had the sudden urge to flee — and the even stronger urge to feel that spike of terrified delight as he was caught.
“Fiora,” Deven said, his voice a low rasp. Oh,fuck. “‘Born of darkness,’ you said it means? The name suits you.” Deven came closer, and Fiora stumbled back involuntarily and bumped into the sideboard, the edge of it digging into his back. “The meaning doesn’t, though.”
Deven set his hands on the sideboard to either side of Fiora’s body and leaned in until their faces were only inches apart. Oh, double fuck. Deven’s eyes held an intensity that pinned Fiora in place like a butterfly on a board, and his lips were slightly parted, like a man about to steal a kiss. Fiora didn’t dare glance down to see if any other part of Deven was showing similar interest.
Brisk footsteps pattered up the stairs, and Deven whirled away, taking up a casual pose propped against the edge of Fiora’s desk as if he’d never been close enough to share the warmth of their bodies between them — close enough to have Fiora’s breath coming fast and shallow and his cheeks burning.
Buggeringbother. Fiora was going to kill all of his servants, starting with Andrei and moving on to…Fred, who popped in the door with a wide smile.
“My lord, you sent for me?”
“Yes,” Fiora said. Did he have a visible erection? Probably not; he was only half hard. “Thank you. Here.” He held out the note, and Fred took it with a bow. “Have Marius take this down to Mr. Clifton’s family’s inn, and give it to…”
