Page 13 of Claimed By the Sinful Dragon
I swallowed the lump in my throat that may have been my heart. “Yes.”
“Excellent.” He stared at me for a long moment, then dropped his arms and stepped back. “You’ll find the kitchen at the bottom of the first corridor. You can go and make a start.”
Asshole.
Hot, intoxicating asshole, but asshole nonetheless.
*
Surprising no-one, dinner was awful. Surprising me, it didn’t actually kill anyone. Shifter resilience, I guess. Although, now that I thought about it…
“If you’re thinking about poisoning me,” Rook said, pushing his not quite empty plate away, “don’t. I’m immune to every type of poison known to man. Quirk of my sub-species.”
“Do you actually read minds?” I demanded with a scowl, gathering up the plates. And then I colored. “Er, I mean, I wasn’t thinking about poisoning you. I’d never do something like that.”
He rumbled a laugh that seemed to turn every muscle in my body to jelly, and I almost spilled something that had been meant to be a sauce off the edge of the plate.
“I enjoy your spirit.” He caught my wrist as I made to hurry past him. “Just remember, you share every meal with me, and your kind aren’t nearly as resilient as mine.”
Yeah, there was that.
“I’m not going to kill you,” I grumbled. “It’s not like I could get out of this stupid place without you.”
“Tryto kill me,” he corrected, a dark gleam in his eye. “Because believe me, tougher creatures than you have failed,Dhoca.”
A shiver ran through me at the ancient sounding word.
“Why do you keep calling me that? What does it mean?”
“It’s old Draconic. Roughly translated, it means Fiery One.” He smirked. “But perhaps Tiny Flame would have been more appropriate. Sadly, no such translation exists.”
“Gee, and why am I not surprised that you haven’t done a good job of making friends?”
I tugged my wrist loose from his and straightened the plates before taking them away, my heart hammering in my throat the entire time. And as much as I wanted to believe it was from his thinly veiled death threat, it was most definitely from the heat of his hand on my arm. Maybe I needed to put something in myownfood to get my irrational horniness under control. Because if there was one guy I wasn’t interested in falling for, it was the one who was currently holding me captive with his massive…walls. Too bad my body didn’t get that memo.
I cleaned the dishes and then hurried to my room, and when Rook didn’t call for me again, I was relieved and disappointed in equal measure.
Chapter 9
Rook
I was goingto have to kill the local wolf pack, I decided as I pushed what I think was supposed to have been soup around my bowl. The mere fact Icouldpush it was alarming enough, even before considering the taste. Soup was not designed to be viscous. I was absolutely certain charred shifter had to taste better than this, and I wasn’t entirely sure the shifter wasn’t doing it on purpose, in some sort of attempt to erode my will to live. Murder by attrition seemed like the girl’s style.
She has a name, you know.
I did know. And I had no intention of using it. Getting close to the staff did not end well. My dragon’s anger raked against my mind, and I pushed the bowl away with a grunt.
“Would you like me to bring the main course?” the girl asked.
“No.”
A look of hurt flashed across her face before she ducked her head, and I bit back a sigh. Wolf shifters and their emotions. Seemed like she was constantly furious or on the verge of tears. Often both, somehow.
She’s trying. It’s only been two days.
“I have work to do,” I told her. “You can eat the rest of your meal in the kitchen.” I paused. “Or here, if you prefer.”
I wasn’t sure why I tacked that last part on, and I pushed my chair back before I could second guess my intentions. It made no difference to me where she ate, so long as she did. I didn’t need to lose her to starvation—though debatably, that was lessdangerous than actually eating the food she produced. If I didn’t think she’d try climbing down the cliff the moment she was unsupervised, or get herself lost in the woods beyond, I’d have shifted and gone hunting. I’d never met a creature with so little sense of self-preservation.
