Page 24 of Claimed By the Sinful Dragon
“Indeed? What the hell is ‘indeed’ supposed to mean?”
“I presume you are proficient in English? Do you require a dictionary?”
“Only so I can shove it up your ass.”
There was absolute silence for a beat as we both realized what I’d just said. He closed the small gap between us so that he was looming right above me, forcing me to crane my neck to look up at him. His voice dropped an octave, low and dangerous.
“Spend a lot of time thinking about my ass, do you,Dhoca?”
If he thought I was going to dignify that with an answer, he could bite me, because I had absolutely no intention of answering.
“Yes,” I squeaked. Wait, what? I snapped my mouth shut and then immediately opened it to take that back. But before I could find the words, his lips were crushing down against mine, hot and strong. I froze, and he pulled back a fraction. And then my hand shot up and wound itself in his short hair, dragging him back to me. His tongue probed at me, demanding entry, and I nipped at him.
He growled and came down on top of me, his body covering mine as he pressed me back into the mattress. Heat shot between my legs and I moaned into his mouth. He chuckled darkly then pulled back again. A frustrated growl left my lips, and I reached up for him again but he planted a hand on my chest and pressed me back down firmly. I squirmed, but he was stronger than me, and he had no intention of letting me up until he chose. Asshole.
He stared down at me like he wanted to devour me, and a shiver worked the length of my body. I wanted that. Very much. I arched my back, pressing my hips shamelessly against him, and wishing that his sweatpants—hot as they were—weren’t betweenus right now. Or the blankets. Or anything that kept his flesh from mine.
I gasped and he stiffened—notin the area I was hoping for, or at least, not just there. I opened my mouth to ask him what was wrong but he was already off the bed, staring down at me with dark eyes.
“Rook?” I asked timidly.
He shook his head, squaring his jaw and jerking his eyes away. “This is a mistake.”
Rejection shot through my chest. He thought I was a mistake? Of course he thought I was a mistake. He was centuries old, rich, powerful, a freaking dragon…and I was justme.Young, stupid, and hell, not even a shifter as far as the rest of the world was concerned. Whywouldhe want me? Even my pack hadn’t wanted me, there was no way someone like Rook would be interested.
“Get some sleep,” he said gruffly, backing towards the door, keeping his eyes carefully averted from me. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Not if I see you first,” I muttered, angrily wrapping the blanket around myself and turning onto my side, facing the wall away from Lord Asshole. I listened as the door clicked softly shut and it wasn’t until his footsteps in the corridor faded away that I allowed the tears to slide from my eyes. I was such an idiot. I didn’t evenwantRook. The guy was a total control freak, rude, arrogant, not to mention completely self-absorbed. I just… I ground my teeth together as my tears tracked down to the pillow. I wished my body would stop having such a stupid reaction to him. Rook walked into the room and my damn ovaries did a tap dance. Something about him got me all tied upin knots, and Ihatedit. So what that he thought kissing me was a mistake? He was right, it was a mistake. I didn’t want anything to do with him. I didn’t even want to be here, let alone start getting cozy with my captor. He dragged women here against their will. Repeatedly. And then when they died, he went out and got another one. In anyone’s book, he was a bad guy. And I did not have a thing for bad guys. Even ones who had abs and looked unspeakably hot barefoot and in gray sweatpants. With hair mussed from sleeping. And hungry eyes roving every inch of my flesh. And who kissed like they’d never tasted another person before. And—
Not. My. Type.
Just because he was theliteralonly guy left in my life did not mean I had to beg him to crawl into my bed with me.
Ugh. The only guy in my life. For the rest of my life. That was a depressing thought. I’d always assumed my celibacy in the pack thanks to my wolfless status would be a temporary situation, but if the choice was celibacy or Lord Asshole, then sign me up to be a nun, because I wasnotgoing there. Even if it had been an option, which it clearly wasn’t, as he’d made perfectly clear when he all but sprinted from my room.
Well, fuck him. It was his loss, not mine, and I was done crying about being rejected by an asshole I didn’t want anything to do with, anyway.
Chapter 12.5
Rook
This was going to be a giant waste of my fucking time. Right now I couldn’t think of a single thing I wanted to dolessthan haul my ass to some pointless godsdamn meeting with a bunch of archaic dragons getting involved in yet another dick measuring contest. There was a reason I’d spent a couple of centuries avoiding my kind whenever I could—they were mostly a bunch of juvenile assholes with nothing better to do than pick petty squabbles. Should just let the whole bunch of them tear each other apart. Might get a bit of peace that way.
And this has nothing to do with a certain shifter your hands were all over not an hour ago?
Shut up, dragon,I snarled, the sound slipping from my maw and echoing through the night air around us. I felt his smug—but wisely silent—response. Damn shifter girl was already getting under my skin. The kiss had been a mistake. Just long-buried hormones taking control like I was a damned hatchling. It didn’t mean anything other than I’d been caught off guard by the reptilian side of my brain, with an unhelpful side dose of biological urges to reproduce. Like reproduction was that simple for my kind, anyway. Even before the Fall it had been complicated, but all that nuclear shit in the ground and in our food hadn’t helped matters. Our subspecies—Wraiths, as some of them insisted on calling themselves, and I grudgingly had to admit that the name made certain rivals think twice before attacking—were more resilient to nuclear fallout than most, which was why I’d built my home in the middle of what the humans would have called a hot zone. Back whenthey understood things like that. Kept unwanted visitors from knocking at my door. Nothing alive out here but me and the three eyed deer.
And a certain shifter.
I growled under my breath.A whole damn pack of them, actually, but I don’t see you obsessing about the rest of them.
I’m not the one obsessing.
AndIwasn’t having this argument again. It had been a brief and largely redundant biological urge and there was no part of me that wanted to attempt to breed with the female if such a thing was even possible. It wasn’t unheard of for dragons—usually ones that had taken leave of their senses—to attempt to breed with shifters or humans, but I doubted much, if anything, ever came of such ridiculous unions.
Which was just fine by me. There were too many creatures in this world as it was, and I didn’t need some kind of half-dragon, half-wolf, all fuck-up creature upending my entire life.
Seemed like a single shifter girl was enough to do that. I’d have to deal with her when I got back. Set her straight about whatever ill-advised notions were going through her head. She was there to cook, and to clean, and nothing else. The fact that she was apparently terrible at both was irrelevant.
