Deryk (Dragon Hearts #2)(6)
“She’s my ma—woman,” he finally managed to growl.
Bryn frowned darkly as he shot the female on the bed a quick glance. “Is she even old enough to be called a woman?”
“Excuse me, but I’m twenty-two years old, and I certainly am a woman.” She sat to draw her knees up beneath her chin and wrap her arms about her legs, blonde hair cascading down the length of her spine. “And despite your mauling just now”—she looked at Deryk with narrowed eyes—“I am not your anything.”
He didn’t agree. Nor did the dragon purring and preening inside him, readying himself to demonstrate his prowess to his mate.
Deryk gave an inner wince at his mate’s age of twenty-two. How was she going to feel about being the mate of a fifteen-hundred-year-old dragon? There was an older man and a much older man.
“You answered in English,” he realized.
She frowned. “This other man spoke in English.”
“My brother Bryn,” Deryk supplied distractedly, inwardly relieved his mate was at least able to understand him. He doubted those two phrases of Russian he’d learned would go down too well with the young human woman he knew was his mate. “And you are?”
Izzi scooted up to the top of the four-poster as the huge man who had attacked her sat on the side of the bed, causing the mattress to dip that way because of his much heavier weight, and threatening to tip her over toward him.
The bedside lamp allowed her to see that he wasn’t only huge, dangerous to look at, and intensely muscular, but also possibly the handsomest man she had ever set eyes on.
His shoulder-length hair was a dirty blond with golden highlights running through it. His eyes still glowed that strange gold shade. His nose was long and aristocratic between sharp cheekbones, and his mouth was currently curved into a sensual and confident smile above a square and stubborn jaw.
He had long, elegant hands that nevertheless looked, even without those lethal talons, as if they could break a human neck without effort.
A human neck.
Because despite the very human clothing the man wore, faded jeans and dark blue T-shirt that clung to his defined musculature, Izzi was more convinced than ever this man wasn’t human. She had been around the Romanov dragon shifters all her life, enough to recognize this man as being one too.
As was the dark-haired man now standing a short distance away. It wasn’t only the unusual color of both men’s eyes. There was also a wildness to these two brothers, as if their inner dragon was barely leashed.
The blond-haired man who had kissed her, the one his brother had called Deryk, might look as if he was aged in his midthirties, but Izzi was pretty sure he was much older than that. The Romanov brothers also looked to be in their thirties but were actually centuries old.
“I’m Deryk Pendragon,” he supplied when she didn’t answer him.
She couldn’t decide what the lilt was she could hear in the gruffness of his voice, but it sounded almost musical. “Izabella Mikhailova.”
His eyes widened. “You’re related to the owners of the palace?”
She gave an inelegant snort. “The Romanovs own the palace. They always have. My family has only ever appeared to be the owners to the outside world, rather than the human servants of the Romanov family.”
“You’re human too?”
“Of course,” she came back pertly.
“And the woman who showed us to our bedchambers earlier?”
“My mother.” Izzi kept a wary eye on Deryk Pendragon. He seemed to be in control again now, but she had no idea how long that would last. Or why he had attacked her in the first place. As for the way he’d growled and snarled at the other man when he’d attempted to pull him away from her…
“Your father, Anton, served dinner.” The man named Bryn spoke to her directly for the first time, having that same musical lilt in his voice.
Deryk seemed to take exception to Bryn so much as talking to her, gold sparks shooting from his eyes as he turned to glare at his brother.
“Yes,” she confirmed firmly. “Now, if both of you would move out of my way, I would like to return downstairs to help clear away after the meal.”
“You’re a servant here?” Deryk Pendragon snapped his disapproval.
“No,” Izzi answered evenly as she saw the golden glow in his eyes had intensified. “I’m a student. At the State University.” Not that it was any of his business. She didn’t know this man, or dragon, and in all likelihood would never see him again after tonight.
Then what had that intensity of arousal been about when he kissed and touched her? Even now, just listening to him talk in that deep and growly voice, with its musically attractive lilt, was enough to make her core ache and throb.
She had never had such a visceral reaction to any man before now.
Except Deryk Pendragon wasn’t a man. He was a dragon.
The Romanov brothers had always treated her a little like a pet, indulging her as a child, buying her toys, and then pretty, feminine gifts as she became too old for the toys. They were kind to her, all handsome as sin too, but Izzi had never once had so much as a crush on any of them, let alone felt the arousal still coursing through her body.
In truth, the ability of the Romanov brothers to turn into dragons had always frightened her a little. Not that she had ever seen one of them in dragon form. It was forbidden. But even in human form, they were all as huge and scary looking as the Pendragon brothers now appeared to her much shorter height and build.