Forbidden Honor (Dragon Royals #1)(67)

I swallowed hard, tried to push all my anger down so deep that it couldn’t seep through the faintest crack in my fa?ade. “You look handsome as ever, Talisyn.”

I’d felt guilty about the fact that I’d had sex with Jaik and I hadn’t talked to Talisyn. I hadn’t wanted to see them angry with each other.

But I didn’t owe them anything. If jealousy fractured them apart… Well, it was a bad day for dragon royals, and they really, really deserved a bad day. Nothing was going to compare with my evening of wearing a corpse-coat and dancing with a minotaur shifter.

Talisyn held out his hand. “Dance with me.”

I smiled at him, but didn’t take the outstretched hand. “Are you giving me a choice?”

“I’ve never needed to give you a choice because you would always take one.” He didn’t lower his hand, his face confident that I would choose him. “Are you going to pretend that you wouldn’t have just smacked me if you didn’t want to dance?”

“You have a point.” I agreed. “But do you really think I could have smacked you in front of all those people, Lord Talisyn?”

“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met before. I can’t imagine you doing anything but what you want.”

“I’m not doing what I want right now,” I answered.

“And what is that?”

Stabbing you through the heart.

But of course I didn’t say that. I smiled up at him and twirled slightly letting my dress swirl around my legs. “You.”

His brows rose. “I can never tell just how innocent you are.”

“A little less than I was before meeting the dragon royals.” I finally took his hand, and he drew me onto the dance floor.

“That’s too bad,” he said, but his hand wrapped low around my hip, his fingers pressing into my ass, in a way that wasn’t innocent at all either.

“Is it? I don’t think so.”

“If you’re happy,” he said, “That’s a wonderful thing.”

“So very happy,” I said. The stench of rotten flesh still lingered in my nose, no matter how perfumed I was, no matter how many floral bouquets dripped from every surface.

He gave me a look that I couldn’t quite read. “That’s a pretty extreme level of happiness. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt that happy.”

“You should try it.”

“Maybe I’ve met a girl who will make me that happy.”

Oh, I doubt that very much. I kept that thought to myself. It wasn’t happiness that I planned to offer. “I’d love to meet this girl.”

The two of us moved steadily across the dance floor. Even dancing the most staid waltzes, there was something so effortlessly graceful and sexy in the way Talisyn moved his tall, powerful body.

“You should meet this girl,” he agreed. “She’s something special.”

He was talking about me, right? I was pretty sure, but there was still a sliver of doubt that made me anxious. I stared at him suspiciously as the two of us danced across the floor.

“Special, hmm? Tell me about her.”

“I don’t think she even realizes how special she is. I don’t think she can see herself truly.”

“I don’t know why you’d think that you could see her, then.”

“Sometimes, we need someone to see us in a more generous light before we can see ourselves that way,” he said, quietly but confidently.

I would have found him very charming if he hadn’t tried to kill me three hours earlier. “What else about this girl?”

“She’s as strong and cocky as a dragon shifter. Even though all her life, people have told her that she’s probably nothing,” he said. “There’s something about her inner power that staggers me because that strength doesn’t come from her soul creature, her family, or her money, like the rest of us. It’s just…her.”

If he’d said those words before tonight, they would have made my heart sing. Now I murmured glib nothings in response, ducking my head because he regarded me too intensely.

I couldn’t let his pretty words thaw my heart that had iced over in the labyrinth. There was a part of me that was too drawn toward these dragon royals, a strange magnetism that left me feeling undone and vulnerable. Maybe there was a connection between us because we were all dragon shifters, even though they didn’t know it.

But they’d reminded me tonight that a woman in my world could never let herself be vulnerable. These men weren’t my heroes, flying to my rescue. I had to play the princess but be the hero in my own fairy tale.

“Your friends are staring at us,” I murmured into Talisyn’s ear. “They don’t approve of me.”

His gaze followed mine to where Arren glowered; maybe his face had gotten stuck like that. “It’s not personal. They wouldn’t approve of anyone I really cared about.”

“So you’re allowed to fuck all the girls but not…” I faltered, gazing up at him. “Well, we haven’t yet…”

Let him think I was this clumsy, lovestruck idiot who faltered even trying to put a word to how Talisyn felt for me.

“Not yet,” he said.

“Not yet? How arrogant,” I teased.