The Viper's Nest (Kit Davenport #4)(17)

Vali shrugged. “Language barrier. Come, I’ll show you your room.”

I snorted a laugh at his language barrier excuse. Damn Romanian spoke better English than I did. Still, it was better than standing in the foyer fuming with anger and clenching my fists.

“Sure,” I huffed. “Find me somewhere to hide until I lose the urge to rip Austin’s fucking head off.”

“Mmm, his head? Or his clothes?” Vali arched a brow at me then flashed a devilish grin and led the way up the grand wooden staircase.

Muttering weak denials under my breath, I followed him and raised my eyebrows when we entered a bedroom that must have been directly above the living area below. The huge bay windows showed the same view of the lake, and an enormous California king bed took up barely half of the tastefully decorated bedroom.

“This is my bedroom, huh?” I asked. Having expected a pretty basic kind of fishing cabin or something, the shock of this opulence was taking some of the burn out of my anger. Austin was still furious though, and it was keeping my own temper stoked.

“It’s the master suite, yes,” Vali nodded. “Seeing as you’re the master in this little crew of misfits, I thought it appropriate.”

“That’s... really sweet of you, but it’s your house. I don’t mind taking one of the other rooms.” I frowned, trying to rein in my foul mood and be polite but really struggling.

“Regina mea,” Vali chuckled. “You don’t need to mind your manners with me. I can feel your fury and frustration. Sit, talk to me.”

“Regina mea?” I repeated, but did as I was told and flopped down backward onto the impressive bed.

“It means ‘my Queen’ in Romanian,” Vali explained, climbing onto the bed and leaning his back on the headboard. He was already barefoot, and for some reason I found that incredibly hot.

“Austin is always calling you Princess, but you’re not. You’re a queen. Our queen.” He wrapped one of his huge hands around my upper arm and pulled me up the bed till my head was in his lap and he could run his fingers through my hair.

“Hmm.” I pursed my lips. “I like it... which is weird because I hate Austin calling me Princess.”

Vali huffed a small laugh. “No, you don’t. Just like you’re not as mad at him right now as you think you are. Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

“You didn’t see?” I asked, tilting my head back to look up at him.

“No, Regina, or I wouldn’t be asking, now would I?” He softened his words with a small smile as his gentle fingers brushed through my hair. How odd to think this was the same man who’d shot one of his guards point blank in front of me when we first met.

“Uh, I accidentally somehow magicked us here from Bravenherst, and Austin is losing his shit that it was reckless and stupid, but it was a fucking accident. I didn’t mean to do... whatever the hell I did. It just happened.” I scowled, but Vali’s fingers in my hair were slowly but surely melting the anger out of me.

“It just happened?” he repeated, using a finger to tilt my head back to look at him. “Really? That’s the defense you want to stick with?”

“It did,” I muttered, indignant. He arched a brow at me over those sexy, granite-gray eyes of his.

“Were you handling any ink at the time?” he asked me sternly, and my cheeks heated. “I take that as a yes. I have no idea how this ink magic works, but I would probably say that handling any sort of ink until you get a better grasp of control might be considered reckless and stupid, don’t you?”

My eyes narrowed. “You’re supposed to be on my side, Vali.”

“Why?” he challenged me. “Because I want to fuck you? That’s no reason to always agree when you’re clearly in the wrong.”

Indignation flared inside me, and I sat up to glare at him. “What the hell? I am not clearly in the wrong here! It was an accident!”

“Yes, but it was an accident that could have been prevented had you not been handling ink. Correct?” Damn man didn’t even have the grace to look anything but calm, but I really had nothing to say back to that, seeing as he was one hundred percent correct. Instead, I changed the subject.

“You want to fuck me, huh?” Sweeping my dishevelled hair off my face where it had flopped when I sat up so quickly, I tried really had to wipe the scowl from my face.

Vali barked a laugh, then stroked his thumb over my cheek. “Nice deflection. And yes, you know I do. It’s practically all I’ve been able to think of since seeing you on that stage at the Onyx Auction.”

“Huh, I would have thought it’s been since you caught me masturbating in your bath tub.” I gave him a cheeky smile and received the heated stare I was aiming for in return. His fingers on my face warmed with dragon magic until they were just this side of uncomfortable, and I shifted until I was sitting closer to him on the bed.

“That certainly didn’t help,” he murmured, his blazing eyes fixated on my mouth while I silently begged him to kiss me.

“So, what’s stopping you now?” I whispered back, leaning forward until our faces were only inches apart. We’d only kissed once, but the memory of his lips on mine was still fresh in my mind.

Vali let out a long, frustrated sigh. “Only your five other boyfriends, and the fact that one of them is my estranged little brother who I suspect wants to kill me in my sleep some days?”