Dragon Bound (Elder Races #1)(33)

The warm water gushed over her head and body, soothing achy, tired places. She hissed when it hit her abraded knees. Working fast, she washed her hair with proper shampoo, sighing with relief as she worked conditioner through it and the ropy length became softer and more manageable. Then she soaped the rest of her body, rinsed, dried and dressed. She brushed her hair and pulled it back with a yellow scrunchie, threw the toiletries back into the shopping bag and stepped out of the bathroom.

Dragos had stretched out on the rumpled covers. He made the queen-sized bed look small and cramped. She ran into an invisible wall when she saw him. He lay on his back, eyes closed, one hand behind his head, the other resting on that long washboard stomach.

He had removed the bloodstained shirt and wore only his jeans and boots. The shoulder wound still shone white against the bronze skin. His ribs rippled under heavy pectorals and dark ni**les puckered against the cool air. He had washed too, the inky sprinkle of hair still damp on that truly inhuman chest. His head was damp too. She caught the scent of clean male.

As with every room he entered, he owned the bedroom just by being there. She shivered and rummaged for her last clean shirt, a long-sleeved button-down. After she tore off the tags, she put it on and wore it like a jacket, since the hoodie had had such a short life span.

His presence was too overwhelming. She could not bring herself to sit near him on the edge of the bed. Instead she crouched to slip on anklet socks and her tennis shoes. Her gaze darted from Dragos to her various belongings scattered around the room. She looked at her backpack with the documentation for three new identities and almost a hundred thousand dollars. Then she looked back at the supine male.

“Are you ready?” she asked. She sounded as winded as if she had run a marathon. She went around the room and collected her belongings, stuffing them into another shopping bag.

“Yes,” he said. He took a deep breath and sighed. It was an awe-inspiring sight. She licked her lips and tried to think of other things. “You don’t need those other identities,” he told her. “I like the name Pia Alessandra Giovanni. It suits you.”

Shit. Three very expensive well-constructed identities down the toilet. And the others were back in New York. “I can’t believe you!” she exploded. “That was my stuff! You had no right to look at it.”

“Of course I did,” he said.

How did he manage to come up with that? She threw one of the shopping bags at him. He must have been watching her with his eyelids slit. In a movement that looked lazy yet was very fast, he caught the bag with one hand. “I bet you counted the money too!” she snapped.

“Of course I did,” he said again. He grinned, a white slash of a smile. “Women really do take a lot longer in the bathroom. I also looked in the refrigerator, used your cell phone to call New York and pocketed your car keys. There can’t be a scrap of predator Wyr in you because you aren’t just a vegetarian, you’re a vegan. No wonder you’re so scrawny.”

“Scrawny!” Only he could think of calling a five foot ten, 140-pound woman scrawny. She threw the other shopping bag at him. He caught that too but couldn’t stop the bottles of shampoo, conditioner and lotion spilling over him. “I am not! And anyway, I’m not quite a vegan either. I’ll eat honey if it’s harvested in a responsible manner. But forget about all that—you give me back my car keys!”

“Not happening,” he told her.

She launched at him and smacked him in the chest. “You bastard! You did not have any right to go through my things or—or steal my car!”

He started laughing, a deep, full-out belly laugh. Then in a move that mimicked the one in the dream, he grabbed her arms, rolled her over his body and slammed her into the mattress. She squeaked. He rose over her, eclipsing the light. Those golden raptor’s eyes were alight. “There is not another entity in the world who would dare to act that way with me.”

She froze and the blood drained from her face.

His expression changed. He held a stiffened finger under her nose and said, “No! I did not mean that as a threat.”

Her lips trembled. “What did you mean then?”

He laid a hand on her cheek. It was so long it almost covered the length of her head. “You’re mine,” he said. “You can deny it, argue, throw fits, try to run away. But. You’re. Still. Mine.”

“That’s insane,” she whispered. “I have no idea what that means. I don’t belong to you or anyone else.”

“Yes, you do,” he told her. His thumb stroked her lips. “You are mine and I will keep you. I will not hurt you and I will protect you. And you’re beginning to trust me. All of that is a good thing.”

“I am not a piece of property, damn it!”

“But you are in my possession.”

She enunciated, “I think you are a lunatic.”

“Since you are too, that works well enough.” His mouth curled into a smile. He lowered his head slowly, watching her. When she tensed, he whispered, “You’re safe. I just want to taste you. No more.”

He waited inches above her lips.

This was so wrong on so many levels. She looked from his patient eyes to his mouth. The tension melted from her traitorous body.

He felt her resistance go. His mouth covered hers. Her eyes fluttered closed. His lips, warm and firm, moved featherlight against hers, discovering their shape and texture. It was nothing like the dream when they were both hard and rough with each other. This kiss was slow, confident, unhurried and sensuous.