Dragon Bound (Elder Races #1)(66)

“Debt paid?” she asked.

“Debt paid.” He rubbed the ends between his fingers.

“What are you going to do with it?” she asked.

He frowned again. “I don’t know.”

“Here, I’ll braid it for you. Otherwise you’ll have it all over the place.”

He watched in fascination as she cut two lengths of gold thread almost the exact same color as her hair. Almost but not quite. It was the closest she could find in her sewing kit and wouldn’t be noticed at any distance, but the thread lacked the lustrous quality of her hair.

She put one piece of thread between her teeth. She wound the other thread several times around one end of the hair and tied it. She used a safety pin to pin that end to a pillow and with swift competence braided the lock. She said between her teeth, “You’re not going to do some kind of black magic hoo-doo on me with this, are you?”

“Oh no,” he said, gaze on her fingers. “I just like the color.”

She smiled to herself, both warmed and weirded out by how they were acting with each other. It felt so natural, so right. There were so many reasons why it shouldn’t. She took the second length of thread to tie off the end of the braid.

Some foolish impulse made her offer, “I could tie it around your wrist if you like.”

She waited for him to tell her not to be stupid. Instead, to her surprise, he raised his eyebrows and said, “I would like that.”

He held out his right wrist. She wound the braid around it. Despite how thick his wrist was, the braid was long enough to go around it almost twice. She took more thread and worked on sewing the braid together. After she was sure she had it on secure, she tied it off and snipped the ends of the thread.

He held up his wrist and admired the pale gold gleam. He ran a finger around his wrist, feeling the soft bumps of the braid. The dark bronze of his skin seemed to make her hair gleam brighter.

“Dragos, am I a prisoner?” she asked. After weighing on her since last night, the question slipped out easily enough after all.

His eyes narrowed as he looked up. She kept her attention on putting things back in her sewing kit and willed her fingers not to shake. “No,” he said after a thoughtful moment. “Why do you ask?”

“The guards last night.” Relief had her offering him an unsteady smile.

“The guards are for your safety. When I’m not with you, they will be.” As she opened her mouth, he said, “That’s nonnegotiable.”

“But—”

His face hardened. “No arguing, Pia,” he said. “I am at war now. Until I bury Urien, he’s going to continue to be a serious danger. Whether he knew about you before or not is a moot point. After what happened on the plain, you have just become a major target.”

“But guards even here?” She felt any hope of even an illusion of freedom slipping between her fingers.

“A couple thousand people work here every day. Several thousand more visit. Yes, there is security and there are restricted areas, but no place is a hundred percent secure, not when Power is involved. You remember how I got to you with the dream. What if some magical attack occurs? You will have guards until this is all over. End of discussion.”

Her lips tightened. His logic was irrefutable and his autocratic attitude all but intolerable. When she thought she had her temper under control, she gave him a short nod. She didn’t necessarily disagree with him once he had explained things. She just expected to have a say in what happened in her life.

He settled back against the pillows and laced his hands behind his head again. He gave her a relaxed, ruthless smile. “Now that it’s come up and we can have that long-overdue conversation, why don’t you tell me all about your mother and how you healed me?”

TWELVE

After a frozen moment, she threw herself off the bed. She grabbed her sewing kit and stomped into the dressing room. “I can’t believe you’re asking me that.”

He followed and leaned a shoulder against the doorpost. He had slipped on a pair of black silk pants. His gold eyes gleamed. “It’s pretty evident you healed me with your blood. That’s why you were so desperate to destroy it. Your blood tells something important about you. You couldn’t leave any behind.”

She took in his dark lounging figure and looked away with determination. Yes, he was too sexy for words. He was also utterly insufferable and he didn’t have an ounce of shame or embarrassment to his name. “I guess when you promised not to ask me about it, you meant you wouldn’t ask when you didn’t want to,” she said in a grim voice. She shoved her sewing kit into a drawer and brushed past him.

“Of course.” He turned to track her. “I learned that from someone I know. You know, the one who promised not to argue only when she doesn’t want to,” he said, raising his eyebrows at her. “Now who could that be?”

She stormed up to him and stuck her finger under his nose. “That was different.”

“How do you figure?”

“We were in a bad situation. I reserve the right to sometimes know better than you do what should be done. So I’ll argue with you whenever I feel like arguing, big guy.”

His mouth flattened. He folded his arms. It was obvious he was unimpressed with her finger or her posturing. “Like you did when we were in the car with the Goblins watching?”