Thea Harrison - Dragon Bound

“This train wreck all is my fault,” she said. “I have to do what I can to make it right.”

Dragos’s grip on her leg eased. His fingers slid along her calf in a subtle movement.

It annoyed her so much, she snapped at him. “But no matter what ridiculous thing you say, I am not yours. You wouldn’t be here except for me so I will see you to the Elven border. I know you lost your head, and you got all scary and obsessive and territorial, and you want to get back your property and all that, but come on. All I took was a freaking penny. Besides, I already gave you another one.”

One corner of his long, sexy, cruel mouth lifted in a smile.

The Elves refused to touch Dragos, so she had to help him as much as she could. By the time he had pushed himself off the ground and she had gotten herself insinuated under his good arm, the Elves had disappeared. She knew better than to believe they were gone.

“You took a 1962 penny,” Dragos said. His teeth were gritted. “You left a 1975 penny. It’s no replacement.”

She stared at him. “Oh my God, it’s scary you noticed that.”

“I know everything in my hoard and exactly where it is,” he told her. “Down to the smallest piece.”

“You could go to a doctor, get checked out for OCD,” she panted. “There might be medication for that.”

His chest moved in a silent laugh.

She focused on putting one foot in front of the other. He leaned on her as little as possible—otherwise they both would have crashed to the ground again. He still felt like a Volkswagen had been hung around her neck.

They got inside. He collapsed on the couch. He draped an arm over his eyes and stretched out one leg until his boot hung over the end. He left the other foot planted on the floor. Between the blood and the buttons she’d popped when she ripped it open, his Armani shirt was ruined. She eyed his chest that went both wide and far, narrowing to an eight-pack that rippled into his jeans.

For God’s sake. The male was injured and here she was ogling him like a pervert in a porn store. “I’m just not right in the head,” she muttered.

He said from under his arm, “I’ll pursue that comment later.”

She turned to the kitchen. “I’ll get you some water.”

“Scotch.”

“Okay. And water.”

She brought the bottle of scotch along with a jug of water and a cloth. He swiped the scotch bottle from her, uncapped it and drank half without pausing. She waited until he came up for air. Then she sat on the wood-framed coffee table and used the washcloth to wipe the blood off his chest. The entry wound was already nothing more than a white scar.

“Does it still hurt?” she asked, anxiety gnawing at her.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Your voice is too loud. Shut up,” he told her. She bit both her lips as she finished washing him. He sighed and shifted. While he had lost none of that lethal animal grace, it was obvious he was in pain. “Keep doing that with the cloth. It feels good.” He paused. “Please.”

After freezing for a moment, she said, “I’ll get a clean one.”

She dropped the bloodied cloth in the sink, grabbed another and hurried back. He hadn’t moved. She began to smooth the dampened cloth over his chest and shoulders. If he had felt hot before, now he was an inferno. She took the arm draped across his washboard stomach, pushed up the sleeve and bathed it. Then she put it down and reached for the arm he had covering his eyes. He let her, eyes glittering under half-closed lids.

“It was the phone call,” she said. “For the steaks. I didn’t call a number from the phone book. I had memorized a help line number somebody gave me.”

“I got that.” His reply was very dry.

She nodded, dipped the warm washcloth in the water from the jug to cool it down and started over again. The words kept pouring out of her. She said, “I was scared when I called them. I thought you were going to kill me.”

“Got that too.”

“I’m sorry,” she burst out. She grabbed the scotch bottle from him and took a deep swig.

As she lowered the bottle, she caught him smiling. “Good,” he said. “You should be very sorry. In the last two days, you have cost me an untold amount of manpower, tens of millions of dollars in property damage—”

“Hey. Let’s keep the record straight. I wasn’t the one who threw a hissy and hollered fit to wake the dead.” Her spine straightened and she glared at him.

His smile broadened, a slash of white in the room’s gathering darkness. “You’ve caused me all kinds of broken treaties with the Elven community, and now I’m sick as a dog.”

She pointed at him. “You broke those treaties. You weren’t supposed to come here. How crazy is that.” A pause. She looked at him with sad eyes. “Are you really sick as a dog?”

“Pretty much.” He gestured for the bottle and she handed it over. “My body’s fighting off the poison. It’s better than it was. In a little bit I’ll be able to move around on my own.”

She turned and sat with a small grunt on the floor. She leaned back against the couch facing away from him. She drew up her legs, put her elbows on her knees and pushed the heels of her hands against her eyes. Her headache had grown. “I’m not sure where the Elven demesne ends, but it won’t take long to drive it. Couple hours. We’ve got some time.”

He dug his fingers into her hair and lifted up the strands. “I want some of your hair.”

She lifted her head. “What?”

“I said I want some of your hair. Give me a lock and I’ll forgive you for breaking and entering.”

“Oh-kay. Sure.” She squinted at him. “So I give you a lock of my hair, take you to the Elven border and drop you off?”

He laughed. “I never said I was letting you go. I just said I’ll forgive you.”

“I knew that had to be too easy,” she muttered. “You’re just not a straight road, are you? Okay, so why will you forgive me but not let me go?” Her shoulders sagged. “Never mind. I’m too tired for this conversation.”

He kept running his fingers through her hair. “Did you ever give your boyfriend any?”

Her eyes tried to close. The gentle tugging on her scalp was making it all but impossible to keep her head upright. “Ex,” she mumbled.

“Ex,” he amended.

“No.” She fought against the drugging pleasure, to wake up. She gave his hand a halfhearted push. “Stop it. I can’t keep my eyes open when you do that.”

“So don’t.” He smoothed his palm over her head. He liked how her voice got soft with drowsiness. He liked that she didn’t smell of fear any longer, that her scent was tinged with a lingering faint arousal. “Go to sleep,” he murmured.

“Gotta meet that deadline. Set an alarm.” She tried to struggle to her feet.

As she was rising off her knees, he hooked an arm around her waist and pulled her down on top of him. It wasn’t hard. She was off balance to begin with and wobbly with fatigue. She oophed and tried to push off him, but he wrapped his arms around her and trapped her in place.

“Lie down,” he ordered. “I’ll make sure we leave on time. Go to sleep.”

She collapsed on him like a house of cards. He pulled her head into a comfortable spot on his uninjured shoulder. “Quit giving me orders,” she yawned. Under the guise of shifting to get comfortable, she rubbed her cheek against his chest, wallowing in the sensation of warm, powerful male. It seeped into the cold cracks that ran deep inside her. “You’re not the boss of me.”

“Sleep,” he told her.

Just like that, from one moment to the next, she was asleep.

No one was around to witness when he experimented with pressing his lips against her forehead.