The Dragon’s Devoted Defender (Brinnswick: Tales From Gauhala #4)

Chapter One

Oakley

“Ugh. I can’t get my eyeshadow right.” I sighed as I went in with the brush, trying to blend the two colors together better. I flicked my tongue piercing around in my mouth for a few seconds while I fixed it.

“I’m sure it’s beautiful,” Keryth, my best friend, said.

I shot a glare at the phone since it was sitting on my dresser on speaker. “I can hear your eye roll from here.”

He snorted. “Good.”

I flipped him off, not that he could see it, and went back to the mirror.

“Don’t flip me off.”

I gasped, laughing. “Good lord, do you read minds now?”

“Nope. I just know you.”

With a chuckle, I finished my makeup, still not a hundred percent happy with it. I snapped a picture of myself and sent it to Ker, saying, “What do you think?”

“Mm. You look beautiful. As always.”

The comment warmed me, even though I knew he was full of it. “I feel like you’d say that even if I was wearing a paper bag and had lipstick drawn all over my face.”

He snorted. “No, I wouldn’t. I’d kindly tell you to wash your face and please put on real clothes.”

I laughed at that, then looked in the mirror again and sighed. “You really think this is good enough?”

“Oak.” Ker sounded serious all of a sudden. “He’s going to love it.”

I scrunched my nose up. “Who do you think I’m dressing up for?”

“Uh, Roman, obviously.”

My heart pounded in my chest at the thought, and I had to take a deep breath to cover up my shaky voice. “You’re insane. Why would I care what he thinks? He’s a pain in my ass.”

That last part was true, but the rest was bullshit. I wasn’t stupid enough to lie to myself about it, but I also didn’t want my ridiculous and inappropriate feelings out on display for anyone else.

Roman was my father’s best friend. He was my bodyguard on most days, my work partner on others.

He was also like a billion years old, just like my father, and I was only twenty-seven.

There was no way in hell anything could ever come of this… immature, stupid crush I had on the man.

When he’d been assigned as my bodyguard, I’d been so pissed, so upset that my father didn’t think I could handle myself, and so annoyed that Roman seemed to feel the same.

But slowly, over the months of spending nearly every waking minute with the man, my feelings began to… change. To grow.

And now, every time he was in front of me, all I could think about was licking him. Like… I really wanted to lick him. Even thinking about it now was making my cock twitch a little in my pants.

Shit. That was so terrible when I was on the phone with Ker. Yikes!

“You wish he was a pain in your ass.”

I blinked down at the phone, taking a second to register what the hell Keryth was talking about.

I wish… oh my Mother of Scales. “Keryth!” I sounded so affronted, like I was a little housewife in an old TV show.

I should be gripping my pearls from the sound of my voice.

Which was so unlike me, but the fact that Keryth made a sex joke was… shocking.

And fucking hilarious.

Keryth cracked up laughing, and his laughter was contagious, so I plunked down on my bed and let it out.

It felt good to laugh.

This latest mission had been a tense one, so laughing with my fae bestie was very much needed.

When we both calmed a little, Keryth sighed, saying, “Seriously, Oak, you look beautiful.”

That made me smile as warmth gathered in my chest. For too much of my life, I’d been told I was never good enough, that wearing makeup was wrong, that there was no such thing as nonbinary, that everything I felt, everything I was was wrong. I was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

My mother and her people had abused me my entire life, and I hadn’t even realized it was as bad as it was until my father was able to get me away from them.

Keryth knew a little about my past, although I’d never told anyone everything that’d been done to me, so he always seemed to reinforce his compliments to me.

Like he wanted to make sure I’d heard him, that I believed him.

At first, I’d thought he was only being nice, but as I’d gotten to know him better, I realized he actually meant the things he said.

So I believed him now, and it made me all warm inside.

I smiled down at my phone. “Thank you.”

“No prob.”

A knock on the door interrupted us. “You ready to go, Oakley?” Roman’s voice was deep yet soothing, and if I let it, it would give me chills.

But I couldn’t let it because, well, Dad’s best friend.

I cleared my throat and called out, “Yeah, be out in one minute.”

“I’ll wait in the living room.”

“Okay!” To Ker, I said, “I have to go.”

He sighed. “Please be careful.”

“I will. Talk to you later. Bye, babe.”

“Bye. Love ya.”

“Love you too.”

We hung up, I applied one last layer of lip gloss, and packed up my bag. I checked all the spells I had on my phone, made sure they were intact, then double-checked that they were undetectable for anyone else.

With all that good to go, I stuffed my phone and wallet into the pockets of my jeans and headed out the door with my bag in tow.

Roman stood the second I entered the living room, holding his own bag, and my breath hitched.

Ho-ly shit. He was the hottest man I’d ever seen in my entire life.

His red hair was dark and styled in that sort of messy way that still somehow looked put-together, his blue eyes were shining bright, reminding me of the color of his dragon, which was the most beautiful color of the rainbow, and he was wearing shit-kicker boots, black jeans, a tight black t-shirt that left nothing to the imagination, and a leather jacket.

He honestly looked badass, like a biker dude or something, and hot as all fuck.

My tongue was practically salivating at the sight of him.

He was just so damn lickable.

Like, who in the world was this lickable? Honestly? It should be illegal.

But because I needed to remind myself that I could not, in fact, just walk over there and lick him, my mouth opened up with, “That’s what you’re wearing?”

He crossed his muscly arms—mm, yum—over his broad chest and lifted a brow at me. “Yes. It’s fine.”

“You look like you’re about to go biking across the country, not go to a nightclub.”

“I do just fine at nightclubs looking like this, thank you very much.”

The grimace that crossed my face was involuntary. I did not want to think about Roman in a nightclub doing just fine. I did not want to think about him with other people. No way. No how. Ugh.

Just because I can’t have him, doesn’t mean I want someone else to.

I blinked at my own horrible, super selfish thought, and had to turn away from him to shake it off. What a terrible person I was.

Of course, Roman could seek out other people. We weren’t a couple, we weren’t dating, and we never would be. Yeah, I spent more time with him than anyone else, but that didn’t mean anything. It was his literal job. I was his job. Roman deserved happiness.

After all, he’d been waiting for his viramore to show up for thousands of years, hadn’t he?

And despite everything I said and did, he was one of the best people I knew.

So that selfish thought just needed to take a fucking hike.

“Oak?” Roman’s voice was gentle. “I didn’t mean… I mean I… it’s not like I’m planning on… meeting anyone there tonight. You know that, right?”

Taking a fortifying breath, I faced him with a nod. “It’s none of my business if you do.”

His face went through a strange array of emotions. Sadness, hurt, confusion, sadness again. And then he pulled on his typical bodyguard-blank look I’d come to know so well. “Let’s go.”

For some reason, I had a feeling I’d hurt his feelings, but I didn’t know how, and since asking Roman about his feelings was like talking to a brick wall, I decided to let it go and followed him out the door, stuffing my bag next to his in the back seat.

Whatever.

We would go to the club, and I’d get to dance my booty off all night.

This was going to be great.

Yeah… I can’t even lie to myself. Sigh.