Chapter 11
Eleven
Anna
I woke with a start, fully believing that the room was burning down around me. The woodsmoky-man-musk was beyond strong, permeating everything, including my clothes and probably my skin.
Becoming alert and realizing that there wasn’t actually a fire should have been reassuring. My pulse should have slowed and my breathing with it. Adrenaline should have flowed out of me and left a peaceful calm in its place.
None of that happened, though, because my brain reminded me why it smelled so much like man. I was sleeping in a man’s bed. Not just any man, either, but the one who might be my mate.
My dragon growled in irritation. It had no doubts.
Good thing you aren’t in charge then. There’s a reason maturity has an age limit, Scales, and you’re only a day old. So remember that while I run the show for the next fifty years.
The beast huffed in annoyance and curled up around its tail, clouds of frosty air billowing from its nostrils.
I rolled my eyes, thankful it didn’t have the strength to take charge. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have slept in the bed alone. The Ice Tyrant would have joined me because it was his bed.
The leader of the Ice Kingdom, and he’d forced me into it. Wouldn’t let me sleep anywhere else. Had sworn to stand guard all night. To keep me safe.
“Fuck me,” I moaned as nausea cut through everything, sending me dashing from the ridiculously opulent bed to the just as luxurious bathroom in search of the toilet.
I was going to be sick.
This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening.
Three nights ago, I had been sleeping on a cheap bedroll, wearing rags that were falling apart and practically see-through.
I had spent my nights hunched around a campfire, roasting anything we could catch that had meat on its bones, unsure of where our next meal would come from.
Last night, I’d had a personal chef make me a meal, a tailor supply me with clothing that could have bought and paid for half the clippys at the market, and then I’d been “forced” to sleep in the most comfortable bed I had ever been in.
And it wasn’t close. The mattress, the sheets, and the thick, cozy comforter had knocked me out instantly.
It was perfect.
And all so, so wrong.
“Are you okay?”
Caz’s voice from the other side of the door was full of concern as I moaned and bent over the toilet, reveling in the cold porcelain against my knees.
“No,” I called back between stomach-churning clenches. “No, I am not o-freaking-kay.”
I wasn’t sure what to expect. Caz to come flying in, breaking down the locked door to get to me? A calm reassurance that it would pass or similar comforting words?
What I did not expect was the few seconds of silence followed by the click of the door unlocking and Caz coming in. He stopped sharply, issuing a very sexually fraught growl.
The rumble shook the entire room.
Realizing the cause, I reached back, trying desperately and far too late to tug the sleeping shorts back down to cover my ass. “Now is not the time.”
“Here,” Caz said, setting something down with a clink on the counter next to the toilet. He didn’t even acknowledge the fact he’d been staring at my ass. Completely ignored it.
That should have been a good thing. So why was I disappointed?
“What is it?” I asked, the worst of the nausea beginning to pass as I grounded myself in the reality of the situation.
I was actually here. In the bedroom—well, bathroom at the moment—of the Ice Tyrant. I had slept in Casimir Dvorak’s personal bed. At his insistence.
The nausea came crashing back in.
“For you,” he grunted, pushing whatever was on the counter toward me.
I forced myself to look up and saw a mug on a little saucer, hot steam pouring over the rim. “What is it?”
“Ginger tea.”
He got the words out a moment before the smell hit me. It was ginger all right.
I stared at it, frowning. “It’s warm, Caz.”
He cocked his head sideways, looking at me like I was an idiot. “Tea usually is,” he suggested, as if I might never have known that.
“Don’t treat me like I’m an idiot just because I’m a clippy,” I ground out, anger drowning the flip-flopping of my stomach as I stared into his far-too-handsome face.
Green eyes danced with laughter. “You were the one looking at it like it was weird.”
“Because it’s warm right now. You had it warmed up.” I frowned. “You were only silent for, like, five seconds. Long enough, maybe, to pour it. Which means you had to have it ready.”
Caz shrugged. “There’s water, juice, and coffee if you’d prefer those instead. I’m not good enough to predict which one you would need for a morning like this. Yet.”
The subtle reminder that our dragons were mates hung in the air between us as he leaned back against the counter, dropping his arms so his palms rested on the surface.
The pressure of supporting himself did certain, somewhat noticeable things to his arms, his triceps in particular.
I couldn’t help but notice the way they bulged under the sleeve of his shirt.
My eyes dropped lower, accidentally, and I realized his arms weren’t the only thing bulging.
“Your ass looked really good,” Caz said with an air of defiance as he followed my gaze to his hard cock. “Really good.”
“I was dry-heaving,” I pointed out.
He shrugged. “You were bent over. My dragon is, shall we say, less than concerned with any other details at that point. It knows what it wants, and it wants you.”
It. Not I. The distinction was small, but it was there.
Still, his dragon wanted me—that monster I had sensed with the insane alpha power levels. That beast apparently wanted me. Somehow. A weak as shit clippy. It didn’t make any sense.
“No,” I said, setting the tea down.
“No what?” He glanced at the mug on the fragile little saucer, dancing figures of dragons enameled along the rim of it. “No more tea? Do you want the coffee then?”
“Not that, Caz,” I said firmly enough he stopped short. “No to this. No to us. We can’t be mated.”
“Well, we are.”
“No,” I said more forcefully, “we’re not. It’s a mistake. Your dragon is confused.”
The greens of his eyes hardened into emeralds, glittering and cold. The growl coming from his chest was no longer pleasant. “My dragon is many things, Anna, but it is not confused. Not about this.”
I shook my head, trying not to let the sounds of his dragon get to me, to provoke a reaction from my own dragon, who was constantly spreading its wings and resettling them, impatient and eager to move ahead. With him.
“You don’t get it,” I said. “I’m a clippy. You are on the opposite end of the power spectrum. Quite literally. I’m zero. You’re one hundred.”
“Anna—”
“Caz, there is no middle ground. None. It doesn’t exist. I can’t live in your world. I’m not a part of it.”
His jaw stiffened and thrust forward slightly, further emphasizing the hard lines of it. “I know. You’re all of it.”
That line. That damn line.
It took everything within me not to fall for it. Not to swoon and lick my lips, to drop the invisible wall between us, and go back to bed. Not alone, this time. He delivered it so smoothly, so confidently, that I almost believed it.
Almost.
Instead of caving, of throwing myself at him and that rather large bulge in his pants the way half of me wanted to, I forced myself to look away. To create a space, a break, something, anything between us.
Because I knew that line wasn’t the truth.
“Casimir.” I said his full name. Another tactic to create distance. I was scrambling, pulling at every little thing I could, but it was all I had. Because I wanted to dive in. To let go and swim in the pool of woodsmoke and steely muscle that was Casimir Dvorak IV, Ice Tyrant of the Ice Kingdom.
“Yes?”
“You barely know me,” I said, the words starting slow, but picking up steam as I latched on to the truth within them. “You met me yesterday. Besides my name, and what I look like bent over a toilet, you don’t know the first thing about me. You can’t even be certain I’m your mate.”