The Dragon Prince's Promise (Dragongrove Book 5) Page 4

  When he bid her good night and disappeared into his cave, she sat and watched the fire for a long time, her cloak tight around her.

  She didn’t particularly like what she planned to do.

  She didn’t know why she followed him; she didn’t know what she was going to do. She only knew that she needed to try everything, to make every possible attempt at getting herself and Juliette home.

  “Hello,” she said as she found him in his cave. He was sprawled on his makeshift bed, a book in his hands, angled so that the fire lit the pages. He was achingly nice to look at, and she internally grimaced at herself.

  He didn’t speak to her, he hardly even acknowledged her with a glance before he returned his attention to his book. His jaw was tense, though, and if she looked closely in the orange light, she thought she could see a vein sticking out in his neck. He wasn’t as unaffected by her as he wished to show.

  She sighed and bit the corner of her lip, hating herself as she shrugged her shoulder slightly and let her nightgown fall down over her arm, exposing her neck and shoulder in one long, unbroken line. She glanced at the book in his lap as she did so, wondering if it was something familiar to her so she could make conversation. Before she could make out what it was, though, he slammed it shut and her attention went back to his face.

  His gaze was searing, but he wasn’t looking at her face. He was fixed on her exposed skin that her gown should have covered. Trying not to be too obvious, she tugged it back up over her shoulder, but then when she lowered her arms it fell again, right where it had before.

  He got to his feet, and she was suddenly overwhelmed at how much space he took up inside the cave. Much more than his body did.

  He turned his attention to her face, finally. “Hello,” he rumbled, not looking very amused. “What do you need?”

  It scared her how quickly she could slip back into being that person that she’d been trying to forget for over a year. It scared her how easily the coy smile came to her face, how comfortable she felt as she stood slightly too close to him. The nightgown that she’d cursed before was now her weapon: she shifted slightly and let the scalloped edge fall down her shoulder, and she didn’t miss the slight way that his eyes widened when his gaze swept along the length of her neck.

  She didn’t like it, but she liked being in this desolate camp even less. She needed to return home—wanted nothing more than to wake up again in her own bed, without being the sole person to worry over a companion, without a distracting, hulking man taking up space in her thoughts. Unfortunately, she needed that man just then. He was perhaps the only person who could order them returned home, the only one whose order might be obeyed.

  There were four types of men, Elsie had come to learn, and the trick to getting what she wanted was in figuring out which type she was dealing with.

  The first were the givers, those who only wanted to please a lady; and the second, their opposites, those who would only do exactly what a lady didn’t wish to happen. The third were the men who didn’t care at all about what a lady wanted, the men who were only interested in what their peers might think. The last kind she disliked the most: the men who only worked for themselves, those who were wholly selfish and and changed their desires on a whim. It wasn’t the selfishness that she despised, just the difficulty in knowing what to expect from that type.

  She assessed the man in front of her. He had ordered her captor staked to the ground as punishment. That reeked of the third type—making an example before the people of the tribe—but there had been something in his look when he’d told her why, something small that had maybe just hoped that she would be pleased with it. That maybe, despite the public display, it was all for her. She had seen the way he’d looked at her, despite his harsh words, had heard the way that his voice lowered when she was near.

  Maybe, just maybe, he only wanted to please a lady.

  She stood near where he did, close enough that he could see the long line of her neck, close enough that he could see the swell of her breasts at the top of her nightgown. Not close enough, though, that she was obvious. She didn’t want to be obvious.

  She pushed her luck. “Thank you,” she said, smiling up at him from under her lashes, “for putting us up. It was very generous. I know your kind has little need of—”

  Her breath caught in her throat, because he had reached his finger out and grazed along her neck, down to where it met her shoulder, so gently that she could scarcely feel it. It had her on fire; the slight, unexpected touch, and she fought to keep her breaths even and her heart from pounding. She knew he could hear it.

  He stepped closer, so close that she had to look straight up to see his face. He was handsome, she admitted to herself, more handsome than he deserved to be. She’d known a great number of ugly people in her life, and had liked most of them. It was the attractive ones that she didn’t trust, and experience had proven her right time after time.

  With the same hand that had brushed her neck he pushed his hair from his forehead, and somehow didn’t seem to notice when it fell right back where it had been. He leaned close to her, over her, enveloping her, and then he spoke.

  “How sweet you smell,” he murmured. “How much I’d like to taste you.”

  She stared at him with widening eyes, feeling as if she didn’t have the upper hand at all. She didn’t think that she was truly so out of practice, but...she found herself helpless when faced with him.

  He pulled back from her all at once, and took a deep breath. “What do you need, Elsie?”

  She blinked and clenched her fists by her sides, thinking of Juliette to remind herself of her task. “I need to go home,” she said. “Juliette needs to go home. Take us home.”

  “You know I won’t,” he said.

  “She’s going to freeze to death,” Elsie hissed, suddenly furious. “I’m going to freeze to death. You can be inconvenienced by us being here all you want, you can hate the king’s court all you want, but if they find that we were here and you let us die, they will kill you.”

  She was bluffing. She had no idea what they would do. Juliette was the guest of a prince, which surely counted for something, and the queen seemed to like Elsie, despite Elsie’s betrayal of her. Still, she couldn’t imagine the palace forces waging battle over two human women.

  Tate watched her as she spoke, then swept his infuriating gaze over every inch of her. She could feel it on her shoulders, she pulled the fur a bit tighter around herself as it fell on her breasts. It moved downward to her hips, to her thighs and then her bare calves. When it again returned to her face she was heated all over.

  “Well,” he said, looking amused, “I certainly don’t want to die.”

  It took all of her lessons in etiquette to not slap the infuriating smile off of his face. He took no responsibility—none—in the part he’d played in bringing the women there.

  She snapped her head up and took a quick step back, hoisting her stupid nightgown back over her shoulder. He was the last kind of man, then. “Take us home, you absolute ass.”

  He was silent, and watched her with a look that she didn’t understand.

  “The queen loves me,” she said. It was a lie—the queen tolerated her. “If I’m harmed—on purpose or through neglect—she’ll have your head.”

  He froze at her words.

  “The king will do anything to please her,” she continued desperately, latching on to his silence. “He’ll hunt you down. He can—they’ll do it.”

  “The queen,” was all he said, his voice low and strained. “The queen.”

  “I’m her lady. She’ll know just where I am. She’s a powerful mage, she can find me.” Elsie was inventing things, stretching the truth, but self-preservation was the only trait that she recognized in Tate.

  “The queen,” he repeated a third time.

  She just watched him, wondering what game he was playing. He seemed to have lost some of his formidability, and then all of it as he leaned against the rock wall.
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br />   She watched him for a minute, frozen to the spot, unsure what to do or say or think.

  “So he’s remarried,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “The king?” she asked. “No. He has a mate.”

  The look he gave her was scorching. “His mate died with the other females.”

  Realization dawned on her. “You really are isolated,” she said, a faint smile crossing her face. “The old king is dead. The new king has a mate—Queen Ingrid.”

  “Helias,” he breathed.

  She nodded. For the first time since she’d seen him, she felt as if she were truly seeing his face. His mask was gone, the careful way he’d hid his thoughts and feelings. It was just...him. Just Tate.

  “He has a mate,” he said. “You said she’s a mage, so she’s...human?”

  He looked to her for confirmation. When she nodded slightly, her eyes wide, his face hardened and the seemingly impenetrable mask he wore slid over his features again.

  He stalked in front of her, inches from her. He looked right down at her and brushed his fingers across her cheek. She tried to ignore the burning they left in their wake.

  “Take us home?” she asked quietly, his face inches from hers.

  He shook his head. “I wish I could,” he said suddenly. “And I wish I could explain. I’m sorry.”

  She was overcome with a ridiculous urge to take his face in her hands and rub her thumbs over his jaw. She balled them tightly by her sides, instead. “I don’t care that you’re sorry,” she said flatly. “I only want to go home.”

  “Go back to the cabin, Elsie,” he said abruptly. “Take care of your friend; give her the herbs. I need to...” he trailed off, and his gaze had settled on the darkness at the back of his cave.

  She’d obeyed without even another word of protest, and she couldn’t explain to herself why her eyes burned the entire walk back.

  Eight

  Juliette’s recovery had stagnated; by the end of the week she’d begun to spend more time awake than asleep, but she was still hot to the touch. She was alert during the time she did spend awake, but Elsie’s explanation of their situation seemed to just distress her; she was so desperate to get home to her sisters. Elsie had swallowed the tirade that she’d nearly unleashed about Tate and just smiled prettily, assuring Juliette that she had things under control, and that they would be going home just as soon as she was well enough to travel.

  Elsie fretted silently in the cabin, but loudly whenever Tate was within earshot. She only left Juliette’s side when the men ate in the evening, each reluctantly returning to their filthy, naked human form and swallowing down what they could as quickly as possible.

  “They don’t like you, do they?” she asked one night from her place beside him, perched on a relatively flat boulder. There was only meat to eat, and she only had her hands to eat it with, so she held it between her fingers as delicately as possible.

  “How is she?” he asked, ignoring her question.

  “Significantly worse than if she were at home,” Elsie spat, but regretted it when she turned to look at him and his face was...sad. “She’s been awake more today, but the sweating is worse. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”

  “How does the wound look?”

  “I haven’t seen it since last night,” Elsie admitted. “I’m going to change the dressings after this. She cries so pitifully when I do. I’ve been putting it off—I know I shouldn’t,” she hastened to add at the face he pulled.

  He turned his gaze toward Elsie. “You don’t like to see her in pain?”

  She furrowed her brow. “Is there anyone who likes to see another person in pain?” she asked, incredulously.

  He turned his attention back toward the large fire in the center of the camp, with meat arranged around it for preserving. “I’ve lived with these people for a long time. Avoiding pain is preferable for yourself, of course, but there’s no reason to be affected by another’s distress.”

  She watched him for a minute before returning her attention to the food in her hands and daintily nibbling a small bite from it. “That’s very sad,” was all she said.

  “Is she your friend?” he asked.

  “No, although after all this I suppose we may be,” she said with a faint smile aimed at him. “We’re not unfriendly, but we have very different positions and I don’t see her often.”

  “What’s her position?”

  “I don’t exactly know,” she admitted. “She’s friends with the prince’s wife. She came to the palace with her months and months ago, but I don’t know if she has duties.”

  “The prince is married?” he asked carefully. “Which prince?”

  “Caelian,” she said.

  He was silent for a moment, and she thought he might look...pleased? It wasn’t an expression she’d seen him wear before.

  “And you’re the queen’s lady-in-waiting.”

  She nodded.

  “How did that happen, I wonder? How did some pretty little human from mortal lands come to serve the Dragon Queen?”

  Her stomach flipped at his description of her, and then turned at his line of questioning. She wouldn’t go back there, she couldn’t go back there. She had earned her place at the palace, she reminded herself, and it wouldn’t be taken from her. The man in front of her was nothing, and Elsie served the queen directly. She didn’t have to answer his prying questions, she didn’t have to let her mind wander back to what she’d done.

  So she didn’t answer, she just turned away from him and back to her dinner. To his credit he didn’t ask again, and when she finished eating, she rose from her seat and turned to him once more.

  “Take us home.”

  He just gazed silently at her, so she shook her head and glared daggers at him before turning and stalking off for the dark path leading back to the cabin.

  •••••

  “You understand,” she said one evening around the fire, after he’d refused again to take them home, “that being one of only two women here makes me...uncomfortable.”

  The thought had been lingering in the back of her mind. She’d been there...days now, maybe weeks. She’d entirely lost track of time. Her comfort had been growing, slowly, and she no longer constantly checked the sky whenever she left the cabin. No one seemed remotely concerned with her, and yet...a suspicion had begun to form about why she had to stay. She hated to even consider it, but it had been eating at her enough that she needed to hear it from Tate’s own lips.

  From the look on his face, he did not understand. “It’s not my fault that our females have died. It’s your own business if you long for female companionship.”

  She sighed and looked around the camp, around the savage looking faces, all appearing more savage in the firelight. “I’m not lonely,” she said, “that’s not what I’m saying. What I mean is that...I don’t understand your motives for keeping us here. For keeping me here. I find myself afraid to consider them.”

  He turned to look at her, silent.

  She decided to be blunt. “These people are lonely. That’s clear. I won’t be the one to help them with that problem. Neither will Juliette.”

  The look on his face was murderous. She was frightened for a moment, frightened that he would force her, force her with threats and bribes and promises of a better life. “There’s not a man here who would touch you,” he seethed.

  She furrowed her brow at the ferocity with which he’d spoken. She should have been relieved; she was relieved, and yet...she really shouldn’t have been offended.

  Not one, though?

  He must had noticed the way her face changed. “Without your permission,” he added. It was...dangerous, the silly game they kept playing. There was no reason for it, no reason to tempt fate and screw up the life she’d worked so hard to build for herself. But hadn’t he screwed it up already? Wasn’t she stuck here, stuck on this desolate mountainside because he couldn’t be bothered to send her home? She decided that moment that if she could
get any pleasure out of this, any fun or way to occupy herself with a flirtation, she would. She’d always been good at the game.

  She shifted slightly and let her silly, filthy nightgown fall off her shoulder. She pressed her index finger into her neck, where it began to curve into her shoulder, and met his gaze. “Right here. You touched right here without my permission.” She moved her finger to the place on her cheek, right next to her nose, where she could still feel the brush of his hand. “Right here, too.”

  He was silent as he watched her, but his gaze was scorching and full of want.

  She continued. “I forgive you, I suppose, for those transgressions,” she smiled coyly, “but when you touch me next, you need my permission.” She hoped he picked up on her lack of the word ‘if’.

  He was unreadable, and for a minute, entirely still. She wondered if she’d pushed him too far, until he raised his hand and it hovered in the air in front of her face. “I’d like the rules to be clear,” he said, then lightly swept his thumb over the bridge of her nose. “I can’t do this?”

  She shook her head. “Not without permission,” she said, a faint smile on her face. “It shouldn’t be so complicated, you said it yourself.” She kept her face calm, despite the hot blood rushing to every part of her.

  “I did,” he murmured. “I’m just clarifying. So I should ask you—if I want to do this?” He traced his finger from her neck, hovering just above her skin, along the top of her shoulder, all the way to where her arm curved and the scalloped edge of the nightgown hid anything else.

  She nodded, afraid to speak, overwhelmed from his ghost of a touch and the heat from the fire and his body and the tiny, tiny distance between them.

  “And since I haven’t been granted permission,” he breathed, winding his hand in her loose hair and cupping the back of her head in his palm, “I absolutely shouldn’t do this.”

  Her eyes were wide, her heart was pounding, and heat flooded her core. He was so close to her, his mouth was inches from hers, and she wondered if he would kiss her. She would be well on her way to winning the game, if he did, the stupid game that he didn’t know they were playing. A tiny part of her also wanted him to kiss her. She shook her head. “Absolutely not.”