But it was still a big if as to whether or not Vaughn would be guarding Anastasia Chenkova for this last week and a half of the ballet company’s European tour.
The company director looked to be aged in his early forties, with a handsome face and styled light brown hair tinged with gray at the temples. He was as tall and thin as any of his dance troupe. Probably because, Vaughn knew, Antipov had once been a dancer himself. Not as a principal, but good enough to become company and artistic director of The Turov Ballet Company.
“Leave us, Irina,” the other man now bit out harshly as he stood at Vaughn’s side, scowling his disapproval of her behavior.
The dark-haired woman gave a tiny squeak before stepping round them and beating a hasty retreat.
“Anastasia.” The director’s voice softened slightly as he spoke to her. “I would like you to meet Vaughn Romanov.”
Vaughn was reminded of just how tiny Anastasia was when she stood up. She was still wearing the flat silk slippers and the matching formfitting costume she had worn for the last act of the ballet.
She wasn’t only tiny in build, but the top of her head barely reached the middle of his chest.
Her hair, loose now, was the palest gold Vaughn had ever seen, and it fell in a silky straight curtain almost to her pert bottom. Her purple-ringed irises were the only color in her pallid face.
“Mr. Romanov.” The hand Anastasia held out for him to shake was so slender, Vaughn returned the gesture carefully, afraid he might crush her hand in his much larger one.
He was totally unprepared for the charge of awareness that shot through him the moment their fingers touched.
The bright bursts of light behind his eyes.
The tightness in his chest that was making breathing difficult.
When he did manage to draw in a breath, it was filled with the tantalizing scent of honeysuckle and oranges.
He suffered light-headedness as the blood instantly rushed to fill his cock so that, in seconds, it throbbed and ached with desire.
All in response to a single touch from Anastasia Chenkova’s hand.
Because, incredible as it might seem, she was his mate.
The woman fate had chosen to be his.
Mine, his dragon echoed possessively.
Chapter Two
Anastasia, seated in the back of the cab next to Vaughn Romanov on their way back to her hotel, had no idea what had happened in her dressing room earlier. One minute, the man now sitting beside her had been staring at her with those cold, assessing eyes, and the next, the moment they shook hands, it seemed, he had reacted as if his body had been struck by lightning.
His fingers had tightened about hers as his body tensed, his breathing became shallow. She wasn’t sure whether or not she’d imagined it, but it had also seemed as if a brief blaze of flames lit up and warmed the depths of the dilated pupils of those pale green eyes.
She had to have imagined that. Eyes didn’t light up with real flames. Even if it had seemed exactly what Vaughn Romanov’s had done…
But she hadn’t imagined the way Vaughn refused to release her hand or the heat of his body as he began to draw her closer to him as if compelled to do so. So close that Anastasia’s senses were completely overwhelmed, and she became aware of the hard length of his cock pressing against her abdomen.
Irina had been right. At approximately nine inches long, it really was mighty!
Not that Anastasia was given too much time to dwell on that as Leonid’s voice cut across the tension and demanded to know what Vaughn intended to do about her stalker, putting an end to the intimacy.
Vaughn had stepped back and slowly released her hand, as if reluctant to do so, before turning to look coldly at the director. “Anastasia’s safety is now my concern and mine alone,” he told the other man. “Which means I will also be taking charge of the security detail you brought with you from Russia.”
Leonid looked suitably annoyed at this highhandedness. “But—”
“Any of those men who disagree with that decision or who aren’t up to the task will be sent home,” Vaughn Romanov continued briskly. “They may have started off the tour in an efficient manner, but that is no longer the case. I walked in here tonight simply on my own say-so. No ID was asked for.” He eyed Leonid angrily. “Even you only have my word that I’m Vaughn Romanov.”
“But…of course that’s who you are—”
“How do you know that?” he challenged. “Do you have anything, a photograph, perhaps, so that you are able to identify me on sight?” He stated the question as if he already knew the answer was no.
Anastasia was curious as to why he should sound so certain of that. Social media and an online presence were so immediate nowadays that it was virtually impossible for anyone to escape being photographed in one way or another.
“No, of course I do not. But the head of Pendragon Security vouched for you and your family.” Leonid was becoming more and more annoyed at having his authority challenged in this way.
“You know Grigor Pendragon…?” Vaughn prompted softly.
Leonid’s expression became even more flustered. “Not personally, no. The company was recommended to me.”
“By whom?”
“I don’t remember,” the other man snapped in irritation. “I asked for the best and was told they are the best. It doesn’t really matter who told me. The day after I’d contacted Grigor Pendragon, he got back to me within a few hours with the information he had arranged for a member of the Romanov family to come from Russia to look into the situation.”
“Why didn’t you contact the Russian embassy as soon as the flowers and cards started to arrive?”
The other man’s gaze shifted from meeting his. “I prefer not to involve them.”
“Why not?”
The company director drew himself up to his full height of one inch under six feet in height as he glared at Vaughn. “I am in charge of this ballet company,” Leonid stated angrily. “As such, it’s my decision whom I choose to ask for assistance.”
To Anastasia, he looked like a baby chick standing up to a bird of prey. A huge bird of prey.
Pale green eyes narrowed on the other man for several tense seconds before the frown on Vaughn’s brow turned to knowing mockery. “And, I’m guessing, if you had asked the Russian embassy for extra security to protect one of your dancers, they would have instructed you and your ballet company to return to Russia immediately.”
Leonid’s lips thinned before he finally admitted, “Yes.”
“And you didn’t want that to happen?”
“We only have another week and a half left of what has otherwise been a triumphant European tour.”
“So, you’ve put completing the tour over the safety of your principal dancer?”
Leonid scowled. “No physical harm has been threatened toward Anastasia.”
“I believe ‘die, bitch’ does that quite succinctly.” Vaughn’s eyes glittered with anger. “Have you received a flower and card this evening?” he prompted Anastasia.
Color warmed her cheeks at once again being addressed directly. The two men had been talking so heatedly, she believed they had forgotten she was even present. Obviously, Vaughn Romanov hadn’t forgotten her.
“Not so far, no,” she answered softly.
The pupils of his eyes widened, as if he were somehow affected by the sound of her voice. Which was ridiculous.
He finally nodded. “Then that means it’s probably waiting for you at the hotel.” He turned to Leonid. “From tonight, I will personally ensure Anastasia’s safety,” he repeated. “To that end, I shall be moving into her hotel suite—”
“Irina shares the suite with me,” she protested.
“Not anymore.”
Anastasia frowned at his implacability. “There’s only one bedroom.”
“And the couch in the sitting room no doubt converts to a bed, as is the case in most hotels,” he dismissed.
Color warmed her cheeks. “A be
d that would be far too short for you.”
His mouth twisted. “I’m sure I’ve slept in worse places.
“In any case, I do not allow my male and female dancers to share a suite,” Leonid informed the other man haughtily.
Vaughn’s smile became derisive. “I really have no desire to wear tights and prance about on a stage.”
Anastasia had to bite her top lip to stop herself from laughing at the image he painted.
Leonid looked as if he might explode. “My dancers do not prance.”
“Anastasia certainly doesn’t,” the other man allowed with a warm smile in her direction before sobering. “No matter what the arrangement has been until now, you will see the other woman has removed all her belongings from Anastasia’s suite before we reach the hotel.”
“You cannot share a suite with Anastasia!” Leonid was almost jumping up and down with frustration.
“Who is going to stop me?” Those green eyes narrowed to icy slits. “You?”
“I— But— I will have to make other arrangements for Irina. She won’t like being denied sharing with Anastasia, as she has done throughout the rest of the tour.” The other man scowled at the complaints he no doubt knew would be coming his way.
Anastasia sympathized. Irina might not actually be sleeping in their suite most nights, which meant that Sergei couldn’t be sleeping in his bed either, but as Anastasia’s understudy, Irina expected to officially be sharing a suite with Anastasia. It visibly placed her as being Anastasia’s successor.
“Do I look as if the temper tantrums of one of your dancers bothers me?” Vaughn taunted.
Anastasia would hazard a guess that very little bothered this huge and arrogant man, least of all a bully like Leonid.
“Has it occurred to any of you that Irina might be the person delivering the flowers into their suite or dressing room?” Vaughn challenged when he didn't receive an answer to his previous comment.
“Oh I’m sure Irina would never…” Anastasia’s protest trailed off.
Not because she believed Irina guilty, but because Vaughn Romanov was standing closer to her, making it impossible for her to think at all with this man’s powerful presence taking up all the oxygen in the room.
“Irina has been with the company for five years,” Leonid added his own protest.
“She is also Anastasia’s understudy for this tour,” Vaughn persisted with his decision to oust Irina from their hotel suite. “Incapacitating Anastasia through fear or other means would enable her to step up into the principal role.”
Anastasia was surprised he already knew so much about the ballet company.
Not that she agreed with his accusation of Irina possibly being involved. The other woman was ambitious, but not so much that she wished to take on the more taxing roles Anastasia was given. Irina had confided in Anastasia one Sunday evening, when the two of them had dinner together in their suite, that she was hoping for a European millionaire to fall in love with her and take her away from the ballet altogether. In the meantime, she had laughed, she was happy to accept Lev’s adoration.
“As I thought,” Vaughn added in a voice that brooked no further argument.
None that Leonid seemed capable of making at that moment anyway. Anastasia had never before witnessed the haughty Leonid Antipov being told what he would and wouldn’t do—he was usually the one issuing orders—let alone actually doing it.
Vaughn Romanov’s arrogance was now the reason Anastasia found herself sitting in the back of a cab with him at her side, on the way to what was now their hotel suite.
She eyed him curiously. He really did look like that actor Irina had described: very tall and muscular, with pulled-back and tied but obviously below shoulder-length blond hair, his eyes that intense pale green. His scent, overwhelming within the confines of the cab, seemed to be a potent mix of hot and virile man and the tall trees in the forests outside St. Petersburg, the city Anastasia had lived in all her life.
Talking of which… “I believe there is a Romanov family living in the Mikhailov Palace in St. Peterburg?”
He turned to look at her. “My six brothers and me, yes.”
Her eyes widened in the darkness of the cab. In all of her twenty years, she had never met or even seen one of the mysterious Romanov brothers before now. Little was known about them, although, as might be expected, rumors abounded about the family who lived in the magnificent palace but were rarely seen.
Some said they were related to the assassinated last emperor of all Russia, Tsar Nicholas. The same emperor whose remains had finally been buried, along with several of the other assassinated members of his family found with him, in one of St. Petersburg’s cathedrals in 1998. The bones of the last two members of that family, Anastasia and Alexei, were still waiting to be buried alongside their mother and father and three sisters.
Looking at Vaughn Romanov, his height and arrogance of bearing, Anastasia could well believe he was related to the last Tsar of Russia. Didn’t the name Vaughn mean royal?
Others said that these modern-day Romanovs were involved in the dealings of the Russian bratva. Certainly, they were reputed to be wealthy enough for that to be the case.
How a member of the Romanov family now came to be her own personal bodyguard, or why Vaughn had reacted to her so viscerally when they were introduced, she had no idea.
The two of them might not be mates yet, but Vaughn was nevertheless aware of Anastasia’s racing thoughts and emotions. Her curiosity to know more about him. Followed by the wariness once she’d realized he was one of the Romanovs from the Mikhailov Palace.
He knew his family were something of an enigma to the inhabitants of St. Petersburg. But how could they be anything else, when even he, as the youngest brother, had been alive for two centuries, and Vladimir for a full millennium? His other brothers were all aged somewhere in between those centuries. But their ages were not relevant to how they looked because all of them had ceased to age at thirty-five.
Because of this, familiarity with the other inhabitants of St. Petersburg would have meant someone eventually realizing the brothers never aged. In previous centuries, that had elicited accusations of witchcraft and the palace being attacked by peasants brandishing burning torches and pitchforks. The last time that’d happened had been five hundred years ago, and, as Vaughn had been told, his brother Maksim had lost his temper, taken to his dragon form, and decimated the countryside for miles around with his dragon fire.
Such an accusation, with the immediacy of the internet, was more likely to result in ridicule rather than the witch hunt of previous centuries. But Maksim’s temper hadn’t improved with the passing of time, nor his dislike for humans, and if any of them reacted and changed into their dragon, it would again be him, confirming their existence by doing so. For that reason, Vladimir tended to keep Maksim, their technical expert, as much in the confines of the Mikhailov Palace as possible.
He had sensed Anastasia’s curiosity earlier when he stated there were no photographs of him in the public domain. But for the past fifty years, at least, all the brothers had kept mainly to themselves, not drawing any attention that would result in photographs being taken. Ones that could be compared years later to how the brothers looked in the here and now, and bringing about comments and speculation regarding the fact they hadn’t aged.
Until a year ago, Vaughn and his brothers had believed they were the only dragon shifters left in existence. An accidental meeting between Vladimir and Grigor Pendragon had told them otherwise. There were differences between the two families, the Pendragon brothers having been “made” dragon shifters in order to assist their human brother, and the Romanovs having been “born” to a mated pair of dragon shifters. But one thing had been exactly the same. Like them, none of the Pendragon brothers had yet found their fated mate.
During the past year, that had changed. Now all the Pendragon brothers were mated, and Vaughn’s brother Vladimir had recently found his own mate. Without exception, all t
hose women were, for all intents and purposes, human rather than dragon shifters. Human women, but with dragon DNA lying dormant in their blood.
Anastasia must have that same dormant gene in her blood for her to be his mate. Even so, Anastasia would have no idea who and what she was to him.
Vaughn wondered what Anastasia would say if she knew he had been in the audience the first time Swan Lake was performed in St. Petersburg in 1895.
Not that he would be telling her that. Not yet, at least.
As she was his fated mate, unlike the way in which he had compelled Leonid Antipov earlier into accepting his presence as Anastasia’s bodyguard, Vaughn wouldn’t be able to compel Anastasia into doing anything. Least of all keeping certain information to herself.
A fated mate couldn’t be compelled or coerced, but was to be cherished and protected.
Not a fated mate but my fated mate!
Vaughn still found it incredible to accept he had found her, but that single touch of Anastasia’s hand was enough to tell him that’s exactly what she was to him.
Mine, his dragon purred.
Vaughn felt the same pride and joy as his dragon. Their mate was as beautiful as she was talented.
All he had to do now was explain he was a man who shifted into a dragon and that she was their fated mate.
All?
Chapter Three
“If you would allow me?”
Anastasia stared at the hand Vaughn held out to take the keycard that would open the door into her suite, her body trembling slightly as she remembered what had happened the last time their hands touched.
Would Vaughn’s eyes seemingly light up with flames in their depths again?
Would she feel that unfamiliar tingling sensation coursing through her whole body?
She shook off those memories as being ridiculous. She had just been tired after her performance, because no one’s eyes had flames glowing in their depths.
“Anastasia?”
And while the two of them stood in the hallway outside the door into the hotel suite she had previously shared with Irina, Vaughn was still patiently waiting for her to give him the keycard.
Vaughn (Russian Dragon Heat 2) Page 2