Grigor was so stunned by Gayle’s abrupt departure that for several seconds, he was unable to move.
“Go take care of your mate,” Nathaniel instructed evenly.
He looked blankly at his brother. “You all heard her say she doesn’t want me.” That had hurt more than Grigor was willing to acknowledge or admit.
Nathaniel’s expression softened. “Gayle is as stubborn as my own mate.” He gave Chloe an affectionate glance before frowning. “Perhaps even more so.”
“And you are a big scary flying lizard,” Chloe teased Grigor. “One more used to giving orders than using charm,” she added dryly before shaking her head. “The last thing you should have done was try to tell Gayle what she should or shouldn’t do.”
His nostrils flared. “She is my mate.”
“She’s also human,” Tegan reminded. “A human who has been through several difficult situations recently.” She glanced pointedly at Volkov. “On top of that, her sister, her only relative, has disappeared for an undetermined time to mate with the man Gayle now knows is a dragon shifter.”
Grigor snorted. “Gayle has shown time and time again, she is scared of nothing and no one.”
Except, he reminded himself, being alone or feeling abandoned.
But as his mate, Gayle need never be alone again or ever feel abandoned. Their mating bond would see to that.
A mating she hadn’t asked for.
And had now made clear she didn’t want.
Earlier, Gayle had suggested, in her own inimitable style, that she was willing to mate with him.
An offer he had refused. But now that Gayle knew about the Rider woman, surely she understood his reason for having done that? To lose himself in the mating frenzy now, when Gayle was in danger, would be madness on his part.
Except, Grigor knew, if the opportunity arose again, whether the Rider woman had been found or not, he would not be able to resist Gayle a second time.
“Speaking as another human,” Volkov put in dryly, “I’d think twice, more than twice, about being mated to your scary-assed dragon.”
Grigor’s mouth twitched with unexpected humor. “Luckily, as I have no desire to mate with a man, you will never be asked to do so.”
“The feeling is mutual, believe me.” The Russian smirked before pinning Grigor with those icy-gray eyes. “You have a good and brave woman there. I suggest you treat her well.”
Grigor took the compliment for what it was. “I intend to do so.”
“So,” Izzy put in briskly, “how many men do you have with you, Mr. Volkov, so we know how many bedrooms to prepare?”
Grigor allowed the conversation to flow around him after that, his attention all on Gayle as he moved to sit in one of the armchairs near the darkened window.
His senses told him she’d taken a shower immediately after she reached her bedroom. A cold shower? If she was feeling the same heat to mate as Grigor was, then in all probability, yes.
She had then crawled into bed naked, but he knew from the sound of the uneven tenor of her breathing that Gayle wasn’t asleep.
Because her body ached, yearned, heated for him in the same way Grigor’s burned for her.
And yet she didn’t make a sound or cry out, but merely gripped the duvet tighter, her body rigid beneath the cool cotton.
Not only because she was stubborn, Grigor realized, but because she hated needing anyone or anything, even though the thought of being alone terrified her.
Volkov was right. His mate was brave. Brave and rebellious, but so very beautiful in that courage and rebellion.
He now thanked the fates for giving him such a willful mate. Gayle, with her stubbornness and quirky sense of humor, was exactly the mate he needed. The one he wanted to claim with an undeniable fierceness.
He almost laughed out loud at the memory of Gayle calling his dragon a big scary flying lizard.
Mine.
An insult his dragon hadn’t taken exception to.
Neither had Grigor, because he knew the insult for what it was: another of Gayle’s defense mechanisms.
He—
Grigor rose abruptly to his feet as his preternatural hearing allowed him to hear Gayle’s whimper. Her need. Discomfort. Pain.
He had to go to her. To help her. Pleasure her. Ease—
“Don’t, Grigor.” Tegan placed a hand on his forearm as he would have turned and left the room. “Allow Gayle to keep her dignity.”
His mouth thinned. “It is a ridiculous dignity that has already caused her to refuse the serum which might ease her pain—”
“If Gayle wants the serum, or you, she’ll let you know,” his sister-in-law reasoned.
If Gayle ever wanted him again.
Which, as Grigor knew only too well, was still in question.
His mate was just stubborn enough to let them both die rather than relinquish an ounce of her pride.
Chapter 10
There was pride, Gayle acknowledged, groaning softly as she watched the first streaks of dawn appear in the sky outside her bedroom window, and then there was stupidity.
Right now, the latter definitely won out.
It had been hours since she’d stomped up to her bedroom and left Grigor and the others to their conversation. Long and uncomfortable, intolerable hours, when she had become increasingly aroused and needy, until her body shook and ached to the point of pain. When anything against her heated skin, a nightshirt or the now-damp bedcover, did cause her actual physical pain. Her flesh was now so sensitive, she couldn’t bear to have anything touch it.
She’d taken at least three cold showers since coming to her bedroom, but each time, within minutes, she became so hot again, she was burning up. The sheets on the bed had quickly become increasingly damp, forcing her to resort to sitting in a chair by the window.
She wanted Grigor.
She not only wanted him, she needed him.
Now.
God, she desired him so much, it was killing her not to be with him, to have him claim her, his cock filling her—
No!
She had lasted this long; she could last a few more hours. Long enough to seek out and talk to Nathaniel or one of the other Pendragon brothers and ask them for an injection of the serum Dylan had formulated to reduce the mating heat.
Tears fell unchecked down her cheeks at the thought of suffering through this pain and discomfort for several more hours until the rest of the household woke.
She couldn’t do it.
Couldn’t stand it a moment longer.
Oh God, she needed—she needed— “Grigor!” She cried out his name as she staggered to her feet before instantly falling to her knees, deep and heaving sobs shuddering through her body, inside as well as out.
“I’m here, my mate.”
Gayle was crying so hard, her body in such agony, she could barely focus. Even so, she was sure those strong arms moving about her, lifting her naked body and carrying her out of the bedroom, couldn’t really be Grigor’s.
She had to be in a delirium, needing Grigor so badly, to touch him, to have him touch her, make love to her, claim her, she was imagining he was here. When in reality, Grigor was sleeping soundly in his bed, thoroughly disgusted with her for announcing to his family and Nikolai that she wasn’t his mate and had no intention of ever becoming so.
Gayle had seen how Grigor flinched when she made that initial statement. She should have backed down then, but instead, she had persisted in making that claim again and again.
Proving to Grigor how much he really didn’t want a brat like her as his mate.
“I’m sorry.” She turned her face into the bare shoulder beneath her cheek. “I’m so sorry.”
“You are forgiven,” Grigor assured her softly. “Whatever you have done, you will always be forgiven.”
The shoulder felt real enough against her cheek; the skin was soft, but the toned muscles beneath were hard. But Grigor’s voice sounded gentle in a way Gayle had never heard before, proof this
was all part of a hallucination.
A sob caught in her throat. One of the Pendragon women would no doubt find her in her bedroom in the morning, collapsed and naked on the floor, her body caught in a humiliating fever of sexual need only Grigor could assuage. And after her behavior last night, her verbal rejection of him as her mate, he had every right to refuse to give her that relief.
“I didn’t mean it,” she choked. “I didn’t mean any of it!” She sobbed even harder.
“I know,” Grigor’s voice soothed. “I’m sorry too. I have been too…strident with you. Too demanding. Too inconsiderate of your human feelings. You have my promise I will not be so again.”
A hysterical giggle rose up in her throat. Now she knew this definitely wasn’t real. The stern and dictatorial Grigor would never apologize to her.
Delirium or not, her arms moved up to cling about his neck as she felt herself being lowered away from the comfort of dream Grigor’s warm and reassuring body.
“I want you to sleep,” that voice murmured as Gayle felt the coolness of sheets beneath her back.
“I can’t sleep.” Her head thrashed from side to side on the pillow beneath her, her arms still clinging about Grigor’s neck. “Make love to me. Bite me. Mate me. Fuck me. But stop this torture now. Please!”
It took all of Grigor’s willpower to reach up and pull Gayle’s arms from about his neck before taking a syringe from the pocket of his jeans, where he had kept it all night. He removed the protective cap from the needle and injected the antidote to the mating heat into the top of Gayle’s arm.
She could hate him when she woke up, rant and rave at him for taking this choice away from her. For the moment, Grigor only cared about alleviating her suffering, and the serum would dull her need to a bearable level.
“What did you—” Her eyelids flew wide, and for a moment, there was lucidity in her gaze as she looked at him before those lids slowly fluttered closed, her body relaxing, becoming boneless, as Gayle fell into a deep sleep.
Grigor pulled the covers up over her naked body and then moved to pull a chair up beside the bed, dropping wearily down on it.
Listening to Gayle’s torment these past five hours, her whimpers and cries as her sexual fever deepened, had been the hardest thing Grigor had ever had to do. He felt as if he had aged a further century overnight. But he had waited, as Tegan told him he must, until Gayle had cried out for him in her anguish.
It was all he needed to move so quickly to her side, he doubted even his brothers’ preternatural eyesight would have been able to see him. His heart stopped the moment he saw Gayle collapsed on the floor, her face pale, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Never again, Grigor vowed grimly. No matter what he had to do or whatever Gayle’s protests, he could never stand back and allow her to go through such suffering ever again.
He leaned forward, his heart aching as he gently caressed the strands of long and silky hair from the dampness of Gayle’s brow. She looked so young when she was asleep, her defenses down, the fire in those green eyes hidden from view. Young, and so beautiful, she made Grigor’s chest ache as his gaze greedily ate up every feature: the smooth and creamy brow, the long dark lashes sweeping high cheekbones, her nose, small and pert, lips with that perfect bow meant for kissing and being kissed.
As Grigor ached to kiss her now. To hold her. Touch her. Caress her. Make love to her.
Mine.
Yes, Gayle is ours, Grigor acknowledged his dragon’s claim.
Gayle was theirs, but if she decided not to mate with him, condemning them both to death, Grigor knew he would accept that decision.
Without Gayle at his side, as his mate, there was no reason for him to want to live anyway.
Gayle felt as if she had been in a battle with a tank—and lost—as she slowly returned to consciousness. Every part of her body ached, from her head to her feet. But at least she no longer felt consumed by that intense and all-consuming sexual need.
Why didn’t she?
Her eyes widened as she slowly turned her head in the darkened room and saw Grigor asleep in a chair beside the bed. He wasn’t exactly sitting in the chair; he was slumped so far down he was in danger of sliding out of it.
Gayle glanced quickly around the room, immediately recognizing this as Grigor’s bedroom rather than her own.
Did that mean she hadn’t been hallucinating last night, after all? That Grigor really had come to her bedroom at dawn and lifted her into his arms before carrying her here? Did that mean the gentleness, both in his voice and his touch, was also real?
Well, duh, she was here, in his bedroom, and so was Grigor.
She also remembered something piercing her arm before she was swallowed up by darkness, her body and emotions exhausted from hours of sexual torment.
An empty syringe lay on the bedside cabinet. As evidence Grigor had given her the serum to dull the mating aphrodisiac?
Her cheeks burned as she recalled begging her dream Grigor to mate with her, bite her, fuck her.
Instead of taking advantage of that plea, as a lot of men—or dragons?—would have done, Grigor had injected her with the antidote serum before keeping vigil at her bedside once she had lapsed into unconsciousness.
Tears stung her eyes as she turned back to look at him. Despite being asleep, Grigor looked exhausted. There were dark shadows beneath his eyes, his cheekbones visible beneath the skin above hollow cheeks, deep grooves beside the grim set of his mouth. His dark hair was slightly tousled and fell endearingly onto his brow.
He was heart-stoppingly gorgeous.
And last night, she had deliberately humiliated him in front of his family and Nikolai in order to salvage her own pride. Yet Grigor had still taken care of her.
Gayle felt ashamed of herself.
Grigor hadn’t done anything to deserve being deliberately belittled in that way.
She was too insecure, too used to her mask of stubbornness to be able to hide insecurity. Both those things made her too damned immature for a man as confident and controlled as Grigor. As magnificent as he and his dragon were.
A wistful smile curved her lips merely thinking of that beautiful red dragon. Grigor was awesome as both man and dragon—
“Are you feeling any better?”
Gayle closed her eyes, taking several seconds to bring her emotions back under control before looking at Grigor again. “Much. Thank you,” she added huskily. “How long have I been asleep?” She was pretty sure it had been dawn the last time she looked out of the window, but now it seemed to be dark again.
Some of the tension eased from his expression as he straightened in the chair. “About twenty hours.”
Her eyes widened. “So it’s midnight?”
“Yes.” He grimaced. “I’m afraid I had to guess at the dosage of the serum.”
“Too much?”
He nodded. “Because of our dragon strength, it’s not always easy for us to assess weight. I obviously estimated wrongly in your case.”
But not her sexual arousal, Gayle noticed. That, she knew, had to have been all too obvious.
She gave a rueful smile. “That really isn’t very flattering, Grigor.”
He eyed her quizzically. “It wasn’t meant as a compliment but a statement of fact.”
Her humor faded at his formality, her gaze no longer meeting his. “Of course it was.”
Grigor knew he’d said something wrong as Gayle no longer smiled. Something else wrong, he mentally corrected. Because when it came to his mate, he seemed to be incapable of saying anything right.
“Thank you.”
He blinked at the quietly spoken words. “For what?”
“Taking care of me.”
His jaw tightened. “I would have done so earlier, but Tegan warned me against interfering until you called for me.”
She frowned. “How did you get to me so quickly? I mean, I know from Chloe’s books you have this preternatural stuff going on, but if I remember correctly, it was only
a few seconds after I cried out before you scooped me up into your arms.”
“I spent last night sitting on the floor in the hallway outside your bedroom.”
Her eyes widened, her cheeks burning at the thought of Grigor hearing her in all those hours of intense sexual arousal. “You did?”
He nodded abruptly. “Your health and happiness are my priority. My only priority.”
Was that bitterness Gayle could hear beneath that last statement? If it was, then it was fully deserved. So far, she had only looked at this from her own point of view, not Grigor’s. She might not be the ideal mate he had waited sixteen hundred years to find, but neither had she done anything to endear herself to him. All she’d done was complain and whine and behave exactly like the brat Dylan called her, since the moment she and Grigor first met.
Last night, she had even called Grigor a big scary flying lizard in front of Nikolai Volkov and the Pendragon family. Not only had she humiliated and ridiculed Grigor to the Russian, but the flying lizard comment was also an insult to all Grigor’s brothers.
Hot tears began to fall down her cheeks.
She really was a mess.
“Are you in discomfort again?”
She blinked to clear her blurry vision. “Am I aroused again, do you mean?”
His jaw tightened. “Yes.”
Gayle considered the question. She was naked beneath the duvet. Her body ached. She was very tired still. But… “Not especially, no.”
“Oh.”
Was that disappointment she heard in Grigor’s voice or merely wishful thinking on her part?
Her admiration for Grigor had nothing to do with the mating aphrodisiac and everything to do with the selfless man she knew him to be. He was strong and loyal. Dedicated to his family’s happiness. And now hers. All before even considering his own wants or needs.
She wanted to be worthy of such a man.
Which meant she needed to grow up—fast—and stop behaving like a brat and more like a dragon mate.
She held the duvet over her breasts as she sat up against the pillows. “Any more sightings of the intruder?”
Grigor’s mouth tightened at the thought of the woman who had come here solely with the intention of killing his mate. “Not so far, no. But Aeran is keeping a vigilant watch on our security screens, and we are searching the hotels in the area in the hope of discovering where this woman might be staying.”
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