His mate was right here.
In this palace.
Somewhere.
All he had to do was find her.
“So, who are they and what are they like?” Izzi asked her father eagerly when he returned to the kitchen after serving the Romanov brothers and their guests the first course of their dinner.
Her father placed the silver tray he carried down on the table before answering her. “It is not permissible to ask such a question, Izabella. You know this.” He frowned his disapproval.
But Izzi knew that disapproval was because of the other servants in the kitchen. Those servants not privy to the information the Romanov brothers were all dragon shifters.
It was far too big a palace for her parents to keep clean on their own, as well as dealing personally with the needs of the Romanov brothers. Outsiders were employed to take care of the menial tasks that would not bring them into contact with the Romanovs.
Pyotr’s older sister was one of them, Izzi having recommended the other woman to her father after Tanya found herself suddenly unemployed. It was only a temporary job for the other woman, until Tanya found something more suitable. As there was only Pyotr and Tanya, since their parents died ten years ago, the other woman couldn’t afford to be out of a job even for a few weeks or months.
“Besides, there is only one of the guests present at dinner.” Her father softened his severity slightly at Izzi’s disappointed expression. “The other one is unwell after the journey here and remains in his bedchamber.”
“Would you like me to take a dinner tray up to him?” she instantly offered.
“No,” her father drawled, not fooled by her innocent tone for a moment. “I am informed he does not require food and he has bottled water in his room already.”
Which didn’t mean Izzi couldn’t excuse herself once the main course of the meal had been served. Her mother didn’t need her help with dessert and coffee. Izzi’s curiosity was such that she intended to knock on the door of this man’s bedchamber on the pretext of asking if there was anything she could get for him.
Deryk felt as if he had dozens of bees stinging him beneath his skin, sweat beading his forehead as he paced the ornate bedchamber fighting the urge to shift completely. He didn’t bother to turn on the lights. There was no reason to when his dragon’s night vision was excellent.
Knowing how close Deryk was to shifting, Bryn hadn’t wanted to leave him in order to go down to dinner with the Romanov brothers. Deryk had insisted. Grigor had asked the two of them to represent the Pendragon family, and Deryk had no intention of letting his eldest brother down the first evening he was here by appearing for dinner and making a scene because he couldn’t control himself. Or having Bryn excuse both of them so that he could remain here and keep an eye on him.
Not that crying off dinner with the excuse of not feeling well would succeed in fooling the Romanovs for a moment. Dragons didn’t get sick.
Mate.
Except for the mating heat.
Which wasn’t a sickness as such, but more an overwhelming need to fuck and keep fucking until his mate surrendered totally and he had bitten her and put his dragon’s scent all over her. His scent and the mating bite to the back of her neck would warn off other male dragons from coming anywhere near her.
The mating bite was also supposed to calm his dragon down to a manageable level, but Nathaniel’s mating heat seemed to have grown worse since Chloe became pregnant. To the extent that he occasionally growled at his own brothers if they went too close to her.
Deryk’s own mate was here, in the Mikhailov Palace. He knew it. He hadn’t even seen her yet, but he could already feel the possessiveness building inside him where she was concerned.
Bryn was going to make discreet enquiries at dinner, to see if they could work out who she was and what connection she had to the Romanov family. They knew the Russians didn’t have a sister, and it certainly wasn’t the middle-aged woman who had shown them to their bedchambers.
Deryk was filled with a barely contained anticipation at the thought of meeting his mate for the first time. He had thought it was never going to happen, and that he would spend the last few years of his life as inwardly alone as he had always been, fighting the last change that would end his life. But she was here, and close enough he could feel the thrum of their connection. Goddess, he wanted her. To be with her. To know her.
Deryk also sensed his mate was human. Or mostly so, at least. Chances were she also had no knowledge of dragon shifters. Remembering how Chloe had freaked out when Nathaniel tried to tell her what he was, Deryk knew he had to get himself under control before he met his own mate. Otherwise he could, as Grigor had warned two days ago, end up hurting her. Now that he had found her at last, scaring her away was the last thing Deryk wanted to do.
He threw the doors to the balcony of the bedchamber open before stepping outside to draw several deep breaths of the frigidly cold air into his lungs in an effort to dull the heat burning through his body.
Goddess, his emotions were in turmoil. He was filled with euphoria at knowing his mate was near, and fear at the thought of losing her now that he’d found her. His dragon had no doubts she was his mate, and so Deryk didn’t either. But a human might balk at the thought of a dragon mate. Balk? She might run off screaming into the night once she knew what he was.
Deryk’s predatory nature wouldn’t allow that. Whoever this woman was, she was his.
And if she should refuse the mating?
Then she would leave him no choice but to do what Nathaniel had done with Chloe, and carry his mate off to his cave until she accepted him.
He—
“Hello…?”
All Deryk’s reasoning, his plan to proceed slowly and carefully in order to win over his mate, all in the knowledge he would be spending the rest of his life with her, was utterly destroyed the moment he and his dragon heard her voice.
Mine.
Chapter 3
Izzi realized her mistake the moment she entered the bedchamber after knocking briefly.
A very tall and muscular man, standing silhouetted outside on the balcony, let out a feral growl before rushing toward her.
His eyes glowed golden in the darkened room. Four-inch-long talons visible in the moonlight as they burst from the end of his fingers.
Dragon.
She couldn’t see his face clearly, only perceived that he was huge. But she had known the Romanov brothers all her life, and she knew it wasn’t one of them. Besides, they were all downstairs—
Izzi had no time for further thought as she was swept up into steely arms before the man carried her with lightning speed toward the four-poster bed.
“What are you doing?” she cried out as she was thrown on top of the bedcovers and the man—dragon?—followed her down, pinning her beneath his much larger and stronger body as he held her hands captive above her head. His cock was hard, long and pulsing hotly against the soft flesh of her jean-covered belly.
“Please…” Izzi wasn’t sure, as her body suddenly filled with heat, if she was asking him to stop or give her more. More heat. Desire. Pleasure unlike anything Izzi had ever felt before.
All those emotions surged through her body at the same time, the blood in her veins feeling as if it had turned to liquid fire as the man above her claimed and then began to devour her mouth. A sweep of his tongue parted her lips even further before it thrust inside to explore and touch each and every part of her mouth: tongue, teeth, the moist dips and hollows in between.
Izzi’s arousal centered between her thighs to gather and coil in her core until she felt as if she was about to explode with the overload of intense and unrelenting pleasure coursing through her.
The man’s free hand, bare of those talons now, moved to cup one of her lace-covered breasts beneath her sweater. The nipple became hard as a pebble as he squeezed and teased Izzi’s aching and sensitive flesh until she was shaking with arousal.
She had no idea what this ma
n even looked like or who he was, and yet she was poised on the brink of a sexual climax she knew would totally devastate her if it was allowed to break free.
Panic caused Izzi to fight against the restraint the man had on her wrists, but she only succeeded in having those talons bruise and scrape against her tender skin.
Ouch. That was going to leave marks.
Attempting to squirm out from beneath him only caused his aroused cock to grow harder and longer.
Ouch again. That was going to hurt even more if he attempted to put it inside her.
It took all the strength Izzi had to wrench her head sideways and pull her mouth free of his. “Stop!” she gasped. “You have to stop!”
“Mine,” he growled as those hot lips moved to her throat, teeth scraping over the pulsing vein running along its length.
“Please. I don’t—”
“Deryk!”
Izzi barely had time to register the sound of that third voice, along with the snapping and snarling of the man above her, the talons back in evidence on both hands as he was wrenched from her, leaving her panting and alone on the bed.
She turned on the bedside lamp before turning back quickly to look at the two huge men standing over her. Ominously dangerous-looking men who could probably snap her much smaller body in half without even trying.
She instinctively huddled into a ball to make herself a smaller target for those dual piercing gazes, one golden, the other a dark and equally unnatural bronze.
Because she knew without a doubt these two men were both dragon.
Deryk felt a degree of humanity returning to him now that he wasn’t actually touching the woman on the bed. Enough to allow him to take control of the mating haze and fight the shift as he looked down at his mate. A mate who was curled into a protective fetal ball on top of the bedcovers.
She was so tiny, probably only a couple of inches over five feet tall. Her body was slender and yet curvaceous, and he already knew the full swell of her breasts fit perfectly into the palms of his hands. Her hair was a long and shiny blonde and probably reached all the way down to the perfect curve of her ass.
She was utterly beautiful.
An angel.
Which was pretty fucking insane when he probably looked as threatening as the devil himself as he loomed over her.
She had perfectly arched brows above eyes the color of a flawless emerald. A small retroussé nose, her lips a perfect bow, with the top one fuller than the bottom as an indication of a passionate nature he intended to enjoy fully. The pointed challenge of her chin, as he continued to stare at her, indicated something else: a strong and determined nature.
Something she would also have need of as his mate, Deryk conceded self-derisively.
Bryn kept a firm grasp of his shoulder. “What the fuck, Deryk?” he rasped, his eyes gleaming the same color bronze as his dragon.
“She’s my ma—woman,” he finally managed to growl.
Bryn frowned darkly as he shot the female on the bed a quick glance. “Is she even old enough to be called a woman?”
“Excuse me, but I’m twenty-two years old, and I certainly am a woman.” She sat to draw her knees up beneath her chin and wrap her arms about her legs, blonde hair cascading down the length of her spine. “And despite your mauling just now”—she looked at Deryk with narrowed eyes—“I am not your anything.”
He didn’t agree. Nor did the dragon purring and preening inside him, readying himself to demonstrate his prowess to his mate.
Deryk gave an inner wince at his mate’s age of twenty-two. How was she going to feel about being the mate of a fifteen-hundred-year-old dragon? There was an older man and a much older man.
“You answered in English,” he realized.
She frowned. “This other man spoke in English.”
“My brother Bryn,” Deryk supplied distractedly, inwardly relieved his mate was at least able to understand him. He doubted those two phrases of Russian he’d learned would go down too well with the young human woman he knew was his mate. “And you are?”
Izzi scooted up to the top of the four-poster as the huge man who had attacked her sat on the side of the bed, causing the mattress to dip that way because of his much heavier weight, and threatening to tip her over toward him.
The bedside lamp allowed her to see that he wasn’t only huge, dangerous to look at, and intensely muscular, but also possibly the handsomest man she had ever set eyes on.
His shoulder-length hair was a dirty blond with golden highlights running through it. His eyes still glowed that strange gold shade. His nose was long and aristocratic between sharp cheekbones, and his mouth was currently curved into a sensual and confident smile above a square and stubborn jaw.
He had long, elegant hands that nevertheless looked, even without those lethal talons, as if they could break a human neck without effort.
A human neck.
Because despite the very human clothing the man wore, faded jeans and dark blue T-shirt that clung to his defined musculature, Izzi was more convinced than ever this man wasn’t human. She had been around the Romanov dragon shifters all her life, enough to recognize this man as being one too.
As was the dark-haired man now standing a short distance away. It wasn’t only the unusual color of both men’s eyes. There was also a wildness to these two brothers, as if their inner dragon was barely leashed.
The blond-haired man who had kissed her, the one his brother had called Deryk, might look as if he was aged in his midthirties, but Izzi was pretty sure he was much older than that. The Romanov brothers also looked to be in their thirties but were actually centuries old.
“I’m Deryk Pendragon,” he supplied when she didn’t answer him.
She couldn’t decide what the lilt was she could hear in the gruffness of his voice, but it sounded almost musical. “Izabella Mikhailova.”
His eyes widened. “You’re related to the owners of the palace?”
She gave an inelegant snort. “The Romanovs own the palace. They always have. My family has only ever appeared to be the owners to the outside world, rather than the human servants of the Romanov family.”
“You’re human too?”
“Of course,” she came back pertly.
“And the woman who showed us to our bedchambers earlier?”
“My mother.” Izzi kept a wary eye on Deryk Pendragon. He seemed to be in control again now, but she had no idea how long that would last. Or why he had attacked her in the first place. As for the way he’d growled and snarled at the other man when he’d attempted to pull him away from her…
“Your father, Anton, served dinner.” The man named Bryn spoke to her directly for the first time, having that same musical lilt in his voice.
Deryk seemed to take exception to Bryn so much as talking to her, gold sparks shooting from his eyes as he turned to glare at his brother.
“Yes,” she confirmed firmly. “Now, if both of you would move out of my way, I would like to return downstairs to help clear away after the meal.”
“You’re a servant here?” Deryk Pendragon snapped his disapproval.
“No,” Izzi answered evenly as she saw the golden glow in his eyes had intensified. “I’m a student. At the State University.” Not that it was any of his business. She didn’t know this man, or dragon, and in all likelihood would never see him again after tonight.
Then what had that intensity of arousal been about when he kissed and touched her? Even now, just listening to him talk in that deep and growly voice, with its musically attractive lilt, was enough to make her core ache and throb.
She had never had such a visceral reaction to any man before now.
Except Deryk Pendragon wasn’t a man. He was a dragon.
The Romanov brothers had always treated her a little like a pet, indulging her as a child, buying her toys, and then pretty, feminine gifts as she became too old for the toys. They were kind to her, all handsome as sin too, but Izzi had never once had so much as a crush
on any of them, let alone felt the arousal still coursing through her body.
In truth, the ability of the Romanov brothers to turn into dragons had always frightened her a little. Not that she had ever seen one of them in dragon form. It was forbidden. But even in human form, they were all as huge and scary looking as the Pendragon brothers now appeared to her much shorter height and build.
These two men didn’t look much like brothers, she decided after studying them both for several seconds beneath lowered lashes. Deryk was blond, Bryn was dark. One had golden eyes, the other bronze. Deryk was over six and a half feet tall, Bryn was maybe a couple of inches shorter but, incredibly, broader across the shoulders and chest.
She fidgeted uncomfortably under the intensity of that golden gaze that hadn’t wavered from staring at her for as much as a second since he glared at his brother. It was as if Deryk knew she intended making a run for it if he took his eyes off her.
Because Izzi did intend doing just that. And not only from this bedchamber, but from the palace too. She could never tell her parents what had happened here tonight, because if she did, they would pass the information on to the Romanov brothers. She didn’t know a lot about dragons—no one did except the dragons themselves—but she did know they were very territorial. If her parents reported one of the Romanovs’ guests had attacked Izzi, it could result in a dragon war. Which she doubted anyone would wish on the human world.
Besides, it had been a little scary initially, but she would be lying to herself, and everyone else, if she claimed she hadn’t enjoyed being kissed and caressed by Deryk Pendragon. Enjoyed it? It was the most arousing experience of her life. She was still aroused. If anything, more so than she had been a few minutes ago.
No, instead she would make her excuses to leave the palace by telling her parents she had forgotten she had an assignment to get in by Monday morning. Izzi knew from past experience that only the excuse of her law degree and its ability to help the Romanov brothers in the future would excuse her from remaining here for the rest of the weekend.
“I’m only here to help out while the two of you are here,” she explained.
Deryk (Dragon Hearts 2) Page 2