It smelled like home.
Not my home. Not anything close to my home.
“The couch,” Marina said, pointing to a piece of furniture that was definitely not designed for someone of his height. “Blankets are in the closet. Bathroom is there. Kitchen is… well, you can see the kitchen.” She paused. “I wake up at four. I recommend earplugs.”
Alessandro looked at the couch. Looked at the apartment. Looked at the woman he was now magically bound to for the next twenty-eight days.
This is a nightmare. This is an actual nightmare.
“Twenty-eight days,” he said.
“Twenty-eight days,” she agreed.
Her relief washed through him, warm and immediate, chased by curiosity, quickly suppressed, about the man who’d invaded her life.
He felt the same curiosity about her. He hated that he felt it.
“Goodnight, Mr. Draven.”
“Alessandro.” The word came out before he could stop it. “If we’re going to be forced into proximity for a month, we might as well use first names.”
Her expression softened, just slightly, a loosening around her eyes. Surprise rippled across the connection between them, and warmth beneath it.
“Goodnight, Alessandro.”
She disappeared into her bedroom. The door closed.
Alessandro stood alone in the middle of Marina Pearl’s apartment, surrounded by the smell of cinnamon and sea salt, feeling her presence on the other side of a thin wall like an itch he couldn’t scratch.
He sat down on the couch, which was, as predicted, too small, and pulled out his phone. Eighteen missed calls. Thirty-two emails. David, probably panicking. His father, probably demanding updates. Malachar, probably watching with that knowing smile.
None of it mattered right now.
On the other side of the wall, water ran in the bathroom. A cabinet opened, closed. She moved through her own apartment as if it were unfamiliar terrain, careful around the edges of him, and he felt every wary step.
He set the phone face-down on the coffee table.
Chapter Five
The alarm went off at four AM, and the dragon on her couch made a sound like something dying.
Marina sat up in bed, heart pounding, before she remembered. The bond. The summit. The beautiful, awful man currently groaning in her living room like she’d personally attacked him with the concept of mornings.
This is your life now. For twenty-seven days.
She pulled on her robe and shuffled to the doorway.
Alessandro Draven was sprawled across her couch in a way that should have been impossible given its size. His legs hung over the armrest. One arm dangled to the floor. His designer shirt, the same one he’d worn yesterday, because apparently billionaire dragons didn’t pack pajamas, was rumpled beyond redemption.
He cracked one eye open and glared at her with the intensity of a man who had never experienced 4 AM from this side and was deeply offended by the concept.
“Turn it off.”
“The alarm?”
“The sun.”
“It’s not up yet.”
