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“Well, yes, that would be preferable. Don’t you think?”
“To the alternative of?”
He smiled then, his inner dragon shining through for a moment, the power it held, the power it was accustomed to. He might not kill her, but he could choose to lock her away until further notice. He might not throw away the key, but he might not be inclined to let her out anytime soon either. He might even pull it so far as to use her as a bargaining chip with her father after all.
Fuck.
“I’ve been sitting here and, as we’ve been having this rather riveting conversation, I’ve been thinking,” he said, stroking the tablecloth with one finger as if he hoped the softness of the sound would be soothing to her. It wasn’t. It sent goosebumps up her arms in anticipation of what he was about to tell her. “Your brother joined together the families of Kumarin and Aslanov. Thanks to this, you have a blood bond between your two families that can’t be broken. Not for anything.”
She didn’t say anything. She knew he wasn’t expecting her to, but her heart was picking up its pace again. She had an inkling of where this might be going.
“I’ve been meaning to take a mate for some time now,” he said. “I have no sons. It’s never a good look.” The comment annoyed her, but she didn’t show it. “I haven’t found a female that could easily fit in with my lifestyle.”
“A female,” she scoffed, her hackles rising at how transactional his tone was.
“I’m prepared to make you an offer,” he said.
She realized then that what he was doing was proposing they enter a mating bond using the same approach he would to any other business venture. Wasn’t that exactly the point she’d made earlier? Only she hadn’t expected it would land her here, with those green eyes resting on hers, his whole demeanor unhurried, calm, waiting for her response.
Chapter 4 - Dmitri
The question had grown in his mind very gradually. From the moment she was dumped on that chair to her slipping the first sweetened cherry in her mouth, he’d felt a growing fascination.
She wasn’t like the other women in his circle. Perhaps that had something to do with her still unkempt exterior, but it also had to do with her backbone. There was courage tracing her attitude in very enigmatic ways. Of course, there was also independence, no matter how much she relied on her father for the comforts in her life. She wanted to be her own woman. He even got the impression she aimed to lead.
This only added to the many ways the picture he was tentatively sketching in his mind was slowly getting shaded in with a stronger impression of who she was underneath the harder layers she’d wrapped around herself.
She didn’t feel safe, no matter how much she told herself that she did. She was guarded, alert, observant. Being in this situation must have been like a shock to her entire system. He wondered if the electric currents of it were still running through her. If it was right of him to bring his idea of how to proceed up this early on, or whether he should’ve let her have a night’s sleep first. Let the shock quiet down.
No going back now.
“What’s your offer?” she asked.
“We can discuss it in the morning if—”
“Just tell me,” she stopped him.
“We have the ceremony here. Over the next few days.”
“Immediately?”
“Yes. This is a contract, you understand? It’s a way for me to get out of a potentially precarious situation.”
“I think the situation is precarious as is.”
“Fine, you’re right,” he said. “But you recognize I can’t just let you go.”
“Because you still don’t trust I’m not here under my father’s orders?”
“No, I know you had nothing to do with this.”
“Ah,” she said slowly, understanding settling in those blue eyes. “But you don’t trust my father didn’t.”
“Would you put it past him?”
“Using my intended mate to kidnap me in order to entrap you?” She paused for a long moment, biting the inside of her cheek thoughtfully. “No,” she finally admitted. “I really wouldn’t put it past him. But he’s barely had anything to do with Gregor.”
“And that might be because he didn’t want you to think they had anything to do with each other,” Dmitri remarked.
