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Oh, dear.
“I’ll get you some clothes,” Dmitri reassured. “Just… wait here.”
“I’ll do that,” she said, mock-agreeably, since the request was so unnecessary. Where else would she be waiting? Before he could smile at her again, she closed the door. It also kept her from watching him walk away.
She couldn’t enter into a mating bond because she was horny. Three hours of conversation was not a foundation for a lifetime of… definitely not being a ruling head. She mated with the Kuznetsov heir, and he was certain to be the ruling head when it came time for any sort of succession.
What would her father have to say to that?
It didn’t take long for another knock to arrive, only this time it was Martha.
“Thank you,” Alina said as she accepted the hanger with a dry-cleaning bag on it, apparently containing whatever outfit he’d chosen for her.
She barely dared to look. Would it be something slinky? She unzipped the bag, sighing her held breath out at the sight of black sweatpants and hoodie. She suppressed the smile. It was so completely the opposite of anything she would’ve ever expected.
“Might as well have just worn the pajamas,” she murmured.
But no. Of course, this was better.
She changed, getting her hair out of the towel, shaking her locks out so they were at least presentable.
She opened the door to find him waiting outside.
Right, then.
“After you,” she said. “What?”
He gave her a brief once over, eyebrow cocked.
“I just didn’t expect my sweats to look that good on you.”
The flirtatious way he said it made a spark of heat form in her belly that had nothing to do with the fire always flowing through her veins.
“They’re yours?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said, taking the lead down the corridor. “Whose else would they be?”
She was about to open her mouth and tell him that she’d thought they were guest clothes when she heard how stupid the assumption would sound.
“I just wasn’t expecting to be wearing your clothes this early in our relationship,” she said.
His gaze found hers with rounding of his eyes and, when he smiled, she gave him a friendly shove with her elbow, rather than get too caught up in how the expression did that softening-warming thing to his face.
He brought her through hallways that she had to admit took her breath away. The details of the house spoke of quiet but sumptuous wealth, the same way her father’s house did, but this one felt more personal. As though Dmitri himself had been part of every stage of the design rather than merely the one paying for it. It still smelled of freshly cut flowers and wood polish, but now that she’d spent time with him, she could detect his scent tracing through. It was a nice scent. Deep and inviting and all man.
They reached a door flanked by two guards, one of them—a tall, dark-haired beauty of a young man—nodded his head solemnly in greeting before he opened the door for them, letting them inside the office of Vasili Kuznetsov.
The fact that he had an office set up in his son’s house told him a lot about him, or so she thought. She’d met him once or twice. Shaking hands at her father’s house in the years when he’d still deigned to appear at formal functions. But that was half an age ago now. She could barely remember the last time she had been face-to-face with him.
He was a big, broad-shouldered cut of a man, having big, broad-shouldered sons to show for it. He was handsome, his face showing signs of aging that, to their kin, were marks of elderhood. His graying beard and the crow’s feet in the corners of his eyes warranted him to take on an overseeing role within the dragon shifter community itself. Wherever he went, whether known or unknown, this meant status in the eyes of any dragon shifter he met. Because of this, before doing anything else, she bowed her head to him.
“Please,” he said. “Sit.”
His voice was hoarse, as though he needed to clear it. She was about to learn that he never seemed to follow the urge to.
“Welcome to our home,” he continued. “I was surprised to hear that I hadn’t been informed immediately of your arrival.” He gave his son a reprimanding look but then left it, focusing back on her. “Have you been treated well?”
He spoke softly. Part of her would begin to question whether it was his true voice or an affectation. Was he playing the part of Godfather and taking it to a literal interpretation of Marlon Brando as the Godfather? She couldn’t exactly ask. She also didn’t want to linger on the impression of him as she felt a smile wanting to tug itself onto her mouth.
