Danil’s Mate(6)

“Nice to meet you all,” she said over her shoulder as Danil tugged her from the room.

He’d gotten the feeling back in his hand and he’d remembered that he needed her off his mother’s property as fast as possible. But then they were out the front door into the fresh, fragrant spring air, striding toward her car in the driveway, and Danil knew he’d made a mistake when he’d come outside with her. It was much harder for him to be cool and civilized when he was outside.

Her citrusy scent mixed with the pine of the forest that pressed in on them from all sides. Danil got a flash of what it would be like to peel that jacket off of her like an orange. He wanted to taste her fruit.

“So it’s Danil, huh?” she asked him as she struggled to keep up with his quick pace as he basically dragged her to her car.

“Da,” he replied. “My real name. The men at work call me Dan.”

“I prefer Danil,” she told him as he paused at the driver’s door to her car.

“I don’t care,” he replied.

She cocked her head to one side and leaned up against her car like she hadn’t a care in the world. “You don’t like me much, do you, Danil?”

“I do not care one way or another,” he said, inwardly kicking himself as he heard his accent grow a little thicker. It only did that when he was agitated. But she was just so damn exquisite, standing there in the azure twilight. Her cheekbones were two stunning slashes and her hair fell across her forehead in a jagged chop that highlighted her huge, round eyes.

“I think you do, Danil,” she said, her eyes narrowing a tiny bit. “I think my question just struck a nerve. And I think you care very much.”

Shit. She was right. He’d given away his hand in his urgency to get her out of there. He cursed himself. He needed to throw her off the scent. She was smart. Annoyingly smart. How to make her stupid?

There was one way that he knew how. And it worked every time.

“It wasn’t your question that struck a nerve,” he said, shifting his weight infinitesimally into her space. Her eyes tracked the movement. “It was this face.” He intentionally raised a hand like he was going to stroke her cheek but dropped his hand. She tracked that movement as well. “These eyes. Your legs. I find that they’re striking all my nerves.”

It was a calculated move. He’d meant to discombobulate her, confuse her, get her thinking in circles. But when her pink little lips fell open and the tiniest flash of arousal zipped through her eyes, it was the first honest expression her face had made since he’d met her. And Danil realized that he was as disoriented as he’d meant to make her.

Suddenly he was completely in her space. His hands on the hood of her car on either side of her curvy little body. He could feel the heat her skin was kicking off, he could scent it in the air. Her eyes had fallen to his lips and she wetted her own.

It was just the tiniest little glimpse of her delicate tongue, but Danil felt it like a punch to the solar plexus. He leaned down, their lips both tasting the air between them. Her warmth caressing over him, just a breath away.

“Oh, crap. Sorry, Danil,” a voice said behind them which had Danil straightening up and turning. It was AJ, a family friend who lived a few blocks away. She was 25 years old and like a sister to them. They’d known her since they’d moved here ten years ago. And right now she was looking more uncomfortable than he’d ever seen her. Pink in the cheeks.

“That’s alright, AJ,” he told her in the characteristic sweetness that they all used with her. “Dora was just leaving anyways.”

Before he could turn back to her, get lost in that moment again, Danil reached behind Dora without looking, and opened her car door.

“Oh, okay,” AJ said, obviously still very uncomfortable. “Well, nice to meet you, sort of. I’m just gonna go inside and die now.”

AJ scampered up the front walk and only then did Danil turn back to Dora. She’d obviously regained any composure she may have lost a few moments before.

“Apparently I’m leaving,” she said to Danil, one eyebrow raised.

“Goodbye,” he said, without any more explanation. He stepped back from the car.

“Hmm,” she said to him, her eyes giving him the full up and down as if she were still trying to figure him out.

Right when he thought she was going to slip into her car and drive away, she leaned over the top of the door. The light from his mother’s porch dusted her skin gold. “You hang out at the northwest precinct a lot, Danil?”

His eyes searched hers. “Why?”

“I just want to know where I can find you,” she said, a little half-smile on her face. And then she ducked down, started the car, and reversed away.