Her eyebrows flew up, then a smoldering look settled on her face. “Perhaps your brother can join us.”
“We’re rather… territorial.” The disgust was working hard to make an appearance. “But trust me, my brother will be happy to oblige any tastes you have.”
Her eyes glittered. “Older or younger?”
“Younger by two minutes.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and speed-dialed Leonidas. “We’re twins. Fraternal, although he’ll tell you, he’s the better-looking one.”
That put some spark back in her eyes.
Leonidas picked up on the first ring. “Did this plan of yours go south already?” he asked. “I would have expected—”
“Leonidas! So glad I could catch you. I have a lovely woman here who can’t wait for you to warm her bed.”
“Arabella is lovely, but I thought—”
“Her name is Sandra.” Lucian managed to keep the swell of his roar inside, but he was shocked by the sudden intensity of it. Along with the desire to strangle his brother should he lay a hand on Arabella. Shit. That wasn’t good. “I’ll text you the address. Be here in twenty.” He hung up the phone and forced a smile for Sandra. “He’ll be here soon. In the meantime, let me order up something to set the mood. I hear the French Merlot is exceptional. Perhaps some chocolate-covered fruit to accompany it?”
Her smile grew wider. “Sounds like a party. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to stay?”
He was already on his feet, ready to leave all this in his brother’s capable hands and retrieve Arabella from the horror of a neighborhood where she worked. “Trust me, you and my brother will have a much more enjoyable time without me.”
He ordered room service, and that came in no time at all. He had two glasses of wine into Sandra before his brother knocked at the door. A flood of relief filled him when he opened it—barely nineteen minutes had passed, and Leonidas’s eyes were still flashing bronze, his dragon just recently tucked away. He must have flown straight from the keep.
Sandra grinned at him from over Lucian’s shoulder then waved.
Leonidas scowled and dropped his voice low. “Green eyes? Lucian. What are you playing at?”
Green eyes. It was Lucian’s attempt to signal his desire to Arabella. But of course, his brother would see it as something completely different. And perhaps he wasn’t wrong. They were Cara’s eyes. “It’s not like that.”
“It damn well better not be.” Leonidas put on that charming smile, the one he saved for the many human females he’d bedded over the centuries, and brushed past Lucian. His brother was the kind of dragon that suited this business of seducing women. If only he could fulfill the treaty as well. But no, it had to be the prototokos, the firstborn of the king of the House of Smoke… and that was Lucian, by accident of birth order, when he was first to leave the womb of his mother. The fae were nothing if not exacting in their following of the letter of the law—their magical law—and in this case, it was binding with magic just strong enough to keep them contained. It was his fate, and he had to accept it… even if it broke him.
Lucian closed the door without looking back.
Arabella was silent on the long ride back to the keep.
She chose one of the seats far from Lucian, on the opposite side of the limo, and she kept her gaze to the windows, serving him one-word answers to his questions while ignoring his attempts to capture her attention with a look. He had allowed her to assume he had gone through with the hookup, but that Sandra simply wasn’t his type of woman, and thus they were back to square one in the hunt for his mate. She had barely questioned it—a simple nod was all he got when he came to retrieve her from her miserably unsafe office. He had wanted her to believe he had tried and failed, that this other woman simply wasn’t the True Love he was seeking, all while triggering a moment of jealousy, some blossoming of feelings for him… but instead, she radiated nothing but anger. And small verbal and body-language complaints about returning to the keep.
She seethed at his keeping her prisoner, and what could he expect? She was even more right than she knew. He was a monster for what he was doing.
His runes writhed along his skin, his agitation building stronger during the long drive through the mountains. He knew what was coming—he would have to escalate this seduction to the realm of the physical, and that tormented him. On the one hand, he salivated at the thought of finally touching her. The few times he’d taken the liberty had left his hands and mouth and the rest of his body aching for more. At the same time, there lay the danger of losing himself in her. He knew it would eventually come to this, and in truth, he should have bedded her right away, before he could come to know her better. But even then, it felt like dangling over a dark precipice where his doom awaited with hungry, snapping jaws.