by Amelia Jade
And then, just like that, it was over. Her eyes could practically see his defenses fall back into place. The fire in his eyes quenched itself as he stood up straight, pulling himself away from her. His golden-brown eyes wrenched themselves from her gaze, staring at some point on the wall behind her as he visibly took a deep, calming breath.
“We’ll reconvene in the morning,” he said hoarsely, and then to her surprise, he nodded politely and strode from the room.
She let him go. Her assigned room was right next to the princess’s.
It was also right across the hall from him. So she let him go, running fingers through her hair to calm herself as she walked in an aimless circle around the room just to kill time. The last thing she wanted just then was to be following him down the hallway headed for the same destination, but not walking there together.
How awkward would that be?
Not as awkward as what just happened.
“What the hell did just happen?” she asked herself aloud, still trying to make sense of it.
She knew he’d been ready to kiss her. Miranda had been ready to let him. They had been alone, with no one around to witness it.
But something had stopped him.
And whatever that something was, it was not his sense of duty to Cadia.
She knew what that sort of reluctance looked like, and felt like. It did not correlate with the haunted, guilty look that she’d seen in his eyes not once, but twice now.
“What are you hiding?” She spoke softly into the empty room, turning to stare at the arched doorway through which he’d left.
What aren’t you telling me, Daxxton Ryker, Aurum Dragon and ruler of Top Scale Academy? What has got such a powerful person as you willing to run from me?
There was something else going on.
Was he mated?
Miranda didn’t think so. There was no easy indicator without either asking or searching his entire body for another dragon’s scale, but something about him told her that no, he wasn’t mated.
So what the hell was holding him back?
Unless…
No, there’s no way he could know. Daxxton would have said something if that were true, she knew it. He wouldn’t be able to resist asking her questions, at a minimum.
Her brain began to hurt as she ran through reason after reason he would not only refrain from kissing her, but fight so hard to stop a moment once it had already occurred.
“Stop it,” she said, vocalizing the words to give them more effect. “There is nothing you can do. Whatever it is, you have a mission to complete. Focus on that, not getting a little hanky panky.”
Miranda took a deep breath, rolled her shoulders, and strode down the hallway, hoping desperately Daxxton had gone straight to his room and wasn’t standing outside hers.
Although if he was…
Chapter Six
Daxxton
His shoulders were so tense as he walked away from her that Daxxton thought they were going to explode.
What the hell had he been thinking?!
Almost kissing the head of the Princess of Tanith’s security team?
No, he corrected. It wasn’t the head of the security team he’d almost kissed. It was Miranda Pyke. That was who he’d almost kissed. Who he’d wanted desperately to kiss.
Still desperately wanted to kiss, if he were being honest with himself.
But he hadn’t, and he couldn’t.
Oh, physically he was ready and willing. She was tall, gorgeous, funny, witty, and intelligent beyond measure. In every way he knew of, she was his equal, except, perhaps, on the battlefield.
She was competent there too, he did not deny her that. But Miranda couldn’t be more than two centuries old. He had over half a millennia on her in sheer experience, including some of the worst battles shifters had ever fought in recent memory.
Daxxton snorted softly, the sound echoing down the hallway as he made his way to the suite of rooms that had been set aside for him. To think of five hundred years as “recent memory” was rather amusing to him, even if it was considered recent to dragon shifters.
Yet even that attempted diversion couldn’t last for long, and his memory drifted back to Miranda. She was interested in him too. He’d seen her eyes, she’d known what was about to happen, and she’d gone with the flow, never once stopping him or trying to slow him down. She’d been waiting for him to kiss her.
He couldn’t though.
Not without betraying Kyra. She doesn’t deserve this from me. I need to be better.
Guilt racked his soul as the thick door to his suite flew open and slammed closed behind him. He was careful not to slam it with his dragon strength. The last thing he needed was to wreck the door.
Boots came off as he walked across the floor, followed by his shirt and pants, leaving him clad only in his boxers. Looking down, past his thick chest and chiseled abs, he eyed the massive bulge straining against his boxers.
Yet another side effect of his intimate moment with Miranda.
With a sigh he fell back into the bed, covers flopping around wildly upon impact.
“What am I getting myself into?”
The answer was trouble, and he knew it. It wasn’t that he was unwilling to be intimate with another woman. Daxxton knew Kyra wouldn’t begrudge him that much. But he’d never allowed himself to have feelings for the woman. It had usually been humans as well. He would venture out to nearby Cloud Lake, or one of the other human settlements within a short flying distance, and there he would select a woman for the evening. And only the evening.
Never the same one, and they weren’t allowed to stay the night. Those were his rules. It was easy, and clean, and prevented him from developing any feelings for them.
Yet he’d been with Miranda for less than twenty-four hours, and already he could barely resist the call of her thick, pink lips. He wanted to cover them in kisses, to run his hands across her thick, powerful body.
He wanted to feel her next to him at all moments.
His boxers grew tighter.
With a sigh, he pushed a hand down his firm stomach and under the waistband.
Maybe he would think more clearly if he was doing so with only one head.
Guiltily his hand began to move up and down, even as images of a woman flashed in his head.
A woman with hair blacker than night, and not the blonde of his long-dead mate.
***
He woke in the morning, banishing the ghosts of his past back into the depths of his subconscious, where he hoped they would remain.
Blearily rubbing sleep from his eyes, he stumbled into the bathroom, an elaborate setup nearly the size of the sleeping chambers, and turned the water on in the shower. Maybe the scalding water would do more than just wash away the physical evidence of his guilt-laden evening.
His skin screamed as the blistering water rolled over him. Daxxton was instantly awake, flinching in surprise at just how hot the water got. It wasn’t that he was in danger of being hurt, but he could still be jolted awake by temperature change, like any other being. As he grabbed the bottle of thoughtfully provided body wash and began to clean himself up from the night before, washing sweat and other dried fluids away, he tried to send his stress with it.
He wished desperately that he had someone to talk to. Being the age he was, and of his power status, there were very few people he felt comfortable opening up to. Most of those who thought they were as powerful as him were people like Klara Nova.
And there was no way he was going to talk to her. The idea of that actually made him laugh, his body heaving with laughter, sending water flying as he shook.
Some of the tension left him then, making him breathe a little easier.
He contemplated the few people he could talk to. Unfortunately, most of them were unavailable, and would be for decades, if not centuries more. Even as powerful as he was, Daxxton was not going to get in the habit of waking one of the Great Ones, dragons of the Old Blood.
&nbs
p; Most of them spent their time sleeping, hibernating away for several decades or even a century at a time. Nearly fifteen hundred years before, a mutation had occurred in the dragon gene. One that had spread fast and wide, like a virus. All dragons born with it were inherently weaker, and their lives spanned perhaps half that of their parents and grandparents.
By now most of the Great Ones had passed on, but Daxxton knew of several still alive, though he was positive most of them were currently sleeping. So, he was on his own then.
Lingering in the shower wasn’t going to help that, so he killed the water and toweled off swiftly, pulling on a fresh set of clothes which had been dropped off overnight, it seemed.
Klara’s staff certainly were efficient, he had to give them that.
Feeling refreshed from the shower, but still exhausted after a mostly sleepless night, he exited his room. There was no response after a swift knock on the princess’s door, so he instead headed for the kitchen. It was still plenty early in the morning that he doubted they would have gone much farther than that.
The princess and Nolan were just leaving as he arrived, the pair almost colliding with him as they rounded the corner, completely engrossed in their own conversation.
“Oh, morning, Daxxton!” Nolan said as they split around him like flowing water around a boulder and kept walking.
“Morning,” he said, looking at the pair oddly.
There was something off about their body language. Something that…
His eyebrows rose a fraction.
Was the princess having a dalliance with one of her security team?
He watched the young woman laugh at something Nolan said. Her eyes focused on him even as he prattled on some more.
Yes, she was.
“Hi, Daxxton,” a soft, velvety-smooth female voice said from his right.
He froze.
“Hello, Miranda,” he said stiffly, hating himself for how formal he sounded.
The beautiful woman with dark hair and eyes so brown they were almost black smiled at him. A kind, disarming smile, completely unlike the seductive, sultry gaze she’d turned on him the night before. It was as if she knew he would be on edge, and she was doing her best not to make things worse.
Of course, she didn’t need to do anything to make it worse. Daxxton was perfectly capable of doing that on his own. Oh yes he was. It wasn’t often he was made to look like an idiot. But when he was, it was almost always his own doing.
Like now, as he stood in the doorway, blocking it so that neither could Miranda leave, nor he enter. So they were forced to stand there and look at each other, each unsure of what to say to the other.
“Can I get by?” she asked at last, gesturing past him to indicate she wished to leave.
“Oh, um, yes, of course,” he muttered, his face burning with embarrassment.
Daxxton backed out into the hallway, letting her pass before he all but fled inside the kitchen, hoping that he could get some breakfast into him before he had to interact with her for the rest of the day.
“Can I ask you something?”
He froze, halfway to the buffet table that had been set up in the middle of the room. The smell of eggs and bacon, sausage, hash browns, and pancakes tantalized his nose. Someone had had waffles loaded with syrup he realized a moment later as he caught yet another whiff of deliciousness.
It wasn’t fair. He wanted all of it.
“That depends,” he said, a sliver of his confidence returning, hoping the change in his voice and body language would let Miranda know that she was treading dangerous waters.
But he had to give her credit. She was strong, and even as he slowly rotated back to face the doorway, he noticed there was no give in her expression. It wasn’t a hard look she turned his way; no anger or other negative emotion present. Yet for all that, she wasn’t backing down either.
“What did I do?”
Ah. So that’s why she’s feeling so bold. She thinks it was something she did.
“It might sound cliché,” he started, then shook his head. “No, it does sound cliché. But in this instance, Miranda, you didn’t do anything. It’s all me.”
He hoped she would leave it at that, that she would let him go and eat his breakfast in peace. Instead, the infuriatingly lovely woman took a step into a room that seemed to shrink abruptly as she entered it, her presence filling the space he so greedily sought for himself.
“I’m not going to throw myself at you,” she said softly. “But why didn’t you kiss me yesterday? The moment was there. I know we both felt it.”
He gritted his teeth, the muscles in his arms bunching up as he flexed.
Straight shooter too. He admired that, even if it made his life extremely difficult just then.
His eyes wandered the room for a moment as he formed his words, wanting to ensure he spoke clearly, without any ambiguity.
“Yes, it was there. And there is nothing about you that stopped me. It’s just that—” He paused. Now wasn’t the right time to tell her that he had a mate.
You had a mate.
The traitorous thought raced through his mind. As if the thought wasn’t bad enough, he could have sworn that it wasn’t his own voice which had given life to it. Instead, it was a lively little alto that had once belonged to his mate. To Kyra.
“I can’t,” he said sharply and spun on his heel before Miranda could respond, snatching a plate angrily and slamming food down onto it.
“I’m sorry,” she said, still in that soft, gentle voice that made him want to wrap her up into his arms and just lie there next to her.
“Me too,” he said so quietly he wasn’t sure she heard him.
There was a brief, almost startled pause.
“For what?” The question was accompanied by footsteps as she entered the room fully, stopping half a dozen feet from him.
His back was still to her, bits of egg dripping from the ladle he held suspended over the tray, unable to move. Daxxton squeezed his eyes shut tightly, wishing fervently that she would just leave. He wasn’t ready for this, wasn’t able to talk about it. Not yet, and definitely not with her.
The silence grew, and grew.
“You aren’t leaving, are you?” he asked at last.
“No.”
He carefully put the ladle down, and then sat his plate on an empty part of the table.
“Listen, Miranda,” he said, his voice calm and steady, despite the trepidation he felt. “There are…things about me. Things you don’t know, and that I’m not ready to share yet. It’s those same things that mean I cannot follow through with urges like that.” He looked at her sadly. “No matter how much I may want to, or feel the same. And I’m sorry, but I’m not ready to talk about them. Not yet.”
The shifter from Tanith stared at him for a long time.
“Okay,” she said at last, giving him an appraising look.
Miranda gave him an understanding smile, and exited the room, leaving Daxxton standing there alone.
“What the hell just happened?” he asked at last.
Nobody answered, and eventually he shook himself and returned his attention to breakfast.
What an amazing, intriguing woman.
Spending time in close quarters with her was going to be trouble, he knew it.
But what pretty trouble it will be…
***
Miranda
“What is taking so long?”
“Hmmm?” Miranda asked, bringing herself back to the present as part of her subconscious realized that the question had been addressed to her.
“To hear from Klara. Or anyone. It’s midday already. You’d think we would have heard from them by now, wouldn’t you?” the princess asked, a frown etched onto her facial features.
“Yes, I suppose so,” she replied, still distracted by her thoughts.
“Miranda.”
“Yes?” she responded, turning her head to receive the arched eyebrow look from the princess that she knew was coming.
/> “Focus. This concerns you as much as it does me,” the princess admonished.
“I know,” she agreed, deflating slightly, before taking a breath and focusing her mind at the task at hand, pushing the image of a gorgeous golden-tanned male from her thoughts.
“So, what is taking them so long to—”
The Princess never got a chance to finish her sentence. A fist rapped sharply on the door, interrupting her.
Miranda frowned and rose.
“It’s me,” Daxxton said from the other side before she could say anything. “Klara has arrived.”
“Speak of the devil,” Miranda muttered as the princess and Nolan both rose from their places on the chairs nearby and headed for the door.
“About time,” the princess said, just a bit prickly as she waltzed out into the hallway, breezing past Daxxton.
The Aurum Dragon arched an eyebrow at the Tanith royal before turning his questioning gaze on her.
I don’t know. She mouthed the words, not quite sure what that was all about either.
The big man shrugged, the motion pulling at the gray shirt he was wearing, stretching it tighter around his muscular form. Miranda very carefully did not stare at his chest or arms, though she did glance his direction occasionally.
It was tough to resist. Their near-kiss the night before had woken a fire within her. It was only embers at the moment, but for all her concentration and focus, she’d been unable to douse it. Every time her eyes followed the bulge of a bicep or the curve of his rear, tendrils of flame flickered, threatening to explode into an inferno that she would not be able to control.
“Princess!” Klara exclaimed as the quartet entered the main greeting room at Daxxton’s instruction.
“Councilwoman Nova,” the princess said somewhat primly, stopping short of the Cadian woman’s outstretched arm.
Klara’s jaw clicked as she snapped it closed before she could speak again. The room seemed to grow a few degrees cooler as Miranda watched.
“I have good news,” Klara said, her arms dropping to her sides.
“That sounds excellent. What tidings do you bring?”
