Chapter 2
Bloody arrogant Welsh bastards.
She was locked in a real live dungeon, for God’s sake, with a small battery lamp to show there was only a bed and a bucket—and if the Pendragon brothers thought she was going to use that to pee in, then they were mistaken!—inside the three rock-hewn walls and the metal floor-to-ceiling bars as the fourth one. Those bars were wedged so far down into the rock above and below, they were impossible to move. She knew, because she’d tried.
Admittedly, the Pendragon brothers lived in a castle that had been built for their ancestors in the fifth century or something like that, but surely it shouldn’t still have a dungeon. Most people would have converted this basement area to a fantastic indoor swimming pool complex by now.
But not the Pendragon brothers.
She’d met only six of them so far. Arrogant Nathaniel. Outwardly charming but definitely dangerous Deryk. Dour Bryn. Mischievous Garrett. Serious Aeran. Scientist Dylan. All of them were devastatingly handsome and charismatic. The other two brothers, Rhys and Grigor, were off somewhere doing something for Pendragon Security, a company run by all the brothers.
How weird was it that the eight brothers, all aged in their thirties, still lived in this castle together, even though three of them were married and one was about to be?
She—
“Gayle.”
She spun round to look down the stone hallway for the source of that deep and compelling voice. All she could see in the darkness was the huge, looming shape of a man as he came down the stone steps to the dungeon level. But she didn’t recognize that voice as belonging to one of the Pendragon brothers.
“Who the hell are you?” she demanded.
“Moderate your language, woman.”
“Fuck off,” she snapped. “And stop hiding in the shadows and show yourself.”
Grigor’s first thought as he looked at her from the darkness of the hallway was that there had to be some sort of mistake. This young woman, possibly aged in her early twenties and with a mouth on her like a dockworker, couldn’t possibly be the mate fate had chosen for him.
Admittedly, she was beautiful, with long red hair that reached almost to her waist, her skin the delicate white of a natural redhead, all the curves of her tall and willowy body revealed in the figure-hugging green T-shirt and jeans she wore. His gaze moved instinctively to her long and slender neck, where he would place their mating bite.
She had dark green eyes that glittered against that pale complexion, bow-shaped lips, the top one fuller than the bottom as an indication of a passionate nature, with a small and pointed chin to go with what he already knew to be a statement of her stubbornness.
She had also easily resisted the compulsion in his voice. Something only another dragon shifter or fated mate could do.
“Well?” she challenged.
“Well what?” Grigor returned evenly.
She breathed heavily through her nose. “Are you going to let me see you or just continue hiding?”
“How long have you been down here?”
“Obviously long enough to need a pee! And don’t even mention using the bucket in the corner, because—well—ew!”
Grigor drew in several deep and controlling breaths. He had waited sixteen hundred years for this woman who talked of her bodily functions so readily?
Mine.
His dragon appeared to think that was the case. The lethal talons that had pierced the tops of his fingers at the first sound of her voice indicated the same. The rock-hard length of his aroused cock wholeheartedly agreed with them.
Grigor would be lying if he didn’t admit he was burning with the desire to bite and claim his mate. That his body shook at the control it was taking not to do so immediately. But this woman was human, too young, too mouthy, too much of the twenty-first century.
He had thought his mate, if he was ever lucky enough to find her, would be a female dragon shifter, if any still existed. Or, if human like his brothers’ mates, that she would at least be ladylike. The sort of woman who would respect his authority and acquiesce to all his decisions and demands.
Within a few seconds of meeting him, this young woman had told him to fuck off.
He was the acknowledged leader of the Pendragon family of dragon shifters, more powerful and imposing than any of his brothers. His regal bearing as dragon demanded and was given respect. No one, not even his mate, spoke to him this way, not if they wanted to continue breathing—
“You’re another one of them, aren’t you?” she accused knowingly.
Grigor eyed her guardedly. “Another what?”
Gayle sighed her impatience. “Overbearing Pendragon brother. God knows what my sister, Holly, is doing thinking of marrying one of you.” She gave a disgusted shake of her head. “Admittedly, Dylan is one fine-looking man,” she said grudgingly. “But he’s also possessive as hell and twice as arrogant. Which of the scary bastards are you? Rhys or Grigor— Whoa!” She stepped hurriedly back as a huge and threatening man suddenly loomed on the other side of the metal bars.
He appeared to be a foot taller than her own five feet seven inches, with dark overlong hair, his skin slightly swarthy, with a sculpted face that looked as if it had been hewn from the same unrelenting rock as the dungeon walls.
She hated that she’d flinched away as if afraid of him, but she hadn’t been prepared for the speed with which he’d moved. One minute, he had been standing out of sight in the shadowed hallway, the next… Dear God, the next, he was glaring through those metal bars at her with the fiercest and darkest eyes she had ever seen. Eyes that glittered like onyx, with a deep red glow at their center.
What the hell…?
“Not so brave now, are you, little one?” His top lip was turned back in a sneer, almost a snarl.
Gayle literally felt the color drain from her cheeks even as she gave a defiant lift of her chin. This man might be the biggest and scariest of the Pendragon brothers she’d met so far, but if he expected her sister to agree to marry his brother Dylan, there was no way he was going to hurt her.
“Brave enough,” she snapped.
Those dark eyes raked over her from her head to her toes and then back again, the sneer having deepened on the man’s sculpted lips by the time his critical gaze returned to Gayle’s face.
She raised her chin another notch. “Like what you see?”
His mouth quirked into a humorless smile. “You are…beautiful,” he acknowledged. “Perhaps, with time, I can do something about what comes out of your mouth. Or simply find other uses for it,” he added with satisfaction.
She eyed him pityingly. “You and who else, big boy?”
He gave a low growl. “I don’t anticipate needing any assistance in the endeavor.”
Gayle would like to say she felt as confident on the inside as she was trying to project on the outside. But this man totally unnerved her. For all that he looked like a roughly hewn statue come to life, there was something…wild lurking inside him to go along with that growl. Something untamed and untamable.
Which was a weird thing to think about someone she was sure had to be another one of Dylan’s brothers. The likeness in coloring and facial features was too striking. According to Aeran, Rhys was a warrior and Grigor the eldest of the brothers, and therefore the accepted patriarch of the family.
She gave the huge man in front of her an assessing glance. He looked fiercer, colder, harsher, and therefore slightly older than the other Pendragon brothers. He also exuded a leashed power that caused butterflies in the pit of Gayle’s stomach.
“You’re Grigor,” she guessed.
He gave an inclination of his head. “And you are Gayle, sister to my brother’s mate.”
“Fiancée.” What was it with the Pendragon brothers? They lived in a castle, all of them, including their wives and a cute baby that belonged to Nathaniel and Chloe, despite the couple having a house of their own on the other side of the mountain. Tegan, Bryn’s wife, was apparently expecting a baby in six months’ time too. But it wasn’t natural in this day and age, was positively feudal, for whole families to live together like this.
And how weird was it that Grigor had called her sister Dylan’s mate?
It was bloody medieval was what it was, like the rest of everything to do with the Pendragon family, including having this damned dungeon in the basement. “Your brothers locked me in here because I said I was leaving.” Those fierce dark eyes narrowed at her statement, but at least Gayle no longer imagined she saw a fiery red flame in their depths.
“I’m afraid it isn’t possible for you to go anywhere.”
She snorted. “I doubt you’re ever afraid of anything.”
“No.” He raised one dark brow. “But you are.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Whatever her fears were, past or present, Gayle had no intention of sharing them with what she was quickly discovering was also the most arrogant and frightening of the Pendragon brothers.
He eyed her speculatively. “By choice, you spend most of your nights alone with your computer, but inside, I believe you’re frightened of being alone. Of being left alone. Of the possibility of abandonment. It’s the reason you don’t like being locked up down here—”
“Shut the fuck up!” Gayle was furious now. How dare this bastard delve into her private pain and insecurities? How fucking dare he!
“Swearing at me will not change the truth,” he reasoned practically.
She glared. “But it makes me feel so much better!”
He shrugged. “Somehow I don’t think so.”
Her mouth set stubbornly. “I want to leave.”
“No.” He didn’t even attempt to be polite about his refusal the second time.
“I’m a grown woman, and you can’t keep me here when I’ve said I don’t want to stay,” she challenged.
“I beg to differ,” he drawled. “I can keep you here as long as I wish.”
“You talk really strangely, did you know that?” she scoffed. “Really formally, like someone from a bygone age. Someone old,” she added insultingly.
He didn’t rise to the taunt. “You find politeness strange?”
“I find you strange.”
He studied her with dark, hooded eyes. “Are you deliberately trying to antagonize me?”
Her expression brightened. “Am I succeeding?”
“No.”
“Pity.”
Grigor was quickly getting the measure of his mate. On the outside, Gayle was prickly and defensive. On the inside… Ah, on the inside, she was less than sure of herself, and she tried to cover up that lack of confidence by being deliberately rude and challenging.
Aeran had told him that Gayle, as well as being a computer geek, was a hacker who had gotten herself into a spot of bother with the Russian bratva in London before Dylan had brought her here. The matter was settled now, but Dylan had still believed his future sister-in-law would be safer in Wales with his family, where he hoped Gayle wouldn’t get into any more trouble while he and Holly went to France to complete their mating.
Except Gayle had announced she was leaving the castle earlier today, with the intention of finding the nearest railway station and making her way back to London. Which was, as she’d stated, the reason his brothers had locked her in the dungeon, much to the chagrin of their human wives. Grigor could find no argument with their actions if locking Gayle in the dungeon was the only way to keep her safe.
The trouble Gayle was in now was of a much more dangerous kind than merely trying to leave here or upsetting the dangerous head of London’s bratva. Nor did Grigor appreciate her thinking his brother Dylan was a “fine-looking man.”
She was Grigor’s mate. His. The mate he had waited sixteen hundred years to find. She should not find any other man attractive but him. Besides, he was running out of time and his need was too great, his shift to remaining dragon and turning feral too near the surface for him to delay taking Gayle as his mate.
“What are you doing?” Gayle took another nervous step back as Grigor unlocked and opened the barred door of the dungeon. She might not like “being locked up down here,” but she had felt safer with those bars between her and the imposing Grigor.
He didn’t answer her but reached inside the dungeon to grasp her wrist with strong and long fingers before pulling her effortlessly out of the confining room and along the stone hallway.
Gayle tried to hang back, but it was as if she weighed no more than a helpless kitten the way Grigor just kept moving forward, effortlessly pulling her stumbling along behind him as he strode toward the stairs leading up into the living quarters of the castle.
Perhaps once she was upstairs she might be able to get away—
“Do not even think about it.” Grigor didn’t even glance at her as he started to ascend the stairs carved into the rocky basement. “There will be no escape for you. From Pendragon Castle. Or from me,” he added with finality.
Gayle was really starting to worry now. What the hell was this man going to do to her? Yes, she knew she could be a pain in the ass at times, but surely that was no reason to threaten her?
Over the years, being a pain in the ass had become Gayle’s fallback defense.
She had been seventeen when her parents died, and although she had known it was hard for Holly, being the eldest by five years, the loss had come at a time in Gayle’s life when she should have been going out with girlfriends just to have fun, experimenting as to what her taste in boys might be.
Instead, her and Holly’s lives had changed overnight. Her parents had left them very little money for one thing, just Holly’s student loans and a small allowance coming in to support Gayle. But that wasn’t the biggest change. Holly was her best friend as well as her big sister, and Gayle adored her. But again, overnight that relationship morphed into something else. Holly had become the parent figure rather than the best friend and the adored older sister. Gayle had hated seeing the way that responsibility changed Holly, and even worse, knowing the main responsibility was her.
But this man, Grigor, seemed to instinctively know more about her than Gayle was comfortable with him knowing. Seemed to see beyond that pain in the ass to the seventeen-year-old girl who was still frightened and crying inside, not only for her parents and older sister, but for the loss of the ability to be a normal, carefree teenager.
Her response to having Grigor’s fingers wrapped about her wrist was even more disconcerting.
The skin beneath his fingers actually seemed to burn. That fluttering sensation in her belly had gotten worse. Her breasts seemed to have swollen inside her bra, the nipples tingling against the restrictive lace. Her core… Dear God, her core was red-hot and weeping, dampening her panties.
She was twenty-two years old, and she’d had boyfriends in the past. Never anyone serious, but she’d been kissed, gone a little further if she particularly liked the guy. Which had only happened once. But her response to having Grigor merely touching her was…unprecedented.
Especially as she didn’t even like the man.
She knew from Holly the Pendragon brothers didn’t have any parents living either, but even so, Gayle would bet Grigor had never been a gawky teenager with a fear of losing the family he had. Gayle had lived for years with the dread of Holly dying too, or of her sister simply being unable to cope with the responsibility of Gayle any longer. Grigor was at least twelve or thirteen years older than her, and he had the experience and carried himself with the extreme self-confidence to go along with those added years.
He was also, Gayle discovered once they had stepped into the sunlit entrance hall, the handsomest man she’d ever set eyes on!
Dylan, her future brother-in-law, was gorgeous, so much so that Gayle had taunted him about possibly being a magazine cover model rather than the part-owner of a security company. The other Pendragon brothers were incredibly good-looking too. But Grigor—Grigor was in a class of his own.
She hadn’t been able to see him properly down in the basement, but now she could see his hair wasn’t just dark, it was black, so deep in color it seemed to have a navy-blue sheen. His face was…beautiful, in a completely masculine way. His brows were dark, his eyes so deep a brown they really did appear black, and were surrounded by long and thick lashes. He had aristocratic high cheekbones, a long aquiline nose, those sculpted lips, and a square and arrogant jaw.
His body… Wow, Grigor’s body was a work of art in itself. Over six and a half feet tall, with wide shoulders, washboard abs, and a narrow waist clearly outlined in a tight-fitting black polo shirt. He also wore faded black jeans that hugged the leanness of his hips before tapering down to long, muscular legs. Biker boots completed the all-black ensemble.
“Like what you see?” He turned her earlier taunt back on her.
Her cheeks burned with embarrassment at being caught staring. “Not particularly,” she dismissed.
“Are you a virgin?”
“What the hell?” She glared at him as she finally managed to wrench her wrist out of his grasp with such force, she knew it would leave bruises on her delicate white skin. “Mind your own fucking business!”
“I have already warned you about your unladylike language.”
“A warning I’m obviously choosing to ignore!”
“Even if to do so comes with retribution?”
“Even then!”
Grigor held back a smile. Gayle might try to pretend she wasn’t attracted to him but he’d seen the lust in her gaze just now as it roamed over him from his head down to his boots. He could also smell her arousal, floral with an added touch of pepper. The latter didn’t surprise him, considering her fiery nature. It was an addictive floral-and-pepper aroma that was even now invading his senses, deepening his desire and need, and causing his hard and aching cock to press painfully against the zipper of his jeans.
Mine.
Grigor’s mouth thinned as he grasped her wrist again before turning and pulling her toward the wide staircase leading up to his suite of rooms on the second floor.
He needed to claim Gayle now, while he was still able to maintain a little control over the mating.
If his dragon took dominance, there would be no possibility of Grigor showing Gayle even a small amount of gentleness.