Chapter 5
He kept his gaze fixed on Gayle as he started at the beginning of his existence. He told her of how he and his brothers had been born on the island of Annwn to a human father and each to a different goddess mother.
How they had ceased aging when they reached the age of thirty-five.
That King Arthur had also been their brother, and the then ten dragon-shifter brothers had been his army, not the Knights of the Round Table, as myth claimed.
That the suits of armor in the entrance hall were their suits of armor, well used and battle worn. How Pendragon Castle wasn’t built for their ancestors, as Gayle had previously stated, but for the same Pendragon brothers who lived here still.
It was an abridged statement of facts, but even so, Gayle’s face had paled by the time Grigor finished speaking. Her booted feet were also back on the carpeted floor as she sat tensely forward in the chair, eyeing him warily.
He sighed, now knowing exactly how his brothers had felt when they’d explained their existence to their own human mates. And he hadn’t even mentioned they were all dragon shifters yet. “I know what you’re thinking—”
“Somehow, I doubt that!” she scorned.
His mouth twisted. “It is exactly the same disbelief as your sister had after Dylan told her about us.”
She stared at him incredulously. “Dylan told Holly all this nonsense, and she’s still thinking of marrying him?”
“Dylan told her the truth, yes.” He nodded. “And she is not thinking of marrying him. The two of them are now well and truly mated.”
Gayle stood abruptly. “I want to go to my bedroom—”
“Sit down.”
She narrowed her angry gaze on him. “Stop ordering me about, you—you arrogant bastard!”
His mouth thinned at the insult. “There is still more you don’t know—”
“That I don’t want to know,” she corrected. “Whether you like it or not, I’m going back to London tomorrow.”
“No.”
“Yes,” she bit out furiously. “I don’t know what the hell Holly was thinking, leaving me alone here with all of you, but as soon as it’s light and I can find my way down the mountain without breaking my neck, I’m out of here.”
“No.”
“Yes!” She marched toward the door.
“I am a dragon shifter, and you’re my fated mate.”
Gayle came to an abrupt halt, drawing in several deep breaths before turning to face him.
Grigor looked just as arrogant and self-confident as usual, and nothing at all like the deranged man who had just tried to tell her he was sixteen hundred years old, King Arthur’s brother, and a dragon shifter. All of which Chloe wrote about in her books.
Chloe’s fictional books. Gayle admitted to having found the first three books in the series in the library. Intrigued by the fact Chloe had named those three books after three of the Pendragon brothers, Nathaniel, Deryk, and Bryn, and the three heroines were Chloe, Tegan, and Izzy, with an appearance by the other Pendragon brothers, Gayle had taken them up to her bedroom to read—before they locked her in the dungeon for trying to leave—and quickly discovered the books were hot. As in the heroine having lots of off-the-charts red-hot sex with their powerful dragon-shifter mates. The books went into so much detail about that mating, she had felt embarrassed the next time she saw Chloe, knowing the other woman was the author of those numerous erotic love scenes.
Erotic love scenes that even now, merely thinking about them caused Gayle’s nipples to tingle and harden and between her thighs to grow warm and damp.
Gayle also knew—damn Grigor for realizing this about her so quickly!—that a lot of the appeal to her about Chloe’s books had been the heroes’ total fidelity to their fated mate. Dragon shifters mated for life, their sexual and emotional devotion to their female absolute. Something no human male could ever guarantee. Which was the reason Gayle had chosen to pass on relationships. She didn’t want to fall in love with some man and then learn he was either cheating on her or didn’t return that love.
“Look at me, Gayle.”
She closed her eyes briefly before raising her head, her breath arresting in her throat, heart pounding loudly, as she found herself looking not at Grigor, but at something that resembled him and yet wasn’t quite him.
His face had taken on a sharper and scaly appearance. His eyes were fully glowing that deep red. There were two rows of large and pointed teeth visible in his mouth. His shoulders seemed to have bulked out with even more muscle, the flesh of his arms having that same look of being scales rather than skin. His hands… Dear God, his hands were no longer hands at all, but huge claws tipped by long black talons that looked as if they could tear her apart with one sweep.
Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she fell into a welcome blackness.
“—might have tried to ease her into it,” Gayle heard a female voice admonish as she started to come round from her faint.
“I thought it best she should know the whole truth,” Grigor snarled. “How was I supposed to know that truth would affect her like this? She gives the impression she can take anything thrown at her!”
“Anything logical, yes,” another female voice chided. “The existence of you and your brothers isn’t in the least logical. Not by any stretch of the imagination,” she added derisively.
Gayle thought the first voice belonged to Tegan and the second to Chloe, but with the ringing noise inside her head, she couldn’t be absolutely sure. Nor was she ready to open her eyes yet and confirm it.
She didn’t want to look at Grigor and see whether or not he still resembled some monstrous caricature of himself, with glowing red eyes, scales, claws, and talons.
Maybe there had been magic mushrooms in the spaghetti bolognese?
But even if there had been, that didn’t explain Tegan’s and Chloe’s comments to Grigor.
Unless that was all part of the hallucination?
It had to be, Gayle decided. There was no way Grigor was sixteen hundred years old and a dragon shifter, let alone that she was his fated mate.
Fated mates were as fictional as dragon shifters. They didn’t and never had existed. Just as any man promising a lifetime of fidelity and love didn’t exist. Gayle had seen too many of her friends suffer through breakups or divorces to believe in happily ever after.
Even so, she couldn’t resist giving herself a few minutes’ indulgence of imagining how it would feel to have Grigor Pendragon promise her his fidelity and love for a very long dragon-shifter lifetime.
Awesome, she decided.
There was no denying he was the most imposingly gorgeous man she had ever set eyes on. The most remotely unattainable man she had ever met, which would make winning his love and devotion all the sweeter. He also exuded a latent sensuality she just knew would be totally overwhelming if it was ever unleashed.
There she went again with the unleashed, as if Grigor was some animal released from a cage—
Or maybe a man who could shift into a dragon?
No!
She was not going to allow herself to be sucked any further into his delusion, had already made enough of an idiot of herself by fainting—
“I know you’re awake, Gayle, so you might as well open your eyes.”
Her jaw clenched to show she had heard Grigor’s drawled comment even though she kept her eyes firmly closed. “You put something in the food I ate earlier. You must have done, because none of this, what I saw, can possibly be real.”
“If you wouldn’t mind, ladies,” Grigor drawled, indicating that his sisters-in-law should leave through the sitting room doorway where Nathaniel and Bryn hovered in the hallway outside, their expressions ones of concern. Thank God it was Garrett’s turn to take watch on the roof; otherwise, Grigor had no doubt he would be teasing the hell out of him again right now. “And close the door behind you. I need to finish talking to my mate.”
Gayle shot to a sitting position on the couch Grigor had carried her to after she fainted. “Do not, any of you, leave me alone with this maniac!” Her expression was one of panic.
“Go,” Grigor harshly instructed his family.
“But—”
“Come here to me, Tegan.” Bryn held his hand out to his wife, obviously having seen the feral glitter Grigor knew would be in his eyes.
Grigor turned back to his mate once his family had gone and, as he requested, closed the door behind them as they left. No one interfered between a dragon shifter and his mate if they wanted to live.
He went down on his haunches beside the sofa, a scowl darkening his brow as Gayle instantly scooted into the far corner of the leather couch as she eyed him warily. More than warily; fear darkened those deep green eyes.
Grigor instantly rose to take a step back in the hope of reassuring her he meant her no harm. “There was nothing in your food. Everything you heard and saw earlier in my study was real,” he stated evenly, not wanting to add to Gayle’s alarm but unwilling to allow her to continue thinking she had imagined it all.
He admitted now that doing a half shift in his study hadn’t been the wisest thing to do, but at the time, he had thought it a risk worth taking. Gayle’s reaction, having her pass out and now look at him as if she feared him, told him that it hadn’t been.
“I apologize for frightening you.” He grimaced. “I thought a visual explanation was better than—”
“A thousand words?” she came back with the return of a little of her usual sarcasm. “I was dealing just fine with the words, thank you very much!”
“Because you could choose to disbelieve them.”
“Didn’t you get the memo? I’m choosing to disbelief the visual too!”
Grigor sighed heavily. “My brothers and I have been alive for sixteen hundred years. We are all dragon shifters. You are my fated mate.”
She gave a shake of her head. “Nope, no more believable for having been repeated.”
“Then tell me how I can convince you?”
She tilted her head as she gave the subject some thought. “According to Chloe’s books—which I think you’ve taken far too seriously, by the way—if you were really a dragon shifter and I was your mate, shouldn’t you be consumed with a lust to claim me?”
His hands clenched at his sides. “I am consumed with a lust to claim you!”
Her brows rose. “This is you consumed with lust?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” Her voice dipped with disappointment.
Grigor found himself smiling again. “You would rather I threw you across my desk and ravished you like the heroes and heroines in romance novels?”
“There’s a happy medium,” she mumbled.
“And this isn’t it?”
“Exactly.”
He gave a shake of his head. “You really are an amazing woman.”
“Flattery won’t get you anywhere either.”
“Not even when it is the truth?” He reached out to grasp one of Gayle’s hands in both of his, relieved when she didn’t immediately pull away.
Probably because she knew at least two of his brothers were still outside in the entrance hall. Nathaniel and Bryn, already mated, knew exactly how dangerous Grigor was right now. He wouldn’t ever mean to harm Gayle, but his desire for her was such that he couldn’t guarantee he could maintain control of his need to take.
“Look, if you’re wanting a little convenient nooky until Holly and Dylan get back from their trip, I’m really not your girl,” Gayle told him dryly.
“Convenient nooky!” Grigor released her hand to rise abruptly to his feet, watching through narrowed lids as Gayle moved even farther into the corner of the couch and made herself appear smaller as he towered over her. “When I claim you as my mate, I will go down on my knees and worship and kiss every inch of you, from the top of your head to the soles of your feet. I will kiss your delicious lips, caress your breasts, between your sweet thighs—”
“I think you just went past the happy medium,” Gayle hastily interrupted before Grigor could go into any more embarrassing details regarding “worshipping” her.
Although, she had to admit, the thought of having this gorgeous and powerful man down on his knees to her had its appeal. She was also rethinking her dismissal of Grigor burning with lust for her, because right now, despite what she’d said to the contrary, he looked consumed by it. His eyes glittered, his shoulders were tense, his hands clenched at his sides, and there was a large—a very large—bulge pressing against the front of his jeans as evidence of his arousal.
Gayle hastily averted her gaze from that telling bulge. “You’re acting weird again, Grigor.”
“Because you are not listening to me!” He glared his frustration with her. “Didn’t my partial shift earlier convince you I’m telling you the truth?”
Well, if she really hadn’t consumed some magic mushrooms—
Nope, really not going there.
“It was…interesting,” she answered cautiously. “Even if the whole concept of dragon shifters existing is completely impractical,” she added more firmly.
A scowl darkened Grigor’s brow. “Impractical how?”
She shrugged. “Well, for one thing, I think people would know if there was a family of dragon shifters living in Wales. They would have seen you flying about.”
“We can cloak our appearance as dragon.”
“Of course you can,” she muttered. “Secondly,” she continued firmly, “I’m human, so how can I possibly be the mate of a dragon?”
“The mate of a dragon shifter,” Grigor corrected. “I will be in my human form when we mate.”
“Moving swiftly on,” Gayle drawled. “I’m human,” she reminded him.
He nodded. “Tests on Chloe’s, Tegan’s, and Holly’s blood have shown that they all have a recessive dragon gene which allows them to be the mate of a dragon shifter. As Holly’s sister, it is highly possible you have that same recessive gene.”
Gayle had read that much in Chloe’s books. Those fictional books. “I would have to believe in dragons to accept any of what you’re saying as being true. And I don’t. Believe in dragons,” she explained as Grigor frowned.
“Chloe, Tegan, and Holly shared your skepticism initially.”
Her brows rose. “Not Izzy?”
“Izzy’s family and ancestors have long been servants to the Russian dragons.”
Gayle had read that in Chloe’s books too. But she hadn’t taken a word of it as being true. “You’re saying there really are more of you?” she prompted guardedly.
Grigor shrugged. “The Russian dragons are not the same as us in that they were born to a pair of mated dragon shifters. We were the first Welsh dragon shifters, born to goddess mothers and Uther Pendragon.”
Amazing. Grigor really was sticking completely with the details in Chloe’s books. Gayle would never have thought erotica to be Grigor’s choice of literature. “The legendary King Arthur’s father?”
Grigor nodded. “He was father to all of us.”
She snorted. “And, by the sound of it, a very busy, and promiscuous, man.”
“Gayle—”
“Grigor,” she came back in the same admonishing tone. “Do you have any idea that what you’re saying sounds like absolute gibberish? Or taken straight from Chloe’s books. I’ve read them all,” she explained dryly as his eyes narrowed quizzically. “The dragon shifters. The aphrodisiac in your saliva and—and other bodily fluids that drives the heroine wild with sexual need if she ingests it.” Her cheeks flamed with embarrassed color. “The claiming by the dragon shifter biting the back of their mate’s neck during sex. The barb on your—their— Well, the barb that locks a dragon shifter and his mate together for hours of mind-blowing sex during the claiming and mating.” She gave a firm shake of her head. “They’re just stories, Grigor. Well-written, extremely sensual stories, but still stories nonetheless.”
His mouth twisted derisively. “It is because we knew no one would believe Chloe’s books were true, allowing us to continue to hide in plain sight, that I allowed her to publish them.”
“Because you’re the scary head of the Pendragon dragon shifter family,” Gayle taunted.
His mouth twisted. “Chloe took some poetic license with her stories.”
“So you aren’t the head of the family?”
His jaw tightened. “Someone has to make the final decisions.”
“So you are the head of the Pendragon family?” she persisted.
“Yes.”
“Because you’re the eldest?”
“By a single hour, yes.”
“Because you were all born within one week of each other on the invisible island of Annwn off the Welsh coast?”
“Yes.”
Yep, Grigor really had read Chloe’s books. Next, he would be telling her there really were dragon hunters too, and that one of his brothers had been killed by one during Victoria’s reign.
She moved cautiously to the edge of the couch and rose to her feet. “I really am too tired to listen to any more of this—”
“I very much want to kiss you,” Grigor groaned with aching longing.
Gayle’s heart gave a lurch, her mouth going dry. As for the rest of her… Her nipples were so hard, they hurt, and between her thighs was now very wet and aching.
She wanted this man as much as he claimed to want her. And she couldn’t have him. Not unless she wanted her heart broken once Grigor had used her up and moved on. Besides, there really was that whole believing-Chloe’s-books nonsense.
She sighed. “If Chloe’s books were true, then the two of us kissing would start the mating process.”
“Yes.”
“Driving us both wild with a sexual need to claim and mate?”
“Yes.”
“I thought Dylan had formulated a serum to alleviate the worst of that need for the female?”
“He has, yes. But as he is presently away, and the dosage needs to be precise…”
Gayle remembered that too. The dosage of serum had to be in direct alignment to the woman’s weight and level of sexual arousal. Gayle didn’t fancy going through the second part of that diagnosis but kissing Grigor was one way of proving to him, once and for all, that he was delusional…
What the hell was she thinking? She didn’t need to prove anything. Grigor was living in la-la land. Nor was there any serum she could be injected with if she went into mating heat.
So what would one little kiss hurt?
Was she really, seriously, thinking of letting Grigor kiss her just to prove a point?
No, not just to prove a point, Gayle realized as she looked at Grigor from beneath lowered lashes. Visibly, Grigor was every woman’s idea of the perfect man—definitely her own perfect man—tall, dark, and handsome, with all that power and brooding angst adding to his overall attraction.
Gayle had never wanted any man as badly as she now desired Grigor Pendragon.