Chapter 14
“Do you want to finish our earlier conversation now?” Deryk suggested once they had eaten and cleared away.
Talk? Izzi didn’t want to talk, she wanted to—
“Of course,” she agreed as she rose smoothly to her feet. She wasn’t about to beg for Deryk’s lovemaking. The clawing inside her for sexual release wasn’t bad enough for that.
Yet.
Izzi was so tired, she was sure it was only that aroused buzzing inside and outside her body which was keeping her awake. Deryk must be exhausted too, after carrying her and a couple of backpacks as he flew through the night to Wales, and then on to Scotland.
Not that he showed any signs of it as he made himself comfortable in one of the two armchairs.
“You were going to tell me about your human brother,” Izzi prompted as she sat in the other armchair.
He nodded. “Arthur.”
“His mother wasn’t a goddess like the rest of you?”
“No, but we all had the same father.” He paused briefly before adding, “Uther Pendragon.”
Uther Pendragon? Why did that name sound so famil— Deryk couldn’t possibly mean as in the father of the legendary King Arthur? Could he?
“Yes,” Deryk confirmed dryly as he saw Izabella’s doubtful expression. “If you’re anything like Chloe was initially, then you don’t believe Arthur ever existed. Let me assure you, he did. He was our brother, and ensuring his safety was the reason we, the dragon warriors, were goddess born. Arthur had to live long enough to provide Wales’s future in the heir that would ultimately result in Owain Gwynedd, the first Prince of Wales, and subsequently his grandson Llywelyn the Great.”
Izabella continued to eye him uncertainly. “I always thought Arthur was a myth.”
He shrugged. “I was there. I can assure you he was very real. And also my brother.”
“But Owain Gwynedd is a well-known historical figure. Wouldn’t historians have been able to identify Arthur as his ancestor?”
“Not if Arthur wasn’t officially his ancestor.”
Her brow cleared. “Ah.”
Deryk smiled slightly. “I’m sure that if most people traced back their own ancestry, they would find a straight line that ultimately led back to some well-known historical figure or other. Or not,” he added dryly. “But that sort of chart doesn’t allow for bastards born within another marriage. Arthur’s son was one of them, and his dragon brothers had to ensure Arthur lived long enough to father that child.”
“You were a part of Arthur’s court?”
His mouth twisted. “There was no court, as such. Not in the way you probably think of them today. I’ll also tell you the same as Nathaniel told Chloe when the two of them met. There were no Knights of the Round Table. No Camelot. No Guinevere. No Lancelot. There was only Arthur.”
“And his warrior dragon brothers.”
“Yes.” Deryk nodded. “Our brother Gideon was killed during the same battle we lost Arthur.”
Izzi knew that Russian history wasn’t exactly straightforward. In fact, it had been one of the hardest subjects to study when Izzi was at school. Especially so the last two centuries, when the royal family was assassinated and the communist rebels took over and the country became the USSR, with all the complications that entailed.
Some of that was no less unbelievable than that King Arthur existed alongside his warrior dragon brothers.
“What happened to the nine of you that were left after Arthur and Gideon died?”
Deryk shrugged. “We remained human for most of the time and became mercenaries for a while. Fought for whichever side we believed to be the right one. We were mainly right.” He grimaced. “After we lost Rufus to dragon hunters during Victoria’s reign, we retreated to Pendragon Castle and avoided too much interaction with the ever-increasing human population. Latterly, the advances in technology have become our biggest enemy, as well as the biggest ally for our security company,” he added ruefully. “My brother Aeran has become our computer nerd.”
Izzi could see many ways modern technology could be helpful as well as dangerous to Deryk and his dragon brothers. The latter because they had lived for fifteen hundred years without aging. Which was no doubt when their ability to use compulsion came in useful.
She would become a part of that too when—if she and Deryk mated.
Which she was no longer sure Deryk wanted.
He hadn’t so much as touched her for the past couple of hours since their arrival in Scotland. Something her aching and painfully aroused body was only too well aware of.
She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “So what happens now?”
“Now we sleep.” Deryk rose to his feet. “There’s only one bed, I’m afraid, so we’ll have to share.”
Izzi wanted to do more than share a bed with Deryk. But again, she sensed his reluctance to take their relationship to the next level.
But surely the fact he had confided to her that his tenth brother had been the legendary King Arthur had to mean something?
Along with all the other things she now knew about the Pendragon dragons?
But she was also responsible for bringing the Petrov brother and sister into the lives of both the Romanov and Pendragon dragons. Vaughn had almost died because of her.
Maybe Deryk now saw her as a security risk to both himself and his family?
Maybe he hadn’t minded telling her all those things about his past because he intended to kill her and leave her body in these remote Scottish mountains before becoming feral, rather than mating with her?
“What are you thinking about?”
Izzi turned, her mouth going dry as she saw Deryk was already undressing in preparation for going to bed. He had removed his T-shirt to reveal his wide and muscular shoulders and arms, along with the taut ridges of his chest and abdomen.
All Izzi wanted to do was launch herself at him and beg to be taken, to become his mate.
Instead, she forced herself to answer calmly. “I thought our being mates meant you were able to sense my emotions?”
“It does.” He nodded, scowling darkly. “And right now, I’m sensing that you’re afraid of me.”
“No! Not exactly,” she amended with a wince. “I was merely wondering if you still wanted to go ahead with the mating.”
“Or?” Deryk prompted sharply as he definitely sensed there was an “or.”
“Or kill me.”
“What the fuck!” Deryk crossed the cave so quickly, Izabella had no opportunity to step back even if she had wanted to. His firm grip on her arms ensured she didn’t. “Why the hell would you ever think I want to kill you?” He glowered down at her. “Did Chloe say something—”
“Chloe loves you,” she defended. “And you love her too.”
“As a sister and Nathaniel’s mate, yes,” he acknowledged.
“You admire her too.”
He nodded. “She was such a little spitfire when she and Nathaniel first met. She threatened to stab me with my own sword once,” he recalled fondly.
Tears welled up in Izabella’s beautiful green eyes. “And my own friendship with Tanya and Pyotr almost resulted in Vaughn’s death. Maybe you now think—believe—I’m too young and naive to be your mate. That I’m a security risk to you and your brothers.”
Deryk realized he’d gone too far if his mate believed that of him. He had agreed not to spank her earlier, but had decided denying Izabella physical release would be as effective in teaching her that when he asked her to do something, it was to keep her alive, and not meant as a show of dominance over her. Keeping his physical distance had worked so well, she now believed he didn’t want her as his mate.
He gazed intently into Izabella’s tear-wet eyes. “To me, you’re perfect. From your glorious long blonde hair to the tips of your dainty feet. Your kind and trusting heart is a huge part of what makes you Izabella. It’s also the yin to my yang,” he acknowledged self-derisively. “I’m a cynical bastard. You’re open and warm-hearted. Was I angry when I realized you had put yourself in danger by going to the Petrovs’ apartment? Hell, yes,” he confirmed grimly. “Was I equally as proud of my mate when I came into that apartment and found you standing there with a broken glass pressed against Petrov’s throat? Pride doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt when I looked at my warrior woman. It even overrode my own fear for a few seconds.”
“Fear?”
“I thought the bastard was going to kill you before I could get to you,” Deryk grated, the memory of imagining Izabella lying dead still all too vivid.
Was it enough to remain angry with Izabella? To cause her to doubt he still wanted their mating?
He released her before taking her in his arms. “Izabella, never again doubt how much I want you as my mate. I want to spend the rest of my life protecting you. I know from yesterday, you will protect me and our young with your life too.”
Deryk wasn’t talking about love, Izzi acknowledged, not in the way she knew she loved him. But maybe with time, that would come too? Chloe seemed to think so. “Then why have you been so distant toward me since?”
He drew in a deep breath. “You asked me not to spank you, and so I—”
“Decided to punish me in another way,” she realized suddenly.
Deryk winced. “If it’s any consolation, I’ve been punishing myself too.”
“It is,” she assured him softly.
He shuddered. “I wouldn’t survive if anything ever happened to you.”
“Chloe told me you would become feral without your mate.”
“I said I wouldn’t survive, not my dragon,” he snapped.
Izzi felt as if a heavy weight had been lifted off her as she placed her hands against Deryk’s bared chest. She relished the silky feel beneath her fingertips of his skin over the tautness of those defined muscles, along with the fierce beating of his heart. Deryk still wasn’t talking about love, but it was close enough for her to know what she now had to do. No, wanted to do. So very much.
“I still want to spank you,” Deryk admitted.
“Chloe said—”
“Forget what Chloe said,” he cut in forcefully. “My sister-in-law is a menace.”
“I like her.”
“So do I most of the time,” Deryk acknowledged heavily. “But the truth is, I’ve been afraid to so much as kiss you the past twenty-four hours.”
Izzi eyed him quizzically. “Why?”
He scowled darkly. “Because if I do, I’ll introduce more of this damned aphrodisiac into your system, which will deepen your discomfort. I haven’t just been keeping my distance because of that spanking you deserve,” he assured her gruffly, “but because I seriously doubt my own ability to stop in time if we make love again.”
It felt good to know that, despite all that had happened, Deryk wanted her as much as he ever had. That it was painful for him to resist her too. “And if I don’t want you to stop?”
He tensed. “What does that mean?”
“That I’m ready to complete the mating if you are,” Izzi told him huskily.
His heart began to beat faster beneath her hand. “There’s still time. I don’t want you to rush your decision.”
“Why wait?” Izzi answered calmly, more convinced than ever now she knew the reasons for Deryk having held back. “If we don’t mate we both die.”
He quirked a mocking blond brow. “So becoming my mate is marginally better than death?”
She smiled. “Oh, a lot more than marginally. Chloe is going to write our story next, you know,” she teased. “She also mentioned she needs us to have lots of erotic sex I can tell her about to help the book sell.”
“Son of a bitch!”
Izzi laughed at Deryk’s horrified expression. “You’re the one who left me alone with her,” she reminded him.
“Only so that I could talk to Dylan. I wanted to know… I needed to… He gave me the first dose of the dragon birth control he’s been working on,” he revealed flatly. “If we do go ahead with our mating, I want you to have a choice in that too.”
Izzi looked at him searchingly. Deryk still might not have told her he loved her, but everything he said convinced her that he did. That she and her happiness truly were all that mattered to him. “It isn’t going to harm you? Or stop there being a pregnancy in the future?” Having seen and spoken with a pregnant Chloe, Izzi now wanted that for herself and Deryk. Maybe not immediately, but definitely once she had completed her law degree, in all probability in Wales now, so she could be of some practical use to the Pendragon brothers. “It won’t affect the mating?”
“Dylan says not. Everything should be exactly the same except you won’t immediately become pregnant.”
“How do you feel about that?”
Deryk shrugged. “I want whatever you want, and if that means waiting a couple of years for young, then that’s what we’ll do.”
There is was again. Love. Except Deryk didn’t know or recognize it as that yet. Maybe he never would, but Izzi knew it for exactly what it was. “Then I suggest we both get undressed and complete our mating.”
Deryk’s fingertips touched the dark circles beneath her eyes. “You’re exhausted.”
“I’m also going out of my mind with lust,” she told him as she pulled off her sweater.
His eyes darkened to molten gold as he gazed at the fullness of her breasts cupped in a lacy black bra. “That’s the mating fever talking. Dylan is working on something else that might help with that—”
“And in the meantime?”
“We wait.”
“You can help me with the lust now,” Izzi insisted, the fever of desire in Deryk’s eyes a match for the one she felt inside her. “First by getting undressed, and then by taking me in that magnificent bed you handcrafted so lovingly. For your mate, if I’m not mistaken?”
She had realized in the last few minutes that there was no reason for Deryk to have made a bed like that for himself. Izzi very much doubted that, when Deryk visited his cave in the past, he had even been in human form most of the time. His dragon didn’t need a hand-carved bed and silk bed linens but his mate would. Deryk had waited for that mate long enough.
“Yes,” he confirmed.
Izzi reached behind her to unfasten her bra before slipping the shoulder straps down her arms and discarding it completely. “I’m here now.” She held the fierceness of Deryk’s gaze with her own as she held her arms out to her sides.
In surrender to her mate.