Deryk (Dragon Hearts 2) Read online

  “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, D
eryk 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.

  Chapter 15

  The naked hunger on Deryk’s face as he stared at her robbed Izzi of breath and left her with no more doubt as to whether or not he still desired her.

  The rapid beat of her heart sounded like thunder in her ears as she unfastened her jeans and pushed them down over her hips and thighs before removing them and her socks. She left on the miniscule pair of black lace panties. Out of shyness, not because she wasn’t totally committed to this mating. Deryk might have seen, touched, and had his mouth on parts of her body no one else ever had, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t still shy standing almost naked in front of him.

  And a little apprehensive still.

  This man, her mate, was going to bite her during the act of lovemaking.

  “Are you absolutely sure?”

  The ache inside Izzi became stronger, deeper, as Deryk made no move to approach or touch her, his hands clenched tightly at his sides. He looked so fiercely handsome, the total predator that he was. His eyes glowed, his face all sharp and harshly etched angles Izzi wanted to reach out and touch. That she needed to reach out and touch.

  There was no space inside her for further doubt. Only the two of them, Deryk and Izzi, intent and focused on each other.

  She nodded. “Absolutely.”

  His breath left his lungs in a relieved whoosh. “Would you loosen your hair for me?”

  She reached up to release her hair from where she had plaited it before they left Wales earlier. She shook her head until the golden silkiness cascaded over her shoulders and down the length of her bared spine, the ends curling softly against the cheeks of her bottom.

  He breathed audibly. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

  Izzi was sure, after fifteen hundred years, that couldn’t be true. But she so wanted Deryk to believe it… “Thank you.”

  He looked pained as he shook his head. “What did I ever do to deserve you?”

  Izzi stepped forward until she could feel the heat of Deryk’s body as a caress against her own as the two of them almost touched. “Exist,” she answered simply as she reached up to gently place her palm against one side of his face. “You’re the other half of me, as I’m the other half of you.”

  A nerve pulsed in his throat. “Do you truly believe that?”

  She nodded. “Yin to your yang.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “You won’t.”

  Deryk gazed at her searchingly. “How can you say that when I’m going to fuck you and bite you?”

  She smiled. “Because you aren’t going to do either of those things. We’re going to make love to each other, and during that lovemaking, we are going to complete our mating, which happens to involve you biting me. Now kiss me,” she encouraged.

  His control was so precarious, he was shaking with the effort of holding himself back. “I’ve waited for you for so long, centuries, I don’t think I can be gentle.”

  Considering Izzi wanted to rub and writhe against him, touch and taste him everywhere, bite him, she didn’t think either of them wanted gentleness.

  Deryk hissed as she leaned forward, pebble-hard nipples pressing against the heat of his bare chest as she raised her face and kissed him on the lips.

  He made a harsh sound deep in his throat before his arms wrapped around her like steel bands and his lips parted beneath hers, instantly deepening the kiss.

  A hot, devouring kiss. Tongue dueling. Eager and bold as that desire shot straight to her core. That sudden burst of lust caused Izzi to clench her legs tightly together, applying pressure to her swollen clit.

  “Let me,” Deryk murmured, his lips leaving a trail of fire as they traveled the length of her throat. One of his hands gently pushed her legs apart before long, and sensitive fingers brushed against her lace-covered clit to move in slow and teasing circles.

  Izzi gasped, fingers digging into the flesh of Deryk’s shoulders as her climax slammed into her with the force and speed of an express train, that pleasure centered and then radiating out to every part of her body.

  “Oh God,” she murmured long minutes later, her damp forehead now resting against Deryk’s chest.

  He held her limp body tightly against his muscular one as his fingers pushed aside the tiny lace barrier to allow his hand to cup her silky mound. The palm of his
hand pressed against her still-pulsing clit, prolonging the climax as he thrust one long finger inside her channel.

  He raised his head as she cried out at this breach of her virginity. “It’s less painful for you this way,” he murmured in apology as that first finger was joined by a second, the two thrusting slowly as he claimed her mouth with his to take away the last of the pain.

  The pain had last for only a few seconds, and was now being replaced with a return of that pressure and pleasure. Her hips moved of their own volition, it seemed, in rhythm with those thrusting fingers, her body trembling with eagerness as she climaxed a second time.

  Deryk carefully slid his fingers from inside her before lifting her up in his arms and carrying her over to the bed to lie her down on the silk coverlet before lying down beside her. There was a smear of blood on his fingers, from where he had breached her innocence.

  Mine, his dragon crooned.

  Lick, taste, claim.

  Deryk was powerless to resist, holding Izabella’s dark gaze with his own as he raised his fingers to his mouth and the taste of her innocence, both sweet and salty, exploded on his tongue.

  She swallowed. “That’s—”

  “Barbaric.” He nodded. “My dragon demands it, aches for it.” He slid down the length of her body to remove her panties, gazing his fill of her golden curls, swollen and blood-smeared sex, before he claimed her with his mouth.

  Izabella’s taste caused his body to shake, his muscles becoming rigid. His heart was beating so loudly, he could hear it both inside and out as he fought allowing his dragon to take over and claim Izabella fully.

  He was more than the demand of his dragon to mate and claim her in a frenzy of lust and possession. He was also a man, and as a man, he wanted to give Izabella more than a mating. She deserved more. So much more.

  He began by kissing the soles of her feet, realizing she was ticklish there as she squirmed and writhed on the bed until he turned his attention to her ankles, kissing her delicate bones.