Bryn Read online

  Mine.

  His dragon obviously had no problem with how Tegan looked this morning.

  Neither did Bryn, if he was honest. The pajamas and slippers were adorable, and he could imagine Tegan’s hair and appearance would look in this same state of disarray after the two of them had spent the night making wild and passionate love together.

  “Just coffee for now,” Tegan muttered as she staggered over to the breakfast trolley and poured herself a cup of the strong brew. “God, that smells good,” she groaned in ecstasy as she inhaled the coffee before taking a grateful swallow.

  “Not a morning person, I’m guessing?” Bryn drawled.

  Tegan scowled at his cheerfulness. Not only was the bedding cleared away from the sofa, but Bryn had obviously showered and shaved in the second bathroom before dressing. His jaw was clear of stubble, his dark hair slightly damp, and he wore a pale blue button-down shirt and tailored navy trousers. His black shoes were polished to a shine bright enough to add to the headache she already had.

  It had been after two o’clock New York time when she heard Bryn returning to the hotel suite, and despite her exhaustion, Tegan hadn’t been able to fall asleep before or after he returned. Dawn had been breaking when her eyes finally closed out of complete exhaustion. But she’d slept too deeply, and not for long enough, and the brightness of the sun shining in through the window had given her a headache the moment she opened her eyes.

  She dropped down onto the sofa now before kicking off her slippers to curl her legs up underneath her. “Are you one of those disgusting people who jumps out of bed in the morning ready to fight another day?”

  Centuries ago, being prepared to fight upon waking was exactly how Bryn had needed to be. First in King Arthur’s army and, after he died, in whatever army Bryn and his brothers decided could most use their help. The Pendragon brothers had been mercenaries of a sort through the centuries, although not always for the person who could pay them the most. Even as mercenaries, the brothers had chosen to fight on the side of whoever they believed had the worthiest cause.

  Nowadays, they did the same thing through Pendragon Security.

  It wasn’t the same, of course. They no longer fought with sword or pistol, but even so, Bryn knew there was less scum on the streets, selling drugs or trafficking in human flesh, because of them.

  “Something like that,” he answered Tegan dismissively. “What’s the schedule for today?” he added briskly.

  “A breakfast meeting at nine. Coffee at eleven. Lunch at one. Afternoon tea at four—”

  “A full day, then,” he derided.

  She nodded. “And evening.”

  “Is it always like this at these conferences?”

  “I’ve only been to one before this, but from what I’ve been told, pretty much, yes.” Tegan leaned her head back against the sofa. “Someone should just shoot me now,” she groaned.

  Bryn grimaced. “I guess it’s all part of your job.”

  “I guess it is,” she snapped. “Where did you go last night?”

  Now it was Bryn’s turn to become defensive. “I went for a walk.”

  “Where?”

  He shrugged. “Times Square. Central Park.”

  Her eyes widened. “Don’t you know it isn’t safe to go into Central Park at night?”

  Maybe not for humans, but for a dragon… “No one bothered me.” He shrugged.

  No, they probably hadn’t, Tegan accepted ruefully. Not too many people would want to challenge that dangerous bad-boy thing Bryn had going. Even in Central Park at night, when the drug pushers and addicts took over from the families and lovers who visited the park during the day.

  She finished the last of her coffee and rose to her feet as she became aware of how underdressed she was, considering she’d known this man less than twenty-four hours. “What are you going to do today?”

  “A breakfast at nine, coffee at eleven, lunch at—”

  “You’re going to follow me around today too?” She’d been grateful Bryn had been there last night to intercede with Steven, but having Bryn dog her footsteps all day, every day of the conference, was going to get very old very fast.

  His brows rose. “Do you know of another way I can protect you?”

  “From a distance,” she bit out. “The farther away, the better.”

  “I’m starting to get the impression you don’t like me,” Bryn taunted.

  “I don’t know you.” Tegan avoided answering his statement directly.

  Bryn tilted his head as he observed her with those weird bronze eyes between narrowed lids—Tegan really had never seen eyes that shade before. Now that she thought about it, Nathaniel had green eyes, Deryk’s were gold, Grigor’s were so dark a brown, they almost appeared black, Dylan’s were a bright sapphire blue, and Bryn’s were this metallic bronze.

  How was that even possible when they were brothers?

  The laws of DNA Tegan remembered from school said it wasn’t.

  According to Chloe, there had been ten Pendragon brothers originally. Two of them, Rufus and Gideon, had died. Although Chloe had never actually said how they died.

  Did all the brothers have different colored eyes, including the two who had died?

  And, if so—

  “Do you want to know me?”

  Tegan’s mouth flooded with saliva at the way the air in the room seemed to have suddenly become thicker, making it more difficult for her to breathe.

  And was Bryn standing closer to her than he had been?

  It certainly seemed like it.

  She could smell his aftershave now, a heady combination of spices she couldn’t quite identify. There was also an underlying scent of pine, and the fresh smell of the air after a summer rainfall, she believed to be purely Bryn. It was intoxicating.

  So much so, her nipples were tingling and puckering into tight nubs beneath her pajama top and robe, and there was a heat and plumping of the nether lips between her thighs.

  Bryn’s nostrils flared, as if he was inhaling the perfume of her arousal. “Do you, Tegan?” he prompted gruffly.

  Tegan had no idea what the original question was, every thought but Bryn and his sudden proximity having fled her brain. It was as if his unique scent, pine and that fresh-smelling air after a rainfall, had invaded all her senses, completely robbing her of all rational thought.

  She didn’t move away, her breathing becoming shallow, as Bryn slowly raised a hand and stroked the back of his long fingers against the heat of her cheek. It caused a jolt of electricity to course through Tegan’s body before centering as a burn between her thighs.

  Her arousal deepened, juices slicking her nether lips, her clit becoming an aching throb.

  Tegan’s gaze was held captive by Bryn’s as she lifted up on her toes and swayed toward him, her lips slightly parted as if waiting for the possession of his kiss.

  A kiss that never came.

  Instead, those bronze eyes suddenly glittered with angry displeasure, and Bryn’s hand dropped to his side before he stepped abruptly away from her.

  Tegan felt as if she was slowly emerging from a thick fog where only Bryn existed. Those mesmerizing eyes. The chiseled perfection of his mouth. Those muscular shoulders and chest. His unique aroma that appealed to, and held captive, every one of her senses.

  God, she’d never wanted anything more than she wanted Bryn Pendragon right now.

  A desire he either didn’t reciprocate or had no intention of satisfying.

  Tegan could appreciate the irony of the situation, even if Bryn couldn’t.

  She had Steven Baker chasing after her with his creepy and misdirected attempts to win her over.

  Now she discovered she wanted Bryn Pendragon. So desperately, she just wanted to launch herself into his arms and beg him to make love to her. Literally beg him. Something, an intensity of emotion, she’d never experienced before. And all for a man who not only didn’t seem to approve of her, but also didn’t like her.

  How masochisti
c was that?

  Bryn was only here at all as a favor to Chloe. Something Tegan would do well to remember the next time she had this overwhelming impulse to throw herself at Bryn and kiss him.

  Hopefully there wouldn’t be a next time.

  Maybe.

  Chapter 5

  “No, you can’t talk to my mate,” Nathaniel snapped down the telephone line after Bryn had asked to do exactly that.

  Bryn had such a tight grip on his cell phone, it was in danger of being totally crushed. “I need to speak to Chloe,” he insisted through gritted teeth.

  He’d known, once Tegan had left to go to the bathroom to shower and dress, that he couldn’t continue to stay in New York. But he needed to talk to Chloe first, to try to explain to her why he couldn’t stay here any longer and protect her friend, but without telling Chloe that Tegan was his fated mate.

  Because, against everything Bryn had decided years ago regarding taking a mate, contrary to every single one of his survival instincts, he had touched Tegan.

  The one thing he’d decided he couldn’t, shouldn’t, mustn’t do to his fated mate.

  The compulsion to do so had been so strong, Bryn hadn’t been able to stop himself from learning if Tegan’s skin felt as soft as it looked.

  It had felt fucking amazing.

  Like liquid silk.

  Hot, liquid silk.

  The hand that had touched Tegan still burned from the contact, ached with the need to touch her again. To caress all of her as Bryn demanded she surrender herself to him.

  His dragon would accept nothing less that Tegan’s complete submission.

  A possibility Bryn couldn’t and wouldn’t allow.

  Hence this phone call to Chloe.

  Unfortunately, Nathaniel had been the one to answer Chloe’s cell phone. “Just put your mate on the line and stop being so fucking territorial,” Bryn instructed his brother harshly.

  There was a heartbeat of silence before Nathaniel rasped, “Chloe is in labor.”

  “What?” Bryn heard the cracking of the plastic casing as his hand tightened about his cell phone.

  “You heard me,” his brother came back aggressively. “To make matters worse, my mother has arrived. Now go do your job and protect Chloe’s friend, and leave me to take care of my mate.” He ended the call.

  Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

  Nathaniel had sounded distraught.

  None of them knew how Chloe was going to react to giving birth to the first Pendragon offspring in sixteen centuries. Or even whether that offspring would be born human or dragon. The scans showed the baby as being human, but that could change during the birth.

  Born of a human father and a goddess mother, Bryn and his brothers had all been born human on the island of Annwn, the Welsh Otherworld. The brothers hadn’t been able to take on their dragon form until they reached the age of thirty-five, which was also when they had stopped aging and left Annwn.

  But none of them, not even Dylan, their healer, knew what would happen to Chloe during the birth of the dragon-human hybrid offspring.

  Chloe and Nathaniel had been mated for ten months now. She’d already absorbed a great deal of the aphrodisiac into her bloodstream from the initial mating bite, and it was replenished every time Nathaniel bit her during sex. It would also ensure Chloe lived as long as her dragon mate.

  But Dylan wasn’t sure if Chloe, a human, would survive the birth of her hybrid baby.

  And if Chloe died, then so would Nathaniel.

  Not immediately. History had shown that the death of a fated mate resulted in the remaining mate sickening and then dying three weeks later. They now knew they had lost their brother Rufus’s mate in that way two hundred years ago, after Rufus had been killed by her dragon-hunter family.

  Bryn’s own problem of having met his fated mate but having no intention of taking her, paled into insignificance against the outcome of Chloe’s fight to survive the birthing of Nathaniel’s offspring.

  The fact Nathaniel’s mother, Aeronwed, the Welsh goddess of war and battles, had made her first appearance since the brothers left Annwn sixteen centuries ago, did not bode well for that outcome.

  “Is something wrong?”

  Mine.

  Bryn turned to face Tegan, knowing that the uncertainty of the outcome of Chloe giving birth was another reason why he couldn’t take Tegan as his mate. Chloe’s pregnancy, so soon after she and Nathaniel met, had been an accident, before Dylan had formulated the dragon contraceptive. But that didn’t mean the same thing couldn’t happen to another fated mate. The drive for a dragon to procreate was primal, all consuming, once they met their fated mate. The contraceptive antidote had to be taken each and every time a dragon claimed his mate. Without it, the possibility of pregnancy was high, a certainty if they had unprotected sex.

  Bryn had no problem with dying himself, but he would not be the cause of his mate’s death, for whatever reason.

  As he now knew, Tegan’s death.

  “Chloe is in labor,” he stated evenly.

  Tegan’s expression instantly brightened with excitement. “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  Her excitement dimmed to a frown at his obvious lack of enthusiasm. “Has something gone wrong?” The frown turned to an expression of panic. “Oh God, is Chloe okay? Do I need to go to her—”

  “She’s fine,” Bryn hastened to reassure her, realizing that alarming Tegan wasn’t the wisest thing to do. Her instinct was to go to Wales to be with her friend, and not knowing the outcome of the labor, Tegan’s presence wouldn’t be good for any of them. “And she has Nathaniel’s mother with her.”

  “Nathaniel’s mother?” Tegan repeated slowly. “She isn’t your mother too?”

  Instead of calming Tegan’s concern for Chloe, Bryn realized he’d opened up another potential minefield. How was a human female supposed to understand they were eight brothers with the same human father but a different mother? Let alone that each of those mothers was a Welsh goddess.

  “That would certainly explain the eyes,” Tegan added distractedly.

  “Sorry?”

  “All of you have different color eyes.”

  That was because those shades reflected the color of their dragons’ scales.

  Nathaniel’s dragon was green.

  Deryk’s golden.

  Dylan’s blue.

  Bryn’s bronze.

  Aeran’s, Rhys’s, and Garrett’s eyes were also the colors of their dragons.

  Only Grigor, as their leader, was different. His eyes were almost black, but his dragon was red.

  It was a testament to Tegan’s intelligence that she’d noticed the differences of their eyes.

  It was also indicative of the care Bryn needed to take around her if he wasn’t to reveal the real secret of the Pendragon brothers.

  “You’re going to be late for your breakfast meeting,” he reminded her as a diversion.

  “Oh God, yes.” Tegan instantly morphed into editor mode as she ran into the bedroom to pick up the papers she needed as well as her shoulder bag. “But you’ll keep me informed about Chloe, won’t you?” She really would rather have flown home to be with her friend, even though she accepted there wasn’t a lot she could do except be there. Which, considering Nathaniel’s mother had turned up, also seemed superfluous.

  Bryn nodded. “Of course.”

  Tegan hurried from the suite, leaving Bryn to follow behind her, if that was what he wanted to do.

  But if he thought the intriguing subject of the brothers’ eyes was at an end, he was sadly mistaken. She sensed there was still a lot Bryn wasn’t telling her, and Tegan had every intention of returning to the subject the moment they were alone together again.

  Which didn’t happen for the rest of the day, as it seemed she ran from one meeting to the next, drinking too much coffee and eating too much food.

  But she remained aware, always aware, of Bryn’s watchful presence, wherever she happened to be or who she happened to be with.r />
  As Tegan was still haunted by thoughts of that kiss they had almost shared this morning.

  She knew she hadn’t imagined the desire burning in Bryn’s eyes. Or the charge of electricity that had gone through her body the moment his knuckles touched her cheek. A charge Bryn had also seemed to feel, from the way his pupils had blown wide after breathing in her arousal, leaving only a thin rim of bronze about the blackness.

  So why hadn’t Bryn taken her up on the invitation and kissed her?

  Tegan had been burning up with desire when she went to take a shower, and half temped to take care of that desire herself before she stepped beneath the hot spray. But she had decided against it. It would have been too humiliating if Bryn guessed she’d felt the need to stroke and caress herself to a climax simply because being in the same room with him, having him touch her cheek, had aroused her so thoroughly.

  But being alone with Bryn in the confines of the elevator going back up to their suite after her last meeting of the afternoon, neither of them speaking, was enough to tell Tegan her desire for Bryn was still there as a tingle in her breasts and a moist ache between her thighs.

  She finally broke that silence as they walked down the hallway to their suite. “Any news on Chloe?”

  Their suite.

  Tegan had no idea how she was going to get through another five days—and nights—of sharing a suite with the overwhelmingly attractive Bryn.

  “None,” he answered her abruptly.

  Tegan studied the slight pallor of his face. “You’re worried.”

  “Yes.” He used his key card to unlock the door, holding it open so that Tegan could enter first before following her inside.

  It was like stepping into a refuge of peace after the hectic pace of her day, the hotel now packed to capacity with the authors and readers attending the conference.

  Apart from the fact her arousal had deepened to an almost unbearable degree now that she was alone again with Bryn, Tegan inwardly mocked herself.

  Yes, apart from that!

  She—

  Tegan slowly straightened from dropping her papers and bag onto one of the chairs as she saw the rectangular white box, wrapped in red ribbon, sitting on top of the coffee table in the sitting room.