Vladimir (Russian Dragon Heat #1) - Carole Mortimer Page 0,12

make it an informal one.”

A mocking smile curved her lips. “Does that mean you’re going to unfasten two buttons at the top of your shirt instead of one?”

Vladimir drew in a long and controlling breath, and then wished he hadn’t as yet more of Tanya’s addictive scent invaded his senses.

She snorted before continuing. “I’ve been a prisoner here for months, and you’ve come nowhere near during all that time, so why are you here now and being so insistent on my having dinner with you this evening?” She looked at him from between suspiciously narrowed lids.

“As I said, there are things we need to discuss.” And Tanya was wrong in her accusation that he hadn’t come to their winter palace in the last three months.

Vladimir’s previous visits, and there had been many since he had first brought Tanya here, had been made as dragon, shielded and under the added cloak of darkness. During none of those visits had he alerted the Mikhailovs or Tanya to his presence or come inside the palace itself.

Instead, he had landed on the roof of the east turret and allowed his dragon his fill of the knowledge that their mate was only a short distance away, even if through several feet of bricks and mortar. Those visits had sustained his dragon’s need to be close to his mate, if only for a short time.

And Vladimir’s needs?

He had been alive for a millennium, and during that time, he believed he had developed a will strong enough to sustain him through anything.

Except his need of Tanya Petrova.

Her beauty, her spirit, and most of all her total lack of awe for who and what he was, made her a formidable adversary, as well as, despite what he had told Vaughn and himself, a very worthy mate.

“What sort of things?” Tanya continued to eye him warily.

“I would prefer to wait until this evening to discuss them.”

“And I would prefer that you tell me now,” she came back aggressively.

“Careful, Tanya,” he snapped. “I might have allowed a certain leeway in your manner thus far, but I am not a man known for his tolerance of others.”

“Haven’t I been showing enough subservience to you or your dragon, Your Majesty?” she challenged.

“Why do you call me that?” he demanded. Russia had been without a tsar or tsarina for over a century, since the assassination of the royal family and all their children, and no one but the Romanov brothers and their human servants knew that Vladimir was king of the Russian dragon shifters.

“Because you’re arrogant enough to think of yourself as royalty,” Tanya scorned.

In Vladimir’s case, there was no thinking about it. “In that case, I haven’t noticed you showing any subservience toward me or my brothers.”

“Nor will I.”

Impossible for Vladimir not to feel admiration for the way this woman continued to refuse to be intimidated by him or his dragon. “A dragon usually only chooses to exert his patience when it comes to the stalking of prey,” he told her softly.

Her eyes widened in alarm, her throat moving as she swallowed before answering him. “Is that what I am to you? Is it your intention to feed me tonight, maybe fatten me up for a few days, for the sole purpose of letting me loose before chasing me down and then killing and eating me?”

He scowled his irritation. “Once again you are being ridiculous in this assumption I wish to eat you.”

“Am I?”

“Yes.” Vladimir took the steps that brought him almost within touching distance of her, feeling an inner admiration for his mate when she refused to step back. “Believe me when I tell you that currently my idea of ‘eating’ you and your own are two decidedly different concepts,” he warned huskily. “My way would involve both of us being naked, my head between your thighs, with the result of much pleasure for both of us,” he added so there should be no doubt as to his meaning.

Tanya stared up at him in puzzlement for several long and searching seconds before her eyes widened in understanding. “You can’t be serious?” she gasped as she took a step back, as if the threat of him giving her physical pleasure was more terrifying to her than physical pain.

Causing Vladimir to question if she had ever known the former.

He doubted there had been any pleasure during her years of having to sell herself, and in the years since, she appeared to have dedicated her time and emotions to her ungrateful brother. None of