Dragon Her Back (Entangled Covet) Read Online Free PDF Page A

completely forgotten the dead fish.
    His pleased expression shifted, and he thumped his feet down hard on the floor. “You didn’t open them, did you?”
    “No.”
    “Why not?” His furrowed brow was intense, like he was trying to discern the last word in a crossword puzzle.
    “I’ve been a little preoccupied.”
    He stared hard, communicating his displeasure with a lift of his dark brows. “What can I do for you?” His question was gruff, and she sensed his dragon, barely leashed under his human skin.
    Mei sat across from him in a black chair without invitation. A gray tie coiled in a perfect circle on his desk, the edges perfectly aligned. She stared at the weave and symmetry of the fabric rather than the overwhelming feeling of being ensconced with him.
    “I’ve never been in here.”
    He frowned and open-palmed his hands toward the ceiling. “You want a tour?” His voice was sarcastic, and he dropped his palms to his flat stomach, drawing her eyes. She knew what he looked like under the business suit. The images of him naked, strong, in their bed in Paris cascaded in rapid succesion, making it hard to breathe. The scent of him, the heat of him surrounded her and she looked at the tie as if it was a lifeline to sanity.
    Silence stretched, becoming loud and distorted with numbing white noise, making him too close and too far at the same time. She raised her eyes to his, seeing him staring, waiting for her to speak.
    The fax. She had to get answers on Bo Quan. “You’re angry with me.”
    “I’m frustrated with you. There’s a difference. It’ll be six years in—”
    “I know.” Immediately, the images she’d pushed aside crowded back in her mind and a tight ball of longing, edged out her current fear. He was supposed to have been a fling for her, an escape anthem, a declaration of independence. Then she’d woken to find his binding dragon mark on her hand and all her hopes for a new life had disappeared.
    “I understand that things between us took you by surprise,” Darius said, drawing her attention to the present. “They took me by surprise, too. But like it or not, we’re mates, and I want you back in my bed.”
    With their very lives at risk, his preoccupation with the carnal side of their relationship rubbed her the wrong way. “That’s all you care about? Sex?”
    “Is there more?” His tone issued a challenge for her to wade right on into that quagmire.
    What more indeed? Li hadn’t cared about anything but her ability to continue his line, and when she’d been unable to, he’d made no attempt to hide his interest in other women. “Mates are supposed to love each other, or at the very least like each other. We can’t stand each other.”
    “I like you very much.”
    “No, you don’t.” Mei laughed. “You want to strangle me most of the time.”
    “That’s not true,” he said. “I’d never harm you.”
    She held his gaze, caught by his certainty. He took note of her interest with an assessing side tilt of his head, and she dropped her gaze to the stack of papers in her hands. “Scott said you sent ground intel to investigate the fax I got?”
    “Yes,” Darius answered, but she could tell his mind was still on their more personal conversation. “They found nothing. Very odd.”
    She lifted her face, and for once did not try to mask her fear.
    “What is it?” Darius leaned farther over the desk. “You’re upset.”
    Upset was such a benign word for the raucous nightmare ruling her life that she laughed, brittle and tight. “Yes, I am upset .” She gathered the facts to filter them down to the essentials. “This group may present a threat.”
    His eyes narrowed on her face, so she knew he looked beneath her façade. Studying every clue she gave away in her expression, in her body posture, in the tight clasp of her hands on the pages of research. He was trained to detect body language tells, and keeping the secrets from him no longer seemed possible. The words