Dragon Lord by Kaitlyn O'Connor Read Free Book Online

only a monster, but as hard as granite all over, she removed her hands from his shoulders and pushed at him. Almost reluctantly, he dropped his hands from her waist and Riana drew a breath of relief.
    “You’ve got water on your glasses,” she pointed out, as much to distract herself from her uncomfortable awareness of him as to distract him from his sudden interest in her.
    He pulled the sunglasses off, looking down at his soaked clothing for a dry spot to wipe them on.
    Seeing his dilemma, Raina said, “I’d dry them for you, but I’ve got the same problem.” She was almost sorry she’d pointed that out. It drew his attention to her at just about the same moment she realized her blouse was plastered to her skin and transparent enough she could clearly see her bra through it. Worse, the chill of the water, or the excitement of having him whisk her from the top of the water heater as if she weighed no more than a feather, had her nipples sticking out like twin bumpers on a caddy. His gaze zeroed in on the hard little nubs until heat climbed into her cheeks. She forgot all about her embarrassment, however, as he flicked a glance up at her face.
    As quickly as he looked down again, frowning as he rubbed the lenses of his glasses on his coat and then put the glasses on, she saw he had the same, really strange looking eyes as Simon Draken.
    Were they related? Or was it just some trait of the people from where ever it was they were from?
    “I should go check the damage,” she said, abruptly far too keenly aware of how close they were standing and the way the room, tiny already, seemed to have shrunk around them. He was a big man. As accustomed as she was to being around people all the time who were taller than her, she rarely even noticed--unless they were a lot taller than her, and he was. Not only that, but he was just plain big. His hands had very nearly spanned her waist, she recalled, abruptly feeling vaguely uneasy.
    She had a small waist. She’d always thought it was her best asset and had worked to keep it that way, but even so, twenty inches was a hell of a hand span--or two handed span.
    He followed her back across the garage and then up the stairs. She tried not to feel threatened. There was no reason why she should. He hadn’t been the least bit pushy, hadn’t crowded her space until he’d pulled her off the water heater, but even at that she couldn’t say that he’d purposefully intruded within her personal space. The utility room wasn’t big and he was.
    She regarded him with wide-eyed uneasiness when she discovered he’d followed her to the bathroom and stood in the doorway. He met her gaze and then looked away, a faint frown between his brows. “This is mess.”
    Distracted, Raina surveyed the room glumly. “So much for a bath,” she muttered. “Guess I won’t be getting one.”
    “You come to big house. Stay there. This must fix.”
    Her shoulders slumped dejectedly. She really, really preferred staying in the little apartment, mostly because she really, really didn’t like the idea of staying in the ‘big’ house with Mr. Smith and his friends from giant world. It was unnerving enough to be around one of them. Being around all of them made her feel like a cat romping through a lumbering herd of buffalos, in imminent danger of getting squashed if she didn’t watch her step. The alternative, though, was trotting to the big house every time she needed to use the bathroom and that didn’t appeal to her a lot more.
    Besides, she reminded herself, Mrs. Higgenbottom stayed in the main house. Shrugging, struggling to shake off her uneasiness, she followed him as he left the bathroom and went to get her suitcases. Fortunately, she hadn’t had the chance to unpack. He took her suitcases from her, shoved one under his arm and caught the handle of the other.
    He dwarfed them. If she’d had any doubt about his strength, or his size, being purely the product of an overactive imagination, she no