Page 40 of Draco's Defiance
Her mind was quiet as he wandered from the room and closed the door, his lips curling as he realized what that meant. For the first time since he’d known her, he’d been able to silence her racing thoughts. He’d done that! A peculiar sense of pride swelled in his chest. Giving Moira peace of mind was worth more than a little heartache with Sebastian.
Moira
THE DAY WAS DEFINITELY not working out the way Moira had anticipated. Sure, she hoped that there would be passionate sex, and Draco hadn’t let her down on that score. Her thighs trembled just thinking about the pleasure he’d squeezed from her body, but she’d wrongly assumed that they would have dealt with the legal matters first. That’s what she’d stayed up late working for. She’d memorized the points she’d planned to present to him in her head over coffee that morning, but as things stood, her briefcase was still in his hall, waiting for their attention. The conversation had never happened.
“Funny.”
She whispered the words to herself as she drained her drink. Things might not be proceeding as planned, but somehow, she’d never felt happier. It didn’t seem to matter that she’d done all that work for nothing. Didn’t matter that she’d permitted him to take the lead. That was what she’d come for. Maybe she’d lied to herself while she’d studied his contract line by line, convincing herself that it was his fee that interested her, but it wasn’t.
It was Draco. His smile, his body, and those intense blue eyes.
It had always been Draco.
Rising from her seat, she placed her empty cup back on the table and wrapped the enormous shirt he’d loaned her tighter around herself as she contemplated another drink.
No. She inhaled as she counseled herself. Not another coffee. I’ll never sleep tonight.
Her pulse quickened as she considered what she might do instead of rest. Moira certainly had some ideas...
The abrupt noise from the far corner of the room buzzed into life, making her heart miss a beat. Tensing, she looked to find the source. It was an old-fashioned type of telephone, like something out of the 1950s, and its shrill ring stopped her dead in her tracks. Her stare swung between the screeching phone and the door Draco had left from.
What should she do?
Would he expect me to answer?
She didn’t know him well enough to answer his phone for him, and since he was visiting the bathroom, he probably wasn’t going to come running back to stop the incessant chime himself.
Just ignore it.
She breathed at the rational answer, intending to follow her own advice, and yet something about the insistent tone made it difficult to comply. Had any noise grated as harshly as this one seemed to, its resonance running up and down her spine with every passing ring?
‘Answer me!’ The black phone’s clanging message was clear with each passing ring. ‘Answer me! Answer me!’
“Okay, fine.” Heart hammering, she turned in its direction, intending to respond and yet hesitating as she neared the cause of the relentless racket. “I can’t answer it,” she concluded. “It’s not my place, my house, or my phone.”
Just as she thought she might go mad if the whirring chime didn’t stop, it finally ceased, the abrupt quiet almost as loud as the phone’s call had been.
“Thank God.” Her heart was just starting to settle at the silence when she noticed the clicking sound of what she guessed was an answering machine whirring into life. Holding her breath, she moved closer as a male voice burst onto the loud speaker.
“Draco?” The guy sounded younger than her host, his voice smooth as he inquired about Draco’s whereabouts. “Draco, your cell doesn’t have a signal, but if you’re there, pick up the phone.”
Less than a foot away, Moira stood suspended in time as she listened to the new message.
“Listen, man, I’ve just had Sebastian on the phone.”
So, this wasn’t Sebastian, then? Who was it then? Another brother?
“He’s upset, Draco, and he wants our help, but he says you’re refusing.” The stranger sighed. “Wanna tell me what’s going on?”
A pause ensued where Moira could scarcely take another breath. There was an urgency to the message, as though it was somehow wrong that she was hearing it.
“Listen, call me back when you get this. Monroe has gone rogue,” the voice went on. “He tried to snatch Rebecca, but we think he’ll use the chimera to come after her again, or another one of us. We have to stick together, Draco. Balthazar thinks we might need to shift and use our dragons. The chimera will be damn near impossible to stop otherwise.”
What? Her heart hammered at the collection of disturbing nouns. Dragons? Chimeras? Had she heard correctly?
Moira gulped as she struggled to understand what had just happened. The guy on the other end of the line was talking about mythological creatures as though they were real, as if they walked the Earth like people, and what was it he’d said? They needed to ‘shift’? What did that mean? Could the anonymous caller be referring to the transformation that men underwent in fiction when they turned into were-wolves? She sniggered at the ridiculous idea. What was going on?
“Anyway, four dragons are better than three, Draco.” The stranger laughed. “We need you. So, call me.” The machine beeped before the line went dead.