Dragon Knight (The Collegium Book 3) Read Free Page A

chance to learn the Deeper Path, to possess what she’d almost sell her soul for, and he wanted to bargain. She couldn’t have heard him correctly.
    “You want me to visit your dragon. If your dragon is real.” Well, that was blunt enough. “I want your word that as many visits as I make to your home to travel on to meet with the dragon, will be matched with the same number of private visits whereby it appears that I am staying with you, but actually I could be anywhere.”
    “And anywhere would be…? How long would you be gone?” Visions of Collegium guardians descending on her cottage in pursuit of their lost president danced through her mind.
    “A day, perhaps. And my whereabouts would be my business.”
    Private business. The president of the Collegium wanted the freedom to pursue his own agenda. Why?
    She studied his face, but there were no answers there.
    Lewis had long ago learned how to shut away his thoughts and emotions. By reputation, he had no emotions. People said he was cold. He served the Collegium and beyond that…nothing.
    So why did he want a secret route out, and what would she risk by providing it?
    Suddenly, from offering Lewis a chance to learn the Deeper Path, both she and he would have to take each other on trust.
    “If I agree, you’ll meet with Morag?”
    “Yes.”
     
     
    Lewis watched Gina’s thoughts and feelings flicker across her face. Her green eyes were remarkably expressive, perhaps more so than she guessed.
    She’d walked into his office broadcasting casual confidence and a normal level of curiosity, such as most people exhibited towards him in his new role as president.
    He couldn’t fault his bodyguard PA Chad for not looking beyond the obvious: the moderate house witchery magic Gina confessed to and her sexy appearance.
    Lewis couldn’t see magic any more, but he wasn’t blind to her physical attractions. He’d noted them even as he took in the tightness of her mouth that the red lipstick couldn’t disguise. It betrayed that she was far tenser than she wanted to appear.
    She lacked a guardian’s fight-fit physique, but she had a healthy, athletic look that said she enjoyed exercising, and she walked with the ease of someone who took for granted their agility, strength and fast reflexes. Her figure was an old-fashioned, sexy-as-hell hourglass shape, and she’d evidently chosen her outfit to emphasize it.
    He could appreciate the appeal without being influenced by it—or so he’d thought, before he clasped her hand.
    Only the knowledge that the meticulously installed protection spells and Chad’s guardian training would have detected siren magic prevented him from suspecting an ensorcelment. But no, the flash of heat, the tightening of his muscles in lust, and the need to lean closer and inhale her peach and spice scent were natural, if unwanted, signs of attraction.
    Just as disconcerting was to see her arousal as she stood near him. The pupils of her eyes had widened and her skin had flushed. Make-up might have hidden the color on her face, but the faint blush of the tender skin at the hollow of her throat, where her pulse beat fast, gave her away.
    He wanted to kiss her there, in that tender hollow, before trailing kisses down to the full breasts. He’d had to rein in his masculine instincts to concentrate on what she said, and what she unconsciously revealed.
    Burning out his magic had opened his eyes to some of the Collegium members’ unthinking biases. He’d been guilty of them himself, concentrating so hard on the magic swirling and patterning around every encounter that he’d failed to catalogue other, mundanely human aspects of an interaction. Body language could lie, but mages generally didn’t bother to mask their nervous tics, or even to realize how their subconsciouses betrayed them.
    He’d have to suggest body language classes for guardian trainees and invite serving guardians to attend.
    With Gina, her eyes had been the biggest giveaway. She was