Dragon Lord by Kaitlyn O'Connor Page A

Mrs. Higgenbottom shooed her out of the kitchen. It was mid-morning before she came awake enough to mentally review the morning visit with any objectivity.
    She supposed, since she was sleeping in his room, he might have the idea that it was still his room. And she completely understood that he needed his clothes to change. And if he was sleeping on one of the couches he wouldn’t want to move his clothes, especially since this arrangement was supposed to be temporary.
    But for some odd reason, she had a feeling there was something going on that she was missing--like maybe it wasn’t just because of the inconvenience of moving them that Audric had left his clothes in the room. Unless they knew where he was sleeping, it was bound to look as if he was occupying the room with her.
    And then there was the kiss the night before. Simon had said he’d done it to distract her from the argument with Hatchet-face. She’d been too bemused by everything to really question it at the time, mostly because she turned into a slobbering moron the moment she discovered she was anywhere around Simon, but also because Audric had really dazzled her.
    He was a damned good kisser. She considered herself a connoisseur of kisses. She’d kissed a lot of guys, or been kissed, and most of them were pretty so-so. Some were down right nasty. Some irritating. Some boring. Some ok, and every once in a great while, some were pretty damned good. On scale of one to ten, though, Audric was a definite fifteen. She’d had guys kiss her pussy that didn’t get her that hot, that fast.
    And pretty much all she’d been able to think about since he’d kissed her was if he’d do it again and if it’d be that good the second time. And if he could kiss like that, just how good was he in the sack?
    She’d thought about that when she wasn’t wondering if Simon could kiss even half that good and what he’d be like in the sack.
    Which was why she was only just now getting around to realizing just how bizarre that episode had been.
    She could understand everything right up to the point Audric had grabbed her and kissed her. She’d been arguing with Hatchet-face, getting madder and madder, and old Higgenbottom had been getting angrier and angrier, and she supposed both of them had been getting louder, which explained why the argument had drawn attention. It didn’t explain why all of them had piled into the kitchen.
    They’d expected a show--that was the only explanation that made any sense.
    She’d suspected, at first, that the ‘show’ had to do with that kiss. She still wasn’t sure it hadn’t, because she couldn’t really remember what sort of expressions any of their audience had had on their faces.
    Except Simon.
    Simon had looked like he wanted to kiss her himself, and at the same time as if he wanted to throttle her--and not with his tongue.
    If he’d been surprised to find Audric kissing her, if any of them had been, she’d missed that part, and she didn’t know when they’d arrived. They might have been standing there when Audric had started kissing her.
    As much as she’d enjoyed that kiss, now that she’d had time to gain a little perspective, it seemed like a really lame excuse. Kissing her to distract her?
    Besides seeming lame, it was really depressing.
    On the other hand, if he’d kissed her because he knew they were there and had wanted to make it look like something was going on between them, then that wasn’t depressing or lame, and it pissed her off.
    Trying to shake the sense that had come over her the night before, that there’d been more to it than a man seizing the opportunity to do something he’d been looking for an excuse to do, she studied over it again.
    And she still got the impression that all of them had sailed into the kitchen because they’d expected … something, maybe not what had happened, but something.
    And then all of them had left when Higgenbottom had started bawling, except Audric had dashed back into