Theodore shouldn’t have worried so. He found his mate, nearly half an hour later, smiling and laughing with the enemy – with the competition.
His worry was replaced with anger when he saw how the young impudent boy dared to briefly bump his legs with hers under the table.
He marched there while trying very hard to contain his anger.
“Let’s go,” he announced as soon as he reached their table.
They looked like such a cute couple. They looked almost like they belonged when he knew for a fact that Emily was his mate – his, totally, completely, and irrevocably.
Her head snapped up at the intrusion. Her eyes reflected both her longing for him and her anger.
“I won’t go anywhere with you,” she told him defiantly.
“We can do this calmly or make a fuss about it, dorogaya,” he said simply.
The boy she was with – he knew his name alright, he just didn’t wish to acknowledge him so – was daring enough this time around to stand up to him.
He rose to his feet and told him, “Back off, man. She doesn’t want you.”
“She doesn’t?” He echoed in an almost incredulous tone. “Should we test that theory of yours?”
The boy’s face fell.
His mate rose to her feet as well, her chair scraping the floor loudly, attracting many stares. “You have no right to come here and demand that I go with you,” she spat angrily at him. “You’re nothing to me. Not my boss. And certainly not my lover.”
He couldn’t understand where all her anger was coming from, but still the words hurt.
“Nothing to you, dorogaya?” He raised an eyebrow at her.
She had the decency to blush at that.
He closed the distance separating them and then grabbed her hand. He put it above his wildly beating heart.
“This here beats for you,” he told her amorously. He was careful enough not to bring up some other place that simply ached and outright throbbed at her mere presence.
She looked at him with something akin to awe, desperation, and slight disbelief.
There was one hell of a war going on inside that pretty head of hers.
And he was supposed to put his mate out of turmoil.
“I’ll let you handle Mrs. Steams however you see fit, dorogaya,” he said softly. “She had no right to do what she did.” He didn’t tolerate the obvious disrespect for his mate. “Just come back with me.”
He wasn’t above pleading or even begging… even if he had never done it, neither in business matters nor love matters.
His words elicited a gasp out of her.
“You don’t mean that,” she was clutching his shirt as if it was her safe-line. And her eyes were shut tightly as if she didn’t believe it.
He wanted to peer into her beautiful green eyes and see what she truly felt like.
She didn’t deny his silent wish for too long for she soon opened her eyes.
“Tell me you aren’t lying,” she basically begged of him in a soft whisper.
“I never lie,” he told her simply, his lips crooking up into the ghost of a smile.
And that was how she molded her body to his and breathed in his perfume deeply as if to make sure she wasn’t dreaming, or something along those lines.
He encircled her waist and hugged her closer to him.
“I won’t be made fun of like this,” the boy dared to say.
“You were nothing to her from the start,” Theodore told him dismissively.
His mate wanted to free herself, probably to apologize to the young Calrington, but he didn’t allow her out of his embrace.
A moment later, he had the nerve to spit out the words that undoubtedly made Theodore see red. “I listened to your whining… but like a true gold-digger, you’d much rather have a sugar daddy than a boyfriend.”
Theodore had killed for less.
Within seconds, he had the human boy in a tight hold – in broad daylight.
“I dare you to repeat that,” he iced out.
The boy was reddening by the second, and struggling too, but to no avail. And he was unable to speak no matter how much he tried to apologize.
Theodore’s beast wanted blood.
However, his mate was much too kind, much too soft.
She held on his shirt from behind and whispered a sweet, “Theo, please let him go.”
“Are you defending him?” It took all his will power not to growl the words out.
“No,” she deadpanned, “But I want to go home now.”
And just like that, he spared the young boy’s life. He used to be a man to be feared, not a lover to be controlled… and yet, here he was.
He grabbed her hand and then headed straight to his car. He opened the door like the gentleman he was brought up to be.
He looked at his sweet mate. She was unfazed by the whole ordeal… and all he could feel coming from her was desire – plenty of it.
He took pride in having gotten such a response from her.
She was undoubtedly his mate. And she was without the shred of a doubt meant for great things. She was meant to have control over him like no woman ever had. She was meant to lead… and lead, she shall.
He was after all a prince. He was supposed to inherit the crown.
And now that he had found his mate, he was bound to take on his rightful position as king.
The king, his father, was not getting any younger – 800 years and change – and he, on the other hand, was the revered God of war – Theos.
He was Theodore King, a dragon prince, a self made billionaire… but he was nothing more than putty in his mate’s hands.
His parents who had mated out of obligation, not out of love, would be outraged to see him so whipped over a frail human girl.
But he wouldn’t have it any other way.
He was Emily’s. And she was free to do with him as she pleased, so long as he could remain by her side