Tempting the Dragon King

by Kiersten Fay

  A thin, sharp object jutted out through a crack to slice his knuckle.

  He reared back. “Ouch!”

  “You don’t hear too good, do you?” she snapped.

  Both guards were quick to jump on her violent reaction. “See?”

  His cut was already beginning to heal when the woman’s voice shot at him, strict and fierce. “Touch it again and you’ll lose a finger.”

  Orik felt the anger rise in his throat, hot and heavy. “That is the second time you’ve threatened me. I doona recommend going for a third.”

  “Eat a donkey dick.”

  He gazed in bewilderment at the gnarled barricade. It had taken him the better part of a decade to climb through the ranks and earn his position as head of the guard and gain the respect of his peers and subordinates. Even with his close ties to the crown, it hadn’t come easy. In fact, he would argue those close ties had made things more difficult for him in the long run. An orphaned waif adopted by the king? A dirt-poor stray with no royal blood elevated to near princehood? Still, he’d had to claw and scrape for every crumb of respect. And this female was undermining him in front of his men like it was her Gods-given right.

  One hand curled into a fist at his side, and he pointed the other to where she likely stood opposite him. “You canna stay in there forever. Understand me, woman. You’ll be coming out of there today whether you like it or no’.”

  “And understand me. I don’t give up and I don’t give in. I won’t be some alien’s science project without a fight. And I can stay in here for months if I want. I found all the goodies. Pantry’s full. And I’m locked and loaded, buddy.”

  Locked and what? “Last chance to make this amicable. You can either be our guest or our prisoner. Choose wisely.”

  A metallic sound drew his gaze down. Several small spheres rolled out from under the wall of debris. What the…?

  He heard the sound of her boots scurrying away just as one of the guards hollered, “Shield your eyes!” But the warning came too late. Loud, bright flashes blinded Orik, followed by a sour scent that made him retch and his eyes burn like they’d been splashed with acid. Desperate for clean air, the three clambered out of the ship, gagging and hacking and rubbing their tear-stained eyes.

  “I’ll kill her!” Garrison grated through labored gasps.

  “What the hell was that?” Orik heaved, still unable to see clearly.

  Kellvin answered, “Flash bombs of some kind coupled with an irritant that makes it hard to see and breathe for a time. We believe it’s a Kayadon weapon. She’s found a stash of them in there. We thought she ran out.”

  She’d been bombarding his men with these?

  Though she had run after rolling out her weapons, that ship was small and she couldn’t go very far. She might be feeling the effects herself unless she’d secured herself in a room…which meant she wouldn’t be near the barricade to defend it.

  But he didn’t dare reenter the ship yet. Not until the cloying musk had dissipated somewhat.

  Meanwhile, he continued to wheeze as he struggled to drag air into his lungs. “She’s a hellion,” he rasped, coughing repeatedly. Through each hack and sputter, he caught the low snickers of the other guards standing by. He got the distinct impression that they’d been curious to see how he’d fared with the tenacious female. Apparently, they found his failure amusing. And that grated his hide.

  Overcome by a righteous indignation and determination, he threw his shoulders back and stomped back onto the ship, braving the barbed air, and began tearing at the barrier, ripping metal away and discarding it behind him with a volley of clatter. A moment later, he heard a hatch opened from within, followed by her protests. “Stop it! Stop it!” It sounded as though she tried to get closer, but the effects of her attack still lingered in the air, and she began to cough and gasp, backing away. The hatch closed once more. Her lungs could not take it, and she was smart to return to her inner sanctum.

  Though Orik, too, was having difficulty breathing, his supernatural healing meant his lungs were mending just as quickly as the gas could tear them up, and as motivated as he was, he could endure much worse than this.

  Soon the tangle of metal was a heap of rubble that he simply climbed over, revealing a long corridor lined with hatches. At the farthest end, he spied those blazing hazel eyes peeking through a small porthole. He shot her a look he knew she could interpret; his lips curled at the edges, his eyes flashing with triumph.

  She countered by pressing her middle finger to the glass. His spunky human queen had educated him on the meaning of that gesture.

  Orik bared his teeth in a mocking grin. “Out of tricks?”

  He frowned when she mirrored his expression.

  3

  Who the fuck is this guy? Goliath?

  Jessie peered at the man through the hatch’s small porthole. He was a straight up beast, she noted, running her gaze over his gladiator’s physique. Barely anyone on earth was that faultlessly beefy. Even Dwayne Johnson with his comedically arching eyebrow would be impressed. Goliath’s shoulders practically sported their own hemisphere. By comparison, his waist was slim, yet still double her width, and packed with muscles. And his arms? Fucking tree trunks!

  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Was he built in a lab?

  She surveyed his face. His jaw could have been sculpted by the Hollywood gods, all beauty and masculinity, cut and chiseled to a perfect rough-and-tumble angle with just the right amount of stubble. His dark hair was short, yet long enough that it still had to be brushed off his face. But it was his arresting eyes that held her attention. They were like ice in a storm. Clear and blue, yet hard and piercing, menacing, targeting her through the porthole.

  Though his physical appearance was pleasing, it was his dark uniform and action-ready stance that convinced her he was a dangerous adversary. It was highly likely that his long-sleeved coat concealed weapons…just as hers did.

  As soon as she’d realized capture was imminent, she’d retrieved her red biker’s jacket from her pack, the one that had cost half a month’s paycheck—a functionality-meets-beauty kind of purchase.

  She used it to conceal both her loaded 9mm and utility knife.

  Goliath’s stance was that of a trained warrior. Her father used to stand like that, a former Marine and war veteran. It was like he could never shake the constant tension in his body, the readiness to attack or defend. A mighty berserker, struggling every second to shrug off the horrors of his past, but it had always been there, in his movements, in his countenance, like an impenetrable miasma that gathered around him constantly.

  The man currently glowering at her through the window exuded that same vibe, a faint similarity, a faint…coloring? She blinked, literally seeing strange ghostly hues dance around Goliath’s shoulders and head. The longer she looked, the more pronounced the colors became, a soft burnished orange cloud tinged at the edges by indigo. She rubbed her eyes, trying to clear them, but when she looked again, that strange orange cloud remained. Was it the gas? It had never looked like that before.

  As his gaze bore down on her, her secondary barrier seemed like a paltry obstacle. It was only a matter of time before he and his posse broke through.

  And when that happened, her last resort would be to fight her way out. Problem one: her clip only held ten bullets before she had to reload. Problem two: she had no extra bullets to reload with. She’d wasted the rest on carefree target practice the second day of her solo camping trip, long before her abduction, but how was she to know she’d be propelled into space and captured by an alien race?

  Problem three: Even if she managed to get past Goliath and his considerable backup, she didn’t know where the shit she was in the universe. She didn’t know if she was on another planet or still in space. She couldn’t fly a ship. Not even this one. She’d tried. The hieroglyphs around the controls might as well explain the secrets to quantum physics for all she could interpret.

  The hatch handle jiggled. She had figured out how
to lock it from her side. When she glanced back up, Goliath bared his even white teeth. “Open this door,” he ordered.

  She backed away, shaking her head, her heartbeat knocking against her ribs. Having determined her chances of battling her way out—nil-point-nil—she could see only one final option.

  She retrieved her gun from her jacked holster and gazed at it. One of these bullets had Jessie Jane Knight written on the side. Her stomach felt like churning rocks, and her eyes began to water. Is this really how I end? With my own gun? By my own hand?

  Was this a coward’s way out? Is that what her father would have thought? Modern warrior that he was, she had no doubt he would have fought. He’d have fought to the death, taking out as many aliens as he could before he kicked the bucket. But as much as he’d taught her, she couldn’t take on an army. She wasn’t a trained soldier. She wasn’t a…killer.

  Unless I count what I’m about to do to myself.

  And for all her bravery, the prospect of being a lab rat was too horrible to fathom.

  She felt a warm tear slide down her cheek as she rubbed her thumb over the butt of her gun.

  “What are you doing?” Goliath’s rough voice held a hint of concern, his agitated gaze darting between her face and the gun in her grip. Was her intention painted all over her face? Apparently so, because he ground out, “Doona do this.”

  “I won’t do well in captivity,” she replied earnestly, as if to convince him this was the only course of action left. Why was she even bothering?

  As she slid her finger over the trigger, a thunderous roar made her jump. It was the sound a wild animal might make if in agony…and if nuzzling a microphone with the bass turned up. She practically felt the reverberation in her bones. It was like no creature she had ever heard before.

  What sort of animal did they have out there with them?

  She noticed Goliath had vanished from his position at the window. Then there was a sudden flash of light and an eruption of fire. Flames blasted the window in a frenzy.

  Holy hell. Had a bomb gone off?

  As flames whipped the window, the hatch handle began to glow. Before long, the whole door began to take on a molten hue. The heat was tremendous, she could feel it on her skin, even from where she stood several feet away. Was the entire ship about to go up in a blaze? Was she doomed no matter what?

  She watched with trepidation, transfixed by the odd fire still pelting the hatch. Had Goliath and his men been torched? Who was responsible?

  Without warning, the blaze suddenly died, replaced by tendrils of rising smoke. Then something rammed the door.

  Boom!

  Whatever it was, it was massive; the ear-splitting sound vibrated the entire ship.

  Boom!

  The hatch bent inward, dented once, twice. Terror seized her…

  Boom!

  Then an odd sensation came over her. One that was strangely somewhat familiar, and yet not. A tingling in her hands drew her gaze downward.

  She gasped. Her palms shimmered, enveloped by a ghostly blue flame, though she felt no heat. No pain.

  What the—?

  Boom!

  The metal screeched harshly, grinding and whining, hurting her ears. The burning-hot door buckled, peeling away from the frame. An object dug through the small opening. At first she mistook it for a crowbar. Then she looked closer and gasped.

  Holy fuck! Is that a claw?

  Stunned by the sight, she stumbled back and tripped over her pack. The gun went off as she fell, the bullet ricocheting around the room before bouncing to a halt somewhere she couldn’t see.

  Sprawled on her ass, she’d barely even registered the misfire as a set of talons shoved the rest of the way through that crowing crack, bending and reeling the metal back like a Little Debbie Swill Roll. She shuddered in fear. Then the entire hatch was wrenched away as though it were as pliable as papier-mâché.

  Adrenaline doused her system, making it hard to breathe. Her thoughts slogged through a thick swamp. Cemented in place by terror, all she could do was watch and wait to see what kind of monstrous thing would creep through that threshold.

  Liquified metal dripped from the doorframe, sizzling on the cool floor and kicking up plumes of steam. Beyond, a shadowy figure sliced through the smoke.

  Instead of a monster, Goliath came into view.

  He stepped into the room, completely uninjured, ignoring the red-hot magma raining down around him.

  How had he survived that fire? Where was that monster? Was it still out there? Or…could she have imagined it?

  While her mind spun like a firecracker tied to a pinwheel, her body reacted to the approaching danger and she instinctively aimed her 9mm at Goliath. Her hand trembled like it never had before. She’d only ever shot at inanimate objects. Never a living thing. But he was coming toward her…reaching for her!

  It didn’t even feel like she had pulled the trigger, but suddenly the gun recoiled in her grip. Goliath’s left shoulder jerked back. Sweat dripped down her temple.

  He glanced at his wound, then glared down at her, his enraged eyes glowing green like some kind of demon.

  As she gawked, dominated by fright, not breathing, body shuddering, he snatched the gun from her grip and held it up for her to see him crush it in his fist like it was made of soft cheese.

  Every fiber of her being freaked—the—fuck—out.

  A banshee-like scream ripped through her lungs as she kicked her feet along the floor, scrambling away from him as fast as her floundering limbs could carry her. She reached in her jacket for her knife, but the second she pointed it at him, she knew it was a mistake.

  He moved so fast, she couldn’t track him.

  Suddenly he wrenched her wrist back, easily disarming her. Her knife clattered to the floor. In the next mind-boggling instant, he dragged her to her feet and positioned himself behind her in a hold that had her arms bent painfully behind her.

  Once again she cried out, petrified.

  “What in the world?” a voice interrupted…a soft feminine voice.

  A petite woman draped in elegant evening wear carefully towed her way over the still-molten threshold. A last piece of hot metal dripped down, landing on the tail of her gown. She rushed to stamp it out. “Dammit! Edel is going to kill me.”

  Jessie wanted to rub her eyes, because there seemed to be a strange pinkish-purple halo around this woman. Could the cloying fumes burning metal be messing with her?

  “Your Majesty!” Goliath exclaimed, his voice both shocked and concerned. “You should no’ be here.”

  “Nonsense. Who else is going to—” The woman, who appeared to be around Jessie’s age, blinked at them both in surprise. “Orik, what in the hell are you doing?”

  “I am restraining the human.”

  “What? Why?”

  “She is dangerous, Your Majesty.”

  Her Majesty waved that notion away. “Don’t be ridiculous. You let her go right now.”

  “She shot me with an Earth weapon.”

  Her Majesty’s eyes went wide. “Shot you?”

  “Aye. Then she threatened me with a knife.”

  Her Majesty’s gaze zeroed in on Jessie’s Ka-Bar lying on the floor. “Oi, now, that's a knife,” she exclaimed…in a faux Australian accent?

  That couldn’t have been a quote from Crocodile Dundee.

  Then Her Majesty turned in a circle, taking in the thrashed state of the ship for the first time. The control room was a shell of its former self, just like the rest of the craft. Jessie had ripped up, torn out, and demolished whatever she could. Panels that used to hide the inner workings of the ship had bulked out her initial barrier. Now, wires and pipes were exposed everywhere. Much of the ceiling had been gutted so she could carve a path through the ventilation system to the other areas of the ship where the doors had been locked: the hydroponics room, the storage room, the sleeping quarters. Preparing to make her stand here in the control room, she had stripped those rooms of their goods and stashe
d everything here, designating corners for food, sleep, and weapons.

  Her Majesty knelt and rifled through Jessie’s considerable supplies. “How did you get all this stuff?”

  Goliath shook her when she didn’t answer right away.

  “I went through the ceiling.”

  Her Majesty glanced up and studied the exposed metal framing. “Are you shitting me? Dammit! Why hadn’t I thought of that?” Facing Jessie, she tapped her chin. “Geez. You’re smart, pretty, and resourceful? You make booby traps and you have a wicked sick Rambo knife? Who are you, Lara Croft’s little sister?”

  O-kay, that was way too many cultural references for an alien. “What is going on here? Who are you people? And what was that…thing?”

  “Oh, of course. Sorry,” replied Her Majesty. “This is Orik, head of the guard, and I’m Juniper, but you can call me June. I’m, uh, sort of the queen around here. And I’m from Earth, too.”

  Dragon Lords

  TEMPTING THE DRAGON KING

  SEDUCED BY THE DRAGON LORD

  * * *

  Shadow Quest

  THE DEMON’S POSSESSION

  THE DEMON SLAVE

  THE DEMON’S RETRIBUTION

  DEMON UNTAMED

  * * *

  Creatures of Darkness

  A WICKED HUNGER

  A WICKED NIGHT

  A WICKED DESIRE

  * * *

  Ever Nights Chronicles

  KEEPING HIS SIREN

  THE VAMPIRE’S MASQUERADE

  * * *

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  www.kierstenfay.com

  © 2018 Kiersten Fay

  * * *