Ryuu rubbed his face, “First coffee…then talkie.”
Alexis giggled. “I just wanted to say thank you for breakfast.” She caressed the necklace at her throat. “And I want to thank you for the gift.”
Ryuu squinted down at the necklace around Alexis’s neck. “Sorry to burst your bubble, princess, but I had nothing to do with that. Hell, I’m not even awake yet,” he yawned. “Besides if I was trying to impress you, I would have sent you an ancient book of love poems. Jewelry is Ladon’s specialty since his nanos have an affinity for minerals.”
Ryuu waved her off as he walked towards the area they were using as a kitchen. Alexis wasn’t sure how to react to the knowledge that this morning’s surprise was the work of Ladon alone. She had never had a man go out of his way to do something nice for her.
A small smile played on her lips as she looked down at the beautiful necklace. Somewhere deep inside she was happy that it was Ladon who gave her such a thoughtful gift.
Alexis blushed and dropped the necklace from her hands like it burned her. Thankfully the chain was still around her neck, so it didn’t fall to the floor. What was she thinking? Ladon wasn’t for her. He was arrogant, rich, and ran in circles that she would never circulate in. He had ruined her career. If that wasn’t enough, he wasn’t even human…. He was a damn dragon for god’s sake.
Good manners dictated that she needed to thank him for such a gift, but she didn’t have to give him more than gratitude.
*****
The storm raged for nearly a week, and every morning Alexis woke up to some new gift. This morning it was a piece of poetry that was so bad it made her laugh. She still tried to maintain a professional distance, but Ladon was chipping away at her resolve a little bit more every day.
Alexis knew that she should probably just tell Ladon that he was wasting his time. Every time she opened her mouth to do just that, she ended up blushing and spouting off some nonsense about what she had discovered in the library. Alexis rubbed her face and sighed. Who was she kidding? She was beginning to fall for the stupid dragon like an adolescent with a crush.
She knew their species were genetically compatible. After all, that was the reason his species had come to Earth to begin with. Right now they didn’t even know if there were any more Drakonians in existence. Ladon and Ryuu might be the last of their kind.
But what if they weren’t? It was possible that there might be an entire civilization of dragons somewhere in the stars. If that was the case, Alexis seriously doubted that Ladon would choose her over his entire culture.
She opened the storm shutters and leaned against the window sill. The rain still poured in sheets, but the wind wasn’t as severe. The storm would probably clear by tomorrow. But she wasn’t seeing the rain. She was seeing the face of an arrogant dragon who had a sweet steak to him. Instinctually, Alexis knew he was dangerous to her in a way that no man had ever been before. Little by little he was stealing away pieces of her heart.
A knock at her door startled Alexis from her thoughts.
“Are you alright, Alexis?” Ryuu’s muffled voice came from the other side of the door while she quickly shuttered her windows once more.
“I’m coming,” Alexis called.
She knew that Ryuu was worried about her. He had become a good friend, and she saw the looks he gave when he caught her looking sad. He hadn’t asked, but he knew Ladon had been courting her. In the beginning, he almost seemed to be encouraging it. But as the week progressed and Alexis became more quiet and thoughtful, Ryuu began to wonder if it was a mistake to encourage the obvious sexual tension between Alexis and Ladon.
Alexis forced a smile on her face before opening the door and breezing past Ryuu. “Let’s get started. I want to get into the new chamber we discovered to see if we can find anything new.”
20
“I think it might be best if you stop courting Alexis.”
Ladon nearly fell over in his chair when his friend walked in with that announcement. He steadied himself and turned to Ryuu.
“Were you not the one who told me that I shouldn’t let a woman who could be my true mate go?” Ladon’s eyes shifted from his friend to the woman haloed in lantern light at the other end of the chamber. He wasn’t blind. He knew why Ryuu was concerned. Something had changed in Alexis this last week. Ladon had worried that she hadn’t liked his gifts, but he saw her caressing the necklace whenever she stopped to think about something. It was an unconscious gesture, but it told him that she viewed the gift as something precious to her.
Ryuu slumped in a chair next to Ladon and sighed. “I was, and I still don’t think you should let her go, but something is definitely bothering her.”
“I know…. I see it too.”
The pair sat in silence and watched the woman they both cared for work. Ladon tore his eyes away from Alexis and studied the chamber they were in.
“Ryuu, why did you call this place the ‘new chamber’?”
“Hmm? Oh…I guess because I remember we had just started construction of it before I fell into that forced stasis.”
Ladon thought for a moment, “Wouldn’t that mean that the humans at the very least continued to use this place after that?”
Ladon’s train of thought finally hit Ryuu’s station. “Well fuck…that means everything in here would have been deposited after whatever happened to us.”
“I never knew you could be slow on the uptake, Ryuu,” Ladon laughed.
Ryuu punched his friend’s arm and growled, “Well if I wasn’t so distracted by your train wreck of a love life, I would have thought of it sooner.”
“In any case, we should probably buckle down. If there are answers to be hand in this library about that time, they will most likely be here.”
“Aye, aye, Captain!” Ryuu stood with a mock salute and walked away to start cataloging the various manuscripts to narrow down the ones that would most likely be the most useful.
Ladon shook his head with humor as his friend walked away. Then, like the pull of the sun on the planets, his eyes returned to Alexis. She was beautiful, but he could see the dark circles under her eyes. She hadn’t been sleeping well, and it pained him to think he might be the cause. If he was an honorable dragon, he would let her go and not complicate her life. Ladon sighed. He might be an honorable warrior, but he was too selfish a man to let go of a treasure like Alexis. So somehow he had to figure out why she was troubled and do his best to fix it. That was what a good mate would do after all.
*****
“Yes!”
Ladon and Ryuu looked up from the manuscripts they were sorting to see Alexis jumping up and down and wiggling around in some sort of strange dance.
The men set their manuscripts aside and walked over to Alexis. They just stood there grinning at her until she turned to see them standing there. She stopped immediately and a deep blush creeped up her face.
Ladon laughed. “What did you find?”
Alexis cleared her throat and was once again the epitome of a professional. “When we perused the chamber in the beginning, I thought that I saw something that looked like a census record in this area and I was right.”
“Every few years we recorded which Drakonians decided to settle on Earth for a while. It also helped keep track of any children that may have been born.” Ladon shrugged. “Those records are thousands of years old. I don’t see why you are so excited by them.”
Alexis pulled her journal out. “This is just a rough translation. Eastern kanjis are not my forte, so I had to rely on what I could decipher using a modern translation dictionary. This is far from accurate, but it gave me an idea of content. Look at this line here.” Alexis pointed to a line of script. “If I am right, this census was taken after y’all went into stasis.”
Ryuu snatched the manuscript, causing Alexis to cringe at his rough treatment. Thankfully this document had been recorded on wooden slats instead of fragile vellum or papyrus.
His eyes scanned and widened. He could e
asily translate the ancient script, as he had seen it regularly in his lifetime.
Ladon recognized Ryuu’s shock. “Out loud. If you don’t mind,” he demanded.
“The date is written as ‘three years after the gods slept.’” Ryuu’s eyes bored into Ladon’s. “This document was a census of dragon kind taken after we were forced into stasis.”
The implication of that document staggered Ladon as Ryuu continued to scan the document.
“There are more of us?”
Ryuu opened the document fully, “I believe so, but I don’t know how many. This document is only one of a set, and time, vermin and the elements have damaged this one. We may not be able to fully reconstruct this document to know for certain.”
“Alright gentlemen. We are going to leave the section you were working on and concentrate on this area. I have already started cataloging the manuscripts and where each was found. We will start where this particular manuscript was found and work our way out in a spiraling grid.”
Alexis quickly took control in a professional manner, and for once neither man countermanded her instructions. Finding clues in the ancient past was her area of expertise after all.
“Ryuu, since you are the resident expert on ancient languages, I want you to pull and scan the documents.” She handed Ladon a journal and a site map. “I’ve already plotted a grid for this section and did a quick sketch. As Ryuu pulls the manuscripts, I want you to assign it a catalogue number and mark on the map where it was found.” Alexis picked up the manuscript that started this whole thing. “I will begin preservation on this piece. Ryuu, scan the documents and sort them by their possible usefulness. Normally, I would want to systematically work through the find, but I understand that if others are stuck in stasis like you two were that you would want to find them as soon as possible.”
The trio worked in relative silence for several hours. At the end of the day approximately a dozen documents were set aside to be studied first. Each seemed to contain clues to a possible location of a ‘sleeping god.’ Alexis had documented each with high resolution photography but had only begun the preservation of the first one she had found. Worst case scenario they at least had the digital copies of the information. Alexis stood and stretched. She called to the men that she was going to take a break and asked if they wanted anything. Both men’s stomachs decided to rumble loudly at that point. Alexis laughed and told the men that she was going to go fix them something to eat before they continued.
When she left the chamber, Ladon turned to Ryuu. “She set aside her professional curiosity to make finding our people a priority.”
Ryuu glanced over to where Alexis had left the room. “She has a kind spirit….”
“I know…did you know that I read the reviews about her on ‘Rate my Professor’?”
Ryuu laughed, “Yes I know. You cyber stalked her the entire time you were apart. Let me guess, she was a tough teacher.”
Ladon thought about it. “I would say most likely. The students who posted a review either loved her or hated her; but there was a common thread even with the ones who hated her class….”
“Well?” Ryuu asked.
“Even those that hated her class stated that she was always available to help them. Alexis truly cares about the people around her. She isn’t like a lot of other scientists that care only about knowledge and discovery first. To her the most important things are the people, not the knowledge.”
“She would have made an excellent dragon-mate queen in the past.”
Ladon smiled and stood up to follow Alexis, “She will make an excellent dragon-mate in the future, and she is a queen always to me, even without the crown.”
Ryuu watched his friend chase after his chosen mate with a smile that faded when he turned back to the piles of manuscripts in front of him and the chaos of Ladon’s notes. The pair was more alike than either would admit; both had a habit of leaving the mess for Ryuu to clean up in the kitchen, and it appeared that was going to spill over to the research as well.
21
Ladon found Alexis in their makeshift kitchen. She was in front of the propane grill cooking up huge steaks for him and Ryuu. A smaller chicken breast was off to the other side, which Ladon knew was for Alexis; he had discovered she wasn’t overly fond of red meat.
Ladon leaned against the door frame and observed his future mate. The fact that he remembered these small details about her was one of the things that marked her as different from past females. Ladon hadn’t considered his past behavior before, but since meeting Alexis he had to acknowledge the fact that for most of his life women had been simply a tool to slate his physical needs. He wasn’t interested in them beyond what he could get out of them.
It was true that he hadn’t made Alexis his bedfellow yet. In his heart, Ladon knew that didn’t matter. Alexis was a remarkable woman. He should know, Ryuu still gave him a hard time about his five years of obsession after only a single meeting. Ladon chuckled to himself. His instincts obviously recognized the gift that Alexis Carmichael was before his rational mind did. Ladon had wondered if his fascination would fade after spending day in and out with the woman before him. The answer was a resounding ‘no!’ If anything, the more time he spent in Alexis’s company the more time he wanted to spend with her.
Drakonians lived a very long time compared to humans because their nano machines regularly repaired damaged cells and injuries. If Alexis agreed to be his mate, Ladon would give her an infusion of his nanos, which would eventually reprogram themselves and multiply until she had her own system of nano machines. This would greatly extend her life for centuries.
Ladon frowned as Alexis bounced around the kitchen singing to herself. If he hadn’t been forced into stasis, he probably would have died before this era. Ladon rubbed his chest as he felt a visceral pain at the thought that he would never have known Alexis. It made the warrior who had always been a man of action rather than philosophy turn introspective. Maybe the clerics had been right about a greater power in the universe that guides all because he couldn’t imagine a fate where he had never met Alexis. In the end, it didn’t matter because she was standing there in front of him. All he had to do was reach out and grasp her.
Ladon’s arm was raised and he was walking toward her when Alexis spun around at a rather exuberant part of the song she was singing. Alexis jumped with a squeak.
“Oh, I didn’t know you were there.” She took a couple of deep breaths to slow her racing heart. “Food should be ready in just a few minutes.”
Alexis’s eyes widened when she looked up into Ladon’s face. She shivered at the darkly intense look she found there, but not from fear. She had often caught Ladon staring at her since he walked into her office in Ft. Worth. But she had never seen such an open look of hunger and longing before. It would be difficult for any woman with a working libido to ignore such a look. Never in her life had a look made her feel both beautiful and powerful. She knew in that instant that she was a goddess encompassing the whole of Ladon’s world. It was a heady feeling.
Alexis swallowed and tried to find the words buried deep within her throat. Ladon stalked closer. He reached out and his hand trailed up Alexis’s arm, leaving a burning trail of sensation. Ladon bent his head towards Alexis. He didn’t ask. He didn’t have to. He just took the kiss that he had been denying himself since he heard her voice on the other end of the phone line.
Ladon poured himself into the kiss and Alexis answered his call. She clung to him as he deepened the kiss. All of the uncertainty…all of the questions about the future…all of it burned away in the flames of that kiss. The past, the future…none of it mattered. Only here. Only now.
Promises were made without a single word passing between them. It was better this way. Their essence knew what they needed; thinking wasn’t necessary when you were overwhelmed with feeling.
Ladon lifted Alexis in his arms. He wanted her there always, clinging to him as if her life depended upon it. He knew that he was irrevo
cably ensnared by her feminine power, but that prison made him feel free for the first time in his life.
“What is on fire?!” Ryuu bust through the kitchen doorway. He ran to the grill and searched franticly for the fire extinguisher.
The action was enough to raise Alexis from her lust-induced haze. She looked around, surprised to see the whole kitchen area filled with black smoke. She tried to wriggle out of Ladon’s arms, but he tightened his grip.
“Ladon!”
Her alarmed cry was like a bucket of cold water on Ladon’s lust. Soon everyone was searching for the fire extinguisher. Alexis had turned off the propane to the grill, but the food was consumed in flames and it flared when it hit the gas trapped in the lines.
Ladon threw open the windows and partially transformed. He used his wings to fan the smoke, pushing it through the windows to clear the air as everyone coughed. The fire finally burned itself out, but their dinner was reduced to charcoal.
Ryuu pointed a soot-stained finger at Ladon and Alexis. “The two of you are not allowed in the kitchen alone ever again.”
All color drained from Alexis’s face before it turned bright red. She slapped her hands over her mouth, spun on her heels, and bolted out of the kitchen before Ladon could even reach for her.
Ladon groaned and wiped a hand down his face, causing the soot to streak in lines. He looked like he was about to launch a jungle sneak attack.
“Damn it! I’m never going to get her out of her room again.”
Ryuu laughed, “Well you can’t say that she isn’t affected by you anymore. The fire I saw in here wasn’t just from the remains of dinner.”
“Yeah,” Ladon smiled as he turned and walked away with a whistle. Today’s disaster left him oddly cheerful.
Ryuu looked around the destroyed kitchen and sighed. “I am hiring a damn maid when we get back to civilization.”
22
“Alexis,” Ladon called from the other side of the door.
Breathing Fire (Drakonian Chronicles Book 1) Page 8
