by Cathryn Cade
In the storage room which housed the prince’s menagerie, two of the keepers huddled over a large cage. They had just discovered that the kronos’ eggs had hatched. But all that remained were the leathery egg cases—empty.
“The hatchlings have escaped,” said the young Aquarian handler nervously. “We must tell the ship’s crew.”
“No, no, not me,” replied the other, a small Pangaean. His hair wrapped around his neck as if he were afraid. “I’m not telling anyone. You tell them. You were supposed to be watching last night.”
The young Aquarian’s pale skin whitened even further, his crystal eyes widening. “I-I’m afraid. You come with me.”
“Shhh.” The Pangaean looked behind them, then ducked his head close. “We won’t say a word. They’ll think she ate them. Who knows, perhaps that is what happened. She’s in captivity, after all.”
The Aquarian nodded hopefully. “Yes, perhaps that was it. All right, we’ll say nothing.”
The Pangaean nodded. “We’ll say nothing.” But as he turned to follow the other down the row of cages, the ends of his green hair coiled around him. “You’d better bring some more food out for the creatures,” he said. “Extra for the kronos, so she will be quiet.”
“All right.” The other nodded, eager to have a task to expiate the guilt he was feeling. He turned and hurried into the storage closet at the far end of the room. The doors closed behind him. After a moment, he hurried back out, his arms full of a large basket.
The Pangaean’s face fell. “Oh, good, you have it,” he said flatly. As he turned away, he eyed the storage closet. What had gone wrong?
Chapter Fifteen
Unable to sleep, Sirena had just stepped out of the shower-dry and belted on her flame silk robe when she heard musical laughter out in the corridor. It sounded familiar.
“Holo-cam on,” she commanded. “Passageway.”
She stood stock still, rage burning inside her as she saw the image that sprang up. Two of the Aquarian princesses were just coming out of Slyde Stone’s room. One was patting her tousled hair, the other fastening her robe.
“Thank you, Commander.” One of them giggled. “That was lovely.”
“Yes,” the other added. “We hope you enjoyed it too.”
Sirena’s eyes narrowed dangerously. He was grinning like a fool, his uniform was unfastened halfway down his broad chest and his short hair was tousled, as if someone—or two someones—had been running their fingers through it.
“Thank you, ladies. My compliments on your treat. I’ll take care of cleaning everything up.”
Why, the sneaking, slithering bastard. He had lied to her so completely, so thoroughly. She had actually swallowed his tale of waiting in solitude for her.
She waited until the two had rustled away and then snapped open her hatchway.
Slyde looked over at her, still smiling a little, until he saw the look on her face.
“What is it?” he asked.
Leaning on her door frame, she crossed her arms and looked him up and down.
“Oh, I’d say it’s about one hundred and ten kilos of hypocrite.”
He blinked and then his mouth twitched. “Ah, you mean because of my…visitors. You want to see what we’ve been up to? Come here, I’ll show you.”
She followed him across the passageway, peering suspiciously into his room. Jealousy burned sick and cold in her middle. The place was a mess, cushions torn from his air-recliner and bed, a pile of brightly colored objects that looked rather like toys heaped in the middle of the floor. They had obviously been up to something, but…what? If those were sex toys, they were very odd ones—in fact, they resembled the toys of a young child.
There was a rustle of movement from under the bed and a dark, familiar head poked out. It was the puppy. Erupting out with a happy yip, it leaped on Slyde’s soft boots, tail wagging madly.
“I mentioned I liked the puppy, so the princesses brought it for a visit,” he said. “Playful little thing.”
“Yes, I see it drinks moonring champagne and eats hors d’oeuvres,” she said, fighting for equilibrium. What was she to believe?
He turned to look at the silver tray floating near the divan. It held a nearly empty bottle and three flutes, as well as half-empty plates of delicate viands.
“No, that was for me,” he said calmly. “And just so we’re clear, yes, an offer was made—a doubly generous one—and I refused.”
She straightened with a snap that made her unbound breasts jiggle in her flimsy robe. “I didn’t ask.”
Turning on her heel, she stalked back across the passageway to her own quarters.
“Why did you refuse Azuran?”
She froze. He had followed her. The hatchway hissed shut behind him, enclosing them in her private space. Her eyes focused on her bed, covered with spider-silk the deep swirling hues of a Serpentian sunset. How many times had she imagined him here with her?
“I didn’t want him,” she said without turning.
“Why not?” His deep voice was nearer. She could feel his heat, although he was still inches away.
Sirena lifted her head proudly. She wouldn’t lie.
“Because I want you.” Of course, he already knew it. She’d been panting after him like a fool for days, while he played her.
“You haunt me,” Slyde said, the words as deep and rough as stones grating together. “I’m never free of you. When I sleep, I dream of you. When I’m awake…”
His huge hands closed on her waist, and she felt them tremble. Or perhaps she was the one trembling. She was bewildered. She would stake her very life on the aching sincerity in his voice. Heat, power and need emanated from him.
Sirena let her eyes drift shut and stiffened her spine to keep from drooping back against him like a silly girl. His yearning seduced her far more effectively than any honeyed words. His breath gusted against her cheek as he spoke again, his face against her hair.
“When I’m awake, I look for you. If you’re not near, I have to know where you are. And if you are near, all I’m aware of is you. I listen to your voice, coiling about me like a velvet rope. I smell your perfume, the scent of your body. I watch the way you move, a warrior queen among her subjects…a courtesan selecting the next male who’ll receive her favor.”
His hands flexed on her waist, testing the suppleness of her, then drew her back against him. Her breath shuddered from her as his hard body pressed against hers. His scent surrounded her, potent male.
She gloried in the raw need revealed by his words, but at the same time, sharp tears pricked behind her eyelids. Males wanted her, wanted the pleasure they’d find in her body—had from the time she reached maturity. But none had ever revealed such a yearning for her.
“I choose you,” she breathed. “You.”
He shuddered. “For how long?”
“For as long as we both want,” she promised, putting her hands over his and moving sensuously in his grasp, rubbing herself against him. Ah, he was so big, so hard—the heat and power in his body, all would be hers.
She staggered as he released her. She whirled, not understanding.
The light of the blown glass lamps gleamed on the hard planes of his face. His deep-set eyes were in shadow, but she could clearly see the grim set of his mouth, the clenching of his jaw.
“Sirena…desire is not enough.”
“What do you mean, not enough?” She stared up at him, unable to believe her ears. “Pleasure beyond anything you have known—not enough? Slyde, you and I could be incredible together! What more can you want?”
He shook his head slowly.
Fury such as she had never known blazed through her, molten in its intensity. That it was fueled by hurt, she would never admit.
“Who do you think you are?” she hissed. “Males will fight to the death to have me and you refuse me?”
He reached out to her and she jerked away from him, not caring that her eyes were full of tears of rage, or that she was shaking visibl
y. Her voice slashed at him like fangs. “Don’t touch me again. I’m not some little fool to be toyed with! Or are you waiting for me to service you in some public place? Is that the only way you can find satisfaction? Is my room too private?”
She watched him flinch as this jibe hit home.
“That was—I never intended for that to happen,” he said.
She laughed in his face. “Poor male. The cadet overpowered you, did she? You were unable to break free?”
His cheeks reddened, but he stood his ground. “I’d just spent the last few hours being slowly tormented out of my mind by a siren,” he said through his teeth.
“Oh, blame the female,” she said scornfully. “’It wasn’t your fault. I drove you to it.’”
He clenched his fists so hard the veins in his arms and neck stood out. Then he took a deep breath, visibly controlling himself.
“Sirena,” he groaned. “Why do we always end up savaging each other? You’re right. The fault was mine, not yours.”
She gaped at him, astonished by his concession, only to be further astonished as he slowly and deliberately dropped to one knee before her. He looked up at her, his face in shadow, golden eyes gleaming up at her, riveting in their intensity.
“Sirena, listen to me.”
“Listen to what?” she demanded, clutching the folds of her robe to keep from reaching out to him. Such was the turmoil inside her, she didn’t know whether she would fall to her knees with him, or savage him.
“To me, you are a queen among females,” he said. “You…you own my heart. You have since nearly the first moment I saw you. It has only become stronger in our time together. I would fight to the death for you, but, Sirena…I don’t live by the same rules as other Serpentians, or even other males. The only way we two can be together is if you’ll agree to mate with me. For life.”
Bending his head, he lifted the hem of her robe, pressed it to his lips, then let it drift through his fingers to fall back around her bare feet.
He knelt there for a moment, while she stood frozen, unable to react.
Finally, with a deep, shuddering sigh, he rose and turned away. The hatch hissed open and shut behind him, and he was gone in the shadows of the great ship. Her robe fluttered about her, fell still, and she was alone.
Chapter Sixteen
Sirena looked blankly about her. Finally she stumbled over to huddle in her divan, her arms wrapped about herself.
“Warmer,” she mumbled to the climate controls. “Warmer.”
She shivered until the temperature rose to the baking heat of the Serpentian sun. She was torn between rage and tears. How dare he turn her down—her! The great fool. They could be lying sated in each other’s arms even now. She closed her eyes, a moan tearing from her throat. She wanted him so much—more than she could recall ever wanting another man—and he had refused her. Her!
And all that drivel about mating for life. Who did he think he was, a quarking Dragolin? They were the only ones on Serpentia who had ever chosen one true mate for life. And they were only legend.
He was lying about being true to her, anyway. He was a Serpentian, just as she was. Just as her parents had been, as her first lovers had been. Serpentians mated for a while then drifted apart, as capricious as a desert cloud burst.
Everyone left. Everyone. All those she had loved, back when she used to acknowledge that she had a heart, had left her.
Even her mother and her sister, although of course they had not wanted to. They had been ripped away by the caprice of her beautiful, yet deadly, home planet. She could still see them smiling and waving at her from the verandah of their rented cabana. She had left the oasis resort early to go back to the academy, little dreaming that it was the last time she would see their lovely faces. A huge sandstorm blew in the next day, smothering the oasis and all its inhabitants.
Her father had already drifted away. She saw him occasionally, but she had learned a lesson, beginning with his leaving, then in the deaths of what remained of her family and culminating in her first love affairs.
Reeling from the loss of her family, she’d been easy prey for one of her instructors at the martial arts academy, a charming, handsome male who soothed her tears and made love to her so urgently that she was lulled into believing he would be at her side as long as she needed him. Instead, he’d grown bored with her clinging and gone on to the next attractive new cadet. She could still see his careless smile when she’d walked in on them in his quarters. He invited her to join them. Her already broken heart shattered.
The other male trainees flocked to comfort her. She nearly believed the first, was skeptical of the next and so on. By the time her years at the academy ended, she had learned her lessons exceedingly well. Not only was she a deadly fighter, she was known as a beauty who outdid Serpentian males in using and discarding lovers. As a mature woman, her beauty and her legend only grew.
She had one rule for sensual affairs. She carried it with her like a standard. She always left first. She was the one who said goodbye when her lovers were still yearning for more. That way, she was never left behind. It was all she knew of relationships and all she cared to know.
When she finally slept, she dreamed that Slyde knelt before her in the sand of a Serpentian desert, kissed the hem of her robe again and then, just as she stretched out her hands to him, her heart in her eyes, he threw back his head, laughed and flew away, bursting up away from her as if he had wings.
Slyde moved back toward his own room like a robot. He felt incapable of any thought or action, other than simple forward movement.
Sirena… Sirena… Sirena…
She pounded like a fever in his blood, a refrain that whispered in his mind, fascinating and seductive. Knowing that if he went back to her, if he simply swept her into his arms and made love to her, she would give in, would take him on the sensual flight of his life, nearly drove him back to his knees there in the corridor.
He wanted her with everything that was male in him, but he also yearned for so very, very much more. He wanted to be the first one those emerald eyes saw each morning and the last one at night. He wanted that sharp tongue arguing with him through the years and those arms winding about his neck. That body yielding and demanding by turns beneath his.
He wanted what he very much feared she could not give—her heart and her fidelity.
He stopped in a shadowed fork of the passageway, staring blindly at the choice of corridors before him. Sirena Blaze was a legend in her own time, known as a beauty who would give a lucky male the sensual night of his dreams, but never her heart.
Great God beyond, what made her so merciless? She was certainly capable of fidelity—she was fiercely true to her ship. He knew she would die to protect the Orion.
Why would she not do the same for a man? Was it because she became so quickly bored, or was there some deeper reason? She could not be as heartless as her legend suggested. He refused to believe it. Somehow he would find a way to break down her barriers, and reach the real Sirena.
Perhaps if he told her who he really was, promised her a life of luxury and prestige while she gave him the chance to win her heart. But that was the one thing he had sworn he would not do. He wanted to be, he must be loved for himself, not his fortune. If a female accepted him with currency in his hands, how would he ever know how she really felt about him?
He had just humbled himself to this one, opened his heart, and she had gazed down at him as if he were some being she had never seen before. Had that been pity in her eyes, or merely shock? Why had she not answered him? Did she not know a Dragolin humbled himself for no one in the galaxy?
He clenched his fists, fighting the urge to shift and roar out his pain to the silent passageway.
“Commander? Are you all right?”
Oh, no, not her. Anyone but her. Tawnee walked up to him, reaching out to touch him, eyes soft.
Slyde held out his hands, palms out, in an emphatic signal.
“No,” he said starkl
y. “No.”
“But, you are upset,” she persisted. “Let me—”
“No!” He couldn’t control the deep roar of his voice, or the anger he knew was written on his face. He was too near shifting, too precariously balanced between rage and pain. “Leave me.”
Tawnee stepped back sharply, coming up against the wall of the passageway. Her mouth trembled. And he couldn’t bring himself to care. He walked away.
He could not believe this black hole he had allowed himself to be sucked into.
Sirena… Sirena…
He reached his quarters through habit. He shut himself inside and then stood in the middle of the room, breathing slowly with the effort not to allow himself to shift into his dragon self, roaring to be free.
He was nearly maddened with pain and he couldn’t relieve himself by shape-shifting and flying to exhaustion. He was also still aroused from holding Sirena in his arms.
He finally closed himself in his shower-dry unit, turned the water as hot as it would go and took himself in hand. Then he staggered over to his bed and fell face down on it. Just like Tawnee’s servicing, all his own handful of slippery gel-soap had accomplished was to make him want Sirena even more.
And if he knew anything about his lovely temptress, she was going to make him sorry he had refused her.
Chapter Seventeen
Sirena woke with one resolve burning inside her—despite all Slyde Stone’s fine words, she was going to make him sorry he had dared to refuse her.
Showered and dressed, she looked in her mirror, making sure her hair shone, that her collar was fastened neatly about her throat. As usual, the golden yellow was a perfect foil for her coloring, bringing out the auburn of her hair and the tiny gold flecks in her green eyes. Only the faint shadows in and around them gave any hint of her inner turmoil, or her lack of sleep.
She lifted her chin proudly. Slyde Stone might think he was so special there was only one female for him, but she was enough for any male alive. In fact, she would no doubt spoil him for other women. Especially if he had not—
