by Cara Bristol
Helena dashed over and hugged her. “I’m so glad to see you! Do you know where Henry is?”
“Here!” His head poked out of the “wall” a short distance away.
“I worried we’d been separated for good,” Helena said.
Henry ambled over. “We passed this spot at least a couple of times before we ‘arrived.’ The escort led us on a wild-goose chase.”
So it wasn’t just her impression. “Same with me! At least they put us near each other.”
“The better to keep an eye on us,” he said.
“How’s your room?” Patsy asked.
“Very nice. How’s yours?”
“Adequate.”
“Fine,” Henry said.
“Do you have one of those weird showers?” she asked.
Henry nodded. “It has settings for sonic cleansing, disinfecting mist, and a light laser wash. I took a sonic shower. It worked pretty good,” he said, and Helena noticed he wore fresh clothing. Patsy, too.
“Can you show me how to use it?” she asked. “All those dials and knobs and sprayers—I was afraid I’d set myself on fire.”
He laughed. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
Helena passed through the wall of her unit. And waited. Weren’t they coming? What were they doing out there? She waited a moment longer and stepped back into the corridor. Henry and Patsy stood there.
“What happened?” she asked. “You were right behind me.”
“We can’t get in,” he said. “We’re blocked from entering your unit.”
“I wonder if I can enter yours? And if you can enter each other’s? Let’s try.”
They were all blocked from each other’s units. “Oh, for goodness’ sake!”
“They’re trying to prevent us from congregating,” Patsy said.
“We’re congregating now,” Henry pointed out. “Why put us in close proximity if they didn’t want us to contact one another? I suspect our access is restricted all over the ship. They’re controlling where we go, what we do.”
“I have an idea,” Helena said. “Let’s try it together. Let’s enter my quarters at the same time.”
Clasping hands, she and Henry stood in front of the invisible door. “Ready? On three. One. Two. Three.” Together they took a big step—and entered her unit. “It worked!” She high-fived Henry and then hugged him. “I’ll get Patsy!”
She stepped into the corridor and held out her hand. “Your turn,” she said.
“You two go ahead. I’m going to check out the ship—as much as it will let me.”
“Not by yourself!” Helena objected. “It’s not safe. You could get lost.”
“I won’t go far. I want to see if there’s a mess hall close by. Nobody said a word about meals. I didn’t think to ask.”
She still didn’t like the idea of her friend going off by herself. “What if you encounter a dragon?”
Patsy snorted. “I hope I do. I have to get used to them. You and Henry seem to be handling this fine, but they’ve got me pretty freaked. I’m the one who fainted dead away. Do you know how embarrassing that was? I need to face my fear and conquer it.”
“You shouldn’t be embarrassed! Anybody could have fainted.”
“You didn’t. Henry didn’t. I promise I won’t go far or be gone long. Go take your shower.”
Living in fear robbed life of its joy. Helena had been there. Faced with danger, she had fled, but Patsy was dealing with her fear head-on. “You’re much braver than I am,” she said. “I admire you.”
“Sometimes we have to do the hard stuff.” Patsy took off down the hall, and Helena stepped back inside her room. “Your sister’s not coming in. She’s going exploring, to find food.” She omitted mention of Patsy’s need to conquer her fear. If Patsy wished Henry to know, she’d tell him.
He frowned. “What’s wrong with the food replicator in her room?”
“We have a food replicator?”
“I kind of figured they’d have to feed us. So I poked around a bit. Your room is arranged a little different than ours, so it might be in another spot, but take a look. Mine activated with my palm.” He stood up and pointed to a spot on the wall. “Try pressing there.”
Nothing happened, but after three more presses in different locations, a food dispenser shot out of the wall.
“Oh my gosh! Thank you!” Helena hugged him. “Have you eaten?”
“Yes.” He drew a finger along a row of unusual symbols. “Pressing the buttons in a different sequence will get you different kinds of food. The first, third, and fourth buttons pressed together aren’t bad. I don’t recommend two, three, and four.” He shuddered.
“Okay, I’ll try a one, three, and four.” Carefully she hit the buttons.
The machine hummed for about thirty seconds, and then a drawer shot out to offer up a party-sized platter loaded with brownish hockey puck biscuits.
“I forgot to mention the portions are generous.” He chuckled. “Here, try it.” He handed her one.
“You’ve eaten this, right?”
“Yep. I figured if they wanted to kill us, it wouldn’t be by poisoning.”
“That’s reassuring.” She nibbled the biscuit. It was a savory, meaty…something. She’d never tasted anything like it. She took another bite. “Have some?” She motioned.
“No, thanks. I’ve eaten my fill.”
The food replicator retreated into the wall again. She carried the platter to the sofa and set it on a table. “I wish Patsy hadn’t gone off by herself. Let me check on her.” Poking her head into the corridor, she spied her friend at the end of the passage. Helena ducked back inside.
“She can handle herself,” Henry said.
“Why am I more worried about her than you are? She’s your sister!”
“Actually, she’s not.”
“You mean you are married?” She recalled their cover story.
“No. I need to bring you into the loop. The world situation has changed, and I doubt any of us will go back to Earth again. Patsy and I were partners, operatives in the Central Intelligence Agency.”
“Spies?”
“Our cover got compromised, so we were pulled in. Patsy went to work for your father, and I joined the Secret Service. So, she’s quite capable of taking care of herself.”
That explained a lot: how Patsy always seemed to be in the know, how the two of them had been able to get fake documents.
“We were given new identities and a little plastic surgery.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“I had no idea.”
“You weren’t supposed to. However, sources told me Biggs had begun asking questions. Patsy and I have information he could exploit. When we lost our positions, it seemed like a good time to get out of Dodge—so, you see, our coming here wasn’t solely about helping you. I suspect Biggs figured out who we had been and had us terminated to apply the pressure. I have a hunch he intended to present us with an offer we couldn’t refuse.
“Patsy is very fond of you, and we both believe Biggs needs to be neutralized. I’m sharing this information so you’ll understand that our training and skills can benefit you.” He spread his hands. “And that you don’t need to worry about Patsy—she can take care of herself.”
Unless she encounters a dragon and faints. No wonder her friend was so determined to conquer her fear. Helena took another bite of the biscuit and mulled over what she’d learned.
“Your skill set was in technology, wasn’t it?” she guessed.
“Patsy was the expert in that area, but I do all right.”
“That’s how you were able to figure out the shower, find the food replicator.”
“Draconian tech is different, much more advanced than ours, but I kind of know what to look for.”
She finished off the biscuit and beckoned. “Then come show me how to use the shower!”
Chapter Ten
T’mar entered his twelve-room suite and strode to a monitor enabling him to keep tabs on the crew a
nd passengers. He sank into a chair and zoomed in on the guest sector. The three humans conferred in the hall then Henry and Helena clasped hands and stepped into her quarters. Then they embraced.
Another male is touching our mate! He must die.
Humans hug. It doesn’t mean anything, he reasoned, but a hot coil burned in the pit of his stomach.
It means he must die. She is ours!
He had no hesitation to dispatch an enemy or rival, except killing the man would reinforce the dragon’s misconception about Helena. He needed him alive to prove she meant nothing to them. Killing him would be hasty.
It would be satisfying.
T’mar curled his talons until they cut into his palms and blood spurted. Killing the interloper would be satisfying. Dragons did not engage in casual physical contact. Touching another originated from aggression or sexual intent.
He unclenched his fingers. She means nothing. She is a human female, he told himself, and then said to the dragon, Prince K’ev hugs Princess Rhianna.
And then they kiss, and they leave the room and engage in sexual relations.
Bad example. His brother and his mate reeked of sex. He often wondered how they accomplished anything. They smelled like they rarely left the mating bed.
Helena will be unhappy if we kill her friends, he said.
I will not kill both of them—just the male. Why does she need friends anyway? She has us.
She needs friends. She is human and far from her people. Don’t you want her to be happy?
Yessss… The dragon sulked.
Helena and Henry tapped the walls of her quarters. T’mar felt no guilt about spying. With their acute sense of smell, dragons had no expectations of privacy. Humans considered “butting your nose into one’s business” rude, but the behavior was normal and accepted on Draco. They couldn’t not smell the odors around them. Until he determined whether these particular humans were friend or foe, he needed to keep them under close scrutiny. And since he couldn’t smell them from afar—he’d had the ship’s surveillance activated in their quarters, with a couple of exceptions for Helena.
Nakedness meant nothing to a dragon. Shifting negated modesty or awkwardness over nudity since clothing got sloughed off. The intelligent jumpsuit offered protection when in demiforma, nothing more, although females occasionally adorned themselves with scarves or body drapes.
Humans, however, followed complex clothing rules. Out of deference for his consort’s odd sensibilities, he’d ordered the ship to deactivate the viewer in her sleeping chamber and the cleansing station where she would most likely be unclothed. Watching her there without her knowledge somehow felt wrong.
Wrong? It is not wrong; it is right. Want to see our mate naaaaked.
What did she look like under that cumbersome clothing? Even without an image to conjure—he’d never seen a human unclothed—his fyre flared with a burst of heat, and his cock thickened.
He tried to block the sexual thoughts from his mind and focus on what the two of them were doing. Henry located the food replicator and showed Helena how to use it. T’mar realized he should have done that. He’d escorted her to her quarters but hadn’t given her any instructions. He had no intention of spending time with her, but she still needed to eat.
He zoomed in on the replicator. Henry pressed a sequence that produced a snack portion of replicated lava worm patties. Live lava worms were a delicacy, their venom giving them a nice, spicy tang; however, they were poisonous to humans unless the venom was leached out. Fortunately, replicated lava worms were safe, if rather tasteless.
Henry handed one to Helena, and she bit into it.
The dragon went nuts. He is feeding our mate! He must die!
Fire shot from T’mar’s nostrils. His body began to expand, his wings breaking through bone and skin, thrusting from his spinal column.
No! We can’t shift here! Feeding doesn’t mean to humans what it does to us. The pleas fell on deaf ears. Bones cracked. T’mar’s neck lengthened as the roaring dragon tossed its head.
Panic ballooned with the dragon’s thundering fury. Shifting would be a disaster. Not now! You can kill him later. We must act swift and sure, and we cannot do so on the ship. I promise you can torch him later.
With great difficulty, he regained control and returned to demiforma. Crisis averted. But reckoning would come when the dragon realized he’d lied.
I will incinerate him. I will rip him apart. The dragon continued to fume.
Involuntary, unexpected fury sparked within him, too. She is not my mate, not mine, not mine, he repeated to himself.
Feeding was a personal, intimate act. A male only fed a dragoness with whom he intended to mate, and if she was interested, she accepted. T’mar had never given food to any of his concubines. He had no desire to.
Humans were different…weren’t they? He narrowed his gaze and focused on Helena’s expressions. She did not appear to have a strong emotional reaction to the offering, did not appear to be overtaken by lust, but unable to smell her, he couldn’t be sure. Not only had Henry offered her food, he’d selected the best delicacy the replicator could provide.
She carried the food to the sitting area and set the platter on the table. She peeked into the hallway at the other female and then joined the man on the sofa. T’mar measured the distance between them. They were close enough to touch one another—but they didn’t, fortunately for Henry. If the man made any sexual moves toward Helena, he doubted he’d be able to control the dragon again.
Helena munched on a patty while conversing. Emotions, especially human feelings, were harder to read when you couldn’t smell them. Besides exuding sexual hormones, a dragoness presented as submissive when aroused, although, during sex, she often became quite aggressive and gave as good as she got. T’mar had been clawed and bitten quite a few times. Helena demonstrated neither sexual submissiveness nor aggression, but then again, who knew what bizarre mating habits humans had? Perhaps they showed interest by feigning indifference.
It is a form of flirting, the dragon said. When humans identify a potential sexual partner, they engage in a complex ritual of confusion. They show interest by acting uninterested.
How do you know this?
I overheard Princess Rhianna explaining flirting to the queen.
I don’t remember any such conversation.
You were engaged with King K’rah. You were not paying attention to what was important.
He didn’t think Helena was flirting with the male and suspected his alter self didn’t believe it, either, or he would have flown into a rage again. But how could T’mar be sure? Wasn’t flirting designed to confuse?
It didn’t matter one way or another. He would do as he’d planned—sequester her in the harem and fly away. She could behave as she pleased, provided nothing she did could be construed as an act of aggression against Draco.
She finished the replicated lava worm Henry had given her, smiled at him, and then beckoned. He followed her into her bedchamber.
Fire shot from T’mar’s nostrils, melting the view screen.
Now we kill him? the dragon asked.
Now we kill him.
Chapter Eleven
Helena stood in the cleansing booth while the unit emitted an inaudible wave of sound. Only the slight buzz against her skin and scalp confirmed the system was working.
It blew her mind Henry and Patsy had been operatives. Her friend had been an excellent personal assistant to the president but a former spy? She wondered if she’d found the desk job a tad boring. Well, things aren’t so boring anymore.
If she felt a little hurt Henry had been the one to reveal their secret, she shoved aside the emotion as irrational. They had had to protect their identities. Patsy couldn’t have confided in Helena before now. And only recently had they become the kind of friends who shared confidences.
The buzzing ceased, and a light blinked overhead signaling the sonic shower had finished.
She stepped out of the sta
ll. “Fresh as a daisy.” She hadn’t expected to feel clean without water, but surprisingly she did. Maybe next time, she’d try the laser. She’d skip the disinfecting mist though. That sounded sticky and insulting. Henry had given her a tutorial on how to use the shower, and then he’d left to rendezvous with Patsy. Despite his assurances his ex-operative partner could take care of herself, he worried about her venturing off alone on the ship.
Helena donned her still-clean jeans and knit top and then inspected her hair in the mirror. At least with a sonic shower she didn’t have to dry and style afterward. Fluff and go.
As she exited the bathroom, she caught a whiff of burning…cloves? Dragons set fires rather than put them out, but she hoped they had the sense to install a fire suppression system on the spaceship. She sniffed. What was that smell?
Following her nose, she left the bedroom.
Prince T’mar in demiforma stood in the main room.
“How did you get in here?” she demanded.
Eyes and fangs flashed. “Where is he?”
“Who?”
He growled. “The man who accompanied you.”
“Did you check his quarters?” The prince didn’t need to know Henry had gone on reconnaissance with Patsy.
He circled her in an almost-predatory manner. She rotated as he did, keeping her eyes on him. “What are you doing?” Maybe there was a fire because the room seemed too hot all of a sudden.
His arm shot out and grabbed her wrist.
“Let go of me! What are you doing?” She twisted her arm to try to break his grip while fighting the urge to lean into him. He smelled good. Warm breath scented with cloves and woodsmoke wafted over her as he stepped close, bent his head, and sniffed her neck.
His shoulders relaxed, and he exhaled. “He didn’t claim you. Didn’t touch you. He can live.” He released her.
She moved away, rubbing her arm, although he hadn’t hurt her. The sensation of his touch remained on her skin; his scent was in her nose. “What are you talking about?”
“The male who arrived with you—you and he have not mated.”
“Excuse me?” Her jaw dropped. She hardly knew Henry, and she didn’t think of him that way, but if they had danced the horizontal tango, it would be none of the prince’s business. He’d made it plain he had no personal interest in her.
