by Cara Bristol
“You’re my consort.”
“You gave up the right to have a say in what I do when you announced you wished to have no further contact with me.”
“I changed my mind.”
“Since when?”
“Since now.”
She planted her hands on her hips. Who knew dragons ran hot and cold? Well, he couldn’t barge into her private space and start issuing demands. “Maybe my mind hasn’t changed!”
She almost thought she saw a flash of hurt in his eyes, but then his gaze turned speculative, and he crossed his arms and canted his head. “Are you flirting with me?”
Was he nuts? “Flirting?”
“Sending mixed messages to confuse me.”
“If anybody’s doing that, you are! You planned to dump me in the harem and walk away. Is that not the plan now?”
“You’ll still live in the harem, but I will visit you to get you out of my system.”
Get me out of his system? What fucking nerve! But her body responded, her womb fluttering and her breasts growing achy. “Get out of my quarters!” She jabbed in the direction of the invisible door.
“This is my ship.”
“This is my room. Get. Out!”
“I’ll return later when you’re calm,” he said. “We’ll talk more then.”
“Get out!” God, she wished this ship had actual doors so she could fling one open and slam it behind his ass.
His cheeks dimpled, and then he pivoted, marched in the direction she pointed, and passed through the wall.
“Good riddance!” she announced to open air.
Chapter Twelve
That went well, the dragon said.
Yes, it did. T’mar whistled through his teeth.
Did you smell? She desires us.
Yes, she did. The heady fragrance of warm honey wafting off her had been as obvious as her anger, the combination of the two particularly heady. He could also detect she had no interest in Henry. They hadn’t had sex.
He still needs to die, the dragon said.
Fortunate for the male, he hadn’t been in Helena’s quarters or he would have been toasted on the spot. Inexplicably jealous himself, T’mar wouldn’t have stopped the dragon, but since his anger had cooled after smelling Helena’s arousal for him, he hesitated to put an innocent man to death. We’ll see.
You promised.
He’d find a way to make it up to the dragon. In the meantime, he would prove the human was not their mate by taking her, and, in the process, relieve his own itchy preoccupation. He didn’t understand why she aroused him when his other concubines did not, but after he sated his desire for the human, life would return to the way it should be.
Our mate is not quite ready for us. We must woo her.
Arguing would waste energy; the dragon would discover the truth in time, but he wasn’t wrong that Helena would require some coaxing. How do we woo her?
We must show her we like her. We should bite her. Female dragons love it.
She is not a dragon.
She is! She has fyre. She is our dragoness!
He shifted a little closer to man form and pinched the bridge between his nose and forehead. For some reason, the gesture seemed to bring him a measure of calm when negotiating with the stubborn dragon. Biting won’t work in this case, he said.
A gift, then.
Hmm. Not a bad idea. What do you suggest?
Princess Rhianna says females enjoy receiving flowers.
You gleaned a lot of information from K’ev’s mate.
Like I keep telling you, I pay attention…what are flowers?
I believe they are the sexual organs of plants, he explained.
Very appropriate, then. Where do we acquire them?
Earth was the only planet he knew for sure that had them. Elementa didn’t. Neither did Draco. I’ll come up with a gift. Leave it to me.
Can I trust you not to screw it up?
He let the insult slide. Sometimes you had to pick your battles. He intended to win the war, and if he had to have sex with a human, well, he’d do it, and think of Draco. He hurried to his quarters where he kept a small stash of treasure. He’d find the perfect gift to impress her.
* * * *
Helena waffled all afternoon whether to refuse to see Prince T’mar—or whether to go and voice her displeasure. She’d conferred with Patsy and Henry, but the two were split.
“Go,” Henry urged. “An opportunity like this is why you came, isn’t it? You have a chance to build bridges.”
“Don’t go,” Patsy advised. “Since he makes you nervous, you shouldn’t go.”
“He doesn’t make me nervous…exactly.” He pissed her off. Annoyed her. Surprised her. Even…impressed her. But frightened her? Even when he’d growled, her reaction had been more reflexive than fearful. Not understanding her own feelings, she shied away from trying to explain them to Patsy.
“Henry, uh, told me you two were partners in the CIA.” She changed the subject.
“I planned to tell you—but Henry beat me to the punch. While we were on Earth, I couldn’t reveal my background for your safety and mine,” Patsy said. “In my former line of work, I moved among the most dangerous people in the world. They would have tortured me for information and then killed me if they’d discovered I was CIA. Those people still want me dead. That’s why Henry and I had to adopt new identities.”
“I understand,” Helena said.
“Now we’re on a spaceship headed to another planet. For the first time since joining the CIA, I don’t have to censor myself or worry I might let something slip to the wrong person and end up dead.”
Having lived in fear, she empathized. “That’s a hard life.”
“Having to dissemble all the time, you lose sense of who you are, what you are. I can rediscover who I am. I can’t have my own name back, but I can at least be who I was.”
“At least you’re safe now. We’re all safe now,” Helena said.
“If being among dragons could be considered safe.” Patsy lifted a shoulder. “Now that you know my background, you can understand why passing out was so embarrassing—and disturbing. I expected better of myself. I had no idea I’d react that way. In the field, I faced many life-threatening situations, and I always kept my cool.”
“You’re doing better,” she tried to reassure her. “You went exploring on your own.”
She shrugged. “I didn’t encounter a single dragon in our corridor or the intersecting ones. I did see some in demiforma—from afar—when I peeked around the corner from the intersecting passages. Watching was all I could do. An invisible barrier prevents us from venturing outside our area. It’s like a force field.”
“We’re locked in?”
“Yes.”
“We’re not free to wander the ship anyway,” Henry said.
Now, that was something else to take up with Prince I’ll-visit-you-when-I-want-to T’mar.
So, in the end, she decided to meet with him to let him know she didn’t appreciate his attitude or that she and her friends were confined like POWs.
She dragged out the ugly Drugs & More T-shirt, gladder now she hadn’t thrown it away. Warm colors looked bad on her, and this shirt was a hideous shade of prison orange. On the back was a cracked photo transfer of an obsolete computer with the words, Byte Me. It was the perfect shirt to send a message to His Royal High Handedness.
Grinning, she changed into it. Uncertain when he would pop in, she marched into the sitting room and plopped down on the sofa to wait.
Five minutes later, he walked through the wall. She didn’t know what surprised her more: that he’d arrived so soon or that he appeared in man form again. In real life, she would have died if a man as handsome as him caught her wearing the hideous orange T-shirt. Her stomach fluttered with infuriating sexual attraction.
She scowled and sprang to her feet. “Don’t you ever knock?”
Chapter Thirteen
T’mar had never fathomed he’d fi
nd a human attractive, but Helena looked beautiful in the fiery-hued garment signaling sexual receptivity. Orange, the color of the sacred flame, symbolized the merger of two fyres. Even without a garment shouting sex, her scent signaled her arousal. Blood rushed to his cock, in response to her invitation.
The urge to bend her over the sofa and take her surged through him. But, he’d promised her a meal, and he had a gift for her. “Knock? Why? And on what?”
“It’s customary to announce oneself before entering another’s personal space. If you had doors on this ship, you could do it.” She tossed her head, her anger further enflaming his libido.
“If there were doors, you would venture off where you are not supposed to—like your friends did.” On the monitor he’d watched the female, later joined by the man, creep down the passageway and try to exit the sector. Fortunately, he’d had the foresight to contain the area.
“Patsy was taking a walk, getting some exercise.” She lied to his face, and he smelled no remorse.
Why he was attracted to this human, he had no idea.
“Since you brought up the subject—why are we not permitted to leave this area?” she demanded.
“Because humans have proven themselves to be liars and cheats.”
“That’s insulting!”
“Your people enact treaties and break them. They feign friendship when they intend harm. They lie about matters big and small, deceiving even themselves.” He paused. “You have lied to me.”
We forgive her, the dragon said.
You forgive her, he replied. I don’t. Forgiveness would require letting down his guard, and he couldn’t do that. She’d assaulted his peace of mind just by existing.
“I haven’t lied to you.”
“Haven’t you?” He shifted slightly, the better to smell her.
She crossed her arms. “No.” A sour odor drifted on the air. She lied about lying.
He mirrored her crossed arms. “So your friend just went for a stroll?”
She flushed. “I said she went for a walk, and that’s what she did. I suppose dragons don’t lie?”
“No.”
“Yeah, right.”
“You are the president’s daughter. I assume you’re close to him and privy to the state of affairs between Draco and Earth.”
“Yes.”
“When has King K’rah reversed himself on an agreement?”
“He threatened to attack us!”
“That’s a promise you wish him to fulfill? Should I urge him to proceed?”
“That’s not what I mean! Your people threatened our survival!”
“Your people threatened ours!”
“That’s not true!” she responded before uncertainty knit her brows. “How?”
“It doesn’t matter.” He stopped talking before he revealed something he shouldn’t. Humans couldn’t know the dragons would perish if they didn’t relocate to Elementa.
“Of course it matters! You can’t drop a bomb like that and walk away.”
“If I had dropped a bomb, you’d know it—and I’m still here.”
“It’s a figure of speech!”
He averted his gaze, scanning her room. “I did not come to fight.” Perhaps to spar, to flirt as a human would say, but the situation had gone awry. He enjoyed a good tussle, verbal and physical, but he’d lost control of the conversation, and he’d gotten no help from his dragon. He’d been uncharacteristically silent.
I am listening to you make a mess of things.
So much for silence.
“Why did you come here, then?” she demanded.
“We’d established we’d meet again to talk.”
“No, you said that. I never agreed.”
Tell her we will give her a tour of the ship, the dragon said.
That’s not a good idea.
Tell her!
“How about a tour of the ship? You’d like to see more, wouldn’t you?”
“Along with my friends?”
No!
“Just you.” He and the dragon concurred on that.
She shook her head as if to disagree then said, “All right.”
He needed to get the wooing back on track. “I brought you a gift, a token of our arrangement.” Pulling the trinket from a pouch, he offered it to her.
Diamonds dripped from her hand as she examined the necklace, staring at the large green gem centered in a choker of sparkling clear stones. “This looks real.”
“It is real.”
“Are you crazy? I can’t accept this.” She thrust it at him as if it had bitten her.
He held his arms at his sides, unwilling to take it back. “Why not?”
“It’s too much! Too expensive. You can’t give me jewels! We don’t know each other well enough. I don’t think we’ll ever know each other well enough.”
Dragons loved and hoarded jewels. This particular piece was his favorite, and he’d been reluctant to part with it until now. But, upon opening his vault, he and the dragon had zeroed in on the necklace. The emerald reminded him of her eyes. The diamonds flashed like her personality. She would look so beautiful lying in bed, naked, wearing only the necklace.
For reasons he could not discern, her acceptance of the gift had become very important to him. She’d called it “too much, too expensive.” He could allay her fears on that score. He waved his hand. “I have given my other concubines many more trinkets such as this. It does not mean anything.” He had been generous with them, but he’d never given them anything like this piece.
“Other concubines? That’s who’s in your harem?”
“Of course. Who did you think lived there?”
“Take your damn necklace!” She threw it at him, forcing him to catch it. She stomped away and turned her back.
Now she is angry. She rejected our gift. You promised you wouldn’t screw it up, the dragon fumed. Spirals of smoke puffed from T’mar’s nose.
Both Helena and the dragon were mad at him. He had made a mess of things. He wouldn’t admit it to the dragon, and begging went against his nature, but he needed to make amends. Hesitantly he touched Helena’s shoulder. She shrugged him off but not before that brief contact sent desire surging through him. “I thought the necklace would suit you. I wish you would accept it.”
“I don’t want it.”
“All right. You don’t have to take it.” His heart felt heavy. “Will you at least come walk with us?”
“Us?”
“Me and the dragon. If you don’t come, he’ll be disappointed and angry at me.” He grinned as if joking, but living with a sulky dragon was no laughing matter.
You’ve got that right! You said trust me, and you hurt our mate!
“Why should I care if you’re mad at yourself?” she said, but she’d turned to look at him.
“The duality is complicated. If you come with me, I can perhaps explain it. Plus, you’ll see the ship.”
She exhaled. “All right. But I won’t accept the necklace.”
“Fair enough.” He slipped it back into the pouch. He could find another gift for her—although nothing would suit her as much as this piece. He canted his head. Maybe…garnets! Red like her hair. He had some garnet ear bobs. Later, when he thought she would relent, he could present her with the emerald-and-diamond choker again.
Chapter Fourteen
I should have told him to get lost. Arrogant, presumptuous ass! Helena stomped beside T’mar, tallying his offenses: prejudging all humans as untrustworthy, attempting to buy her sexual favors with a gemstone necklace worth more than the gross national product of many third world countries, believing she was the kind of woman who could be bought, assuming she wouldn’t mind joining his stable of bedmates, and exuding such an alluring, enticing scent she wanted to forget his crimes and wrap herself around him like a dancer humping a stripper pole.
Well, she wouldn’t! She refused to become another sexual conquest, one bedmate among many.
It had been naïve to assume T’
mar would have only one consort just because Prince K’ev had had only Rhianna. She kicked herself for believing his “harem” was merely a place of residence for his female family members. Now he expects me to join the crowd? Fat chance, asshole! God, he smells good.
“Exactly how many concubines do you have?” she asked as they marched along.
“Three,” he said. “Four counting you.”
Still just three, dragon man!
“You’re still angry with me,” he said.
“No, I’m not.”
The dimples that dented his cheeks made her madder. He had no right to look cute.
“You shouldn’t lie to me,” he said. “I can always tell. Even in this form, I can smell a lie.”
“I suppose you can hear colors, too?” she retorted.
“Of course not. Can you hear colors?”
She rolled her eyes.
“Emotions are a combination of thought and physiological reaction, which includes a biochemical component. When you emote, you exude an odor. We have a heightened sense of smell,” he said. “Our olfaction is sharper than that of your Earth bloodhounds.”
Certainty slipped. It had been said dogs could smell fear. It wasn’t exactly true. People perspired and released adrenaline when they got scared; it was the sweat and chemicals dogs detected. What if other emotions released biochemicals?
Shit. It might be possible. “What does a lie smell like?”
A demiforma dragon, an insignia pinned to his gray uniform, approached from the far end of the corridor. He thumped his chest twice in salute then passed through a door on the right.
“That was the captain of the ship,” T’mar said. “To answer your question, a lie reeks of decay.”
She screwed up her face. “Yuck. What about anger?”
“Sour.”
“Sadness?”
“Like rain.”
“Fear?”
“Spicy. An enemy’s fear smells…appetizing,” he said.
“Appetizing…like supper? Do you eat your enemies?” she asked in jest.
