On impulse she asked, “Did you find somebody to take over your PR job?”
“No,” said Tricks. “There hasn’t been time. Why, do you want it?”
She lifted a shoulder, feeling self-conscious. “Maybe I’ll talk to Dragos about it. You know, when I’m up for it.”
“Whatever you decide, you keep that dragon twisted around your little finger,” the faerie advised with a giggle. “It’s his karma after so many centuries of being the center of everybody’s universe around here. It’ll do him a world of good.”
Another visitor came one afternoon. Pia looked up as Aryal threw her six-foot body onto a couch beside her. The harpy’s black hair was tangled again, which seemed to be its usual state. She wore low-rider jeans, a sleeveless leather vest and the requisite sentinel weapons.
Pia studied her as Aryal fidgeted. The harpy’s odd gaunt beauty had nothing to do with dieting, and while lanky, her body was sure cut. Pia looked at her arm muscles and rippling stomach, thinking of all the hard work it took to look like that. Not in this lifetime.
Aryal glared at General Hospital playing on the flat-screen and jiggled a foot. She picked up a Harper’s Bazaar, thumbed through a few pages and tossed it aside. Pia thought she heard the harpy mutter, “I’m no good at any of this girlfriend shit.”
She raised her eyebrows and wondered if she was supposed to say something.
Aryal looked at the TV. She said, “Can you believe it—first, the witch Adela sold you a binding oath, the next day she put a tracking spell on you for Dragos and this week she contracted with the Dark Fae to find you. You turned out to be quite the cash cow for her.”
She shook her head. “That’s pretty wrong. I never did feel quite right about her.”
The harpy continued, “We found her body in the Hudson River. Her throat had been slit. Apparently she contracted her services out one too many times. The forensic report is inconclusive, but we’re guessing the Dark Fae killed her. The estimated time of death is shortly after you were kidnapped. It looks like the Dark Fae were trying to cover their tracks after taking you.”
“I see,” she said, her tone neutral. Maybe she should care that the witch had been murdered. Whatever Adela had done, Pia wasn’t sure that she had deserved to die for it. At the moment she couldn’t seem to muster much of a reaction.
Silence fell between them. Then Aryal’s strange stormy gray eyes met hers. “Bayne and I feel like shit about the kidnapping. But I’m not sorry about the rest of it.”
“I didn’t ask you to be. You’re entitled to your own opinion, and you were trying to protect Dragos in your own way. I respect that and there’s nothing more to be said.” Pia took the end of her cheerleader ponytail and flicked it at the harpy.
A feral grin spread across Aryal’s face. “Uh, listen, sometime when you’re feeling up to it, I’d like to have a round or two with you on the mat. For a while the gryphons couldn’t talk about anything else.”
“Sure, why not,” she told the sentinel. “The way things have been going, I had better keep up on my training.”
“Okay.” Aryal put her hands on her knees and started to push to her feet.
“Just one thing,” Pia said. The harpy paused and looked at her. Pia regarded her with a cold, steady gaze. “Try shoving me into a wall again and I’ll smack you down.”
Aryal’s grin turned into a scowl. She looked like she had just swallowed something sour, but after a moment she nodded.
Pia returned the nod and looked down at her magazine. It was a dismissal. The harpy took it as such, launched off the couch and disappeared.
Pia also had time to give Quentin a call. She went out onto the balcony on a sunny afternoon and closed the door for some privacy. Then she leaned against the new wall and looked out over the city as they talked.
It was quite an exchange. She had to fill Quentin in on all that had happened since her brief stay at his beach house. It was a lot to tell, including that she was now apparently Dragos’s mate and carrying his child.
When she finished, there was a long, long silence on the other end. She toed one of the flagstones and watched traffic below as she waited. “That’s going to take me a while to process,” Quentin said in a scrupulously neutral tone of voice.
“Tell me about it.”
“How . . . is he?”
“You know Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady?”
“The professory, growly son of a bitch?”
“Yeah, well”—she closed one eye, squinted at the skyline and grinned—“Dragos is a lot worse.”
That caused another rant that went pretty much along the lines of he’d-better-treat-you-right-or-I-don’t-care-who-thebastard-is-I’ll-kill-him-myself kind of thing. She bent over, put her forehead on the wall railing and endured it with as much patience as she could muster, making noises every once in a while to pretend she was actually listening.
Finally he said, “I want to see you in person. I want to make sure that bastard hasn’t addled you with some kind of beguilement.”
“He hasn’t,” she said. “But I’ll come to Elfie’s soon for a real visit.”
“You’d better.” Quentin sounded grim. “Or as allergic to the Tower as I am, I’ll come break you out.”
“Tell everybody I miss them.”
“I will. See you soon.” He stressed the last.
“Yes, you will, I promise.” At last she was able to extricate herself from the conversation and hang up.
She was wrung out. This starting a new life was a hell of a lot of hard work.
She and Dragos didn’t talk much after they had shared stories, and she didn’t see much of him after she had convinced him to go back to work. He was soon immersed in stabilizing some businesses in Illinois before he sold them, and he mentioned something about initiating a hostile takeover of an investor-owned utility company.
She wondered if the distance between them would be the definition of her life now. He slipped into bed with her every night and wrapped her up in his arms, and she derived a lot of comfort from his nearness. But they didn’t make love, or have sex, or . . . mate.
Changing and becoming full Wyr enhanced her healing capability. After three days of convalescence, she was climbing the walls. Finally Dr. Medina, who had been making daily house calls, cleared her for treadmill walking and other light exercise.
“Yes!” She’d been hoping for the go-ahead.
“No running until I say so, no matter how good you feel. And I’m not going to say so till at least next week,” the doctor warned. “That crossbow wound gave your respiratory system quite a knock.”
“No running. Gotcha.” She grabbed her clothes, black Lycra exercise tights and sports tank top, and put them on. “Thank you!”
“You’re welcome.” The doctor smiled. “I’ll let myself out.”
She sat on the edge of the bed to put on her running shoes—another new pair—as the doctor left the suite. After her last shoes were ruined in her flight through the rain-drenched forest, Dragos had bought her six new pairs.
The door opened. She looked up, ready to tell the guys they could hit the gym. Dragos strode in. As usual, he took total command of the air space in the room.
He gave her a long look, then shut the door. He had dressed that day in black jeans and a black silk shirt that emphasized the strong athletic lines of his massive body and the bronze of his skin—and did nothing to lighten the severity of his face.
Even in his human form he looked capable of ripping the Fae King apart with his bare hands. Should she find that as sexy as she did? She scratched her head. She wondered about herself, she really did.
“Hi,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Apparently you don’t expect much from me,” he said.
“Excuse me?” she said, taken aback.
He began a slow stroll around the large suite. It was his prowling stroll, his long muscular limbs moving like liquid under the silk and denim. She twisted to watch him with eq
ual parts pleasure and uncertainty.
“The doctor has cleared you for exercise,” he said. “So I figure that means you’re strong enough to face other things now as well.”
“Oh-kay.”
“Go ahead and call me obsessive, but I have a bone to pick with you,” he said. He was frowning.
It made her forehead crinkle in response. “What’s wrong? What else did I do?” Hadn’t she done more than enough for a week? At this rate she was going to have to turn catatonic to make sure nothing else happened.
He turned to face her, hands on his hips. “Do you remember when you stepped in the rabbit hole?”
She snorted. “I’m not likely to forget.”
His narrowed eyes glittered like gold coins. “You remember what you said?”
She shrugged, her face and mind a blank.
He stalked over, put his hands on her shoulders and shoved her back. She fell back on the mattress. “Hey!”
Then he crawled on the bed until he was on his hands and knees over her. He glared down at her, every inch the dominant angry Wyr male. “You said and I quote, ‘I can’t tell you how glad I am that you came or how good it is to hear your voice.’ ”
“So what?” She smacked his shoulders with the flat of her hands. Didn’t quite work out the same way when she did it. Of course he didn’t move an inch. “Quit with the primitive crap already.”
“You might have noticed I’m a primitive kind of guy.” He showed his teeth and got into her face. “All those centuries of civilization? Just a veneer.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” She went lax and just stared at him, helpless as usual against the flood of arousal that swept over her. “Have you been sulking about what I said this whole time?”
He tilted his head, his eyes lava-hot. “You said it like I was some kind of visitor. Or like you weren’t sure I would come when you had been kidnapped. When you had just told me you were pregnant with my child. I don’t know what the hell you think of me other than I am a bloodthirsty monster.”
“Dragos!” Her eyes went wide. She touched his face. “I was kidding when I said that.”
“So? I am a bloodthirsty monster, and you are my mate.” There was not a hint of softness in that aggressive face. He growled, “And I am yours. What will it take for you to accept that?”
“I do. I promise I do,” she said. Incredibly, she had hurt him in more ways than one. She stroked his cheek. “I just don’t know how to be your mate. Somewhere between that horrible Goblin stronghold and when you flicked your tail at me on the plain, I fell head over heels in love with you. But I come from a strong human background. Love, being in love, making love—those things make sense to me. They’re part of who I am. And you already admitted you don’t know what love is. So I still don’t have that frame of reference I was looking for. Even though we’re together, I don’t know how to behave or what it means.”
His expression had eased as she talked. He kissed the palm of her hand. “It means, you stupid woman, that I am learning too. Now you listen to me. I never stop thinking about you. You’re with me everywhere I go but I miss you when we’re apart. I’ve already shown that I will kill for you. I would also die for you. You make me laugh. You make me happy. You’re my miracle and my home. If you as much as twitch, I get a hardon. I will always come for you, always want you, and always need you. We clear?”
She had begun to glow. “Sounds a lot like love to me.”
“I thought so too,” said the dragon. In a move too fast for her to track, he snatched her hands and pinned them over her head. She startled but made herself relax in his hold. His fierce raptor’s gaze flared in the light. He descended until he was nose to nose with her. He hissed, “So say it.”
She gave him a gentle, radiant smile and whispered, “I’m yours.”
“It’s about goddamn time,” he growled. He straightened off the bed and yanked her up with him. Then he took hold of her tank top in both hands and shredded it. “Say it again.”
She started to laugh. Even to her own ears, she sounded drunk. She reached for his shirt and tried to undo the buttons with clumsy fingers as she told him again, “I’m yours.”
He spun her until she faced away from him. The controlled violence in his movements jettisoned her laughter. Her knees started to shake. He tore the rest of her clothes away and pushed her onto the bed until she was on her hands and knees, facing away from him. He widened her legs until she was fully exposed to him. The sense of vulnerability was almost too much to take. She shivered spasmodically.
She heard the tiniest of sounds from behind, the catch of his breath and a rustle of cloth. She tried to look over her shoulder to see what he was doing.
Then he put his hot lips on her from behind and licked along the delicate folds of her most private, hypersensitive flesh. He tickled her clitoris with his tongue and mouthed against her, “Say it again.”
Arousal roared over and through her. It knocked her off her hands. She collapsed forward, turned her damp cheek into the bedspread and gasped it.
Her collapse exposed her even more to him. He licked, nibbled and suckled, coaxing pleasure from her with a soft and dexterous touch, then turning demanding and rough, gripping her by the hips and holding her in place as he feasted on her with a ruthless carnality that sent her squealing into a climax that peaked and peaked until she writhed, utterly helpless in his grip as she fought for enough breath to scream.
All the while he insisted she admit that she was his. She gave it to him every time he demanded. She moaned it, sobbed it, until finally she lay boneless on her back, a mass of quivering, exposed nerves.
There was no part of her he had not pleasured or taken when he finally moved over her body, positioned his cock at her drenched, inviting entrance and pushed his way inside. She stroked the strong curve of his back with trembling hands as he filled her and she whimpered, drugged with pleasure. Tears spilled out of the corners of her eyes.
He framed her face with his big hands as he came all the way inside, seated to the root. At last he had burned even his own ferocity away, until all that was left on his severe dark face was tenderness.
“I have learned so many things over the long years,” he whispered as he moved inside of her. “I’ve taken tribute from sovereigns and witnessed the end of empires. But you are my best teacher.”
She stroked his lean cheek. “I love you.”
A smile filled with simple wonder lightened those fierce gold eyes. “I know.”
Laughter threatened to take her over, but then he lost his smile and grew intent as he drove harder, deeper inside her. She arched up to him as he hit just the right pleasure spot, and his powerful body shook as he spilled inside her. She cradled him close as he gasped and hid his face in her neck. Afterward she stroked his hair as they drifted.
Then he roused just enough to shift his weight off her. He lay on his back and pulled her against his side.
“Good to have that settled,” he said with satisfaction. He ran his fingers through her hair and with a gentle pulse of Power smoothed the tangles out.
“What, that we’re mates?” She stroked his hard, beautiful mouth.
“Yes.” He kissed her fingers. “Because we’re getting married.”
“We’re—” She bit her lip. “That’s your proposal. Just like that, we’re getting married.”
“Oh.” He reached over the side of the bed, dug into his shirt pocket and then dropped a massive diamond ring on her chest. “There.”
She rolled her eyes and flopped onto her back. This was too good to pass up. “Well, Dragos, it’s one thing to agree that we’re mates, but I don’t know about marriage,” she said. “I read Cosmo. You eat people. I think divorce court might call that the definition of irreconcilable.”
He rolled onto his side. The sheet slid from his muscled chest as he propped himself up on one elbow and regarded her from under lowered brows. It was his moody, stubborn look. God, she loved that expression. She could just abo
ut see the wheels turning in his head.
After a moment, he said, “Please.”
“That’s better, big guy.” She nodded and put the ring on.
A special preview of the next Novel of the Elder Races by Thea Harrison
STORM’S HEART
Coming August 2011 from
Berkley Sensation!
Motel 6 wasn’t so bad. In fact, it was kind of cute in a polyester sort of way.
Sure, it wasn’t the Regent, or the Renaissance, or the Ritz-Carlton. But the desk attendant had been cheerfully disinterested when she had checked in, the prices were affordable and, most important, they had smoking rooms. Score.
On the one hand, there wasn’t any room service or those darling little liquor bottles in a small refrigerator. On the other hand, there weren’t any assassination attempts or a pending coronation. Hm. Tricks wondered if they offered a twelvemonth lease.
She limped into the room. She pulled her new sunglasses down her nose and took a long careful look over the rim at the surrounding scene. The bright, warm afternoon sun toasted the asphalt of the motel parking lot, and a fitful wind swirled dirt and exhaust fumes into a toxic soup. The motel was located near some interstate exit, along with several fast-food restaurants, gas stations and a Walgreens. The sound of traffic was a constant in the background, but it shouldn’t be too disruptive once she had the door closed.
She couldn’t see or hear anything unusual in the motel’s immediate vicinity, and her sight and hearing, along with her sensitivity to magic, were inhumanly acute. She wasn’t up to a more strenuous inspection. A visual scan from the doorway would have to be good enough.
After she shut the door and put on the security chain, the first thing she did was kick off her stylish four-inch heels. Ah, thank you, god of feet. She set her sunglasses on the TV. The double room was either painted or wallpapered beige. It had bright bedspreads patterned with an insistent orange, a window covered with short, heavy curtains that hung over a long, thin, wall airconditioner unit, and a plain table and chair that were pushed against the wall. She dropped her shopping bags on the nearest bed, limped to the air conditioner and turned it on full blast.
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