by Faye, Amy
She looked over at him. "Fine, I guess. If you don't mind my asking..." Diana trailed off and he looked over at her. He should have been looking past her, watching for oncoming cars, or looking for a place to turn. But he indulged himself for a moment, regardless.
"Go ahead."
"Why are you doing this?"
"Taking you to dinner?"
"Any of it," she asked. "The trust, the dinner. Why were you at my Dad's funeral?"
"I don't suppose you know anything about your father's life as a younger man, would you?"
She seemed to scan her thoughts. "I mean, he didn't talk about it much," she said finally. "I get the impression he came from California, close to Nevada, and that he met my Mom there and moved out to the middle of the country. Why?"
"You could have learned that just looking him up on the internet."
"Well, I didn't want to sound like I knew," she said, shrugging and looking out the window. "Because, like I said. He didn't talk much to me about it."
"Well, they got that part right, at least," he said. The smile on his face wasn't for her, he realized, though he'd thought that the whole thing was an act he was putting on. And yet, when she wasn't looking, he still had that wistful grin. "He's from California, sure as can be."
"And how do you know that?"
"Because I knew him when I was a younger man, myself."
She looked over at him and raised an eyebrow. "I thought you two hadn't met?"
He let out a breath. Damn; he had said that. "Well, I mean. I didn't mean it like that. I knew of him. He and I ran in... not the same circles, but similar."
"Oh yeah?" She didn't look particularly like she bought it, but simultaneously he couldn't say that he thought she was going to doubt him, either.
"More or less," Alex confirmed. "He left, got married, and I sort of lost track of him."
"That seems to be how he wanted it," Diana agreed. "He was an independent sort of man."
"And you?"
"You might be surprised to learn I'm not any sort of man at all," she said. He chanced a glance in her direction and caught the smile on her face.
"I'd noticed," he said. He looked her up and down. She wasn't his kind. They were fundamentally different beings altogether, and yet... the human part of him reacted. Her shirt was cut low and revealed just enough flesh to be tempting, and her skirt was high enough to show just a hint of thigh above the knee. He put his eyes back on the road before he could look any closer.
"But I mean, I'm sure that you could get this all done from Washington."
"True," Alex said. He eased the car into the left turn lane when the light changed, and the car turned around the corner without the need to slow down, the centrifugal force pulling him towards her. Diana gasped nervously and clutched at the wall, and Alex could feel the stress building up in her. He enjoyed the feeling, enjoyed seeing her squirm. It would be wonderfully interesting to experience it for himself, closer and more personal. Another of Keleth's hoard to be claimed. Perhaps the most desirable piece.
"And yet you're here."
"And yet, I'm here. Thirty years is a long time to not be able to meet a man from your home town, you know? And now the chance is gone forever."
The lies built up on themselves until he didn't know where they were going, but he couldn't stop now. If he tried to explain, it would mean unraveling the whole sweater, and unless it was meant very literally he wasn't interested in going down that path.
"And dinner?"
"I wish I could say that I had some sort of clever plan," he confessed. "But I don't."
"So what, then?"
"You're interested in men, right?"
In the corner of his vision he could see her look over at him, and he allowed himself the opportunity to look at her expression, which held amusement. Her eyebrow was raised in incredulity. "What's that got to do with anything?"
"Well, I'm interested in women. One in particular, at the moment."
"I think there are plenty of pretty girls in Seattle who would be interested in you."
He smiled at that and fixed his eyes back on the street in front of him. "None that I'm interested in myself, though," he said.
That was the truth. The number of human women who interested him could be counted on his fingers, and he was surprised to have run into one of them by accident. Her flesh was shaped about right, but it took more than that. The whiff of danger mixed with value.
Under most circumstances, there was no need to indulge any sexual desire. He felt it in the same way that someone felt any kind of hunger. It would start far away, and if he wanted to then he could choose to ignore it, as long as he kept busy. Turning it off had been easy the past hundred years or more.
That was, of course, right up until you started to collect them. Dragons had a tendency to collect things. It was like a status symbol, and once you started the collection there was no stopping. Letting your hoard go was like admitting defeat, and there was no dragon he knew who was willing to let it go any longer than necessary.
All of that made Keleth a strange specimen, to say the least. Nobody had seen his hoard, not as long as he'd been living his human life. There ought to have been some camaraderie between Alex and Keleth, both of them living false Human lives. Both of them roosting in the same area for quite a long time.
Instead, he wanted nothing more than to take everything that 'Alvin Kramer' had in life, and make it his, and the first step along that route was to claim his daughter. The fact that she had a body shaped for lovemaking only made it that much sweeter, but regardless, he knew, he had to have her, and it was only a matter of time until he did.
6
After almost a thousand years of life, Alex Blume had hoarded a great many things. His collection of Roman philosophy was as complete as it could be. There were dragons much older than he, those who had lived through it, and he still had the most complete collection in the world.
Humans had a tendency to get offended when people amassed such a collection. They thought that things were designed to be shared, to be consumed by other people. So that everyone could know the full text of everything that was known. There were a lot of people who felt that way.
Dragons didn't tend to feel that way; Alex Blume didn't feel that way, either. He was an exception to the rule on a great many subjects, and when it came to someone else's hoard there was a delightful pleasure that he got out of trying to share it with the world. One of his kin had a collection of unreleased albums from several notable rock bands, and it had been a particular pleasure to leak them onto the internet. To see Corinth fall from grace, even just a little bit. It was like a fine wine, almost. Or a fine woman, not unlike the one across the table.
Though few women interested him, or interested most dragons, the few who managed it were like everything in the draconic social existence. The need quickly expanded past an idle interest, and moved into the realm of all-encompassing obsessions. It was something to behold to see her, the way that her body moved. The way that every little thing seemed to be designed by some higher power to attract a man's attention.
In a strange way, she might have been a hoard all by herself. Whoever had designed her, whatever God was out there who created these fleshy humans, he had created this one to hoard men's attention, and even though he was more than a millennium her elder, he couldn't resist her pull any more than any mortal man.
"So what is it that you are studying, if you're not going into law?"
He asked her so that she would continue paying attention to him; if she could so completely claim his attention then he would have nothing less than all of hers. He wasn't going to allow himself to be outdone, no matter what.
"I'm currently in school for art history, with a minor in museum studies."
"Working at a museum? How fitting."
She made a face at him. There was no way that she could understand what he really meant, of course. That would mean explaining too much. But it was fitting on sufficientl
y many levels that he didn't mind the slip.
"How's that?"
"Your father was an artist," Alex offered. "And now you're going into a field where you might show off that very same art. Why, if I didn't know better, I'd guess that people might accuse you of having a conflict of interest."
"Dad didn't like the fame," she said. He doubted if that were the case, but then again, there were a great many things about Keleth that few dragons could really understand. Perhaps that was why he had left. Perhaps that was why he had died.
"So you wouldn't show his paintings off to the world?"
"No," she said, thinking. "I didn't say that, either."
"So, what, then?"
"I don't know. I haven't given it that much thought." He could sense the lie even as she said it. The expression on her face told him that she'd given it considerable thought. It also told him that she didn't know what she was supposed to think about it, so she pretended to think nothing.
"Of course," he agreed. There was no use in pressing it. "If you don't think it too forward of me, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?"
She looked at him and leaned onto the table. "You'd better make it juicy."
The view he got down her blouse played at his mind, and he knew that she saw him looking. He knew, further, that the fact that she did nothing to stop him looking was something that he should be reading into.
"Are you seeing anyone currently?"
"No," she said. She did nothing to adjust herself, nothing to hide the deep valley between her breasts, did nothing to cover herself at all. "I'm not. Why?"
"I'd like to see a little bit more of you," he answered.
"And you think you need to ask my permission?"
"I thought it might be polite," he answered. It was a dodge, but it was a dodge right into 'no, I don't.' He watched the smile cross her face, and he suddenly realized what was happening. It gave him a thrill.
She thought for all the world that she was going to catch him out. That she was going to 'collect' him. She was enjoying the attention of a man far above her station, and there was a thrill to it. Not quite sexual, but it could certainly have leaned that way. It was the same thrill that he felt looking at her. He eased his jaw loose of itself, willing the arousal under control.
"Who says I need you to be polite?"
He eased his jaw from side to side again, the tension rising in his gut. She didn't need to be quite this direct about it, but there was something delicious about it. He realized that even if she weren't Keleth's, he might have wanted her, regardless. The hunger in her eyes lit something in his belly. A need that he hadn't felt in a long time.
He needed to take her because if he didn't, someone else would, and that was unacceptable. Not because she was Keleth's possession, part of his horde. Not to take her away from someone else, to humiliate them even in death. Not because she was attractive, even, though she most certainly was.
He needed her because she had value. Unknown, unknowable value. All he knew was that it was high and it was enough to start a stirring in his chest. He couldn't let her go, not any more. That ship, he thought, staring at her, had sailed.
"Are you telling me I shouldn't be?"
She leaned further forward. The shirt started to strain against her chest, making her breasts look even more delicious, even more delightful. He wanted to take her right then and there, and with a little expenditure of concentration it would have been easy to do it. He could have had her in the middle of the floor, and no one would have said a word about it.
But that would have demanded an explanation, and he wasn't ready to give it, yet.
"I'm telling you to use your imagination," she whispered into his ear. He did, and the things that he imagined were too much. Too delightful. He shivered at the words.
"We've got plenty of time to imagine things together, Diana. The food hasn't even arrived yet."
She settled back into her seat and leaned back against the back rest of the booth. Her arms framed those breasts that his eyes had such trouble drawing away from as Diana crossed her arms in front of her. "Of course we do. We've got all the time in the world," she said.
Alex almost jumped when he felt her foot press against the inside of his thigh. She'd slipped it out of her heeled shoe and ran it up the inside of that thigh. He could feel himself growing hard, against his own will. There was a part of him, some intellectual part, that could have stopped it, if he put a force of will into it. His human body was, after all, merely a disguise.
But with the way that the desire built up in his gut, it would have taken more focus and more energy than he was prepared to expend. He sucked in a breath and she pulled her foot away. But there was no doubting, now. She wanted him, and not just as a little business dinner date.
The food couldn't have come soon enough.
7
The feeling of Alex Blume's lips as they pressed into hers was no less intoxicating than Diana Kramer had dared to imagine. The scent of him was something that she couldn't begin to express. He didn't have the body of a man who spent all of his time in the gym, but he carried it with an easy, predatory grace. Now that he'd turned that body on her, she couldn't want anything more.
Her flesh burned at his touch, and she wanted nothing more than to let him explore every inch of it, but the way that his hands moved across her also addressed another decided inequality between them: while he was exploring every inch of her body, she wasn't getting anywhere near the same leeway with his own body. She'd have to rectify that.
She pulled free of his lips, which had latched pleasurably onto one nipple, and forced him back from her, putting her weight into pushing him onto his back, and working the buttons on his suit.
It became immediately obvious where all the money went in these expensive suits; it came apart like it was made for that express purpose, no hitches or catches that she had to fuss with endlessly. Just easy open, easy close.
Her breath caught as she pushed his shirt back off his shoulders. She'd underestimated him just a little bit, she realized. He still didn't look like some muscle-brained hunk, but for a man who had to be at least in his later forties, he had a body that anyone would kill for.
Alex laid back on his elbows and looked up at her, waiting, daring her to take what was hers, and Diana knew that if she let him look at her like that much longer then she was going to have to tear his head off.
She didn't need to be told twice. Her body moved automatically, pressing a kiss against his lips that lasted just long enough to remember the taste of his mouth before she moved down his body, pressing a line of kisses along his jaw, then tracing down the thick veins of his throat and down to his collar bone.
Her eyes flashed and she forced herself to slow for a moment, and then an idea occurred to her with a flash and she hurried faster still. The billionaire's body stiffened under her kisses as she took one of his nipples between her lips, and then introduced him to her teeth.
She smiled at the sound of his breath hitching. "You like that, baby?"
He answered her by wrapping one of his hands around her head and pulling her in closer to him, allowing her another moment to tease him.
Diana shivered in anticipation of what was going to come next. What she was going to do next. Then he gripped her hair a little tighter and the balance of power between them shifted a second time.
Alex rolled her over, looking down at her. He had a feral, almost threatening grin on his face as he looked down on her, and Diana knew instinctively that she had the exact same expression on her own face. That in that very moment she had to look like she was desperate for him, and the feeling that gnawed at her body wasn't far from it.
"You're feeling frisky, aren't you?" He clicked his jaw. Something about the movement was intimidating, as if he were barely able to hold back his frustration. It sent another shock of anticipation through her.
"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" She asked. He looked at her with wild eyes.
"You know I would," he told her. His eyes were serious and deadly and absurdly fucking hot.
"Then assume I am. What are you going to do to me?"
His hips shifted and what had previously been a losing battle to try to take charge against him became a hopeless one as he pushed on top of her, his weight settling comfortably between her legs. Her very naked legs, wrapped around his still-very-clothed legs. It just wasn't fair, she told herself. Not remotely fair. But she wasn't going to take it lying down. At least, not until she had something inside her.
"Aren't you a little over-dressed for this?" Diana asked, an edge of defiance in her voice. An edge that she hoped desperately he would feel compelled to stifle.
"Shut up," he said, staring at her. There was an edge of threat to his voice, but that wasn't nearly enough, not when there was so many enticing ways that he could follow through on that threat.
"Why don't you make me?"
She didn't know when his weight had shifted, or when his hands had moved, but the feeling of something entering her forced all the air out of her lungs at once.
Alex's fingers wriggled inside her, spreading the walls of her pussy, every movement sending wild shocks of need running through her body. He clicked his jaw again, sending another shock of something else through her. Anticipation, that mixed and mingled erotically with the pleasure that already threatened to overwhelm Diana if she let herself lose control for even an instant.
"That shut you up, didn't it?"
"Shut up and finger-fuck me," she growled. "You were doing so good at it, up til now."
He barked out a laugh and bit into her throat, hard. That didn't send any sparks of pleasure, didn't force all the air out of her chest. No, it forced a loud, low moan out of her that she would have been embarrassed by if there was any way of stopping herself. But she wasn't going to admit defeat any time soon.