“So what did you do?” asked Elaina. “What did you say to all that?”
“I was a twenty-one-year-old girl. What do you think I did? I cried right back at Mom and got furious right back at Dad. It was awful. And Dillaine…poor Dillaine heard all of it.”
“Poor lizard,” said Brogan, shaking his head. “That must have been tough for him.”
“And my parents didn’t make it any easier. They reminded me of how hard it is to get into the Transition Program. It turns out they’d done their homework about it. They called up all the literature about what you have to go through to get accepted, before they’ll let you drink the water without the inhibitor. All the analysis and the questions, and the tests, and more questions, and the examinations, and more questions.
And more questions on top of that, picking every last bit of your mind and body apart to see if being another species is really what you want, deep down in your soul. It’s like being sifted through a sieve while you’re under a quantum microscope and they’re studying every grain of who and what you are while you’re pouring out. If there’s even a particle of doubt in you, they’ll catch it and hold it up against you. It’s no wonder almost no one makes it to the end of the process and actually gets to drink uninhibited. Most people can’t stand up to that.”
“And that’s when you gave it up?” Elaina wondered.
“Of course not. I was a twenty-one-year-old girl, remember? I was determined to defy them. The semester was over and it was inter-term break, so I went back to Lacerta with Dillaine, to stay with him until school started again. And we were happy…for a little while. He was great. Dillaine comforted me and told me everything was all right and there was nothing wrong with me. And he made love to me and made me feel better.”
Gabrielle, lost in memories, did not sense the spike of tension that shot through Brogan at that last part, but Elaina saw how his shoulders suddenly tightened and his jaw clenched a bit when Gabrielle openly mentioned letting her old boyfriend have sex with her. Elaina said nothing, however, and just let Gabrielle go on.
“In spite of how sweet Dillaine was,” Gabrielle explained further, “something changed between us after that. I wasn’t sure what it was—until one day he told me. His parents already knew me, but they didn’t know I was planning to become a Lacertan. But one day, he said, they sat him down and they talked about it. And his parents told him…I don’t want to say they told him exactly what my parents told me. They didn’t react in the exact same way. They were a lot calmer and a lot more reasonable—but it was almost the same argument. They asked him what would happen between us if I didn’t make it through the program.
Would we still feel the same way about each other? Would we still have the same feelings about a life together? Would I even still have the same feelings about myself? And…I didn’t have answers. We were both starting to doubt everything. And doubt—it’s the nastiest, most evil feeling. It was like water getting through cracks in rocks. Sooner or later the rocks crumble. And that’s what Dillaine and I did. We crumbled.”
For a moment, the hovercar flew on in silence. Brogan and Elaina did not look back at Gabrielle, but they could both imagine the lump in her throat at this moment. Brogan was almost sorry they had let this conversation get started.
“So, anyway, Dillaine and I said goodbye. And I left Lacerta again and went back to Earth and finished school there. And I never bothered applying to the Transition Program. I stayed human because I didn’t see any point in trying. So there you’ve got it. I’m not one of you, but I know your world and your people well enough that I’m the one that the Bureau chose to help you stop a gangster from stealing what I wanted to go through the whole process for.”
“That’s an inferno of a story,” Brogan had to admit.
“I guess it is,” said Gabrielle. “But every woman probably has a story about that one relationship in her life. That one just happens to be mine.”
They flew the rest of the way to Talontown in silence.
_______________
It was dark when they returned to Talontown. Confident that the Bureau and its informants were hot on the trail of the information they needed, the three of them decided to have dinner at the Corps refectory and then call it a night. Gabrielle checked in to the guest quarters that the Bureau had arranged for her. Brogan and Elaina retired to their respective apartments.
As soon as he was alone in his bedroom—and somehow feeling more alone there than he had ever felt on a night when he did not have a female sleeping over—Brogan put his powerblade and badge on the shelf over his bed, stripped naked and put his uniform and boots in the clothes freshener, and stepped over to the full-length mirror on the wall opposite the bed. There he looked himself up and down, frowning slightly at his half-erection that would be wasted tonight, and at the reason he was half-erect.
Bane and damn, that story had really gotten to him. The story that Gabrielle told about the old love that she so ironically lost because she wanted to leave her species for his, it had somehow had some kind of effect on him. It had touched him in a way that nothing had ever quite touched him before. Whatever would he do about that?
Brogan thought to look up this other dragon, this Dillaine, who had so loved and so thoroughly sexed Gabrielle when she was younger. It shouldn’t be difficult to do. A mere cross-reference with her personnel files and educational records with similar records from the universities on Lacerta would bring him a full name without much trouble. He could look up everything about this Dillaine, including the way he looked back then, when he spent all those nights and any other stolen moment doing every sexual thing with Gabrielle and screwing her as only a twenty-one-year-old dragon could. But what good would that do?
One thing it was definitely doing was turning his half-erection to a full hard-on.
Snarling through clenched teeth, he threw himself on the bed and lay there on his back, and took matters firmly and urgently in hand.
He tightened his palm and fingers around the root of his distraction and moved them up and down, making a fleshy friction and heat. He shut his eyes and conjured up in the dark an image of Gabrielle out of that black jumpsuit—or anything else. There in the theater of his mind, she crouched naked on the bed with him, with her hair undone, presenting to him the fullness of what he imagined of her breasts, and the softness of what he imagined of her muff. Licking his lips, Brogan pictured himself reaching down beneath that muff to find something wet and warm and tingling and ready for him. But his hand on his root by itself was not quite getting the desired job done.
Prying open his eyes, Brogan released his erection, which bobbed and nagged at him for letting it go, and sat up on the bed. He reached over to his nightstand where he kept a squeeze vial of Slipdragon, the most popular personal lubricant on Lacerta. He popped open the vial and squeezed a quantity of it into one palm. He replaced the vial and took the handful of warm, tingly, slippery liquid back down to the center of his attention.
Enclosing his tool with his hand again, Brogan spread the Slipdragon up and down his length and onto and over the head. Clenching his teeth again, he at once had something approximating the feeling of having his hard dick inside a woman. “Rrrrrr…” he rumbled, shutting his eyes once more and brought back the image of the female in question. Brogan fell back onto the bed, stroking his now thoroughly slippery rod, and picked up where he left off.
In his mind, Brogan reached for the very willing Gabrielle. Their arms encircled each other and their mouths came together wetly and hotly. In his thoughts he told her, Forget about the kid who used to fuck you. Have yourself some grown-up cock now. His imaginary self wrestled Gabrielle down and onto her back, slipping his hand along her inner thighs. “Open up your legs,” he said. And she did, showing him a beckoning, glistening pinkness.
He moved between her open legs and put the blunt end of his instrument at her opening, sliding it up and down along the lips of her sex, teasing her bud with his tip. “You want this di
ck inside you?” he said, sucking at her lips.
“Yes,” Gabrielle said. “Now.”
Oh, her imagined self was a take-charge woman. Brogan liked that. “Take it and put it in you,” he invited her.
Brogan moved away the hand that held his tool and crouched on all-fours over her. Gabrielle took hold of what he’d offered her and slipped it between her folds, letting the throbbing and sensitive head ease into her. Grunting with delight, Brogan did the rest and sheathed himself inside Gabrielle all the way to his balls, which he pressed against her mound with this first blissful penetration. “Fuck, that’s good,” he groaned.
Having taken charge of the first stroke, Gabrielle now completely submitted, letting him pump his hot, hard maleness inside her to their mutual hearts’ content. She rocked up and down under him in time to his pumping on top of her, and both of their bodies sang with the feeling of all that Brogan gave her and all that he took from her. Soon she began to squeeze and knead her way down the muscles of his back and onto the quickly rising and falling mounds of his bottom.
“Yes!” Brogan roared. “Grab my ass! Grab it! Fuck…!” The reality of lying alone in bed and pleasuring himself was swept away by the fantasy of topping Gabrielle and plunging into her. On the screen in his mind, she was as completely consumed by the way he drilled her as he was. She showed him with every flex of her muscles how much she wanted him, and he gave her all that they both wanted. The tightness and wetness inside her set Brogan on fire and sent crashing waves of joy over his body all at once. And he responded in the way that nature demanded.
Brogan had the sudden feeling that someone had taken a lit torch of pleasure to him and ignited his whole body with it. Mouth open wide and head flung back, he bellowed out his orgasm. From his foreskin-jacketed rod came the physical expression of what he imagined, a thick and mighty spurt of cream that fountained up in an arc and splattered all over his abs. He continued stroking and squeezing his cock to bring forth every drop of what his balls produced.
Feeling the warm wetness of his seed covering and flowing on his stomach, Brogan exhaled, gasping, and descended into the afterglow of his imagination. Gabrielle faded like a fog from his mind, leaving him as alone in his head as he was in his bed.
He lay tingling, his maleness in his hand turning from a steely rod to a long, soft hose. He released it and grew still and quiet, and brought back to his mind the image of himself lying post-coitally with Gabrielle in his arms, resting her head on his shoulder, rustling her fingers through his chest hair, and playing with his nipples.
Eventually, that faded as well, leaving Brogan with nothing but the reality of the sexy mess on his midsection which he would need to clean up before going to sleep.
But for the moment, all he could do was sigh and gulp, and murmur a bit ruefully to himself, “Damn. Elaina was right. She’s always right.”
_______________
In her guest quarters, Gabrielle undressed down to an undershirt and panties. She let down her hair and sat on a bench at a dressing table. There, watching herself in a mirror, she began to brush her hair for bed. Sitting there, she quietly, mentally, reviewed the events of the day just ended and looked forward to whatever new intel she would be receiving for the mission, fully expecting to see results by morning, perhaps even sometime during the night.
Though, truth to tell, she rather hoped she could get at least a little sleep beforehand. Even knowing the dire and critical import of what she had come to Lacerta to do, she hoped she would at least not have to work through fatigue to face it. That was how important it truly was.
And as she brushed her hair, she recalled the ride home from Silverwing, and the story she had told the two Squires of her past experiences and her past relationship on Lacerta. She had hoped not to be quite so personal with them, but Squire Elaina had posed the question of how she came into this assignment, which seemed to open the door to all of it. Perhaps it was for the best, as it would let the Squires know and trust her better. However…
Gabrielle felt a little sting of regret about just one thing. She had actually, openly mentioned Dillaine making love to her. It wasn’t really that important, all things considered. It was assumed, understood, and expected that her relationship with Dillaine was a very, very sexual one. But it seemed a rather intimate thing for her to say to them, just the same. Sitting in the back seat of the hovercar, she had not seen a reaction from Squire Brogan. She wondered if he’d actually had one.
She paused in mid-stroke of the brush along her hair. He was male, he was most likely heterosexual, and he was Lacertan. It stood to reason he’d had some reaction on some level. Lacertan men were sex incarnate.
Putting down the brush and standing up from the bench, Gabrielle made her way to bed. Well, this particular Lacertan male was one who had been charged to help her in a mission vital to interstellar security. That was their first relationship and their most important one.
Turning down the bed, she slipped between the sheets and tapped the surface on the nightstand to shut off the regular lights and switch to the dim sleeping lights. Gabrielle closed her eyes and began to clear out her thoughts. Only one thought stayed with her as she drifted down into slumber.
It had been a long time since she had been to bed with a Lacertan.
CHAPTER FOUR
The next morning, Gabrielle was all business again.
Back in the Corps briefing room, she began, “This is what we have on Burl Holman.”
She was clad this time in a grey jumpsuit of the same design as her black one. In the back of his mind, Brogan wondered if all her outfits were of the same cut in different colors. In the corners of his thoughts lingered the memories of how he had imagined the two of them in bed last night, and at the moment they were an unwelcome distraction. Needing to be all business now the same as Gabrielle was, Brogan kept those thoughts in their place. They were of no use to him now.
Standing at the table as she had been before, with Brogan, Elaina, and Templar Vartan seated and attending her words, Gabrielle continued. “Holman is on Lacerta right now, keeping a low profile. He has business tonight at the Talontown spaceport.”
“He wouldn’t be doing anything as obvious as trying to smuggle water through there,” Elaina pointed out.
“No,” said Gabrielle, “certainly not through the spaceport. He and his people would be caught much too easily there. What we’ve learned is that he’s bribed certain spaceport officials for the use of the spaceport’s sub-basement for another purpose. Skinner’s network is recruiting, and the recruitment operation is going on in that sub-basement tonight.”
“They’re recruiting new talent, so to speak?” Brogan ventured.
“Exactly. They’re looking for human mercenaries, only the toughest and the strongest—and most willing to go outside the law. And weredragons of the same type. This is the beginning of Skinner’s building his criminal operation into a private army of weredragons, using smuggled water on the humans.
Interstar Intelligence has arranged new identities for us. Squire Brogan, you and I are going to be part of the new talent, as you put it, at that recruitment. We’re going to get ourselves inside Skinner’s network that way and shut down the smuggling operation from the inside. Our informants posing as members of the gang have put in a good word for us.”
Brogan looked curiously between his partner and the human agent. “What about Elaina?” he wondered aloud.
“Squire Elaina has another assignment,” said Templar Vartan.
Brogan fidgeted a bit in his seat. He glanced a bit nervously over at Elaina, who seemed to be taking all this with perfect calm. “I beg your pardon, Templar,” he said respectfully, “but Elaina and I have always worked together. We’re a team; we know how each other thinks. I’m not sure it’s the best thing to break us up, especially not when the mission is this important.”
“I understand your misgivings, Squire Brogan,” said the Templar, “but we have another, special detail for Squire
Elaina, one that could bring vital information from other sources.”
“What detail could be so vital that you need to break up Elaina and me now?”
Elaina answered, “I’m going to be working with other members of Skinner’s group who are also on Lacerta. I’ll be getting close to them…as part of their entertainment.”
Brogan did not like the sound of that at all. Frowning hard, he said, “I hope that doesn’t really mean what it sounds like.”
Understanding her partner’s feelings, Elaina calmly said, “I’ll be posing as a harem dragon for this mission.”
Totally flummoxed and dismayed, Brogan balked, “You can’t be serious. You? A harem dragon? Tell me I’m not hearing this!”
Tapping on the table, Elaina asked, “Are you suggesting I’m not equal to this task?”
“You know better than that!” said Brogan. He knew she was more than capable of carrying out such an assignment, especially in light of what they had discussed on the beach only yesterday. “This just isn’t your kind of duty.”
BROGAN_A Steamy WereDragon Romance Page 4