by Starla Night
“I love it,” Rose said, forcing herself to confess at least that much. “It might be too fancy for simple janitor like me.”
“Environmental technician.” He grinned and tucked her into the bed. “You can wear it around your neck. I know you care about your neighbors, and I don’t mind if you keep it a secret.”
He understood her. He got her.
Jasper stood and glanced at his phone.
“Aren’t you coming to bed?” she demanded.
He hesitated, then obliged and crawled in beside her, still in his suit.
She rubbed his thick silver tie between her fingers. “New pajamas?”
“I have to be ready for the call.”
Right. The night sobered a little. Even though she’d decided to love Jasper, a lot of obstacles sat between when they could see each other again, much less plan a wedding.
“Did you call Kyan?”
“He’s on standby. When and where do you want to hold the wedding?”
Her heart thudded hard. Her mouth opened…and her grandma’s warning appeared like a ghost wielding sharp fears. She would be happiest the moment before everything crashed down. “I’m afraid to even imagine.”
“Our wedding could be anywhere. The top of any mountain. The bottom of the sea. A tropical island all alone, the floor of a circus in Las Vegas. If you can dream it, I can arrange it.”
He listed venues, each more extravagant than the last, and they wrapped around her heart like tiny, protective wires.
Rose wanted to be with him anywhere, any time, and yet reaching for him and making a wedding plan tempted fate. The happiest day of her life was the most dangerous, and with this gorgeous man planning his wedding to her, her heart squeezed an awful lot like it was the happiest day of her life.
“I can’t decide,” she finally broke in. The lie scissored her heart, but she stuck to it. “It’s enough that I’m here right now, right?”
“You can always be here.”
“Let’s talk about the wedding later.”
He was silent, then he sighed and nuzzled her. “Okay. I understand. I’ll be here, Rose, until you’re ready.”
But she was ready. And that contradiction made it hard for her to fall asleep, and she woke up when he slipped out of the bed, summoned by the rising air siren alarm emanating from his phone. He flew to the bedroom door.
Rose called out. “Jasper!”
He turned in the doorway. “I didn’t mean to wake you. It’s early morning. You have plenty of time.”
“No, I wanted to tell you I’ll think about where to have our wedding.”
“Good.”
“And if it’s okay for you…if you don’t mind…that is, if you think it would be okay, I would like to move in with you. If that’s okay.”
He returned to the bed, launched onto her, and rolled her around the covers, shocking her into crazy, wild, fun laughter. He nuzzled her beneath their mountains of blankets; they snuggled in the middle like the cream filling to a fluffy cannoli.
“It’s okay, Rose. I made this whole lair for you.”
“Oh, and it will be for Liam, too.”
“Liam is yours, so this lair is for him, too.”
She returned his kisses, a smile plastered to her face.
The phone vibrated again and emitted the air siren warning.
Jasper gave her one more lingering kiss, ejected himself from the covers, and zoomed out the bedroom door.
Rose settled back in the bed and blinked at the ceiling.
It was early; she was tired. But also buzzing. She’d move in! What should she do first? Take a bath? She needed a bath.
But maybe, first, just a little more sleep…
Her phone rang.
She answered. “Jasper?”
“I’ll teach you how to navigate later,” he promised over the phone, and she cuddled into comforter, enjoying a moment of teen romance that she’d never enjoyed as a teen. “Kyan or another of my siblings will help you transfer your things.”
Unease returned. How could she be ready when she didn’t know if they had another week?
And how could she fight for Jasper when everyone said any attempt was suicide?
“Maybe I should wait until this whole thing blows over.”
“You do not have long.”
“I don’t have much to move. I just have to put in my notice, get the apartment in order, you know.”
“Good, start. Adviser Wrathmoda will arrive in less than a week.”
Her heart contracted. “Jasper, be safe.”
“Of course I will.” His smile was audible through the phone. “Do not worry. I will always come back to you.”
He had to end the conversation.
She lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling canopy. All the people she cared about had come back to her; the problem was that many had returned with missing pieces or in individual boxes. Her mothers had been so radioactive they couldn’t even have her box at her own funeral.
But Jasper was a dragon. He’d be fine.
She had to worry about moving and a million other exciting things now.
And, just in case something should happen, she had to keep Liam close and convince Peridot to fix the department before the building burned down—or worse, she lost her job.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jasper strode into the delivery room.
The alarm system he’d programmed to notify him of Larimar’s awakening had silenced. He shut off the motion detector, stowed the machine, and focused on the shipment information just as she dragged herself through the outer door—claws gouging the concrete, a wild fury in her white-blue eyes as she whipped across the room.
His nerves shot him in the chest.
“Good morning, Larimar,” he said in an ordinary tone.
She saw him, blinked, and her dragon melted away. “Oh. You’re out here.”
“Yes, I am.” He reviewed the next box. Would she realize they were the same boxes he’d already inventoried last night? He hoped not. “Are you ready for the final ten pounds of cheese?”
Her face blanched even paler to a greenish-blue hue. “I will never eat this fermented milk substance again.”
He lowered the clipboard. “Then have you decided which flavor to export?”
“Give me the last box.” She grumbled as she returned to her tasting room. While he opened it, she prepared a bottle of water, a bottle of red wine, and a tub of crackers. “Mother wanted to raze the planet for a training ground, and right now, I almost agree with her. What’s the point of such variety?”
“Humans can’t help themselves. Just last month, my Rose invented a new method to remove parasites from our sewage pipes.”
“Dragons are ingenious. Our intelligence lacks nothing.”
“Humans apply this creativity to all things.” Jasper booted the software he’d developed to record her cheese evaluation. “Food, clothing, interior design, sex…”
“Sex?” She glanced up from the cheese samples, loathing changing over to surprise. “Don’t be ridiculous. There is only one position for sex.”
“Humans found more.”
“Why?”
“You haven’t seen their educational videos?”
“I need not educate myself. I have had partners. A dragon of my great beauty and influence has never needed lust hormones; suitors approached me, dazzled and reverent, as they should.” She glared at the cheeses and heaved a great sigh. “Okay. I’m ready.”
They began their routine. He scanned the cheese; she opened it, nibbled a taste, spit into the bin, and then guzzled wine and crunched a cracker. Jasper video recorded and entered her opinions into the spreadsheet. He’d designed the testing method based on Alex’s tests.
The first day, Larimar had eaten twelve pounds of cheese; the second, only three, and the third, she’d laid in bed all day feeling unwell. After that, Jasper suggested the spit method, and now she could test almost twenty pounds per day, limited by her jaw sor
eness and mucus. Occasionally, she stopped to throw up, and then she returned to her test.
At the midmorning break, she grasped the wrappers in her clawed hands. “This is taking too long.”
“We’re on the final box,” he encouraged.
She burped and swallowed harshly. Then, she shook her head. “I will not make it.”
“You will.” Her determination in the face of physical limitations reminded him very much of Rose, and he couldn’t help respecting her, even though they were not friends. “Selecting a product always causes the most violent fights among my siblings. You bear the entire burden with none of the synergy. You have already shown impressive determination and rare fortitude. You will finish.”
“I don’t know if I want to.” She scrubbed her face, then plucked a random untested cheese from the box. “If I decide the product today, can you ship it to Draconis tomorrow? So we can launch and see profits next week?”
“It depends on the product,” he admitted. “The cheese you hold in your hand requires nine months of aging.”
She tossed it into the trash with a sigh. “I could have saved myself time by only tasting the products you could export.”
“You’ve learned for the next launch.”
She formed her claws into a fist and thumped her thigh. “I don’t have time to learn this now. I must execute! You were already supposed to know. You’ve been doing this for half a decade!”
“Mal decides the products,” he deflected. “I acquire and ship them.”
“Your job is pointless.” She scrubbed her face. “Mother should have gone after your CEO.”
“Empress Horribus already proposed.”
She dropped her hands. “Why? Did you ever find out why Empress Horribus, the most powerful dragon in the Empire, with her pick of male aristocrats to wed, deigned to offer her claw to you low-caste, backwater, no-name males?”
“We ran the number one company off-Draconis for a time.”
“But she could have married the aristocrat heir of the number one company on Draconis at any time. And if she’d wanted your company, she could have claimed it, and you, with her armies. She could have taken the Earth for herself. No, instead, she offered her claw, like a love match, and her interest has kept any other speculation, such as Mother and the generals, away from taking Earth for themselves.” She drummed her nails on the floor with a rat-a-tat-tat. “Did any of you ever meet the Empress? Was she shown holos?”
He shook his head.
“I wouldn’t think so, given your caste. Your mother’s estate is all the way out on the Outer Rim.” She shook her head. “It is a mystery.”
“For us, too.” He leaned forward. “We still have some protection. A warship—”
“One warship.” She flicked her fingers dismissing him. “If Mother takes this planet, she will bring the arsenal necessary to destroy any opposition.”
His throat tightened.
“That is why you must impress her. Perhaps your knowledge of multiple sex positions will do so. But I doubt it. She cares about coin.” Larimar faced the cheeses with dread. “And that’s why one of us has to finish these cheeses. But your pallet is so unrefined that you prefer cheddar over limburger! The task falls to me.”
He poised to record her next findings. “Thank you for not advocating the total destruction of Earth.”
“If I have to eat any more of this, I’ll change my stance.” She curled her nose up at the mild rosemary-infused soft cheese. “But anyway, I want this company to succeed as much as you do. It might surprise you to learn I’m not Mother’s favorite. I am not rich nor important enough to inherit Mother’s political seat without a duel. I’ve never led an armada, and I have no desire to, and so the only option is to amass great wealth is commerce. In two decades, if I make twice as much as the richest company on Earth, I should secure my place in politics and in her heart.”
Jasper had no idea how to reach that goal. “While luxury goods are a good place to start, the goals you’re describing require products on a different order of magnitude. You can’t reach it by eating cheese.”
“Thank the volcanic mother.” Her grateful smile turned to sadness and then wavered between confusion and fury. “Then why are we wasting our time?”
“Because Earth has no products that could double our current income. We surveyed it in their ‘Middle Ages,’ and it contains no useful natural resources. No stellarium, for example. The lack of raw materials is why we’ve ignored the planet for so many years.”
“They have rare materials. Gemstones, minerals.”
“Trace. The same as you’ll find in any dragon lab. You’d do better surveying for asteroids composed of diamond because you will never find such a gemstone on Earth.”
She clenched her wrappers. “No. I have not come this far to be dissuaded.”
“You need to export an essential. A medical product to reverse aging or a chemical weapon made from Earth plants.”
“And how long would that take to develop?”
“The last family went out of business and returned to Draconis in disgrace.”
She seethed, clenching and releasing the wrappers.
“At least if you succeed in a luxury good, you will have more capital to collect, synthesize, and test every known biological—”
“If?” She split her clothes shifting to full dragon and whirled on him in fury. “If! What do you mean, if? I have tested every cheese. I have put in this effort. You will ship it. There will be no if or I will bite your head off!”
He took a deep breath and held it. Tightening his abdomen stopped the trembling. Although he had gotten to know Larimar a little she was an unknown female dragon who’d chained him to a wall and still considered torture acceptable. And unlike the mercurial dragons he did know, such as Mal, she might not calm down.
She deflated all at once from his lack of reaction, settling nude on the floor in a puddle. “My stomach hurts.”
He let out his breath. “Perhaps you should rest.”
“No.” She straightened and began her work again. A few more cheeses in, she commented between spitting, “Your female. Does she really allow you to pleasure her using more than one position?”
His cock heated at the memory of just a few hours ago. Rose, wild and beautiful, riding him to climax. “Most of the positions are her idea.”
“How strange. Is it even possible? Navigating the tail requires a finesse most dragons don’t master.”
“She is a human, so tails are not a consideration.”
“Disgusting. Plain. Unpleasant aftertaste.” She spat a cheese, and it took him a moment to realize he was supposed to record her judgments on the cheese, not that her judgments were about sex. “Hmm, I suppose the change of anatomy is a reason to watch educational videos.”
“Yes, but she does things even I have never seen. And her smile, her happiness, the way she trusts me…I would sacrifice everything for her. This feeling increases the intensity of coupling.”
She chewed and spat a few more cheeses, steadily forcing herself through the samples.
“I understand a little that feeling,” she finally said. “Mm. This one has an extra spice. What is it? Cinnamon. That is sneezy but interesting. Write it down.”
He wrote it.
“I can’t believe any cheese can be interesting now, so that’s very interesting.” She swished the wine and swallowed. “It’s too bad dragons can’t get drunk. I would order many of these wines. But as I was saying, there was a male—a low-level family, aristocratic but just barely—who once made me feel such intensity. Like the first bite of good cheese and not this seventy-seventh pound.” She lowered the cheese sample to her lap, morose. “For a short time, I thought we would make a simple, yet of course successful, family.”
“He disagreed?” Jasper asked cautiously. “Did you chain him to a wall?”
“No, but I should have.” She sliced the cheese with her claw, tasted it, and continued her story, still nude and like
all dragons, immune to moderate cold. He wasn’t aristocratic enough for Mother, but she was curious about my obsession, so she sprayed him with her lust hormones. He became enslaved to her, as weak males do, and she took him away from me and kept him for herself until…oh, until she tired of him.”
His heart lodged in his chest. “And then?”
“Last I heard, they assigned him to a copper mine on Beryllium Four. She paid off his family, so they didn’t care.”
He let out his breath.
She eyed him sharply. “Why do you look relieved?”
“I heard a story of handbags…”
“Mother reserves punishment for someone she hates. She had no strong feelings for this male. Neither did his family. Nobody cared. Even I didn’t care. Why should I care if a male is assigned to the smaller tunnel complex instead of the main one? It’s nothing to me if he’s in sub-cavern B or C, and sometimes A if the venting system goes awry. Those details are meaningless.”
Jasper let a few cheese judgments go by, and then, gently, asked, “Is he in sub-cavern B?”
“Right now? Since it’s the fourteenth hour in Empire time, taking into consideration the elliptical orbit around the local star, and dividing it by the output hours…he’s in his rest cycle, and about to go back to sub-cavern C on the west fork where they discovered a new vein.”
“The copper mine operates off Empire time?”
“It’s a mix based on conditions and—not that I look up his schedule very frequently, so don’t think I do, because I don’t.” She held up her claw to admonish Jasper. “There’s no point. I barely have access to Mother’s smallest intergalactic yacht with a broken replicator! It would take coin to outfit my own spaceship capable of jetting to the asteroid, and power to overrule Mother’s orders. I’d have to take over the whole mining operation. And that’s not so easy, believe me. I’ve run the numbers. It would take a lot of coin, raised as fast as possible, to do this.”
“It’s a good thing you don’t care.”
“A very good thing.”
They continued working quietly.
Jasper finally cleared his throat. “I could, possibly, help with acquiring supplies and sourcing a ship capable of—”