Kiss of the Dragon

by Christina James

  As he stood waiting impatiently, a young boy appeared with the offering of a steaming cup of refreshment, which he accepted. As he watched the youngster run back across the camp, he found that the drink had been sent to attract his attention. He watched as a woman patted the boy who delivered his drink on the head and sent him on his way. Having disposed of the child, she turned and smiled enticingly at Draco. Her sultry eyes moved over his tall, broad form with appreciation giving him the impression that she was mentally undressing him as she perused him from head to toe. It was apparent that she expected him to follow his brother’s manner. With a come-hither look, she swept her skirt up high as she stepped up into her wagon showing a goodly amount of leg as she did so. She paused long enough to wriggle her finger in his direction. Draco smiled slightly at the obvious invitation. He lifted the cup in a small salute of thanks but shook his head in answer. There was a look of disappointment, but then she shrugged her shoulders and disappeared inside.

  As Draco sipped the drink slowly, savoring the delicious taste, he perused the rest of encampment in detail. He searched for anything out of the ordinary.

  “Perhaps, m’lord, you would like a little of what the young one is getting.”

  The sultry purr drifted his direction on the morning breeze accompanied by the scent of exotic perfume. Draco knew before he turned who had come up behind his back. And for a moment, he thought about fleeing back to the castle and leaving Cynric to find his way back alone. Draco knew from experience there was nothing more dangerous than a hungry woman on the prowl for an unwilling man. It would serve the young pup right to be left to the wiles of a greedy tigress.

  “I did not come here to indulge myself in physical pleasure. My brother is young and insatiable in lust. I am here to keep him out of trouble,” Draco replied, keeping his voice even. He was not about to give away his real reason for being there. If Veryalda did not return soon, he would be dragging Cynric from his lover’s wagon and they would be riding out as fast as their mounts could move.

  Now he had this seductive creature making a move for his attentions and he had no desire to accommodate her. Fortunately, he did not find her at all desirable. Something about her reminded him of Deidre. As a young man, inexperienced in the ways of women, he had believed himself to be in love with just such a cold-hearted little bitch as the one standing beside him. He’d learned his mistake in a most painful manner when she had thrown his love in his scarred face, shrieking her horror and disgust. Deidre had shown him just how shallow and conceited a woman could be.

  “So the Beauty de Neige is no longer a maid, is she?” The smirk that twisted her full lips was not attractive, but Carmen was a jealous woman and she did not like being done in by a naïve girl who had no notion of how to pleasure a real man. And this dark knight was a real man in every way. Her eyes flickered over his broad shoulders and down his muscular body to the leather breeks he wore that molded tightly over his manly parts. She nearly licked her lips at the thought of what lay beneath. Yea, a well-built man indeed. “I must admit that I am not particularly surprised. Her ladyship comes from gypsy stock, after all. It matters not if she was born of noble blood, she still has the instinct to spread her legs for the right price.” Carmen ignored the thunderous look the Black Dragon gave her at her insulting words. She wanted revenge on the lady at the moment and she meant to do her best to get some. “Tell me, great lord, I am curious. Just how high of a price did you have to pay to get her into your bed?”

  “What do you want?” The icy words came out one by one in teeth-snapping precision. Draco balled his fist to keep from wrapping his fingers around Carmen’s slender neck and choking the life out of her.

  “What do you want?” She turned his words back upon him as the tip of her tongue flicked across her lips. She moved a step closer and laid a hand on his hard chest, running her palm down as she raised her head, inviting him to kiss her. She had no modesty in her pursuit of men. Very few men ever turned down her enticement and she had no doubt that she could seduce this great stubborn nobleman.

  “I want to be left alone,” he said through clenched teeth.

  With a succulent pout plumping up her already full lips, she gazed at him from under long, fringed lashes, her pale blue eyes, sparkling with promises of heated passion and pleasure. “No,” she breathed as her lips moved closer to his. “I do not believe you. I think you want,” she rose up on her toes and pressed her breasts to his chest and moved enticingly against him, “much more than you will admit.”

  “Maybe I do, Carmen, but not from you.”

  He caught her hand in midair just before it struck his face. Her eyes flashed fire in a tantrum when she realized that her efforts to seduce him had come to naught. She opened her mouth to spew out words of hate and degradation when her attention was caught by something just beyond Draco’s shoulder. Instead, she went limp against him so that his arms came around her to hold her up. She took the opportunity to throw her arms around his neck and began to kiss him passionately. When he would have pulled back, she held him tighter so that he could not immediately reject her advances.

  The outraged roar that filled the air behind him came with such severity that Draco thought his head might burst from the intensity of it. Just as he managed to remove the tenuous grip Carmen had on him, the full force of a large object hitting him in the side threw him some distance through the air. He hit the ground hard, landing so close to the campfire that his sleeve caught fire. Instinct demanded he fight back, so with all of his strength he kicked the offender off, freeing himself so that he could roll away from the flames. Batting at his arm, he rose swiftly to his feet into a more advantageous position to defend himself against the unexpected enemy.

  Dust rose in a thick cloud as the two large bodies hit the ground, but both men were on their feet in a blink of an eye, tensed, positioned, and ready for the fight. Breathing heavily, nostrils flaring like two enraged bulls, they faced each other.

  It took a moment for Draco’s mind to clear after the initial attack. When the red haze lifted, he realized that it was the giant, Jabulani, who had assaulted him and who was even now stalking around the clearing. What he did not understand was why the giant was trying to kill him. Before Draco could put forth his query, he only had time to brace for the next attack when Jabulani came at him again, head down charging like a mad bull straight for his midsection trying to take him down by cutting him in half.

  It was a good move, but not good enough. Jabulani met Draco’s powerful iron fist with his big nose, which effectively dropped him to the ground. For a moment, he sat there, stunned, his hands covering his nose while blood seeped between his fingers. Hate-filled eyes looked up at Draco and then, with a bellow of rage, Jabulani was on his feet, coming at him again. Draco fended him off with several evasive moves that kept the giant moving in circles. With every blow, more blood splattered the ground. The sounds of flesh hitting flesh, grunts and groans filled the morning air as the two circled and came together to wrestle and pound his opponent. As time passed, it was obvious that Draco would come out the victor. He finally did no more than defend himself while Jabulani staggered and nearly fell several times.

  “Are you ready to tell me why you are attempting to beat the shit out of me?”

  Jabulani’s only answer was a snarl and he made another attempt to overpower Draco. But the Black Dragon of Normandy had been a soldier for too many years to be outmaneuvered by a less experienced man. He had learned how to survive in battle as well as on the road between conflicts. Many of the scars he now carried had been attained not from war but from surviving the fragile armistice between wars. Draco could not count the number of times he had had to fight to save his hide. More times than he cared to remember. But this challenge was not one that he had ever expected to face. He had come in search of Jabulani, or at the very least to learn what he could about the attack on the bodyguard who had been with Bianca when she was taken by outlaws several days before. Not only had he foun
d Jabulani, he was now in a battle of strength with the huge man. Draco braced himself for one more assault and when it came, he easily evaded being trampled to death by the great raging man by spinning to his left.

  As Jabulani rushed by, Draco brought his large hand down forcefully on Jabulani’s back effectively knocking him to the ground where he lay gasping for breath.

  “What goes on here, Jabulani?” Draco demanded breathing heavily after the battle he had just been through. He placed a large boot atop the man’s back, putting great pressure on him to keep his face down in the dust.

  “You dare to ask me such a question, you bastard swine!” Jabulani roared even as his face pressed to the dirt. He twisted his head and glared fiercely up at Draco, hissing through clenched teeth, “You came here seeking the pleasure of a gypsy whore only hours after bedding my Beauty. For that alone, you deserve the worst kind of death.”

  Jabulani had completely misinterpreted his reasons for coming to the Rom encampment. Taken aback by the venomous look with which the huge man speared him, Draco scowled. He glanced at Carmen who stood in the background smiling triumphantly at the fight that had nearly maimed him and nearly killed Jabulani. His mind ran over the incident from beginning to finish in quick flashes of memory. He understood how the scheming gypsy woman had managed to make the little performance she had played out look like he had indeed come here for sexual pursuits. The thought of dishonoring Bianca in such a loathsome way disgusted him. He had come here for one purpose and he was not about to let this situation get out of control.

  “I have done nothing wrong here. But you, my friend, have much to answer for.”

  “What?!” The change of expression on the battered, bloody face was almost laughable. He bucked up against Draco’s foot trying to gain his freedom as he demanded, “Get your damned foot off me and let me up!”

  “What goes here? Why do you have Jabulani on the ground, Draco?” Cynric was suddenly beside his brother looking down at the bloody, dirt-streaked Jabulani who tried to get to his feet. Cynric glanced at his brother’s face and found it bruised and bloody but not nearly as bad as the giant beneath his feet.

  “It seems that the man has a death wish. He attacked me without provocation and I had no choice but to subdue him to get his attention. Then again, he had the gall to insult my integrity, which in my mind demands that I teach him a lesson about making snap judgments about a man’s intentions. This seems to be the only way to get his attention and hold it.”

  “You have made your point, great knight. Now have the courtesy to remove your foot from my back.” Jabulani made the request in a deep, growling pronouncement.

  “I will let you up only when I am sure that you understand just how far reaching your actions to date have been.” The back beneath his heel tensed.

  With a groan of surrender, Jabulani’s body relaxed.

  Draco took the action as a sign that the giant bodyguard was finally willing to listen to his reprimand. “Your disappearance deeply hurt Bianca. She thought you had been killed and, on her behalf. I sent out men to look for you or to at least retrieve your body. When nothing was found, I had not the heart to diminish her hope by telling her that the searching might be fruitless. She has been beside herself with worry for you, you great fool. And then this morning, I find that you have been hiding here in the Rom encampment all the time. Now what I want to know is why you did not bother letting someone at Castle Neige know where you were and in what condition. Did you not swear to the Duke de Neige that you would protect his daughter at all costs?”

  “Yea, Lord Draco. And that is what I have done.” Draco eased his foot up off Jabulani’s back letting the man sit up, but he watched him with a wary eye.

  “Explain yourself.”

  “The day her ladyship and I left the castle to ride to meet you, we were attacked by highwaymen. I fought to keep her safe but I was knocked from my horse and rendered unconscious. Those who sought to do harm to my Beauty must have thought me dead for when I awoke sometime later, I lay on the side of the trail alone. My lady was gone, as were my weapons and my horse.”

  Draco could tell by the bitterness in his voice that Jabulani would never forgive himself for his failure that day.

  “When I was able, I tracked the outlaws to the glade where they planned to ambush you. I watched as they tied my lady and sat her in the middle of the trail as bait in a trap. I watched you arrive and the sequence of events that followed. I vowed that if you failed to rescue Beauty I would charge the ruffians and butcher every one of them. But you took charge and did the rescuing yourself. You succeeded where I had not.”

  His derisive laugh brought some of the boundless humor he was well known for back to the bodyguard’s face. “But even as you snatched my Beauty from the clutches of the villain who dared to strike at her, the bastards escaped the righteous justice that they deserved. My duty was to follow them and seek revenge for what they had done. And in truth, I believe that my Beauty is still in danger. I lost the outlaw’s trail when it merged with the road to the castle. It is my belief that whoever tried to harm my Beauty resides within the walls of Castle Neige.

  “That is why I have been hiding here among the Rom.” Jabulani stood and gazed around the camp in the early morning light that filtered through the thick growth of trees. “I am safe here among my people. No Rom would ever betray one of his own. They keep their secrets well.”

  His gaze followed Carmen as the little dancer edged away and melted into the crowd. He had been watching her since the first night she had danced at the castle and had tried to seduce Lord Draco. He knew that she was capable of many things but hoped that she had not betrayed her people’s trust. The crowd that had gathered during the fight began to thin as many of the band wandered away. The excitement was over. The gypsies returned to their mundane tasks, leaving the three men to sort out the mystery as best they could with what information was available to them.

  “The villain that masterminded the attack on the Lady Bianca is unaware that I survived. I have the anonymity to pursue the villain and, at the present time, I am very close to finding out his true identity.”

  “You have uncovered a plot against Bianca’s life?” Draco could scarcely give credence to such a thing. But then as he thought back to the ambush in the woods, it began to make sense. At the time, he had thought he was the intended target. But apparently, someone had such animosity for Bianca that they had gone so far as to hire assassins to do away with the Beauty de Neige.

  “Yea, it is so. But I have not yet discovered a name or a face to give you, though I have a thought or two on who it could be.” While he spoke, a young gypsy woman came forward with a bowl of water and a rag. She offered both timidly to Lord Draco.

  “Thank you, Lina.” Jabulani took the woman’s hand and pulled her forward. “I would introduce my wife to you, Great Dragon. This is Lina. Curtsy to the lord, Lina. He is a great warrior and champion of the King of France.” The young woman dropped to her knees and murmured a greeting so low that it was impossible to discern what she said. Then Jabulani urged her to her feet and pulled her to him, holding her tight to his side, dropping a kiss on her soft hair. The olive-skinned young beauty clung to him as if he might disappear. She was so tiny that Jabulani’s huge arm around her shoulders nearly hid her from the other men. And it was evident the giant man loved his small wife deeply. That Bianca had never mentioned her bodyguard having a wife should not have bothered Draco, but it did. It showed him that they were very much strangers. That thought disconcerted him more than he cared to admit, especially after what they had shared. As Draco watched the couple before him, a sense of envy enveloped him. He realized that he might never know such closeness. Even if his feelings for Bianca were great, he could never admit them.

  Draco shook his head to clear it of such painful thoughts. He had to keep his mind on the problem at hand. He had the task of ridding Castle Neige of an assassin.

  “I think it best you returned to the castle
.” When Jabulani would have objected, Draco slashed his hand through the air to still his words.

  “You have been found, Jabulani. If we know that you still live, then the assassin could very well find out as well. It would seem that you have more to lose than just your life.” Draco looked pointedly at the young woman cradled beneath the large, muscular arm.

  Jabulani’s gaze dropped to his wife and his eyes grew wide as he realized what the nobleman was hinting at. “You should come back to the castle. If this damned bastard does find out that you live, your life will be forfeit for a certainty as well as anyone close to you.”

  “No! I would never put my own in danger. I believe that your finding me was luck. I must stay here and use what little anonymity I have to help my Beauty. I know how to use the shadows. Nobody cares about a gypsy. The Rom is good at becoming invisible when it is advantageous or desirable.”

  “What of Lady Bianca? She misses you, Jabulani, and she will have to know that you are unharmed and well.”

  “And I miss her, but she will understand what must be done. I am happy that she has finally found a man to care for her properly. I am no longer needed there. And once I have fulfilled my duty to her, I will be moving on with my family.”

  Draco sat down on a fallen log and ran his hands through his short black hair as the gravity of the situation hit him fully. His lady was in jeopardy of being murdered by an unknown enemy. So far there was little information to go on to stop that enemy. The only thing he did know for certain was that he would be looking at every occupant of the castle whether it was a nobleman or a servant. He would work his way through the lot as he determined who was guilty and who was not.

  Draco was a seasoned soldier with years of experience in routing out the enemy and he had the reputation to prove it. He would go with his gut instinct as he proceeded with his investigation. He would discover the creator of this malevolent plot and eliminate him. Draco sighed deeply as he rose to his feet and motioned for his brother to join him as he instructed Jabulani. “I have to get back to Bianca. She is unaware of this plot and in danger even as we discuss this matter. If you find out the villain’s identity, send word immediately. I will do the same.” Draco paused before continuing, “When we discover who it is, heads will roll and blood will flow.” He repeated the adage that his sovereign was fond of quoting.