by Milana Jacks
Belle joined me. “Do you miss it already?”
“Nah.”
“I want to go there sometime,” she said.
My gaze lowered to Nano. It seemed nothing more than a scrap of white metal next to my bronze car. But Nano was an excellent robot, and I could use its company. “I’m sorry, what?” I asked Belle, thinking about how I could get the robot.
“I said I’d like to go there sometime. I hear there’s old movies playing on the big screens.”
“There are. But the place isn’t what it seems.”
“What do you mean?”
From here, the habitat looked like a little patch of utopian oasis amid the snow-covered ruins of a city. “On the inside, it’s rotten,” I said. “My mom used to say this new society is cold and ruthless. There’s no place for arts or for any creativity. It’s all about doing what you should do for the greater good of all.”
“Huh,” Belle said, and we left it at that.
I followed her down the stairs, noticing the vigor in her step. When we reached the bottom, I put my hand on the wall, needing some rest, but Belle happily walked on, her long blonde ponytail swinging between her shoulder blades.
I caught up with her. “This place is huge,” I said.
“It’s pretty easy to get around. You sleep in what we call the tower. This is the east hall.” She pointed left. “That’s the library. I think the lord received you there, no?”
“Yes, I remember the door.” A big wooden door with a dragon carved into it.
Chatter drifted from farther down the hall. “How many people live here?”
“Too many, if you ask everyone.” She chuckled. “But we make it work. And now we’re entering the sitting areas. Ex-cons around here call this Gen Pop.” We entered a well-lit large room occupied by about twenty bare-chested men in gray or black sweatpants. I nearly tripped over my feet. The room went silent. They stared at me, and I stared back at their bodies. All flesh, muscle, and bone, not a single cyborg among them. A strange sight for me.
“Hey, there,” one of them said. “You must be Selena from the habitat.”
Belle took my hand in hers and pulled. “That’s some of the pack. The rest of them are heading out for a supply run.”
I had no idea what she was talking about, but I stole a glance as we passed through the area. The men were attractive and young, sure, but I wondered about their state of mind. It was freezing outside, and here they socialized shirtless. When one of them winked at me, I turned my head away so I wouldn’t fall on my face.
Belle led me into a great hall, a room the size of a mini soccer field where oil paintings of nearly every major city in the United States before the Ice Age hung on the walls. I tugged Belle’s hand so I could stop and admire them. Art was so rare in the habitat. Creativity had been stifled by the focus on technology and the advancement of the society as a whole. If it didn’t serve the society, it wasn’t necessary, and the Cy had deemed the arts unnecessary. That was one of the reasons Mom couldn’t quite fit in, and likely one of the reasons I’d never felt like I belonged there. I didn’t have a talent, per se, but I loved accessorizing, adding trinkets to my purses, decorating my boots, pinning brooches to my shirts, and making my own jewelry.
Belle tugged my hand and picked up her pace just as, once again cloaked, Lord Lance stood from the twenty-foot table at the end of the hall. His friend joined him, wearing linen pants and a matching shirt, with polished boots. I realized he’d actually dressed up and I hadn’t. In fact, my hair was still wet from the shower.
Self-conscious, I joined them at the table and tried not to stare at the scaly indigo skin on Lance’s neck. I didn’t stare at his face, which was partially covered by his cloak. He could probably see through the top part obscuring most of his face. I could see his black mouth. Dios Mío, what hides under the cloak?
His friend introduced himself as Nentres, then he glanced behind me, and his gaze stayed there. Belle had quickly disappeared, it seemed, and so I turned around to see what he was looking at. A huge antique clock graced the wall.
“Ms. Salazar,” Lance said, “do you know how to read the old clocks? The ones with hands like this one?”
“It reads twenty-three twenty.” Shit. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.” I stared at my plate, feeling like a kid about to get chastised.
The lord grunted and uncovered a large oval plate. He wore black leather gloves over his hands. Under my bangs, steam rose from the huge baked fish on the plate. My mouth watered. I picked up my fork, ready to stab the thing. Nentres and Lance both leaned in to sniff. Weird, but when in Rome…I leaned in too and sniffed. Fresh-baked fish. “Mmm,” I said. Lance watched me, I believed. “What? Smells good to me.”
Nentres wiggled his nose. “I’m fine with it.”
“Mandy,” Lance bit out, and I nearly jumped out of my chair.
Light on her feet, Mandy came through the door on my right. She stood by the table, hands clasped behind her. “Yes, my lord.”
“This is salmon.” He pointed.
“Yes, it is,” she said. “I covered it with plenty of lemon like you asked and baked it myself.”
“I ordered halibut. The fresh catch of the day.”
“Oh.”
“Mm-hm.”
She stood there unsure what to do or perhaps waiting for further orders. Nentres leaned back, a smirk playing on his face. I could only see Lance’s mouth and a jaw covered in indigo dragon scales. His pinched lips and flexing jaw told me he was annoyed.
“Is there something wrong with salmon?” I asked him.
“I ordered halibut.”
“Is that all?”
He tilted his head. “That is all.”
I shrugged. “Can we eat salmon anyway?”
“No, we cannot. We eat halibut tonight.”
“But there’s no halibut. There is salmon on the table.”
“Exactly my point, Ms. Salazar. Today, I flew one hundred and fifty-seven miles to catch a halibut. I caught a big one, handed it over to the kitchens, and instructed the entire crew on how to prepare it and serve it at eight. My guests are eating at midnight. The wrong fish.”
“I don’t know about Nentres, but I eat protein bars, cloned chicken that tastes like plastic, and cucumbers grown in the laboratory. Fresh fish, salmon or otherwise, sounds good to me.”
Lance tapped his fingers on the table. “Mandy, bake the halibut for the pack. Make it happen.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Tomorrow, I will go out again and fetch something. We will eat the fresh catch at eight. I want only the best for my guest.”
“Of course.”
“Not yesterday’s fish.”
“Got it.”
Lance picked up the large knife and fork, carved the fish, and placed a nice juicy filet on my plate. Then he poured lemon juice on it. I noted how meticulous he was, how carefully he scooped rice so that when he added it next to the filet, it made a perfect hill. He sprinkled mint over the side of my plate, then twisted it so that the filet faced me. “Perfect,” he said. “Let’s hope it tastes as good as it looks.”
“You should’ve been a chef,” I said.
“I was a chef.”
I glanced at Nentres as if looking for confirmation, but he watched Lance arrange his plate, albeit with larger portions.
“You mean before the Ice Age?”
“Yes.”
“A dragon chef. How unusual.”
“I wasn’t always a dragon.”
That got Nentres’s attention. He snapped his head up, and I presumed they locked eyes. The corner of Lance’s lips dipped in a frown. I glanced between them. “What?”
Lance arranged his plate and forked some rice. He tasted it, moved it around his mouth, then pointed at my plate. “How is your meal?”
I wanted to know about the chef and the dragon. What did he mean he wasn’t always a dragon? How could he not always have been a dragon? Granted, the only dragon things I knew
came from mythology and fiction. They weren’t supposed to exist anyhow, but then again, neither were the aliens. The Cy had made contact with us before I was born, so I accepted aliens as a regular occurrence, but it hadn’t always been so. Half a millennia ago, we didn’t know aliens existed. When the news of extraterrestrials making contact first leaked to the public, masses walked the streets with “Apocalypse Now” signs, and, according to our history books, the government barely managed to contain the mass fear. It took years for the world to accept that these life-forms indeed existed so that life on Earth could move past it. When the Cy helped in the volcanoes’ aftermath, we grew dependent on cyborg parts, and comfortable with the Cy.
Nobody had known anything about Creatures of Earth either. They had appeared after the Ice Age, but people were too busy trying to survive to make a big deal out of it. If aliens existed, why not magical creatures? And here I sat having dinner with two of the four living dragons. “Where are you from?” I asked. “Before the Ice Age, I mean.”
Lance picked up my fork and offered me a bite of rice. I opened my mouth, eyes locked on his mouth, and I swore I saw his lips tilt up in a smile. Swallowing, I said, “It tastes good to me. There’s a spice in it I don’t recognize.”
“Saffron.”
I realized he’d evaded my question. I opened my mouth to ask again, but he forked a piece of salmon and offered it to me. I ate from his hand like this while Lance took the liberty and occasionally shared my fork to feed himself too.
6
Lance
Strange things happened tonight.
One, I nearly told Selena Salazar how we came to be, a legend nobody but the four of us knew. Two, I proceeded to feed her. I intended for her to take a bite, fill her mouth in order to discourage her questions, but as her mouth closed on the fork, my beast stirred again. And that was a third strange thing. My beast seemed to take up permanent residence at the surface of my mind whenever I happened to be around her.
I should pay attention to my beast, give in to what he wanted, but I also couldn’t very well bend her over the table and plunder her virginal pussy. Could I? I shook my head, trying to suppress the urge to grab her hair, yank it back, and devour her month. Guys didn’t do that. Despite my appearance, for the most part, I was still a man. I knew how to treat a woman. My dragon, on the other hand, didn’t know shit about women.
While I mused about bending her over the table, my little soon-to-be-cyborg ate her entire meal from my hand. She hadn’t protested or peeped a sound, dragon legend all forgotten. After Nentres excused himself for the night, I realized I’d ignored him the entire time. But I couldn’t stop feeding her, watching her, doing things that pleased her, because the more I fed her, the more she moaned and the more my beast pushed against my mind. My body ignited as if fire coursed through me.
Across from the table, at the far wall, my reflection showed in the mirror, and I froze. The blue scales on my neck were visible. I’d forgotten to wear a scarf.
Ms. Salazar stretched out her hand and brushed her finger over the top of my glove. I snatched my hand away.
“Sorry. I couldn’t resist,” she said.
Neither could I, it seemed. “Downtown Los Angeles,” I said, answering her question about where I was from. Albeit a little late.
She caught on. “A California native, then. We moved here at the beginning of the Ice Age.”
“Where from?”
“Norfolk, Nebraska.”
“Never been there. But I’ve lived all over the place.”
She frowned. “All over LA?”
“All over everywhere. From one foster home to another.” I pinched my lips. What the fuck was wrong with me? I didn’t want to talk about me at all. I wanted to get through dinner and send her on her merry way upstairs. Then I needed to go into the library and dig up some more dragon fucking mythology, ’cause apparently that was what I’d need as a reference to figure out what my beast wanted from her.
I chewed on rice to keep my mouth shut. It stuck to my teeth. “The rice is overcooked.” I poked it with my fork. It stuck to the fork. “Not fluffy.”
“If you’re so anal about it, why don’t you cook it yourself?” she asked.
“I’m not anal about it. I simply know what it should taste like.”
“It tastes fine to me.”
“Because you haven’t tasted real rice.”
“Or I’m not picky and anal about rice.”
I chuckled. “I’ll cook you rice tomorrow.” Huh? I hadn’t cooked in ages. But I’d said it, so I better do it.
Ms. Salazar smiled at that, and we spent the rest of the meal in silence. I’d never been much of a talker, and the silence between us didn’t bug me. I pushed my plate away and leaned back, watching her tuck her hair behind her ear, lick her lips, fidget in her chair. I felt like she expected me to…entertain, yap about nothing for an hour, waste my breath on talking about my foster homes so she could cuddle me and feel sorry I’d been raised by nobody and everybody.
Still, I didn’t like watching her fidget or making her feel uncomfortable. If we’d lived in different times and this was a date, I would’ve taken her out to dinner someplace nice like that Diamonds place in Malibu I’d always wanted to go to but never had. I’d make conversation, try to impress her with my…wit. But we didn’t live in that world anymore, and Diamonds was nothing but a pile of concrete buried under snow now. “Can I get you anything else?” I asked. A rhetorical question. I liked my guests comfortable. I’d fed her, and she could go to sleep now.
“Yes, actually.”
I leaned in.
“Is there any dessert?” Ms. Salazar blushed.
I frowned. “I’m not sure.” I stood and just then noticed the kitchen staff had gone quiet. It was never quiet around here, precisely why I stayed away from the common areas. Wolves were rowdy creatures. Dragons were more solitary. When not having fish on the go, out in the seas, I ate my dinners upstairs in my chambers, rarely venturing down here. “Follow me.”
I showed her into the kitchen, surprised to find people there. At the door, I paused and lifted an eyebrow at Belle, Mandy, and my other kitchen staff, who lined up against the far counter. They said nothing, probably because they couldn’t see my lifted eyebrow gesture past the cloak I wore. “And you all are standing there because…”
People found things to look at on the floor.
Ah, they were eavesdropping and got caught. I leaned to the right to see the exit door ajar. They’d tried to escape when they heard me coming in, but hadn’t quite made it.
Mandy found her voice. “We were just leaving.”
“Mm-hm.” They still stood there. “Get leaving, then,” I said.
My staff scampered. The door closed and locked, and I stepped to the side and waved a hand. “After you, Ms. Salazar.”
“Selena.”
Selena. I liked her name. I could roll her name and her pussy lips between the two tips of my forked tongue. I could twist her little bud. I bet her pussy was shaved. I bet she didn’t have hair anywhere, just like me. Days of women shaving were long gone, replaced by laser removal in a single hour. Cy tech served women, and women liked to be served.
Selena walked around the food prep area in the middle of the kitchen, then leaned her elbows on it, propping her jaw on her chin. “Can I call you Lance?”
“Only in the bedroom.” What? My expression matched hers. Wide-eyed, stunned stupid, we found shit to look at on the empty counter. Surprised I’d actually voiced my dirty thoughts, I attempted to change the subject. “What kind of sweet things do you like?” Oh yeah, I was a world-class gentleman, because asking her about sweet things worked so much better to get my mind off her pussy, the thing I imagined would be the sweetest dessert for me. I needed to count to ten before replying to any of her many questions.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Besides honey, we don’t have a lot of sweets in the habitat. There are these brown bars called chocolate, but that’s no
t the real chocolate I remember eating as a kid. Chocolate is rich in taste, but not too sweet.”
“I don’t have chocolate.”
“Bummer.”
“I have eggs.”
She bit her lip, made a sour face, but she didn’t know that a delicious, simple, and sweet dessert came from eggs. “Don’t knock it till you try it.” I got to work. From the walk-in fridge, a closed space set outside at this time of night, I got two eggs. Back in the kitchen, I found one deep plastic bowl and another shallow one plus a whisk. Selena inched closer, her body heating mine from her proximity. I broke the egg and separated the yolk from the white. I passed her the yolk. “Sugar is behind you, middle cupboard, labeled sugar. A spoonful.” I pointed at the bowl. “Then mix it.”
She stood there as if I’d asked her to decode a Cy interface. “Get,” I ordered, curious if she’d obey me.
Selena blinked, then got to it.
Mm-hm. I wondered if she’d be a submissive in bed. Likely. When my dick hopped on the opportunity to take a submissive after many years of suppressing the bedroom activities that actually excited me, I whisked the egg white.
Selena watched me whisk away, her own hand mixing in the sugar with yolk ever so slowly. “Mix it like you mean it,” I told her.
She snapped her eyes to mine, and I smiled.
She returned it. “I’ve never cooked before.”
“We’re not cooking.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I don’t.”
She circled her spoon as if stirring precious stones from my treasury. “We have no need for kitchens, at least not kitchens as big as this one. The kitchen in our apartment is probably the size of a bathroom here. It has two pantries and a foot-long counter. One closet is cold and one is dry. We get what we need in packets, and we move on with our day.”