The Dragon Claims His Treasure (Starcrossed Dating Agency)

by Georgette St. Clair

  “You’re coming with me,” Rosamund said decisively. “We’re going shopping. Just warn me if I try to buy anything that might bite, strangle, poison or otherwise kill me.”

  This was great. She’d buy some new outfits, she could say that she’d looked for Kodran, and there was just about no chance that she would actually find him. Win-win.

  “What are we going to buy?” Dot-R asked.

  “Whatever you want. What do you like?”

  Dot-R brightened. “Can we go to the Bot Swap Shop? That’s where you buy interchangeable parts. I wouldn’t mind a few pairs of new feet. It’s how we senti-bots buy new shoes. Oh, and I could swap out my hair. There’s a retro-fIip that I was thinking of trying.” She patted her metal curls with her hand, making a faint clanging sound.

  They made the Bot Swap Shop their first stop. The marketplace in Downtown Agora was a maze of streets lined with shops, their windows crammed with exotic goods from planets, lunar colonies and city-ships across the galaxy. They sold everything from shoes and clothes – some of them designed for people eleven feet tall or with nine legs – to furniture in an equally bewildering range of designs.

  Competing with the shops for custom, stalls spilled out onto the streets themselves. These sold mysterious herbs and spices, strange sticky substances in bottles, and miscellaneous weird-looking artifacts whose use Rosamund couldn’t even begin to guess at. The people running these stalls were of all shapes, sizes and species, but they all had one thing in common. Shifty eyes. They spoke to their customers in furtive whispers and kept a wary look-out for the authorities. Most of their goods had probably been brought on-world by the smuggling rings that did a brisk trade between Agora and its moons.

  Scattered among these were stalls that sold food and drink. Exotic smells mingled in the air, some fragrant and appetizing, other startling and alien. Rosamund stopped to buy a plasti-paper cone full of a steaming, creamy brown liquid that smelled like expensive chocolate.

  As she raised it to her lips, Dot-R said, “I was unaware that humans were able to metabolize Drr’inthian hovercraft fuel.”

  Rosamund froze. “Ah…perhaps I’ll save this for later. Drr’inthian hovercraft fuel gives me heartburn first thing in the morning.”

  The next time Dot-R looked away, engrossed by a display of sleek metal hairstyles on blank foam heads, Rosamund took advantage of the opportunity to dispose of the cone of liquid in what she assumed was a strangely contoured Dumpster.

  It burped as she walked away.

  It was a good thing that she had Dot-R with her. The wrist comm was supposed to be a universal translator, but it actually only seemed to translate about twenty percent of known languages, at best. Dot-R had a translator module that was first-rate.

  After lunch, they were loaded down with shopping bags and they hadn’t spotted Kodran anywhere. In other words, they were having a great day. They’d rented a floater, which was a kind of hovering shopping cart that would fly back to its shop after they’d dropped off all their purchases. However, the floater was getting overloaded now.

  Rosamund decided to head back to her apartment to drop off her things. Then she would go to the office and ask if there were any updates on Kodran’s whereabouts. With any luck, there wouldn’t be.

  As she and Dot-R walked alongside their floater, they heard a shriek of outrage coming from the crowd ahead. A woman was hurrying off angrily, looking over her shoulder and glaring at a big blue-skinned Yarl’fa.

  When the Yarl’fa spotted Rosamund and Dot-R, he stepped into the middle of the sidewalk and blocked their way.

  He looked them up and down and licked his thin white lips. A string of drool leaked out of his mouth.

  “Hey, sexy, want to find out what Yarl’fa cock tastes like?” he leered. Unfortunately, Rosamund’s translator apparently worked just fine when it came to Yarl’farian.

  Once upon a time, Rosamund would have quailed, turned and run. But for the last year and a half she’d had Talia as a best friend, constantly telling her how great she was, and it had done wonders for her self-confidence.

  “Thanks,” she snorted, “I’d rather give myself a home appendectomy with a rusty knife.”

  A slender, white-haired girl tried to walk around them, and he reached out and grabbed her butt cheek and squeezed. She leaped back with a shriek, then turned and ran.

  “Sorry,” he sneered. “That is how we court women on my world. It is our custom, and therefore you must permit it.”

  Part of Rosamund’s training was to study the laws that were common to all planets under the Galactic Federation rule. She knew that it didn’t matter what the customs were on Yarl’fa; ass-grabbing was strictly prohibited on all planets that were part of the Federation. So was any other kind of grabbing, unless a woman had given her express permission.

  “Shall I neutralize this penile appendage?” Dot-R asked. She held up her hands and wiggled her fingers. “I have laser fingers and I am not afraid to use them.”

  Rosamund shook her head. “No thanks. I’m going to be handling all the dicks today.”

  A crowd was gathering now, and several passersby snickered. Oops. That hadn’t come out exactly how she’d meant it to.

  Still, she forged ahead. She stepped a little closer and batted her eyes. “You know what’s the one thing I’ve found is common to all species of humanoid males?”

  His lips stretched in a loathsome smirk. “No, tell me. Or better yet, show me.”

  She smiled back. “It will be my absolute pleasure.”

  She kneed him in the crotch, hard, and he doubled over.

  “This. This always works,” she snapped, and walked past him as he cupped his injured testicles and shouted curses.

  The crowd cheered and clapped. Nobody had ever cheered and clapped for Rosamund before.

  Wow, that felt great! She was invincible!

  She strode forward with a new sense of confidence.

  “Alert, alert,” Dot-R said. “There is your object.”

  Rosamund glanced across the street. Kodran was turned away, talking to one of his retinue, but there was no mistaking him. That glossy blue-black hair and the powerful breadth of his shoulders. He gave a low laugh that thrummed through her body, making her toes curl. Her heart staggered in her chest, punch drunk.

  God, why did the man have such a powerful effect on her? Her eyes wandered down his silk-clad spine and lingered on the fabric skimming over the taut globes of his ass, and she caught herself wondering what it would be like to sink her teeth into that firm flesh. She shook her head to dislodge the thought and tried to pull herself together.

  “Maybe it’s not him,” she muttered. “Maybe it’s someone who looks exactly like him.” Right. Like maybe Kodran had a seven-foot-tall identical twin who dressed in the same garb and was followed by a dozen Draell clan-mates.

  Dot-R snorted and patted her new metal hairdo. “Maybe you are a feathered female earth bird that lays eggs humans find to be delicious.”

  Rosamund shot her a dirty look. “That was a rather long way of saying I’m chicken.”

  Dot-R replied with a smirk. “It worked, didn’t it?”

  Rosamund threw her hands up in the air in annoyance. “Fine,” she snapped. “I’ll go tell him the bad news.” But her feet suddenly seemed to have grown a thousand pounds heavier and she found herself not moving.

  It didn’t help that since she was a little girl, she’d been entranced by dragons. She and her younger sister Alison had grown up in foster homes, but the one possession she’d clung to had been a book of fairy tales featuring dragons and princesses. The giant beasts fascinated her. Their raw strength, their power…in fact, she was wearing little dangling jade dragon earrings at the moment.

  Her attention was yanked back to the present as Kodran stalked over to a lion shifter who was selling barbecued meat on a stick from a stall. It was the same shifter Kodran had told off before.

  Behind the lion shifter, a glum-looking woman and several
cubs cowered.

  Kodran shouted at the lion, smacked him so hard he staggered, then picked him up by the collar and threw him a good ten feet into a trash bin. The lion shifter gave Kodran a terrified glance, then turned and limped off as fast as he could go. The woman and cubs ran in the opposite direction.

  That was it. Rosamund didn’t like bullies.

  She stomped over, with Dot-R following her, and grabbed him by the arm. Her floater followed right along next to her, with her piles of shopping bags teetering perilously.

  “How dare you?” she yelled at him.

  His biceps was firm and muscular under her fingers as he looked down at her with an expression of surprise. She could feel the heat radiating off his skin through the fine silk, and she was suddenly aware that he wasn’t just a big, physically powerful man – he was a Draell, an alien creature of freefall and dragonfire. She snatched her hand away, shaking away the tingling in her fingertips as if she were still touching him. Her heart thumped, and she was sure her face must be scarlet.

  The look in his eyes melted into one of amused challenge, and his lips quirked into a smile. He said something like “Veerga leee marzvan.”

  Damn it. Of all times for her universal translator to die on her.

  “Dot-R, my translator isn’t working,” she said.

  Dot-R glanced at it. “It appears that you have one of the lower budget models. I doubt it will translate Draell.”

  Rosamund cursed under her breath. What an idiot Darfan was. How was she supposed to tell Kodran that Starcrossed was firing him if she couldn’t even talk to him?

  “All right, translate for me, please. Tell him he’s a rude, obnoxious bully and that’s why the Starcrossed Dating Agency is firing his sorry fire-breathing ass.”

  Dot-R shook her head in puzzlement. “I am fairly sure that with the Draell, the orifice that expels the fire is actually—”

  “Dot-R! Translate!”

  Dot-R heaved a martyred sigh and rolled her eyes. “Well excuse me if my parental units designed me with an accuracy module.”

  Rosamund shot her an annoyed look. “It’s the sass module I’m having issues with.”

  “Yes, my parental units regret that one too. But they can’t turn it off. They’ve tried,” Dot-R said with a smirk.

  Dot-R then turned and said something to Kodran, but it didn’t have the desired effect. He threw back his head and roared with laughter.

  “He’s laughing at me?” Rosamund said indignantly. Furious, she kicked him in the shin. Ouch. That just hurt her foot and made him smile. Kodran’s men started laughing too. Nothing was working the way it was supposed to.

  He looked down at her and said something.

  “What did he just say?” she asked Dot-R.

  “He wants to throw your extra Frisbee full of kittens with a side of fries,” Dot-R informed her.

  “What?”

  Dot-R frowned. “Wait. Let me run that through my hard drive again. Oh, sorry, he wants to sell your green cow five times on Sunday moonlight.”

  “Again, what?” Rosamund looked at the serv-bot with alarm. “Are you having a seizure?”

  “I am mechanical. I don’t have seizures,” Dot-R said indignantly.

  “Well, do you need to be rebooted or something?”

  “It’s not my fault! The Draell language is very illogical!” Dot-R stamped her metal foot.

  Kodran started laughing again, and smoke curled from his mouth and nostrils. It smelled rich and strange, like some kind of exotic wood.

  “Don’t you dare laugh at us, you overgrown…chimney!” Rosamund put her hands on her hips and glared up at him.

  Dot-R repeated what she’d said to Kodran in that strange language.

  Now Kodran’s eyes lit up and he flashed her an enormous smile. He nodded and bowed deeply from the waist. His companions all let out roars of enthusiasm, and several of them sent streams of fire into the air.

  “What did you tell him?” Rosamund demanded of Dot-R.

  “Uh…I think I told him to stop laughing at you before I fried his face off with my laser fingers.” Dot-R looked worried. “I hope.”

  “You think?” Rosamund echoed. “You hope?”

  Kodran went down on one knee and said something to Rosamund. Passersby were starting to stare at her. He stood up again and held out his hand.

  “What is he saying?” Rosamund cried.

  A green-skinned man with antennae walked up. “He says that he accepts your marriage proposal.”

  Chapter Three

  “Marriage proposal?” Rosamund cried in dismay. “Dot-R, I swear I’m going to take you apart and sell you for scrap metal!”

  “I’ll fix it! I’ll explain the mistake!” Dot-R protested.

  “Don’t you dare say another thing to him,” Rosamund said quickly. “You are banned from all Draell translations. I’m afraid you’ll declare war on his mother or something.” She looked at the green-skinned man. “Can you please explain to him that this extremely defective robot just made a mistake, and I am not going to marry him?”

  The man looked scandalized. “Why did you propose to him if you did not intend to marry him? That is criminal.”

  The crowd around them began murmuring. They looked at each other, and then at Rosamund, clearly horrified.

  “I did not propose!” Rosamund yelled. “The robot translated what I said incorrectly! You’ve got to explain it to him. Please.”

  He shook his head. “It is not possible. There are no words which would say that in their language. Once a marriage is agreed upon with a Draell, it is not possible to take it back.”

  Kodran was gesturing at Rosamund to go with him.

  She shook her head impatiently at him.

  He turned and consulted with his clanmates. They were gesturing with their hands, waving their arms around.

  Then Kodran shrugged, scooped her up and quickly carried her down the street towards a silver skimmer that was hovering in a big empty lot. Her sudden breathlessness wasn’t all to do with her gasp of outrage at the way he’d bundled her into his arms without a by your leave. He held her firmly against his muscular chest despite her wriggling and her husky-voiced protests. The floater followed them, with all of the shopping bags.

  And the crowd around them applauded.

  “Congratulations! May you have many healthy eggs!” people yelled after her.

  “So beautiful,” said a roly-poly orange woman to a stalk-like insect alien. “That’s exactly how my proposal went too. Except I was the one carrying my husband.” She wiped away purple tears.

  Dot-R ran after Kodran and his crew. “Stop! Put her down!” she yelled. “I will laser you! I am warning you! My laser fingers have been known to raise unsightly blisters!”

  “Blisters?” Rosamund said furiously as Kodran carried her through the doorway of the skimmer, like a bride on her wedding night.

  “The lasers are mostly for illumination and measuring,” Dot-R admitted.

  The floater hurled all the bags through the door after them, and they landed on the skimmer’s floor with a thud. Then the door sealed shut.

  The interior of the skimmer consisted of rows of soft padded seats. Three of the seats were in front of a control panel with a viewscreen. It was sort of like a huge, flying minivan with extra cargo space. Kodran set Rosamund down in one of the seats, and immediately webbing shot out from the side and wrapped around her waist, restraining her.

  “Let her go at once!” Dot-R snapped at Kodran, in English this time. In response, one of the men shoved Dot-R into a chair. The webbing restraint ensnared her just as it had Rosamund. Dot-R pointed her fingers at the webbing and turned her lasers on. The webbing smoked, but did not give way.

  Kodran and his men settled into the seats, and the webbing restrained them too. It must have been some kind of seatbelt.

  “Send me back right now!” Rosamund said indignantly to Kodran.

  Dot-R started to translate, but Rosamund held her hand up to stop
her. “Don’t. Just don’t,” she said with annoyance.

  One of the men barked an order, and the ship quivered and lifted off. It rose higher and higher, and the viewscreen showed the planet shrinking as they headed out of the atmosphere. Rosamund rode in silence, fuming.

  A short while later, the skimmer approached an enormous spaceship, and a hole yawned open in the side of the ship, swallowing them.

  The skimmer landed with a thud and the viewscreen went black. The webbing was sucked back into the seat, releasing them, and Kodran and his men quickly headed out the door. Kodran looked back and waved at Rosamund to follow him.

  Cursing loudly, she got out of her seat and stomped out of the ship, with Dot-R trailing at her heels. They were in a cargo bay, which held several other skimmers and stacks of metal crates reaching up to the ceiling.

  The little skimmer had taken them to an enormous spaceship, undoubtedly one of those faster-than-light models that would take them to the Draell’s solar system.

  “I am in so much trouble,” Dot-R groaned.

  “You think?” Rosamund said. “We’re both in trouble.” Her heart was pounding in her chest. She was angry and frustrated, but also oddly exhilarated. She’d been kidnapped by a handsome dragon who wanted to marry her, and he was about to whisk her away to his home planet.

  She couldn’t marry him, of course, but still…what a crazy adventure! And if she could just get out of this situation without setting off an intergalactic war, she’d have some great stories to tell Talia when she got back.

  If she got back.

  “I am in more trouble than you are,” Dot-R said glumly. “I should never have run away from home.”

  Rosamund stopped and stared at her. “Wait, you ran away? You told me Talia sent you!’

  Dot-R stared sullenly at the ground. “I got in an argument with my parental units because they were requiring me to spend four hours a day in knowledge acquisition and wanted to monitor all of my communications with other sentient retro-bots, especially those of the juvenile male-identifying build design. So I used the transporter to get to Agora.”