Highlander's Need: Winter Solestice (Against All Odds Series 4)

by Veronica Wilson

  At his end of the receiving line, Prince Dagin noticed a minor commotion a few meters in front of him. He and the two gold-clad male members of the Sarmian diplomatic corps accompanying him spied what was happening down the line and exchanged bewildered looks. Behind him, Dagin heard one of his companions whisper, "Who are those humans behaving in so unseemly a manner?"

  The other diplomat whispered back, "I believe the male in the queue is the owner of a space mining industry. I don't know who the young one is who's accosting him. He should be grateful he's here, instead of on Sarma. He'd be dragged out and tossed in the rubbish for behaving thusly."

  Dagin said nothing, just taking in the little drama being played out in the line. It was the most interesting thing that had happened all evening. Of particular interest was the reaction of the pretty-looking, plump girl in the pastel gold gown. Doing the emotional maths on the situation, he guessed that the one trespassing on the queue must be a former or would-be suitor, trying to curry her favor again. Dagin smiled at the thought of what a Sarmian woman would do in such a situation. What would the pretty, plump human do?

  Down the line, Danielle cast her eyes anxiously around, growing ever more uncomfortable at the spectacle they were starting to make. "Braden, you're being rude," she scolded in a hushed voice. "You need to go to the end of the line or someone is going to ask you to leave." To which she mentally added, Then again, go on and keep being rude so they will!

  "Danielle, baby, I don't care how it looks. I don't care about etiquette. I only care about you. I want to talk to you. Promise me we can talk sometime this evening, please."

  "Anything that I'd want to say to you," Danielle said in an acid tone, "I wouldn't want to say at a party. Especially this party. Go away."

  "Danielle is right, son," said Thomas. "This isn't the time or the place. You know better than this."

  "Sir," pleaded Braden, "all I want is to tell Danielle I know what a mistake I made and ask for a chance to start over. I know we can get over this—"

  "I don't want to 'get over' anything, Braden. I can't 'get over' it," Danielle said coldly. "And I don't want up you here. It's a big party full of rich girls. Go and bother one of them."

  Braden pleaded all the harder, "Baby, don't say that—"

  "And I told you never to call me 'baby' again!" Danielle almost shouted.

  Dagin's initial amusement was changing to concern. He did not care for the presumption of the one intruding on the line, and he cared even less for the effect the intruder was having on the pretty, plump girl. He leaned back to one his attendants and said, "I think the young lady needs some assistance. Go and help her before this incident escalates."

  "Yes, Your Highness," said the tall Sarmian in gold, stepping away from the receiving end of the line and striding ahead to where the unpleasantness was occurring.

  In a few steps, the tall diplomat—who looked every bit as if he did half of his "negotiating" with a sword or an axe—was at the trouble spot and glaring down at Braden. "Young man," he said politely but sternly, "are you aware that you are committing a breach of form? Prince Dagin shall be happy to greet you—in your proper turn."

  With all the defiance of the social climber unwilling to let go of his intended meal ticket, Braden looked up at the diplomat and said, "I didn't come here for Prince Dagin. I just want to talk to Dani—" He corrected himself, feeling a need for formality, "Ms. Dryden, here."

  The diplomat, his glare unwavering, said, "If you are not here for the prince, you should not be here at all." And with that he suddenly reached out and grabbed Braden's shoulder—hard. Braden started and winced at the Sarmian's grasp. "You may go to the end of the queue or you may excuse yourself. At this moment the eyes of both my world and yours are upon you. Your president and other leaders are here. The Prince of Sarma himself is here. Disgrace yourself not before them. Are we in understanding?" And he gave a squeeze for emphasis, making Braden wince harder.

  Braden, his options growing decidedly narrow, looked from the frowning expression of the diplomat to the frowns on the faces of the Drydens and the almost scowling look of contempt that Danielle wore, and said in a pained voice, "I understand."

  The Sarmian released Braden's shoulder and said, "It is good that we can thus communicate. Enjoy the ball." And he spun on his heel and walked briskly back the way he had come.

  Braden, too mortally embarrassed even to clutch the shoulder that the Sarmian had grabbed, looked pitifully at the distaste on Danielle's face, the mortified expressions of her parents, and the embarrassment of the other people in the line, and words utterly failed him. He turned around and stalked away towards the ballroom entrance. Danielle faced her parents with the words good riddance to bad rubbish in her eyes, and together they faced again the front of the line, where the prince stood. Danielle could not help but notice the sparkle in the wondrously handsome Dagin's eyes. He seemed to approve very much of the way his attendant had seen off her unappreciated ex.

  Dagin fixed his eyes on Danielle and wondered how she would have handled this situation without his intervention. She was so unlike the women he had known, many of them in bed, on his own planet. Young women, and for that matter young men, on Sarma were not as soft and round as this one. Stout bodies were for the elders, whose warrior days were behind them. And yet, he did not know when he had seen a woman of either planet as lovely as this one, in spite of her girth. How would it be, he wondered, to bed such a woman, to lie with those full round curves? How would it be to feel her response to his arms around her, his body atop her, his erect zazansa penetrating her wet and yielding gliarra? Dagin had never imagined such a thing. Truly the universe beyond Sarma was about new possibilities. Assuming, of course, that she was open to such a possibility.

  The procession of guests down the line to meet the prince continued uneventfully. One of the two diplomats accompanying Dagin had a linker from which he read the names of the guests as they presented themselves. In due turn, he came to Danielle's parents. They shook his hand with as much sangfroid as they could manage, but Danielle was almost afraid her mother would swoon and keel over when Dagin gallantly kissed her hand.

  Once her parents moved aside, it was Danielle's turn. The diplomat with the linker announced, "Ms. Danielle Dryden, heiress to Dryden Industries, of the Martian Colonies."

  At last, Danielle's eyes met Dagin's from within arm's reach. In such close proximity to such otherworldly sexiness, Danielle thought she could feel a charge in the air emanating from his dark pupils and his gleaming smile. His was a handsomeness such as she had never known, a male beauty never made on Earth. He extended his hand as he had done dozens of times this evening, but with a practiced poise that made it seem like a personal gesture and not a reflex. The prince spoke in a voice deep and melodic: "I'm enchanted to meet you, Ms. Dryden."

  Danielle gracefully reached out with her gloved hand to let him kiss it, and was almost grateful that she was wearing gloves. To have the kiss of this man on her bare hand, she thought, would surely make her catch fire. "Enchanted as well, Your Highness," she said. "I hope you're enjoying your evening."

  "Everything has been lovely," he replied, with a sparkle in the darkness of his eyes. "Well, almost everything. The gentleman from earlier... I gather you're acquainted?"

  Danielle blushed slightly. "He wasn't exactly being a gentleman tonight. And our acquaintance is over, thank you."

  "You shall make better acquaintances tonight, I am certain," Dagin said with a smile on his lips. A very kissable smile.

  "I'm sure I will, Your Highness," replied Danielle. "I'm glad I decided to join my parents this evening."

  "As am I, Ms. Dryden," said the Prince, his eyes following her in a most un-princely manner almost like those of a stalking beast as she stepped away from the line to join Thomas and Sylvia.

  At her parents' side once again, Danielle had an odd feeling that Dagin was glancing at her from the corners of his eyes before he turned his attention to the next guests, a
couple of plant-beings who coiled their fronds about his hand in greeting. Then came another of those disconcerting squeezes of her arm from her mother. "Now you see, darling?" Sylvia grinned broadly at her. "If you'd stayed in your suite at home, you'd never have had your hand kissed by an actual prince!"

  Keeping an eye on Dagin—whom she was now finding it increasingly difficult to look away from —Danielle said, "I also wouldn't have had to be bothered by my ex-boyfriend who actually thinks I'd take him back after what he did."

  "Don't bother yourself about him any more," said Thomas. "You're done with him. I can't believe I actually approved of such a bounder."

  "It's not your fault, Daddy," Danielle sighed. "People like him are good at getting the approval of people who they want something from. I should be happy I found out about him now instead of later."

  "That's right, sweetheart," Thomas said, putting an arm around her shoulder. "Now let's just find a table and have something to eat."

  At the moment, Danielle found the prospect of a meal positively seductive. Food may put pounds on a girl, but it would never sneak from her plate onto that of some other girl. And the cuisine was not standing at the end of a receiving line, looking utterly gorgeous but completely out of reach.

  At length, the receiving line ebbed away and Dagin and his attendants took their places at the table of honor in a raised area of the ballroom where they, the lady President and First Gentleman of Earth, and the other highest-ranking dignitaries, sat a step higher than the rest of the partygoers. Dagin's attention was half on his meal and half on the throng of humans and extraterrestrials seated before him. With eyes trained to pick out targets both human and animal from the deserts, fields, forests, and cliffs of his home planet, he scanned the party for one particular figure in one particular dress. He found her at once, with her mother and father, near the middle of the area of tables arranged around the dance floor, dining away and seeming to enjoy herself.

  Again came the thought of how different this Danielle Dryden was from any of the women with whom he had shared beds and bodies back home. Was it only her physical difference that fascinated him, or was there some quality about the young Earth woman herself that made him so curious? He had left Sarma for a variety of reasons, but one was to know what it was in the galaxy that was not like himself. And there, sitting with her parents and taking pleasure in her repast, sat something thoroughly different from him or any other Sarmian. Watching her, he actually felt his zazansa grow stiff in his trousers. How could such a woman intrigue him so? All across the ballroom were women of Earth and a few from his own planet, with bodies of the type to which he was accustomed; figures and forms of the kind he had enjoyed mounting since his Rite of Transition from boy to adolescent. Why did none of them capture his imagination as much as this plump but pretty human?

  After much dining and conversation, a globular device came floating in across the ballroom and hovered at the president's table. It emitted a pinging sound that reverberated through the room, not sharp enough to be offensive but loud enough to get everyone’s attention. The voices in the room ebbed to whispers and the president stood up, smiling, and spoke into the floating microphone. Her voice carried across the dance floor and the expanse of tables: "Friends and dignitaries, on behalf of the government of the Republic of Earth, I'm pleased and honored to have you all here tonight. This has been a most momentous year for Earth, as momentous as our First Contact so many years ago. This is the year we've found kinship not only with another intelligence in the galaxy, but with those whom we truly believe to be our long-lost kin. Among us here tonight is a member of their ruling family, whom we are proud to welcome into the human family. Fellow beings, I give you Prince Dagin of the planet Sarma."

  Various forms applause welled up in the room, from the clapping of hands to the snapping of claws, the whistling of speech and breath organs, the thumping of appendages on tables, and the flashing of bodily luminescence. With a smile of nobility, Dagin stood up from the table he shared with his attending diplomats and bowed to the corners of the ballroom, accepting the welcome and well wishing. He remained standing for the next part of the president's address.

  The president went on, "Now, for those whose custom is to dance, Prince Dagin will invite one member of the party to join him in the first dance of the evening." She turned graciously to the prince: "Your Highness...?"

  Even as the sound system brought up classic waltz from the days before humanity first reached into space, a hush of anticipation fell over the tables. Every female human and quite a number of the males anxiously watched Dagin step out from behind his table and down onto the dance floor. His smile did not so much waver as it narrowed into an almost mischievous crease of his lips. He strode across the empty space between the raised area and the rest of the party, his eyes moving from side to side. Everywhere that humans sat, people grinned and signed and squirmed. They suppressed laughs and giggles and squeals. Step by step, glance by glance, Dagin made his way to one particular area of the party where a dark-haired, tan-skinned beauty in a black dress sat smiling softly and surely at him.

  Danielle had noticed the dark woman when she first sat down. She was slim and tall and her curves were sleek and delicate, not broad and wide. She was exactly the type that Danielle knew a man like Dagin or Braden most desired. It came as no surprise to Danielle that such a woman would find the prince's favor.

  It did surprise both Danielle and the dark woman when the smiling Prince stepped past with a polite nod at the dark woman and proceeded to the tables beyond her. Danielle blinked in amazement. If the prince did not mean to dance with that black swan, then who...?

  The breath all but froze in Danielle's lungs when Dagin stopped at the table where she and her parents were sitting. She glanced over at her mother and realized what must be about to happen. Sylvia looked up, wide-eyed and trembling, at the Prince. It all made perfect sense to Danielle. Her mother was older than Dagin, but of course she had gone under the adipose lasers to reshape the contours of her body from round, full maturity back to slender youth. If Dagin fancied older women, of course Sylvia would catch his attention. What will Daddy say? Danielle silently wondered.

  Prince Dagin held out his hand and cordially asked, "May I have the honor of this dance?" It was only after he had spoken the words that Danielle realized in whose direction his arm was extended—and it was not at her mother.

  It was an utterly surreal moment that made Danielle wonder if some of the potted flowers in the ballroom were actually Denebian dream blooms and she had accidentally inhaled some of their pollen. Surely only the hallucinogenic pollen of the Denebian dream plant could make her think that the excruciatingly gorgeous prince of the planet Sarma was inviting her onto the dance floor. Girls with bodies like Danielle's did not dance with men with bodies like Dagin's.

  But, impossibly, Dagin repeated: "Please, Ms. Dryden...will you join me in this dance?"

  The moment hung suspended in Danielle's mind. The image of Dagin smiling at her, offering his hand, was joined by that of her parents watching it happen, flabbergasted. She next became aware of every set of eyes in the room, human and alien, resting on her, and of hundreds of bulging pupils, gaping mouths, whispering voices and wagging tongues. And then it was her mother again, grinning like a schoolgirl and nodding at her. She gazed back up at Dagin. There was not a hint of insincerity and mockery about him. This was real. "You do dance, do you not?" he asked.

  Danielle did not know how, but she heard herself say, "Yes...I do."

  "I believe your people call it a waltz," Dagin said. "Please do me the honor."

  Danielle felt Sylvia nudge her under the table, and the next thing she know she was standing up—and accepting Dagin's hand.

  The moments that followed remained as surreal as those preceding them. Danielle felt as though she were floating—an unlikely thing for a girl like her—as she went hand-in-hand onto the dance floor with an actual prince who was the embodiment of everything sexy.
She could not feel an expression on her face. She could only hope that she was smiling as Dagin kept her hand in his and wrapped his other arm around her body. She reflexively wrapped her other arm around him, and off they went.

  They swung and circled round the floor like spinning galaxies locked by their gravity. Moving with the music, they spun fast and then slowly, Dagin keeping her close. Danielle's mind became a whirl of unbelievable things: that she was dancing with an incredibly sexy prince, that he was smiling at her as if she were the prettiest girl in the room, that she was moving with him and the music with what felt like an effortless grace. And somehow, it did not seem as if he were just doing a favor for the round girl who had eschewed having her body altered. She could swear that he actually seemed to like her.

  Other couples, including Thomas and Sylvia, joined them on the floor. Danielle was only marginally aware of them. She was fixated on the face of Prince Dagin, on the sparkle in his dark eyes and the power that she sensed in the muscles that swayed so smoothly with her. She sensed a kindness in Dagin that both surprised and pleased her. Even if they parted after this dance, had no other business with each other, and never saw each other again after tonight, Danielle would be happy to take the memory of this experience back with her to Mars. She would lock it up in her heart and carry it with her forever.

  The tune ended. Dagin released Danielle and bowed to her. Danielle gave a curtsy in return. The other couples on the floor were by now just shapes at the edge of Danielle's awareness. She was prepared to go back to her table and bask in the memory of the amazing thing that had just happened. But just as she was set to turn and leave the dance floor, the next amazing thing happened.

  Dagin said, "I should very much like the pleasure of your company for the evening, Ms. Dryden—if you would not mind entertaining a stranger from far away."

  Suddenly back in a place of incredulity, Danielle blinked at him. "Me?"

  "Yes, if you please," Dagin said. "I know that I am merely a prince of a foreign planet, that I am more familiar with battlefields than ballrooms and new to the ways of your people. But I am here to learn that which I do not know of other worlds. I think it is true that you have never known a man such as me, even as I have never known such a woman as you. Will you not let us know one another this night?"