The present
Tansy wandered around her bedroom, tweaking pictures that were already ruler-straight and plumping wrinkle-less cushions. It was a lovely room, soft and warm, furnished in colors of forest green and earth red.
In the past two months this room, and the den for that matter, had become a safe haven for her. Dev and Rye had taken her into their home and offered her their company and protection, which had allowed her to move steadily forward in her recovery. What gave Tansy the most comfort, however, was the presence of the two battle dragons who made their home in the lair next door.
The blacks were fierce and territorial. Each the size of a small plane, they were all teeth and claws, with scales as hard as armor and tails that could smash down walls. Fellescend and Zenbaylan had claimed Tansy as their pet and she was very happy to have so much power in her corner.
Of course she still had a way to go. The pain of missing her home and her family was an ache that wouldn’t go away. She couldn’t go back to Earth because the Brightstar Corporation—the bastards who had kidnapped her in the first place—was the only means of off-world travel in Gemarra. And even if Tansy could smuggle herself away from Gemarra somehow, she had no idea how to get home, no coordinates or star map to give to a ship’s captain.
As difficult as it was, Tansy had resigned herself to the fact that she was never going home. So she focused on the present. She put her energy into making a new life for herself in the den and learning all she could about her new home. She attended counseling sessions, worked hard on her mental recovery and spent time with her friends. Tansy thought she was doing pretty well, all things considered.
As long as she ignored the fact that she was virtually housebound.
In the weeks she’d been living in the Sapphire Den, she’d managed to constrict her world to a couple of levels above and below the one she shared with Dev and Rye. The Enforcers were doubling up so she could have a room to herself, and they’d been careful not to crowd her. So far nobody had noticed her special brand of agoraphobia, but Tansy knew she couldn’t keep her secret forever. Not when the only way in and out of the den was on the back of a dragon.
“Tansy.” Dev’s deep voice carried from the dining room. “Breakfast is ready.”
Smoothing her tightly disciplined ponytail, she wandered out into the lounge room in bare feet. The floor-to-ceiling windows let in a glorious amount of sunshine and gave a spectacular, elevated view of the lush green forest and a sparkling blue lake. Farther into the valley she could just make out the elegant columns and arches that defined the architecture of Sapphire township. She liked the view, but she made it a point not to get close to those expansive windows.
She crossed the lounge room, enjoying the smooth texture of the gray marble floor as it gave way to a thick, velvety rug. The room was large, as you would expect from a living space designed for men who topped six and a half feet. The walls and ceilings were paneled in the same pale gray marble as the floor, but it was saved from austerity by the colorful furnishings. Sturdy wooden tables and dressers supported an array of objects—some practical and some displayed purely for their beauty. Cushions and soft throws adorned plump couches and chairs, making the room feel welcoming and comfortable. It was soldier-neat, but there was no mistaking it for anything but a much-loved home.
On the far side of the lounge room were a dining table and a small alcove that served as a kitchenette. All the meals arrived via dumbwaiter, and Rye was just setting the last dishes on the table when she walked over to lean against the ladder-back chair.
She’d been living in close quarters with the Enforcers for months, but in the last few weeks she’d come to realize that she liked them as more than friends. A revelation she wasn’t sure she should act upon. Her awakening libido proved her recovery was progressing, and she didn’t want to jeopardize that by acting too soon. Unfortunately it wasn’t in Tansy’s nature to dither, and she was fast approaching the point when waiting any longer seemed stupid.
Still leaning against the chair, she allowed her eyes to roam over the masculine objects of her quandary. They were tall, heavily muscled, with slanted cheekbones and tip-tilted eyes. Both men’s silky hair was long and looked more like a mane than regular hair. Rye currently wore his loose, the autumn-gold color shining in the morning light. Dev’s hair was dark purple and fell to his waist. It was gorgeous but he almost always wore it in a neat ponytail—much to Tansy’s disappointment.
Currently both Enforcers wore nothing but loose black pants, and the expanse of copper-toned skin on display made her dizzy. Rye turned back to the dumbwaiter, giving her a semi-impeded view of the tattoo on his back. The design was intricate and so lifelike it seemed almost 3D. Two dragons circled each other nose to tail. The dragon at the top was Zenbaylan—Rye’s scaled partner—and the dragon at the bottom was Fellescend, partner to Dev.
Dev had the same tattoo on his back, only in reverse order. All the Enforcers wore the image of their dragon and their dragon’s mate on their backs, and it was as much a part of who they were as their weird hair and outlandish coloring.
Rye turned back to the table and looked her up and down, noting the silk pants and tunic she wore. Her whole body went on alert under the weight of his assessing gaze and she prayed her nipples weren’t showing through her tunic.
“Staying at home today?” he asked, his lavender-colored eyes drifting down to her breasts.
Tansy pulled out the chair and sat down, casually crossing her arms over her chest. “Yes, the other girls are coming over later on this morning, if that’s all right with you.”
The “other girls” included her fellow former captives Sara, Kate, Mackenzie and Sorcha. The group also included the most important person in Tansy’s new world, her best friend and sister of the heart, Chelsea. They’d grown up together, an integral part of each other’s families and inseparable except for the six years Tansy had served in the Australian army. They’d been out at the movies the night they were kidnapped, and when they’d awoken on the alien ship they’d assumed they’d stick together. But during the transfer to Gemarra, Tansy had been taken to Allsgate while her best friend had been freed by the Enforcers.
When the last plate was on the table, Rye took a seat next to Dev, placing both males on the opposite side of the table to her. “We like having you in our home,” Rye said. “You’re welcome to stay for as long as you wish, and your friends are welcome too. You have no need to ask.”
“Thank you.”
Lowering her head, she picked up her utensils and began to eat, concentrating on her food and not the two extraordinary men whose table she shared. As usual they were polite, courteous, considerate…and difficult to read.
Since her libido had come back online, she hadn’t been able to stop herself from sneaking glances at them, from straining to hear their voices or imagining what they looked like naked. After the physical and emotional torture she’d endured at the hands of Councilor Willersby Lockmehdyhn, it was a miracle she was attracted to any man. The fact that she was actively fantasizing made her want to jump for joy—and squirm with uncertainty. She was happy her body was getting back to normal, and Rye and Dev were warriors to the bone—big, scary and competent—which made them just her type. It was deciding what to do about it that was making her itch.
She’d been doing a lot of thinking this past week, especially at night while she lay in bed alone while Dev and Rye bunked together. Tansy had spent two months in a living hell, being tortured and raped both physically and emotionally. She needed time to heal, she knew that, but Dev and Rye felt safe to her in a way no one else ever had. And they were alien-looking enough, and big enough, not to remind her of that bastard Willersby Lockmehdyhn in any way. Her tormenter had been a paunchy, pompus, callous bastard whom she could have flattened in a fair fight. But men like Willersby didn’t get what they wanted by being fair or honorable. Which made him the polar opposite of her Enforcers.
Dev and Rye were warriors in the truest sense, right down to marrow of their bones. Tansy came from a military family, so she understood Dev and Rye on a level that was built into her DNA. Her dad had served in the first Gulf War, her brothers were both career military, and of course there was her own service.
Despite the fact that they weren’t human, Dev and Rye were the kind of males she understood. And trusted. Or at least her body trusted them, even if her emotions were still confused. To cloud the issue even further, she sometimes caught them looking at her with heat in their eyes. Unfortunately, the moment they realized they had her attention, they changed their expression to one of benign friendship.
So the three of them danced around one another, being polite and careful. As a consequence Tansy suffered random emotional swings, from self-pity to numbness to anger, past the dangerous detour of arousal and back to self-pity again. She heaved a pathetic sigh and didn’t realize how deeply she’d slumped into her chair until she felt a large, hot hand on her back.
“Tansy, are you all right?”
She took a breath, forced some steel into her spine and lifted her eyes to Dev’s ice-blue gaze. “Yes, mostly. I’m just jumbled up inside.”
“Of course you are.” That searing hand slowly circled over her upper back and Tansy resisted the urge to lean in to him. “It takes time to recover from any trauma, and you’ve had to deal with events no woman should ever endure.” His voice dropped to a low rumble, and she shivered as it brushed over her skin. “You’ve been so brave. We’re both so proud of you.”
“Thank you.” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“We’re here to help you. Whatever you need.”
She nodded. She hoped that offer was genuine, because she had a feeling she was on her way to asking them for something they might not be ready to give.
* * * * *
An hour later Dev walked down two flights of stairs with Rye at his shoulder. The den housed over three hundred battle dragons and their riders, and they trained almost every day. Sometimes they broke into their flights—small groups of ten to fifteen—and at others the entire den participated in a mock battle. On other days, like today, training involved the mind not the body. Dev was looking forward to the upcoming strategy session.
He and Rye strode along several corridors before coming to a halt at the lift doors. Dev reached out and pulled a lever and then they both stood back to wait.
The lifts in the den relied on a complicated system of pulleys and counterweights that only an engineer could understand. The technology so prevalent in the northern hemisphere was almost useless on Ivasta because of the ion storms that occurred more days than not. Even a small storm could shut down an electrical current, so something as simple as using a hover became a life-or-death proposition.
Ivasta’s four major settlements were sparsely populated, but the people who did live on the southern continent knew how to adapt. Dev had been to the other side of their planet, he’d visited the hi-tech city of Allsgate and he’d seen firsthand the uses those people had for their gadgets and machines. He stepped into the pulley-driven lift with a smirk, silently acknowledging that the Ivastan alchemists and engineers had invented some pretty good gadgets of their own.
Rye stepped in beside him, but instead of waiting quietly for the lift to descend, he moved restlessly from foot to foot. Dev took one look at his denmate’s expression and knew he wasn’t going to like whatever came next.
Rye’s eyes were a little wild when he turned to speak. “We need to do something about Tansy.”
No surprise there. Rye was a male who preferred action over any other strategy and he’d never met a problem he didn’t want to beat to a pulp.
Dev turned to lean his shoulder against the lift wall. “Like what?”
“I don’t know.” Rye turned to mirror his position, standing close. “But I can’t keep pretending I don’t feel her pain, and I can’t keep treating her like nothing more than a temporary houseguest.”
“But that’s what she is.”
“No—”
The lift stopped and the door was pulled open to reveal four Enforcers waiting to go down. Dev shook his head as he closed the doors. “Get the next one.”
The other dragon riders weren’t happy, but Dev was one of only four captains in the den and very few riders had the balls to challenge him. The lift continued to rattle downward and Dev resumed his leaning position and the conversation.
“Tansy needs somewhere safe to stay and we can provide that for her. And we need to find out who tried to kill Sorcha.”
Their den commander and his denmate had taken Sorcha for their own, and it was her kidnapping that had led the Enforcers to Tansy and the other women they’d saved. The man who took Sorcha had been killed during the rescue, so a third party had come after Sorcha and tried to poison her. The trouble was, the Enforcers didn’t know whether the attempt on Sorcha’s life had been personal or whether it had been aimed at the Earth females as a group.
Dev folded his arms across his chest. “Once we’re sure nobody’s coming after the other women we rescued, Tansy will go back to town and try to build a life.”
“With what?” Rye asked, rubbing a frustrated hand over his face. “All her friends are here. She has no family to support her. If we don’t take care of her, who will?”
Dev knew it wasn’t that simple, although he wished it were. “She might not want us to take care of her. She’s been traumatized, raped, beaten and who knows what else. It’s quite likely that once the immediate threat is gone she’ll race out of the den like her skirts are on fire.”
Rye grunted. “If only she wore skirts. Those outfits she wears around the den don’t leave enough to the imagination.”
That was true. Tansy’s strong limbs and subtle curves had fueled many a fantasy for both Enforcers. “Your imagination doesn’t need any help. You jerk off often enough as it is.”
“I can’t help it.” Rye’s smile was grim. “Every time I get a hint of her scent it goes straight to my cock.”
Unfortunately Rye wasn’t alone in that particular situation. Dev’s hand was getting such hard use he was surprised he had any skin left on his palm.
He sighed and dropped his arms to his sides. “I think what she needs most from us is time.”
Rye placed a heavy hand on Dev’s shoulder. “You’d better be right, my brother. Because if I’ve been sitting on my hands when she’d rather we made a move, I will personally break every bone in your wrong-call body.”
Dev acknowledged the threat with a nod. “I’ll consider myself on notice.”
The trouble was that Dev was as clueless as Rye. He didn’t know what Tansy needed—he was simply relying on instinct and his desire to do the right thing. Hopefully when their houseguest was ready she would come to them and ask them for what she wanted. And with any luck, they’d be able to give it to her.