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T’MAR ENTERED HIS TWELVE-room suite and strode to a monitor enabling him to keep tabs on the crew and passengers. He sank into a chair and zoomed in on the guest sector. The three humans conferred in the hall then Henry and Helena clasped hands and stepped into her quarters. Then they embraced.
Another male is touching our mate! He must die.
Humans hug. It doesn’t mean anything, he reasoned, but a hot coil burned in the pit of his stomach.
It means he must die. She is ours!
He had no hesitation to dispatch an enemy or rival, except killing the man would reinforce the dragon’s misconception about Helena. He needed him alive to prove she meant nothing to them. Killing him would be hasty.
It would be satisfying.
T’mar curled his talons until they cut into his palms and blood spurted. Killing the interloper would be satisfying. Dragons did not engage in casual physical contact. Touching another originated from aggression or sexual intent.
He unclenched his fingers. She means nothing. She is a human female, he told himself, and then said to the dragon, Prince K’ev hugs Princess Rhianna.
And then they kiss, and they leave the room and engage in sexual relations.
Bad example. His brother and his mate reeked of sex. He often wondered how they accomplished anything. They smelled like they rarely left the mating bed.
Helena will be unhappy if we kill her friends, he said.
I will not kill both of them—just the male. Why does she need friends anyway? She has us.
She needs friends. She is human and far from her people. Don’t you want her to be happy?
Yessss... The dragon sulked.
Helena and Henry tapped the walls of her quarters. T’mar felt no guilt about spying. With their acute sense of smell, dragons had no expectations of privacy. Humans considered “butting your nose into one’s business” rude, but the behavior was normal and accepted on Draco. They couldn’t not smell the odors around them. Until he determined whether these particular humans were friend or foe, he needed to keep them under close scrutiny. And since he couldn’t smell them from afar—he’d had the ship’s surveillance activated in their quarters, with a couple of exceptions for Helena.
Nakedness meant nothing to a dragon. Shifting negated modesty or awkwardness over nudity since clothing got sloughed off. The intelligent jumpsuit offered protection when in demiforma, nothing more, although females occasionally adorned themselves with scarves or body drapes.
Humans, however, followed complex clothing rules. Out of deference for his consort’s odd sensibilities, he’d ordered the ship to deactivate the viewer in her sleeping chamber and the cleansing station where she would most likely be unclothed. Watching her there without her knowledge somehow felt wrong.
Wrong? It is not wrong; it is right. Want to see our mate naaaaked.
What did she look like under that cumbersome clothing? Even without an image to conjure—he’d never seen a human unclothed—his fyre flared with a burst of heat, and his cock thickened.
He tried to block the sexual thoughts from his mind and focus on what the two of them were doing. Henry located the food replicator and showed Helena how to use it. T’mar realized he should have done that. He’d escorted her to her quarters but hadn’t given her any instructions. He had no intention of spending time with her, but she still needed to eat.
He zoomed in on the replicator. Henry pressed a sequence that produced a snack portion of replicated lava worm patties. Live lava worms were a delicacy, their venom giving them a nice, spicy tang; however, they were poisonous to humans unless the venom was leached out. Fortunately, replicated lava worms were safe, if rather tasteless.
Henry handed one to Helena, and she bit into it.
The dragon went nuts. He is feeding our mate! He must die!
Fire shot from T’mar’s nostrils. His body began to expand, his wings breaking through bone and skin, thrusting from his spinal column.
No! We can’t shift here! Feeding doesn’t mean to humans what it does to us. The pleas fell on deaf ears. Bones cracked. T’mar’s neck lengthened as the roaring dragon tossed its head.
Panic ballooned with the dragon’s thundering fury. Shifting would be a disaster. Not now! You can kill him later. We must act swift and sure, and we cannot do so on the ship. I promise you can torch him later.
With great difficulty, he regained control and returned to demiforma. Crisis averted. But reckoning would come when the dragon realized he’d lied.
I will incinerate him. I will rip him apart. The dragon continued to fume.
Involuntary, unexpected fury sparked within him, too. She is not my mate, not mine, not mine, he repeated to himself.
Feeding was a personal, intimate act. A male only fed a dragoness with whom he intended to mate, and if she was interested, she accepted. T’mar had never given food to any of his concubines. He had no desire to.
Humans were different...weren’t they? He narrowed his gaze and focused on Helena’s expressions. She did not appear to have a strong emotional reaction to the offering, did not appear to be overtaken by lust, but unable to smell her, he couldn’t be sure. Not only had Henry offered her food, he’d selected the best delicacy the replicator could provide.
She carried the food to the sitting area and set the platter on the table. She peeked into the hallway at the other female and then joined the man on the sofa. T’mar measured the distance between them. They were close enough to touch one another—but they didn’t, fortunately for Henry. If the man made any sexual moves toward Helena, he doubted he’d be able to control the dragon again.
Helena munched on a patty while conversing. Emotions, especially human feelings, were harder to read when you couldn’t smell them. Besides exuding sexual hormones, a dragoness presented as submissive when aroused, although, during sex, she often became quite aggressive and gave as good as she got. T’mar had been clawed and bitten quite a few times. Helena demonstrated neither sexual submissiveness nor aggression, but then again, who knew what bizarre mating habits humans had? Perhaps they showed interest by feigning indifference.
It is a form of flirting, the dragon said. When humans identify a potential sexual partner, they engage in a complex ritual of confusion. They show interest by acting uninterested.
How do you know this?
I overheard Princess Rhianna explaining flirting to the queen.
I don’t remember any such conversation.
You were engaged with King K’rah. You were not paying attention to what was important.
He didn’t think Helena was flirting with the male and suspected his alter self didn’t believe it, either, or he would have flown into a rage again. But how could T’mar be sure? Wasn’t flirting designed to confuse?
It didn’t matter one way or another. He would do as he’d planned—sequester her in the harem and fly away. She could behave as she pleased, provided nothing she did could be construed as an act of aggression against Draco.
She finished the replicated lava worm Henry had given her, smiled at him, and then beckoned. He followed her into her bedchamber.
Fire shot from T’mar’s nostrils, melting the view screen.
Now we kill him? the dragon asked.
Now we kill him.
