Sometimes, it was best to answer a question with another. “Have you decided on your short list?”
Her eyes flashed, as if she recognized the diversion for what it was. “I have narrowed it down to five of you. Both you and your brother have made the list. I have about a week until I’m at peak.”
A week. A lot could happen in a week.
“Have you spoken with Razir?”
She cocked her head. “Oh, yes. I was feeling quitemotivated”—she purred the word—“when I spoke to your brother.”
Tyrez had a pretty good idea that she hadn’t done much speaking at all. But at this stage of their cycle, Dragonas were all about the tease. She would have left Razir panting for more.
He’d been through this enough to know he should want to move in on her at this point. Prove to her he was the lustier, more dominant male, and therefore the better choice.
Butnormalhad not exactly ruled his days as of late. His body shook with desire, but his heart held back.
The lack of his response was, unfortunately, noted. Her arched brows drew down, and she stepped right into him, her hand reaching to cup him, then tracing the clear indication that he was not oblivious to her presence.
“Playing hard to get, my Prince? Looks to me like you’re just hard.” She stroked him until he shuddered, and her lips curled. “That’s more like it.”
She let him go and stalked to the edge, her wings expanding as her body began its change to beast. “Just holds that thoughts,” she purred again, her lengthening jaws slurring the ends of the words. “I’ll be backs for you.”
She dropped off the ledge and vanished. A millisecond later, her scarlet Dragon form soared past far below.
Tyrez cursed under his breath. His body ached for her, urging him to follow. But it wasn’t yet time. She would merely laugh and tease him until he was in a complete froth.
Been there, done that. Not doing it again.
Despite his lack of an appropriate response, his status would put him at the very top of her list. He’d better get more than just hislittlehead in the game if he didn’t want to end up a sharding eunuch. There were limits to a Dragon’s natural healing ability.
He tried to ignore the conflict within him. He was just tired. Eating irregularly, sleeping little—he’d even been remiss in taking his crystal supplements.
He collected his beer, drained it in a single gulp, and moved into his apartment. He found himself annoyed rather than titillated. No amount of alcohol was going to relieve what she’d done to him. And jerking off on a ledge two thousand feet in the air was generally frowned upon.
He briefly considered finding a partner. As with many Dragons, the sex of his partner didn’t matter so much as the quality of the experience. But nothing truly came without strings, and although emotional ones were rare for Dragons, political ones were not. Tyrez’s connections to both the Emperor and the Matriarch meant that he was circumspect with his sexual partners.
At the moment, being with anyone, male or female, didn’t appeal to Tyrez. What in the shards was wrong with him?
He shed his scales as he moved through the apartment. By the time he reached the shower large enough for his phase-one Dragon, he was completely naked. With some determination, he occupied his mind with Aranta’s luscious shape and what it would feel like to run his big hands over it. He then visualized the Dragona in beast form, as she would be during the mating, her scarlet scales glittering in the sunset, his body curved around hers...
As the spray cascaded over his bare skin, he leaned against the tile, his fingers sliding along his body. His eyes slipped shut.
Almost immediately, his inner focus shifted. Scarlet altered to a glittering gold, the form beneath his more lithe than voluptuous. And as he curled his neck close, the eyes gazing into his own glowed silver.
Tyrez’s heart raced as his fingers increased their tempo, carrying him effortlessly over the edge and leaving him gasping and trembling on waves of ecstasy.
The golden scales on his wrists tingled long after his body had subsided. He reached to stroke them, and his heart did an odd flip before settling into a dull ache.
Tyrez leaned on the wall beneath the spray and acknowledged he was in serious trouble.
8
Ash followed in Rindek’s wake as they left the realm of the crashing ocean and entered an equally wild, but very different, place.
The Archmage walked a meadow framed by the roots of a giant tree. Bigger around than Ash, the roots suspended a massive—over three hundred feet in diameter—trunk far above them. The light of all three moons barely penetrated to dapple the roots at ground level.
Rindek and Ash weren’t alone. Every time Demeti’s eyes met Ash’s, they burned with a sickening mix of sexual lust and hate. Rindek’s son had no personal experience with the devastation Dragons had wrought on his people. It had happened long before he was born. Yet his hatred of them was almost a visceral thing, the result of historical tales of the Torshin race being wiped out by Ash’s kind. His reaction was far too intense to be rational—and it was actively encouraged by his father.
If children were simply the product of their upbringing, there was little doubt as to the source of Demeti’s obsession. Every fibre of Rindek’s tall body was consumed by hate. But in the Archmage’s case, it was tempered and honed, focused by a cunning brain. At his tender age, Demeti was all about raw power.
