Her jaw worked angrily before she managed another one of those bloodcurdling smiles. “I only ever have your best wishes at heart, Baltic. If you desire that I ignore your woman’s insults, then I shall do so.”
I tapped my fingers on Baltic’s hand, where it lay over one of mine.
His sigh ruffled my hair. “There was a time when I believed that all would be peaceful once Ysolde was at my side again. I see that I was wrong.”
I turned in his arms to give him a share of my scowl. “I am not the one who started this—”
“Enough.” He gave me a quick, hard kiss, then turned me and gave me a gentle push toward the door. “You will no doubt wish to drive us to London, since you claim my piloting the vehicle takes years off your life. We will go to fetch our son—”
I noticed the emphasis he put on the last words, and smiled at them.
“—and Thala can fly to Paris to determine what new measures of security Kostich has put into place to guard the light sword.”
Thala blinked a couple of times. “You’re not coming with me?”
“No. I have business to attend to at Dauva, and Ysolde has extracted from me a promise to meet with the weyr, which she no doubt intends for me to fulfill soon. Once you have assessed the security, return here and we will make our plans.”
I was about to ask Baltic why he needed to go back to Latvia when he had just returned from there, but something about the set of his jaw had me clamping down on the question. “I’ll bring the car around. Jim, get your things. Pavel, are you coming with us?”
He shook his head, flickering a quick glance at Baltic that set off a number of warning bells in my head. “I have some things to attend to. You may exchange polite greetings with the silver guards on my behalf, if you like. Nothing too friendly, and I would prefer that the greetings are offered only after they have acknowledged my absence, since we are the older dragons and it is our due to be greeted before offering the same.”
“You guys are downright archaic sometimes,” I said, shaking my head as I herded a protesting Jim and its bowl of popcorn out the door.
Baltic claims he knows how to drive perfectly well, but experience has shown me that while he has a firm grasp on the mechanics of driving a car, he disregards all other aspects of the driving experience and thus has only a vague idea of rules of the road, laws, and even what common courtesy is with regard to other drivers. He also doesn’t give a damn about any of that, which means that usually either Pavel or I drive when we go somewhere. Luckily, I enjoy driving, even on England’s sometimes confusing roadways.
“Jim,” I said once we had joined the throng of folks streaming toward London, “can I give you direct orders that you can’t refuse?”
“Uh-oh. I don’t like the sound of that,” it said, looking up from one of Pavel’s risqué magazines it had filched before leaving the house. “What kind of an order?”
“I don’t want you to hear what I’m going to say.”
Baltic shot me a startled look.
Jim sighed. “Yeah, you can. But I’d like to point out that I can also keep my lips zipped if I have to, so you don’t really have to order me not to hear something.”
I thought for a moment, then shook my head, both at the driver in front of me who slammed on his brakes for no reason and at the thought of speaking my concerns in front of the demon. “Effrijim, I command you to not hear anything I say until I tell you it’s OK.”
Jim sighed again, and buried itself in the magazine.
“Oh, look, a hamburger place. Let’s go there and have food.”
It didn’t even look up at my bait.
“What is it that you don’t wish to say in front of the demon? Are you going to tell me some new way you wish for me to make love to you? Will it involve a phallic device such as Pavel has? I will warn you, mate, I do not approve of phallic devices for either of us. I do not care for such things to be used on me, and the only phallus I intend for you to entertain is—”
I lifted my hand to stop what showed every sign of being one of Baltic’s “the old Ysolde never was into the sorts of kinky things you are into” lectures. “I don’t want a vibrator, thank you. Although those little bullet jobbies look kind of . . . never mind. You’re phallic enough for me, thank you.”
An odd look crossed his face. “I’m not sure that is a compliment, but I assume you mean it as one.”
“Yes, I do. How about this: you more than amply take care of any and all sexual desires I have. Better?”
“Much.” He sat back with a smug look on his handsome face and waved a hand. “You may proceed telling me about the new fantasy you have.”
“It’s not a fantasy. What exactly were you doing in Dauva?”
His face went blank for a few minutes before he slid me a steamy look. “Do you have fantasies about making love in Dauva? Out in the open, perhaps? It is heavily forested now, and not visited by the locals because they believe it is haunted, so I would be willing to take you there if it would drive you to a new level of pleasure.”
“If that’s some sort of a crack about me having voyeuristic tendencies . . .”
He raised a hand and looked out the window. “I make no judgment, mate. I was simply offering to allow your strange new tastes some freedom; that is all. If you wish instead for me to make love to you in the lair, that is more reasonable, although we would need to bring in a blanket at the least, since the ground is quite rocky there after the centuries of disuse. Perhaps a mattress.” He paused for a few seconds and thought. “I suppose we could build a bedchamber in there if you really liked, although Kostya has stolen all of my treasures, so there would be no gold to rub all over your body.”
“An underground love nest doesn’t appeal to me in the leas—Rub gold all over me?” My eyes went a bit glazed as I considered that thought. Although the dragon that slumbered within me must have shown the same preference for gold over all other forms of treasure, heretofore it hadn’t triggered any response in me. Now, however, just the thought of draping Baltic’s naked form with chains of gold had me shivering with arousal. “Maybe that would be nice. How much gold do you have now?”
His smile was filled to the rim with smugness. “Not as much as I had, thanks to Kostya, but enough to satisfy your lustful demands. It is safe in my Paris lair.”
“Perhaps—” I shook myself, dissipating the erotic images that danced so tantalizingly in my head. “We got sidetracked somehow.” An abbreviated gesture had me shooting him quick little glances as all sorts of warning bells went off in my head. “You did that deliberately, didn’t you?”
“Brought up the subject of making love to you? I frequently discuss my desire to mate with you, Ysolde,” he said, but he couldn’t look me in the eye. He pretended to be interested in the passing scenery, which made a few more bells chime.
“Yes, you do, and I appreciate that fact, but I also know that you don’t like saying you won’t answer a question I asked you, which is why you try to distract me with thoughts of you all warm and naked with gold chains draped across your chest and belly and . . .” My voice trailed off into a little whimper as I swallowed back a sudden wave of desire and need. “What was I saying?”
He slid me another look, but sighed and slumped back into the seat, shaking his head. “You’d never let me hear the end of it,” he muttered. “It would be just like in Milan, when Antonia called me to her side, but I could not tell you because you would have instantly been jealous and likely lopped off my stones with the nearest sword. I had to tell you I was away on sept business just to keep you from following me.”
“I am not the sort of person who gelds other people without due cause,” I started, then realized what it was he hadn’t said. “Wait a minute—are you saying you went off to see your former girlfriend after we were together?”
“Not in the sense you are thinking,” he said blithely.
“How do you know what I’m thinking?”
He pointed to the steering wheel. “Your fingernails have dug into the leather a good half an inch.”
I loosened my death grip on the wheel, spun it when I was about to plow us into a guard rail, and got a grip on my emotions. “What did Antonia want to see you about?”
He was silent.
I glanced at him. His expression was stony.
“I see.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t had a vision about that episode,” he said after a few more minutes of silence,
