“Any man who separates a mother from her child and abandons his own isn’t worth the air he breathes.”
“Thank you,” she replied.
He squeezed lightly and released her.
“He wasn’t the only one,” she was compelled to confess. “I killed everyone responsible for the loss of my daughter.” Vengeance had delivered no peace, no end to her grief, but she would do it all over again. And she had. She had snuffed out the fyre of the dragoness called A’riel because she had attacked Helena.
“Any parent would kill for his or her children.”
She studied him through a different lens. “Have you killed anyone?”
“Only those who needed it,” he said nonchalantly but flexed his shoulders, as if uncomfortable with the admission. “In self-defense mostly, but I took out a terrorist once.”
Dragons considered humans weak and cowardly vacillators. H’ry was anything but. Stalwart. Resolute. Courageous.
“We seemed to have gotten off on a serious topic. I usually reserve conversations of this nature for the second date.” The dimple appeared.
She smiled, the gesture coming easier. The pizza, strange as it was, had sated her appetite, but the conversation and companionship had left her hungry for more.
The burning and churning had increased, an indication she needed to meditate and center herself. She also should try to mollify her dragoness whose ire raged. Perhaps she should seek a flex chamber and allow her to shift, blow off some fire.
“It has grown late, and I must leave, but I have enjoyed our conversation. We have two days before we land, and I resume my duty. I’d like to spend the time with you. If I haven’t scared you off, perhaps tomorrow I could give you a tour of the ship?”
“I would like that very much—and I don’t scare easily,” he said.
Chapter Six
Henry had an operative’s sixth sense to recognize when a situation was going to go south. Further contact with O’ne had disaster written all over it.
Knowing that, he raced toward it with a fool’s eagerness. She’d granted him a couple of days of her company, and he intended to claim every second. He found her beautiful, but that didn’t account for the intensity of the attraction. He’d met a lot of gorgeous women, none of whom stirred him the way she did.
Maybe it’s my fyre seeking hers, he joked to himself as he lathered his face with shaving cream and drew a razor over his jaw. Fortunately, he’d brought his own toiletries because Draco had nothing comparable.
He didn’t feel any different now that O’ne had verified he had dragon in him, other than being crazy-relieved they weren’t related because his thoughts toward her weren’t familial in nature.
To seek her out was playing with fire.
Burn me up.
His infatuation defied logic and lust. He’d done his best to avoid her, had intended to return to Earth, but when she’d showed up in the mess hall, the feelings he’d tried to suppress had burst out of him like a child’s jack-in-the box.
She’d sought him out. Wild hope had ignited—then burned to ash when she revealed she’d known of his visits to the temple but couldn’t be bothered to see him. He’d dredged up the willpower to walk away, and then one little comment from her, about pizza, had him running back to her side.
In two days, they would go their separate ways, never to cross paths again. He had promised her that. He would honor it. He might be a pathetic bastard, but he wasn’t a stalker.
After wiping flecks of shaving cream from his face, he brushed his teeth. He was treating this interlude like a date when it defied labeling.
He verified the shower setting pointed to chemical and not fire and got in, emerging a minute later fully sanitized. Xenophobes on Earth dismissed the Draconians as “filthy lizards,” but nothing could be farther from the truth. In dragon form, they took fire baths to burn away impurities, and in demiforma, they used the disinfecting chem showers.
Draco and Elementa had water, but dragons didn’t use a lot of it.
He donned a long-sleeved, open-neck navy shirt and tucked it into a pair of charcoal cargo pants, accessorizing the attire with two small daggers slipped into the leg pockets. The blades had been forged from a composite material to pass undetected through scanners. It had worked on Earth, and he’d gotten them to Draco on a dragon ship, so carrying them shouldn’t cause any problems. Old habits and training died hard. He didn’t expect trouble, but he felt naked without his weapons.
He dragged a comb through his short dark hair, and, with eagerness in his step, went to meet O’ne.
* * * *
In her last happy moment on Earth, O’ne had been sitting with her fellow Draconians, holding her infant daughter. They’d all been in demiforma. It had been a cold night, and, although a roaring fire threw out heat, she had shifted into human form so her waist-length hair could blanket the baby. The infant, who loved playing with her hair, had grabbed a handful in her tiny talons and cooed. The contentment brimming within confirmed she did not want to become priestess.
The next day, the rescue ship had landed and she’d boarded with her daughter. When she’d been boxed in by a narrow passage and unable to shift, they’d torn the child from her arms and then dragged her away, kicking and screaming, never to see her daughter again.
She vowed then not to cut the hair her baby daughter had loved. At some point in the 10,000 years, it had
