“Wow,” I said, marveling at all of that. When he opened his eyes, the gold flecks were glittering brightly. “That’s really amazing. I had no idea about any of that. It explains a lot about your behavior with the other dragons, too.”
He made a face. “I have a feeling I should apologize for my bad manners, but every time I think about them, I feel exactly the same sense of antagonism.”
“That’s okay. I think you’ll get a handle on your dragonish emotions in time.” I slipped out of his embrace and moved over to the end table, opening a little drawer in its side. “Mrs. P gave me something earlier to show you. Before you say anything, I’m perfectly aware that she must have lifted this from someone, and I’m going to give it to the captain so he can return it to its proper owner. But Mrs. P said you would enjoy seeing it.”
“It’s not an adult toy, is it?” he asked, looking faintly startled.
“No, no, she hasn’t stolen one of those since the trip from L.A. to Munich.” I pulled out the gold watch from the drawer and went to Rowan with it, holding it up so he could see it. “It’s a watch.”
The reaction was instantaneous—the red flecks in his eyes glowed scarlet. His whole body stiffened, and red scales rippled up his arms to his elbows. His nostrils flared and a tiny wisp of smoke curled out of his mouth.
“Gold,” he said on a breath.
“Mrs. P said gold acts like an aphrodisiac to dragons. I can see some of that—I mean, I think it’s nice and I like to touch it, but…” My words trailed off when Rowan made a noise deep in his chest.
“Run.”
“What?” I gazed at him, wondering if I’d heard him correctly.
“Run,” he said more loudly, his teeth clenched together.
“Why? Run where? For what purpose?”
He closed his eyes for a second as if he was struggling to maintain control. “It’s a sexual thing. I must chase you. Run now.”
The light dawned on me. “Ohhh, that sort of run. I thought you meant to go for a jog or something.”
Rowan’s chest heaved, a pained expression on his face. “For the love of all that’s holy, run, woman, run!”
“All right.” I trotted to the door, went through it, and got three steps down the hall before a question struck me. I returned to the cabin and asked, “Where am I running to?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he snapped, his entire body rigid. “Just run!”
“But there isn’t really anywhere private to go that others couldn’t find,” I pointed out. “Assuming, that is, that you’ll want to have wild, steamy dragon sex as soon as you catch me. If you tell me where you want to find me, I can go there and wait.”
An odd mixture of frustration, anguish, and humor twisted across his face. He closed his eyes and I could see his lips move as he silently counted to twelve. “Run, Sophea. Anywhere. Just run if you want me to survive the next few minutes.”
“Gotcha.”
I left the room, and this time made it to the upper floor before I paused, trying to decide if it was worth enraging him to ask if he wanted me to lead him on a chase through the ship before ending up in our shared room.
“The only stupid question is the one not asked,” I told myself, and returned to our floor. I had just put my hand on the doorknob when the door was yanked open, Rowan standing in the doorway, his eyes blazing, and half the room alight with dragon fire.
“RUN!” he roared, and I swear to the goddess the glass in the portholes rattled. His image seemed to shimmer and blur, just the way the air did before the First Dragon showed up. And for a fraction of a second, for a fraction of that fraction, Rowan’s image shifted to that of a red dragon. It was so quick that I wondered if I had even seen it.
My brain didn’t wonder. It registered the fact that there was an impossibly scary thing roaring and smoking and setting fire to everything right there in front of me, and instantly I was running, racing down the hallway, leaping down flights of stairs so fast it was all a blur to me.
All my mind knew was that something big and bad was out there, and I was in its sights.
The very bottom level of the ship was given over to the engines, the electrical works, and things like a minuscule laundry and a kitchen. As I tore down the hallways, careening around corners, I scattered apologies behind me to all the ship’s staff whom I crashed into. My ears were deafened to all but one sound: Rowan.
I heard him even as I ran up the employees’ staircase at the aft of the ship, a small, narrow, dimly lit metal structure that heightened the sound of a man pounding down the passage behind me.
It was exhilarating, this chase, and yet at the same time scary as hell. I wanted to tell Rowan to stop it instantly, while begging him to do it every single night. I was just wondering how long it would take me to get back up to our cabin when I rounded a corner and caught sight of a figure just behind me.
I screamed and flung myself at the nearest door, which was, luckily, unlocked. I slammed it behind me, and looked wildly around the room for somewhere to hide. There was only one light on in the adjacent bathroom, leaving the rest of the room dim. It was one of the lower cost cabins, containing two bunks, a tiny little round table, and two suitcases neatly stacked one on top of the other.
That’s all I saw before the door was thrown open with enough force that it left a mark on the wall. Rowan stood silhouetted in the doorway for a moment before stalking in. I jumped when he slammed the door shut behind him, and backed up as he approached, alternately watching him and desperately trying to find an avenue of escape.
“There is none,” he said, obviously guessing my thoughts. “You’re mine now. I claim you.”
My inner wyvern’s mate squealed with happiness. The primitive part of my brain was telling me to run. I bumped up against the wall, swallowing hard when he took two big steps and then was at me, his body pressing me against the cool, smooth wooden panel.
“Rowan,” I said, hiccupping back a laugh. “We can’t do this here.”
“Why not?” he said in what was more or less a growl. A sexy growl, one I felt to the tips of my toenails.
“Because this isn’t our cabin. We can’t have sex in someone else’s bed. That’s just rude. You wouldn’t want someone to do that to us.”
The light from the bathroom slanted across his face. He frowned as he thought about that, then grabbed me by the waist, and hoisted me upward, using his body to hold me into place. “Then we’ll do it standing up.”
A little quiver of excitement ran through me—oh, who was I fooling, by now my entire body was one giant erogenous zone, just waiting for Rowan to touch me. I grabbed his shoulders, and pulled my knees up, hoisting myself a little higher when he placed my legs around his hips.
“This is going to have to be quick,” he said in the same low, rough voice that seemed to stroke across my skin like velvet. “I hope you’re ready.”
“I was ready ten minutes ago. Eons ago. I’ve been ready for you since the dawn of—Rowan!” He ripped off my underwear, just grabbed it with both hands and snapped the narrow straps, letting the material fall to the floor. “That’s my only undies!”
“You can go without,” he mumbled, working on his fly.
“Are you crazy? I can’t go commando. Not with the short skirts—hooo, Nelly!”
He thrust into me with one smooth, forceful move that left my entire body quivering in pleasure, my intimate muscles doing a little shimmy of welcome and basically singing songs of praise about Rowan.
“I’m sorry. I just can’t… you don’t know what the chase does… I have to… tell me you don’t need more time,” he said in a near pleading voice. “I don’t think I can stop.”
I flexed my hips, the better to accommodate him, and bit the tendon on his neck. “Go, baby, go. Oh yes, just like that. I think… I think…” And that was the point where I stopped thinking and just let my instincts take over. My body moved with his until he tensed up, his face buried in my neck when he yelled his pleasure. That p
ushed me over the edge as well, and I clung to him, reveling in the exquisite waves of pleasure that rippled outward.
We stayed like that for what seemed like an endless amount of time before Rowan finally lifted his head, his chest still heaving as he panted, “You’re going to kill me if you do that again.”
“Me?” I asked, unlocking my legs and regaining my feet. I had to cling to him for a few minutes while they turned from jellied blobs to solid form. “All I did was show you a watch. You are the one who turned into a wild man in the bedroom. And it’s not even our bedroom. Oh hell, it’s on fire, too.”
He grinned at me and stooped to pick up my underwear before stamping out the fire that burned in concentric rings around us. “I believe we’re going to have to have a ban on gold objects until I can better handle my reaction to it. I’m sorry about your panties. And the wall.”
I took my undies from him and stuffed them up my sleeve. “I’ll see if I can’t repair them. What wall?”
He pointed behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and did a double take at the black shape burned into the wood.
“Oh hell, that’s me, isn’t it?”
His smile was one of pure satisfaction when he took my hand and led me from the room. “When we do it, we do it properly.”
“Uh huh. And how are we going to explain that to the cabin’s occupants?”
He gave me a roguish look, kissing my fingers as he said, “If they say anything, I’ll offer to pay for a new cabin, all right?”
“All right, but stop swaggering around like having sex so hot you burned my shape right into the wall is a point of pride. We’re never going to be able to have nice things if we keep burning them up every time we make love.”
Fifteen
I would like to report that the two days following that memorable chase were uneventful, but that wouldn’t be even remotely true. The next day started benignly enough, though: Rowan texted everyone he had ever heard of and several to which he’d received referrals.
Mrs. P did much to enrage me by sashaying around in a manner intended to aggravate me. And aggravate she did.
“Why do you look at me that way?” she asked, flipping her waist-length hair back with a practiced move. “It’s not like I told your man to leave you.”
I pursed my lips. She wore a fairy costume, complete with gossamer wings, nearly see-through low-cut bodice and skirt, and a bag of glitter she called her fairy dust.
“For one, that costume you’re almost wearing was supposed to be mine. We agreed that you’d be the cheerleader and I’d get to be the fairy.” I gestured down to my cheerleader pleated miniskirt and cotton sweater. “I’m too chubby for this outfit. Your skirt is longer.”
“But it suits me much better. See? My bosom is perkier than yours now.”
She had a point, damn her. I made a mental note to ask the laundry if they’d managed to clean the Xena outfit yet. Thus far, they’d taken their own sweet time cleaning the items we had daily taken to them. I shook a pom-pom at her. “And for another thing, I saw you trying to score a few points with Rowan earlier. I didn’t appreciate it, and if you try it again, you’ll find your lovely long hair tied in a knot around your throat.”
She laughed, a silvery, tinkly sound that made me very aware that I had what was politely termed a smoky voice, but was really just plain ole rough and unattractive. “I was, I admit. Not that I could bed him here—my beau would know and not be happy with me. But I did want to see what sort of man you had and whether he would remain true to you. I think he will.”
“I know he will,” I said without as much conviction as I’d have liked.
“Then you have nothing to worry about, do you?” she said, tossing a handful of fairy dust on my head and laughing her way to her bedroom to change for some time at the pool.
I threw a pom-pom at the door and returned to the project of attempting to convert the pair of shorts that came with the cheerleading outfit into suitable underwear.
“I’m feeling distinctly like a third wheel,” I commented later that day, when Mrs. P and her coterie of priestesses trooped into the room fresh from the swimming pool.
“We asked you to come swim with us, but you refused,” Mrs. P said, tossing off her swimsuit cover-up and heading into the bedroom.
“You didn’t miss much, although your friends were up there being nosy again,” Bunefer said, plopping down on the window seat.
“May and Gabriel?” I asked, wondering what they were up to.
“No, the two old ladies. Gidget and Moondoggie.”
“Ken and Barbie,” I corrected. “I think they’re just dying to be of help. They are some sort of cherubs or something from a divine place. Kind of a heaven.”
“The Court of Divine Blood?” one of the priestesses asked. Ahset, I think, although I got her and her (biological) sister Henit mixed up. She looked thoughtful. “Henny and I spent a summer being apprentices in the Court, and I don’t remember seeing them. But then, I didn’t meet everyone.”
“That’s what they said, and I don’t see why they’d lie about being cherubs. I mean, that’s kind of an odd thing to claim if it’s not true.”
She shrugged. “After they left, the captain came around and told us to stop being so loud and to stop scaring off other passengers, and all sorts of other mean-spirited things like that, which of course Ipy wasn’t going to stand for. She read him the riot act about passengers having the right to play in the pool as they see fit, and if we wanted to have music and drink shooters while we were swimming, then that was no business of his, and oh, all sorts of other things like that. All in all, you probably were better off not being with us.”
“Goodness. Sounds like you guys had quite the time of it.”
“It would have been far more fun without the captain harshing our mellow, I’ll tell you that!” Bunefer said before heading into Mrs. P’s room.
Gilly entered the cabin at that point, a large beach bag in her arms. She looked around, a faint frown ruining her normally perky expression. She marched into the Mrs. P’s room, then came out to ask me, “Is Ipy in your room, by any chance?”
“Not that I know of. Why?”
“She’s not here. Ipy never takes a leave without designating one of us as being in charge of Aset’s protection.”
I sat up from where I’d been slouched and looked around, just as if I’d discover the missing model hiding behind the love seat. “I haven’t seen her since you ladies went off to sunbathe and swim. That was almost two hours ago.”
“She said she wanted to get more sunblock because Khenut couldn’t find hers and she didn’t come back. I thought maybe she had too much sun and came in here to have a little rest. Last night’s Beach Blanket Bingo party got kind of intense, and she did, after all, win the tequila shooter contest. I wonder where she could be?”
“I heard she had a little argument with the captain.”
She made a face. “That man has the soul of a toad. A crusty, pus-riddled toad. Ipy gave him as good as she got, and he left with his tail between his legs.”
“Good for her.” I got to my feet. “Let me double check to make sure she’s not indulging in a hangover from hell. Literally. Ha!”
But Ipy wasn’t in my room, nor was she in any of the public rooms on the ship. Gilly and I searched them all, after she alerted the others and told them to stay with Mrs. P while we looked around.
“Right, this is a wash,” I said, emerging from the tiny shop. “The saleswoman said Ipy hasn’t been in today.”
“Where could she have gotten to?” Gilly asked, wringing her hands.
I patted her arm and started up the stairs. “I don’t know, but we’re going to get to the bottom of this. We’ll tell the captain we’re missing a passenger and let him search all the parts of the ship we can’t.”
“I don’t like him,” Gilly complained, but followed me upstairs nonetheless.
I kept the thought to myself that the captain scared the bejeepers out of me, f
eeling that one of us had to put on a brave front. Ten minutes later, we emerged from the room that served as the bridge—the habitual haunt of Captain Kherty—and looked at each other with despair.
“He’s not a nice man,” Gilly said, casting a dark look at the closed door to the bridge. The sound of it slamming behind us still echoed in my ears.
“No, he’s not. That doesn’t mean we have to sit around and ‘wait for Ipy to come crawling out of wherever she’s hidden to sleep off her hangover’—honestly, how that man can live with himself with that sort of attitude toward his passengers is beyond me. No sir. We’re going to find her. Come on, let’s go rile up a couple of dragons.”
“Are you sure that’s wise?” Gilly asked, trotting after me when I went to find Rowan.
“What’s the use of having tame dragons at your beck and call if you can’t get them to overrule a snotty captain?” I asked lightly. “Why don’t you go to May and Gabriel’s cabin and see if they are there. Ask them to meet me up on the promenade deck. I’ll drag Rowan away from whatever bit of research he’s doing, and we’ll have a confab.”
She trotted off to do that, and I proceeded to search for Rowan. We hadn’t seen him during our previous search, leading me to believe that he was closeted somewhere working on the problem of the ring. It took a while, but at last I found him on the pool deck, sitting sideways on a lounge facing Gabriel, who was seated likewise. The two men seemed to be in deep conference.
“—do you control it? All I have to do is look at her and I instantly want to take her to bed.”
Gabriel smiled, revealing dimples. “Ah, that is the curse of wyverns—our mates are precious to us, so we tend to feel emotions concerning them to a greater degree. Control, as I have said, is the key to all issues—if you can control your fire and your emotions, then you can control your sept. I find it helps to center myself in one place in time, and then use that to ease any rampant emotions that threaten to get the better of me.”
“What if I don’t have a centering place in time?” Rowan asked.