“I need offspring.”
Okay, my eyes are going to pop out of my head now. “With me? You want offspring with me?”
Four
FIRST
I didn’t want to get into this tonight. I wasn’t lying. I have had a very long day. Trying to corral the factions still on the ship is like trying to herd flocks of anzi birds back on Draci—they’d rather tear your face off than listen to you.
I know the female Dragon are intending to double-cross me at their first opportunity, but right now, all Dragon need one thing more than any other: children. Children will be our greatest power currency. Power will lie in the hands of those who have them and who have control of them.
In order to sustain our race, we must have as many as possible as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately, Dragon mate for life. But the ends justify the means and this is a numbers game. I must impregnate as many human females as I can.
A feat which would have been much easier had my transition gone as smoothly as my brother’s.
But I am monstrous, neither human nor Dragon.
So I cannot trick and seduce. I must capture and subdue.
Starting with this female, who even now lies less than a wingspan away.
I can hear her anxious breathing. When I sniff, I scent her fear. I imagine her rapidly beating heart. It is the same as when I used to hunt prey many, many years ago back on Dragon.
Is that what I am doing? Hunting these women?
A tide of nausea sweeps through me at the thought. Because at the end of every hunt, there was my fire or my killing blade, and I returned soaked in blood.
I jerk my head no, a visceral reaction that hits my gut.
No.
Mine.
This female is precious. I have brought her back to my safe place and I will hide her here. None other will have her.
I’ll fight any who try to take her from me.
She looks over the edge of the couch down at me again. “I’m never going to sleep with you!”
I sit up swiftly and she scoots back to the arm of the couch. She is afraid of me. My stomach swoops low. I do not like that she is afraid of me.
And then I am angry that I even care. This female is nothing to me. I don’t know what nonsense I was thinking moments ago. She is only a means to an end.
“You will sleep. It is late and you will become tired.”
“What—? That’s not what I meant. I meant I’m never going to — to —” Her mouth purses and then, her eyes sparking, she shouts, “I’m never going to fuck you.”
Fuck.
This human word translates perfectly to a Draci word. Cux.
I cannot help my reaction. Not when such a word comes off her pretty, plump, pink little lips.
My erections begin to descend from where they are usually tucked up inside me.
If I thought the human’s eyes were wide before, it is nothing to the saucers they become as she watches my erections descend and then harden. How can they not, with her watching like that?
As first son of the King, I rarely lacked for female company if I wanted it. But Dragon women use fucking like any other weapon in their arsenal of manipulation and it’s often not worth it. I sometimes took the suppression supplements so I didn’t have to bother with the distraction of the urges.
This soft creature before me, though?
She is suddenly tempting in a way no other female has ever been before.
And I am the one moving back from her.
Because this is not how it is meant to be.
The fucking is supposed to be functional. Not… Not for pleasure. Well, I’ll make it not unpleasurable for her, but only because I am not a monster, regardless of whether or not I look like one. I meant what I said. I will not hurt a female.
But for me it is just a military objective. Find a fertile field. Implant my seed. Move on and find another—
My tongue extends and I shudder as her scent washes over me.
She is still afraid, but there is something else in the air.
My hand snaps out and I grip her leg. She shrieks but I do not let go. Cannot let go.
I bend over and lick her inner thigh.
And shudder as the sweetest scent I’ve ever encountered in my entire three hundred years of existence hits me.
I drag her hips closer.
“Wait, what are you doing?” She smacks at my head. “Stop it!”
“Your scent,” I gasp, looking up her body to her beautiful face. Why did I not notice just how artfully shaped her features were before now? So tiny and delicate.
Her eyebrows scrunch together. “Oh shit,” she whispers. “Juliet warned me about this. Stop scenting me. I don’t want to have sex—to fuck right now. If you keep going, you’ll be raping me. Are you a rapist?”