When Shak traveled, it was only surrounded by secret service and usually in the dead of night. He was human, yes, but unlike Ezo, he’d revealed himself to the Earthen population as the King of all the Draci. He was the friendly face of their kind. When a documentary crew had been allowed into the US Pacific island, his was the face and his family was the family they saw. It was a grave responsibility, but it was a weight he was glad to carry in his father’s place.
To see his people thriving, on each of the islands that he regularly traveled between, was a joy he never could have imagined in the darkest days of the two-hundred-year journey through space, traveling into the unknown after leaving their devastated planet behind. They’d recreated vibrant town centers on the islands. There were programs for humans and Draci to interact and for cultural exchange.
He’d just been talking with the German ambassador about having one of the eldest of the Draci who kept the records, go visit as a professor of history for a semester at their most prestigious university. Similar exchanges had been happening since they’d arrived amongst governments and top Draci engineers, but for them to be out in the open—it was an exciting step forward in human/Draci relations.
“What are you grinning about now?” Juliet asked, pinching Shak in the stomach. He grunted and grasped for her wrist but she yanked it back too quickly.
“Just admiring all the progress we have made since coming here,” he said honestly. “I could never have hoped for things to have gone so well. It is, how do you call it, what your silly deity accomplishes when something is improbable—”
“Hey!” Juliet smacked him in the chest. “Show some respect.”
“What?”
She just rolled her eyes. “A miracle. It’s a miracle it’s all gone so well.”
“Yes! Exactly. This is why you are my ideal female. Your mind so often takes the same track as mine.”
“What a charmer you are,” she said dryly.
Shak lifted his eyebrows. “I am not?” He grasped her around the waist and dragged her into his body.
She giggled and shook her head, wrapping her arms around his torso, light dancing in her eyes as she looked up at him. “It’s not fair you get away with as much as you do.”
He could only grin back in return as he dipped down, his tongue flicking out to scent her moments before his lips made contact with her delicious, sumptuous ones. Ancients, but he’d been granted a King’s ransom when this woman had crossed his path.
He squeezed her tighter, his maleness threatening to descend as he felt all of her softness against his hard lines.
She shuddered against him and then pulled back, sucking in a quick gasp of air like she was out of breath. She glanced quickly left and right, then grabbed his arm.
“Quick,” she said. “Everyone else is busy. If we’re quick, we can—”
“Already ahead of you, my genius female,” Shak said, dragging her forward by his hand in hers. They stalked across the yard. His company wouldn’t mind if he disappeared to ravish his wife.
There had to be some perks to being King, after all.