Taming the Dragon Collection (8 page)

The next night she persisted again, this time even leaning forward so he could catch the scent of the exotic soap she had used to bathe her body that day. Alek’s eyes grew wide as she got close to him and he seemed to almost drink in the aroma that she was wafting in his direction. A dreamy, almost drugged look came over him and he seemed much more willing to speak to her. It was the same as two nights ago when he had laid eyes on her body and checked her out—if she could get him interested and attracted in her, then he was an open book.

“So, how many colors of dragons are there?” she asked.

“Your husband has not told you?” Alek asked incredulously. “He must not be a very good dragon slayer if he does not know about our kind.”

“He didn’t share all his secrets with me,” she said, shrugging and inching herself onto the table so that she was almost sitting in front of Alek. She’d never seduced a man before, but she just tried what came naturally and what she thought he would be interested in. As she sat there she pulled her dress up slightly, allowing Alek to see the smoothness of her legs. His eyes traveled up and down her legs before returning to meet her own. Now she was the one flustered and confused as she stared into his beautiful sapphire eyes. It was like he could bring her into a trance with those eyes.

“The colors I know of are white, red, blue, green, black, gold and silver.”

“That’s quite an array.”

“Yes, well, each dragon has their own talents.”

“There are no others?”

“There might be. There are legends of other dragons who once existed, but they may have died out or been killed.”

“Does it bother you that humans want to hunt and slay your kind?”

“The problems of my kind or of humans are no concern to me. I am only concerned with myself.”

“And your problems?”

“I am a great and powerful dragon. I have no problems. Don’t be preposterous.”

Mara giggled and looked away. Alek had a problem; he just didn’t want to admit it. He was attracted to a human.

“So what do you read in your books?” she asked.

“About treasure that I will go plunder,” he said. “Knowledge is powerful, and since I am powerful I must be knowledgeable. This world has no secrets that I do not know.”

“Wow,” she said, running her hand down her leg and drawing his eye. “You truly are great and powerful.”

“I do not need you to state the obvious.”

“Do you ever run into humans on your adventures?” she asked.

“Sometimes I find adventuring parties, but they are easily defeated.”

“Do any of them have women?”

“Sometimes.”

“Why don’t you bring them here to serve you?”

“They have not been given to me.”

“But you are a powerful dragon. Don’t you have the right to take what you want?”

Alek pondered her words for a moment before looking back up at her. “Well, yes, that is true. I can take them to be mine if I so choose, but a warrior deserves a death befitting a warrior, not a life of servitude befitting a maid.”

Mara tried not to take issue with his words, knowing he was just telling her the truth. Still, it was hard not to be insulted by what he was saying. A warrior’s life held more meaning to him than a maid’s.

“They deserve a warrior’s death even if they are human?” she asked.

“Yes,” Alek said, puffing out his chest. “While they may not belong on the same battlefield with one as great as I, they have chosen to do so and if they fight bravely they deserve a warrior’s death. In my omnipotent wisdom I respect one who takes up arms and fights for a cause, even if they are beneath me.”

“Why do you have to kill them?” she asked. “Why can’t you take a great female warrior as a bride?”

“A bride?” Alek asked, looking at her like she was crazy. “Why would I do such a thing?”

“Well, how else do dragons reproduce?” she asked. “Do you mate with other dragons? Would you be able to produce a dragon with a human?”

“I will eat my meal now,” he said, leaning forward to take a sip.

“But, Alek,” she protested.

“That is enough, Mara,” Alek said, regarding her with coldness in his deep eyes. “You will learn and know your place. Be gone now, before I revoke any privileges I may have bestowed upon you.”

Mara quickly shuffled out of the room, realizing she had touched some nerve with Alek. He obviously did not like discussing the thought of sex with a human or even the thought of marriage, but she knew there had to be something there and she intended to find out what it was.

The next day she was busy cleaning the study when she stopped and looked at his huge bookshelves. There had to be some kind of answer in there regarding dragons. She looked around and listened hard at the doorway, making sure the other maids were hard at work elsewhere. Generally they didn’t tackle rooms together and they left one another to their own devices.

Trying to be as silent as possible, she looked through his books for anything relating to dragons. Most of the books were old, without titles or pictures on the covers, and she didn’t have time to leaf through each one.

Finally, she found a large book with a red leather cover that had a gold dragon embossed on it. She opened it, nearly gagging from the amount of dust that rose up from the old tome.

“This is amazing,” she said, thumbing through the book. It appeared to be a lineage of dragons throughout the world, detailing which dragon had begat which. Except there was a problem with each one: they only listed one dragon as a parent and nothing for the other parent. Each dragon’s name appeared to be male as well, although some were very hard to pronounce. “Why don’t they have any females listed?”

A sound outside the door forced Mara to quickly slam the tome shut and hastily shove it back onto the bookshelf. As she spun around Alek strode into the room, his eyes set on a bookshelf across the room.

“I am not finished cleaning, Alek. Please forgive me.” Alek hated it when he came in to read and the room was still dirty.

He stopped and looked around the room, taking in all the sights and sniffing the air. Finally he walked over to the leather chair he usually sat in and examined the area, nodding his head in approval.

“This will do, Mara,” he said. “It is drawing closer to my meal time. Please bathe yourself.”

“Yes, Alek,” she said, bowing her head and shuffling toward the door. As she began to leave she felt his eyes boring into her back. Was he admiring her from behind, or was he trying to figure out what she had been up to? She pushed the thoughts out of her head and headed for the bathing chamber.

As she prepared to undress, she looked down and noticed that the front of her dress had ripped. It would need to be mended. At that moment a devilish thought entered her mind and she reached down, tearing the front of the dress until the tear dipped to the middle of her bosom. Now Alek would have a full view of her breasts while he ate tonight.

It didn’t take Mara long to bathe that night, but she made sure to use the best oils and soaps that Alek had transported from around the world. For a dragon, he really enjoyed being clean and smelling good. Maybe that wasn’t so strange; after all, he did see himself as some sort of perfect god.

That night she brought his dinner to him with a smile on her face and it only widened when his eyes landed on her. They immediately travelled to the low cut of her dress and grew wide. She even caught him licking his lips at one point. She would be a liar if she said she didn’t enjoy the attention and approval the dragon heaped on her body.

“Something is wrong with your dress,” he said, shaking his head and trying to look away.

“I ripped it while I was working earlier,” she said.

“I see,” Alek said, taking his customary first sip of stew before nodding his approval of the taste.

“Did you have a good read today, Alek?”

He looked up at her, his eyes traveling her body again as he seemed to struggle to form words. Was he going to tell her off again, or was something else bothering him? Finally he put his hands on the table and answered. “Yes, it was very productive.”

“I knocked one of your books off the shelf by accident,” she lied, trying to find a way to broach the subject that had been bothering her since she had viewed the old tome.

“Oh?” he asked, taking another sip of stew.

“Yes. It was about the lineage of dragons around the world.”

What she said seemed to catch Alek off guard and he fumbled with his spoon, letting it clatter to the ground as he looked up at her in surprise. “You read my book?”

“Well, I just glanced at it,” she said innocently, leaning over the table so he’d have a full view of her breasts. “It was strange, though.”

“You should not read any of my books,” Alek said, his face growing red.

“I’m sorry,” she said, flipping her hair behind her as she gave him her most seductive look. He was getting angry; she had to distract him. “How come no women were listed? It listed everyone’s fathers, but not mothers.”

Alek’s eyes grew wide and he bit his bottom lip, obviously trying to hold himself back from exploding. Mara stepped back, realizing that her attempt at seduction was doing nothing to quell the great dragon’s rage. Did he feel violated?

“Pick up my spoon,” he ordered through gritted teeth.

“Alek,” she said.

“Pick up my spoon,” he ordered again, pointing at the stone spoon lying on the ground.

Mara squatted down beside his chair and grabbed the spoon, looking up to find him leering down the front of her dress again. She pinched her shoulders forward, allowing them to hang lower, hoping to distract him from the anger he was feeling. She had no such luck.

“Give me my spoon,” he ordered, holding his hand out. Mara stood up and presented him with the spoon, trying not to anger him any more than he already was. “Now go.”

She turned and started to leave, hoping that this would be the end of it, but Alek loudly cleared his throat, stopping her at the doorway.

“Yes,” she asked, turning slowly.

“Have one of the other maids fix your dress,” he said. “And report to Raylene first thing in the morning. I will have new duties for you.”

“Yes, Alek,” she said.

“My name is Aleksander,” he informed her.

“Yes, Aleksander,” Mara said, feeling her face growing hot and her hands growing shaky. She was so upset she could barely stand.

“Be gone, maid,” he spat, before turning back to his meal.

Mara rushed out of the room. She didn’t stop until she was back in her bed chamber with her face buried in her pillow. Why was she so upset that the man holding her captive had turned on her? It didn’t make any sense that it affected her so much, but that night she cried herself to sleep.

Chapter 11

When the next morning came Mara did not want to get out of bed. Her eyes were puffy and her face was swollen from crying the night before. Priya and Abigail had tried to console her when they came to bed, but Raylene had forced them to leave her alone and go to sleep. They couldn’t help anyway; they didn’t understand what she was going through. Alek—no, Aleksander—had never shown the kind of affection to them that he had shown to Mara. She was alone and trapped with a dragon she had angered and women who were too busy trying to please him to see her plight.

Raylene was waiting beside the bed with a large jug and an oversized cloth.

“Welcome to the world of the living, dear,” she said sarcastically.

Mara could tell Raylene didn’t like her: the way the maid was always ordering her around, always looking at her with jealous eyes and always finding ways to put her down had been apparent from the get-go. She had been with Aleksander the longest and didn’t like the new meat coming in and usurping her spot as favorite.

“I’m awake,” Mara said. She felt miserable; her head was pounding and her face hurt.

“You’ve been reassigned,” Raylene said, holding out the jug and cloth.

“What’s this?” Mara said, looking at the thick, white cream that was in the jug.

“It’s for polishing precious metals,” Raylene said.

“What?” Mara asked, looking up and curling her lip.

“The master has reassigned you to the treasure hoard,” Raylene said. “You are to polish the coins and items he has counted the day before. You are not to speak to him or approach him. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” Mara said, feeling another stab in her heart.

“Your bath privileges have been revoked as well,” Raylene said, giving Mara a knowing smile. “At dinnertime you will not clean the cauldron and you will no longer bring the master his food.”

“Right,” Mara said. “I got it.”

“Do you, dear?” Raylene asked, leaning over toward Mara’s face. “I told you to leave it alone. I told you not to break the master’s routine and to just be a good girl who does what she’s told. But did you listen? Nope. Now you’re paying the price.”

“I guess I am,” Mara said, wanting nothing more than for the fat old shield wife to shut up.

“You’re just like the master’s shiny treasure,” Raylene finished, shaking her head as she headed for the door. “He may get distracted by your gleam, but eventually he gets bored and goes back to old reliable Raylene.”

“Good for you,” Mara muttered under her breath.

She took her time, shuffling and dragging her feet all the way to the treasure hoard. Instead of taking the path that she had taken earlier in the week to escape, she took the left path, winding her way down into the hoard. It wasn’t hard to find the pile of treasure that had been set aside for her to clean and polish.

Mara cursed her luck and cursed her station in life as she began to clean each coin meticulously. The goop she was using to shine them was sticky and smelled like spoiled milk. She had to cover her nose while cleaning to avoid retching several times.

“This isn’t fair,” she said aloud. “All I did was ask questions. Is it so wrong to be curious about the man who’s holding you captive? What’s wrong with wanting to know about his life and where he comes from? He’s obviously interested in me. Why can’t I be interested in him?”

Mara had never felt the sting of rejection as much as she had over the last several weeks. First Val had gotten her hopes up and made her think a handsome knight was interested in her, before bringing it all crashing down with his attempted rape and then sacrifice.