Chapter 19

The artic surface where the whirlpool had been stilled, the circular wound healing over in a scrim of lacy ice. The Blissed automatically scanned the hole where its honeymooners had descended.

In its onboard catalog of recommended honeymoon activities, the “polar plunge” was extremely far down the list…

With a tinkling crash, the ice exploded upward, and a winged shadow, as black as obsidian against the pale background and touched with violet shimmers, soared into the sky.

If only the Great Space Race viewers could see this…

Luc dragged a searing lungful of bitterly cold air into his suddenly huge chest, swelling the aching new muscles that strained against the glacial gusts burping from the whirlpool’s maw.

This was unbelievable. When he’d hit the churning slush of water, he’d been sure he and Amy would die in the icy depths. Instead, in the darkness, his hands—no, his claws—had found the last guttering vestiges of her warmth. And now they were arisen.

He pumped his wings—wings!—hard, struggling above the iced-over whirlpool. It was an empty grave now, not his and Amy’s, and not the Soul’s Dream. They were free. Free!

Exhilaration gave a renewed burst of strength to his wings, and he surged higher toward the Blissed. He wasted a single moment to snake his long neck down for a quick glimpse at her limp form dangling from his claws. Her wide, dark eyes stared back at him in wonder, terror, and awe. His heart slammed fiercely against the struggling musculature that hadn’t existed there before. She had given him this.

The cruiser’s hatch was too small to admit a shifted drakling, and he hovered awkwardly at the open door, on the verge of falling again.

In his claws, Amy twisted, reaching for the handles alongside the airlock. He boosted her closer, and she grabbed ahold. Not a moment too soon as his muscles failed, but he’d saved her, and that was enough.

With an agonized gasp, he felt his new shape collapsing back into himself. Wings reduced to fingers, and he found himself grasping at nothingness, about to fall.

Amy’s hand smacked into his, and he managed to jam his bare foot against the freezing gangplank.

With a shout, she heaved backward, yanking him into the Blissed, to safety.

He sprawled on top of her, his old, familiar shape heaving and shuddering from the cold, from the change he thought would never happen.

She wrapped her arms around him, even more tenacious than her four-fingered grip had been, although she was shaking from cold and from the near disaster too.

“You were a dragon!” She squeezed him so hard, he felt as if his heart was naked in her hands. “You were a larfing dragon!”

He curled into her for a rapturous moment, and though their bodies were too exhausted to spark any heat between them, having her in his arms was all he needed.

From where they lay entwined, the Firestorm Queen’s Prism rested directly in his line of sight. He stared at the legendary gems—no longer mythical—and wondered not at its value but at its pricelessness. This was what he’d come for, even though he hadn’t believed it was real.

He tightened his embrace around Amy.

For another breath they rested before she wriggled sideways.

“We have to get warm,” she said. “And we have to get out of here.”

When he nodded, his neck felt strangely short. “We might have gotten rid of that tracker, but Rickster and Idrin are smart enough to figure out our rough coordinates since they already know the first two.”

“You fly the ship, and I’ll get us something to drink.”

“Hot coffee,” he murmured as he pushed himself upright.

“We used up all those components to synthesize the kyapa-sho,” she reminded him. “How about a glass of water?”

“As long as there are no ice cubes.” He staggered to his feet—just feet, no claws—and levered her up too, then leaned down to grab the prism. He hesitated with his fingers a hair’s breadth from the joined gemstones.

“I saw them too,” Amy murmured. “The Firestorm Queen and her blacksmith.”

“It’s impossible.” But still he couldn’t quite force himself to grab them.

“What’s impossible? Faster-than-light travel? Men turning into dragons?” She gave him a significant look. “Or an essentially eternal, stable crystalline nanostructure matrix capable of holding a vast photonic imprint, not so different from, say, a photograph or a holo-vid?”

He lifted an eyebrow at her. Somebody had been reading up on memory crystal encoding. “It was more than that.” It wasn’t just a picture or even a vid—he’d felt the experience. But he scooped up the stones.

For a single, searing instant, the passion in the prism grabbed him. But then he was himself again. Except he was more than that now, too. His drakling spirit had been unleashed.

He followed Amy toward the cockpit, though she veered off at the galley. Throwing himself into the pilot chair, he set a course for the fastest route away from Altaria. The planet was a required stop for the Great Space Race, and he didn’t want to encounter any Octiron reps until he and Amy had a plan.

Now that they had the prism.

He put the joined gemstones on the center console as the Blissed rocketed through the atmosphere.

Warmth wrapped his naked shoulders as Amy slipped a soft red blanket around him before settling into the copilot seat just as they slipped into darkness. She handed him the goblet, and he took a grateful sip of the heated water. A hint of spice made him hum in pleasure.

“I found one bead of kyapa-sho that didn’t make it into the synthesizer,” she told him. “It’s basically all we have left except emergency provisions.”

“We should stop to resupply, but”—he finished a near-space scan: nothing—“Rickster is sure to be hunting us, with Idrin or someone worse.”

She took the goblet back from him but her gaze stayed on the prism. “We have to get it back to your homeworld.”

His chest ached, not just from the unbelievable flight, but at her selflessness. “We might need it to bargain our way out of Paragon.”

She shook her head. “It belongs to your people, nowhere else.”

The drakling inside him coiled tight. The treasure belonged to its finders, its keepers… He squelched the instinctive greed. “We could make a run for the galaxy border, but we’re low on everything, and a honeymoon cruiser isn’t meant to be an escape vehicle or a fighter.”

“We don’t run.” Without hesitation, she reached for the prism and lifted it to the starlight streaming through the viewport.

His drakling purred, enthralled by the delicate glimmer of rainbows across her golden skin. “What’s your idea?”

“We storm the castle.” She clenched her hand around the prism, though the light still gleamed through the gap of her missing finger. “The Great Space Race ends at the winter solstice on Primaera with the Grand Gala for all the remaining—well, now we know surviving—contestants. The whole universe will be watching. Rickster won’t dare go after us there, and you can reach out to your people to bring us home.”

Home. The word rang discordantly inside him. All he’d wanted was to make it back there to face his brothers, but now… Did he want the adventure to end?

To cover his uncertainty, he checked the ship’s stats. “If we push the engines at max, we’ll barely make it to Primaera for the gala.”

“We’ll make it,” she said confidently, “if you have to fly us there.”

He set their course and then padded back to the bedroom to find replacement clothes for the ones he’d burst through in his unexpected shift. Standing naked under the slowly rotating disco pyramid, he flexed his shoulders. Could he change again without the threat of imminent death?

Although he probably shouldn’t try it in this small ship…

“What did it feel like?”

He pivoted slowly on his heel to face Amy. “I… Strange. It felt strange. Like something I’d forgotten and suddenly remembered.” He clenched his jaw. “What if I forget again?”

“I’ll never forget.” She gazed at him, the disco lights glinting in her black eyes. “It was so dark in the water, and I wasn’t sure which way was up. And so cold.” She shivered. “But then you were there.”

At her shiver, he crossed the room in two steps and enfolded her in his arms. If he still had wings, he would’ve cradled her in that tough, protective embrace. “When I jumped, I had the tether in my hand. I thought I’d grab you and it would haul us out.” He tucked his head over her. “To be honest, when I calculated the odds for success in my head, it wasn’t good.”

“What were the chances of a drakling saving us?”

“Never even thought about that one.” He closed his eyes. “Amy, you have no idea what you’ve given me. The drakling spirit…”

“I didn’t give it to you,” she protested, squirming against his grip. “You found it.”

He lifted his head to look down at her. “But I wouldn’t have. Not without you. I would’ve still been sitting at a dat-pad, running the numbers.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Because that real famous interstellar explorer wouldn’t’ve fallen into an ice whirlpool.”

“Because I’d never have been inspired to really join the adventure.” Though he was still naked and chilled from their dunking—or maybe because he was naked—having her so close sent a torrid surge through his body. He lowered his lashes to hide the glint of aroused gold he knew must be shimmering in his eyes. “That is what you gave me.”

She reached up to touch his cheek. “Thank you for falling in after me. And flying us out.”

“Any time.” Slowly, he lowered his head to brush his mouth over hers.

He’d meant it just as a thank-the-Shining-Lady-we’re-alive moment. But with the memory of flight and the Firestorm Queen still sparking in his veins, the first touch of her lips ignited a desire that wouldn’t be stopped with one kiss.

She breathed out, and the flavor of kyapa-sho feathered over his tongue. Unable to resist, he kissed her deeper, seeking the unique flavor of her underneath. And she seemed to be searching for something too, her hands roaming restlessly over his naked body, skimming up his chest and down his biceps, holding fast.

They were both panting by the time he raised his head, and he watched her with hooded eyes. “Would you like to fall again?”

Her kiss-ravaged lips curved in a sultry smile. “Just as long as it’s into a warm bed.”

“It’ll be super-heated soon enough.”

He wheeled her around toward the ridiculous boudoir bed which now seemed less ridiculous. She stripped out of her clothes as she went, and he groaned to see all those golden curves revealed to him. When they crashed together, they were both still chilled, their skin clammy. He chaffed down her back and tightened on the lushly curved handfuls of her hips.

She canted forward to press herself close, and even the memory of ice evaporated as she molded her lips to his.

A raw, animal hunger swept him like mighty wings and he growled low in his throat, spearing his fingers through the silky black strands of her hair to hold her in place while he feasted. From the eager way she squirmed against him, she was willing to be devoured.

“I almost lost you,” he said in a ragged voice.

“I’m right here,” she reminded him.

He pinned her to the pillows, as if he could keep her right there, in his bed, on this ship, in this galaxy.

And she dug her fingers into the muscles of his shoulders, still aching from his first flight. He surged against her, nailing his hips between her thighs, and she spread her legs to take him.

Too soon, too fast, he cautioned his inner beast. Reluctantly, he eased back, trailing his lips down the column of her throat, flicking his tongue there over the racing of her pulse. When he fastened his lips over the dark tip of her breast, she gasped and arched up into him, offering herself. He remembered the trusting weight of her in his claws as he’d dragged her from the ice, and he wanted to roar in triumph.

But he had better things to do with his mouth. He licked a velvety circle around her nipple, teasing until she moaned and clutched at his head. The heated, musky scent of her arousal drenched his senses, sending an answering hot surge to his burgeoning erection. With the swelling peak between his lips, he pinched her other nipple lightly, and she bucked hard. He cupped her mound to keep her still, and his finger glided into her slippery folds. She clenched around him with another moan, and the exquisite response delighted the beast: she was so strong yet tender.

The flush across her wide cheeks was a fire barely contained, and the blistering need in her dark eyes when she tightened her grip on his hair told him tender she might be, but the strength of her desire ruled her now.

She dragged him up her body, every point of friction a spark that triggered an inferno in his blood. And when she reached between them to wrap her fingers around his swollen flesh, the inferno went supernova.

With a twist of her hips, she thrust herself onto his hard shaft, and her sweet little cry was a spear of fire through his heart, one on which he would gladly impale himself again and again. As he sank into her core, he leaned down to kiss her, slanting his mouth across hers as if he must claim every part of her at once.

As if, if he didn’t, he would lose her.

***

He’d saved her from the ice. He’d saved her from her own freezing fears.

But none of that mattered to Amy in the delicious power of this moment.

She touched him everywhere, reveling in the thick muscle and delicate rasp of scales. He pulsed inside her, driving out every thought except that she wanted him, needed this more than anything in her life that had almost ended.

Starting to shake, not from any lingering cold or fear, but the rising tide of irresistible release, she clamped her legs behind him, guiding him into a pounding rhythm that jolted the breath from both of them in rasping pants. Sweat slicked their skin, washing away the last memories of ice.

“I’m going to come,” she whispered. “Oh, Luc, don’t stop. Don’t ever…”

Pleas failed her as the orgasm crashed over her, squeezing a keening breath from her lips. His mouth sealed over hers, capturing the sound and feeding it back to her as he surged into her with a hot rush and a rough cry of his own.

He’d been holding back, waiting for her, and the realization sent another burst of pleasure coursing through her. He groaned at the hidden ripple inside, and the pulse of his cock answered as he fell across her.

For several minutes—longer than they’d been in the air over the whirlpool—they clung together, their breaths easing. He tugged the blanket she’d brought him earlier over their still-joined hips and let out a gusty sigh.

“I had to stop,” he said in a confessional tone, “or I was going to die.”

“I was just being greedy anyway.” Stroking her hands down his back, she snugged his hips into hers.

He nuzzled her neck. “The drakling approves.”

Not that she’d forgotten—how could she?—but somehow the reminder that he was an alien shapeshifter sobered her. She rested her palm on his shoulder blade. “Where are the wings now? Where do you keep all the extra…you when you’re this you?”

He tilted his head back to look at her, one eyebrow cocked. “Do you want me to start with the first book of drakling religious texts or the scientific explanation for the quantum folding of mass-energy?”

“Er, okay, no.” She forced another short laugh. “It doesn’t really matter, does it? You can fly now.”

And she knew she was being greedier than any treasure-seeking drakling when she wished she could’ve kept him for herself. A handsome, sexy drakling who returned with the Firestorm Queen’s Prism to a twelve-fold wedding would be lucky to make it to the bouquet-toss without getting snapped up by some hometown hussy who hadn’t seen how special he was before…

Amy shook off the spurt of anger. He’d joined the race to prove himself, and now he would. She was glad for him.

As for what would happen to her… She knew he wouldn’t let her down.

But what if she was just now figuring out that she didn’t want him to let her go?