Chapter 30
GILLIAN
Dalox continues to stare at the console in front of him. I probably should have outlined what limits I mean, and I would, if I knew what they were.
Thing is, I only seem to find out when he’s broken through what I would have considered acceptable, and what’s worse, most of the time, I sort of like it.
I like him breaking the rules, and it was never something which I paid much attention to before. Yeah, like everyone, I paid my taxes, and I generally didn’t do anything worse than occasionally speeding. But to throw everything out the window and do what you like? That has to be a dragon privilege.
Yet here I am.
Telling him what to do.
Even if Dalox is probably plotting right now how to break yet more rules I don’t know about. I sneak a glance at him to find he’s looking at me, and then very unsubtly, he looks straight back down at the console.
I’ve caught him out and he has all the subtly of a very large dragon in a very small crystal gift shop. Especially when he looks over at me again, sees I’m still looking, emits a great cloud of smoke, and immediately looks at the console next to him. No subtly, no filter.
I do my very best not to smile as I get up from my seat and make my way over to the window at the front of the flyer.
Despite the name, this is quite a large vessel.
Around the same length as a private jet, but much wider than the tubes we fly around in.
There’s not much in the way of seating, other than the two Dalox and I occupied, but it’s entirely possible the whole place could be reconfigured to fit whatever we want.
It’s something I’ve seen in other space ships, only these were significantly dirtier.
This stolen flyer is, thankfully, clean and fragrant, even with the way Dalox is smoking.
I press my hands against the window and look down. Below us is the occasional scudding cloud and a tundra which stretches away as far as the eye can see.
I’m struck by how it looks so familiar, even though this planet is nothing like Earth. And to think we once believed we were alone in the universe, that our planet had to be a one-off, that the chances for something similar to have come into being were infinitesimally small.
I think we forgot how vast the universe is. Life can’t be held back, even by chance.
“You are thinking of your home,” Dalox rumbles as he comes to stand beside me.
“How can you tell?”
“I see it in your face. I see your sadness,” he replies, smoke curling from one nostril. “Why does it pain you to think of it?”
“I want to go home, I really do.” I watch the clouds making smudges with their shadows against the landscape. “But when I get there, I have to face the fact my mum is gone.”
“It is not an easy thing,” Dalox says. “To bear any loss.”
His jaw is tight as I glance at him. He too is staring at the patterning below us. We stand, side by side, in silence for a while. I feel he knows no words are needed and the silence is comfortable.
“We will reach the second continent before we know it,” Dalox says. “And we need to prepare.”
I follow him as he leaves the viewing window, into the rear of the flyer.
He places his hand on a black square at his shoulder height on the wall, and with a gentle whirring, as I expected, the empty place slowly transforms. First with banquet seating along one wall, then with walls bearing items which look like they are weapons.
Multiple holes in the wall, like the one in Dalox’s quarters, which make food appear.
Tables grow out of the floor and before everything is finished moving, Dalox is already placing cups of the hot, sweet drink he gave me on them before adding two platters of food, one which is predominantly meat-based by the smell and the other which is more vegetable.
“Eat and drink,” he exhorts me. “A good warrior is nothing without a full belly.”
Once again, I’m hiding my smile, but the warmth which blooms in my chest is something else. For such a vast and very, very male creature to refer to me as a warrior, well, it shouldn’t make me happy, but it does.
He might not have apologized for his earlier comments, I doubt he even understands what they meant to me, but our earlier quiet contemplation has made me think there is more to Dalox than bluster and bullshit.
I’m not sure what I want from him, even though he is oh-so-sure what he wants from me. But to be considered in some way his equal, I feel a little better, a little more confident this place isn’t so alien after all.
I take a sip of the drink and a slice of the meat. It’s a strange combination, but somehow it works.
Dalox continues to open up lockers in the seating and on the walls, placing items on the tables one by one before it seems he is satisfied, and he joins me in swigging his drink, which makes him wince.
“Prefer ale-wine,” he growls. “This is for sarkarnlings.”
“Oh, thanks,” I respond, giving him a side eye as he becomes my buzz kill once again.
“You have a very different physiology to a Sarkarnii. If you are unable to tolerate ale-wine that is no weakness.” He adds, rather too rapidly.
“Not so different I can have your children,” I point out. “If the other human women are anything to go by.”
Dalox folds some slices of meat into his mouth and is clearly attempting to keep his expression neutral.
“That is true. I hope you will be ripe and round with my sarkarnling one day, little spark. I would pleasure you until neither of us could stand on a daily basis and then fill you once again once you had birthed.”
One hundred percent I should not find any of what he has said sexy or appealing.
But it would seem my body has completely different ideas. My core heats and my pants dampen.
Dalox’s nostrils flare.
“A concept you like, I believe,” he says.
“I have no comment on the matter…” I respond, unconvincingly.
“You may not, but your sweet cunt does.” He snuffs in several breaths over my head. “It wishes to enjoy Sarkarnii cock.”