Chapter 7 #2
The exploration went both ways. Her curiosity was just as strong as his, and her observation skills were keen.
Even now, in the aftermath of an orgasm that had left her almost insensate, she was looking at him with a curious expression he didn’t quite like.
When around Kate, he could almost hear the gears and cogs in her mind whirring, taking in information and transforming it into something useful for her own ends.
She was not just smart, she was also a little wicked.
He liked that, but it concerned him. Her capacity to work for extended periods of time to bring about changes in the world that otherwise would not have been possible was a strength that could be easily overlooked if he allowed himself to be blinded by her beauty.
She was always working on something, this human of his, and he would have to be mindful of that fact.
“Why do you look at me that way?”
“You’re different from the others,” she said thoughtfully.
He stiffened. “What do you mean?”
“Your eyes,” she said. “You have round pupils. Like a human, almost.”
“Ah,” he nodded. “That is true.”
“And your skin,” she said, running her fingers over his shoulders and chest. “It has a much stronger feel to it than human skin, but the others I’ve seen have some scaling over their shoulders and lower, er…
regions, and you barely have traces of it.
And your dragon form… it is a different color to the others.
You have solid markings, they are all two-toned.
You are different, aren’t you? Is it some kind of mutation? Do others carry it?”
“It is not a matter I care to discuss.” The reasons for his differences being known by Kate would only make the situation more complicated.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m sorry if I offended you.”
She looked a little hurt, which was interesting. She had not been sorry for anything at all since she had arrived, but she did seem sorry about the possibility of hurting his feelings… what a strange creature she was, so brash in some ways and so very sensitive in others.
“There is no offense,” he said. “It’s… complicated. And this situation is complicated enough for the moment.”
“I’m good with complicated,” she said, a familiar spark of interest coming into her eyes. “Tell me more… please…”
“If you can manage to pass more than a few hours without an escape attempt, I will consider telling you.”
She would not take the deal, he knew that, but that didn’t matter.
It had always been a matter of time before she noticed his differences, and she was curious and persistent enough to eventually get to the bottom of them.
But that was not necessarily a bad thing.
If she diverted her mental energies to figuring out his secrets, she might have less time to devote to more dangerous intellectual pursuits.
“Well, whatever is going on with you, you know you can’t keep me here forever,” she said, returning to her old harping point. “People will notice I’m gone. They’ll look for me.”
“They won’t find you here. Even if they did somehow realize that a portal had been opened, and that you had gone through it, and even if they were to risk war by opening another portal, which I very much doubt, they still would not be able to survive here.
Unlike you, they do not have a treatment which allows them to do so. ”
“What if I left a note, telling someone what I’d done if I wasn’t back by a certain time?
What then, Mr. Smart Dragon? What if I also left the formula to my radiation treatment as well?
What if, instead of keeping me here to prevent others from finding out how to come here, you’re actually sealing that fate? ”
“You didn’t do that,” he said confidently.
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do,” he said. “You came here alone. That tells me everything I need to know. Coming here alone was dangerous. You should have had at least one person on the other side of the portal, ready to take your formula and come through to get you, but you didn’t.
And if you didn’t have anyone with you then, I doubt you have anyone to leave a note for either.
You came here without a safety net, Kate.
Maybe because you didn’t want to be saved. ”
“Oh, you just know me so well, don’t you,” she sighed. “After all of three hours, you’ve got my psyche mapped right out.”
“You’re not as much of a mystery to me as I am to you,” Vilka drawled, provoking a spark of outrage in her eyes.
“How is that even possible? I’m human. There are no humans here. You don’t know anything about me, so how could I not be a mystery? I am a mystery. You’re just not curious.”
Vilka restrained a smile as his lovely mate pouted next to him, her pride wounded by the concept that she was not an ineffable enigma.
He gave a light tug on the chain to snap her out of it and leaned close, his lips just barely touching her ear. “You are my mate now,” he reminded her. “I know you in ways no man in any realm knows you.”
“Yeah, but you don’t know humans,” she insisted, squirming on her leash. She looked as though she wanted to get up and storm about, but she couldn’t. She was trapped there, her naked body coated with his scent and his seed.
“Tell me about humans then,” he said, trying not to chuckle.
“Well, for one, they will come for me, and do you know why? Because we know that this realm exists, and that is all humans need to come here. We’re not a species that likes to live in boxes.
We need to explore. So the humans are coming here, Mr. Dragon.
Maybe not many of us, maybe not all at once, but people can’t help but want to go where they’re not allowed to go. ”
“So humans are insolent, undisciplined whelplings with no respect for boundaries.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah. We see a boundary and we go right through it. That’s why we live in highly evolved cities and you don’t even seem to have running water. It works for us.”
“So you say humans are poised for invasion of our realm,” Vilka said, tying her with her own words. “And yet you object to my attempts to stop such an outcome. You are barbaric little things, aren’t you.”
“The only barbarian is the man who orders gateways between worlds destroyed,” Kate scowled. “That wasn’t just my way home, it was a potential line of communication between our worlds, and you severed it without consulting anybody.”
“That’s right,” he growled down at her. “Because these are my lands. Here, I rule. I do not know why you find this concept so hard to grasp.”
“Because it’s stupid! One person, dragon, whatever, can’t make decisions for everyone! You don’t know enough to do that.”