Dragon Count Read online

He indicated his assent, but I was already on my way down. He was a loyal and brilliant Guardsman. No trouble would come from the others if he was there to keep order.

  On the sand, that was another story. Who knew what barbarism had entered our ordered world?

  As I landed on the deck of the little white boat, I changed my form. If I had not, my dragon size would have crushed their vessel, spilling the humans on to the dangerously hot sand below. Although these visitors could not see what lay beneath the sand, I knew that snakes teemed below the top layers, waiting for prey that they might hunt.

  One moment, I was a blue dragon, the largest of my color in Elter. The next, I had a physical body that was not unlike these puny humans. That could seem so, if one were so uninformed as to not know the difference.

  I strode across the deck toward them. “Why have you used our portal without permission?” I was well within my rights to be angry. What they had done was a legal trespass of the worst possible kind. If a House could not keep its portal safe from intruders, then it had no business having one. “Explain yourself!”

  The man and woman who had been standing together when I arrived were both pale with shock. She reached out and grasped his arm when I transformed from my dragon shape to that of a man. With what looked like a great effort, she opened her mouth and tried to speak, but no sound came out.

  “I am losing patience with you, humans.” I gritted my teeth and tried to remain civil, although my headache was intensifying. “I am Indigo, the Count of House Caeruleus. Why are you on my land? Why have you used our portal, when you are unauthorized to do so?”

  The white-haired man merely stared at me. The woman next to him finally managed to speak. She shook her long, curly hair, as if she could galvanize herself into motion with its momentum. “We mean no harm,” she said. “I’m sure you can see that we are not here by our own design. Please don’t harm us. We do not pose any threat at all to you.” She gulped.

  I threw back my head and laughed heartily. “Of course you pose no threat! Don’t joke about this. Now that I see you, I can well discern that you are mere humans, with no magic of your own at all.” I jerked my chin upwards, indicating the dragons that circled above us. “You can see that I have my Guard with me. We could handle anything you might have planned, with whomever your masters might be.”

  The man finally spoke. He was a curiosity to me, seeming to be older than anybody I had ever met in our world. “Olivia is right. We mean you no harm. Our boat has come here by accident.”

  “That is not possible,” I responded flatly. “This is not an open door that a peasant housewife has forgotten to close when she let her cat outside. The portals between the worlds are under strict control by each House. You could never have passed through without assistance from somebody, whether it was in your world or mine. There is an irregularity here, and I mean to find out more before I release you.”

  The woman, Olivia, cleared her throat. “If you are having problems in your own chain of command, it is no concern of ours.” As the words left her mouth, she looked surprised that she had dared to speak so bluntly. She did, indeed, walk a thin line in doing so.

  “Angering a dragon is a fool’s offense,” I warned her. “Even the lowliest peasant knows that.”

  She dipped her head in what might have been a sign of respect. Then again, it might not. This human had nerve, I’d give her that.

  I continued. “Who is in charge here? You, White Beard?” The man twitched as I named him such, but in a motion that confounded me, he turned to the curly-haired woman in deference. He could have spoken for them, but he deflected my attention to her. A male dragon would never yield to a female in that way.

  She nodded. “Yes, I am in charge. I am Olivia Jones. This is my research expedition, so I will take responsibility for whatever has gone wrong here.” She paused to breathe, holding one hand flat against her belly as if to summon calm. “Wherever ‘here’ is. I will tell you again, we mean you no harm. We apologize for trespassing on your...ah...House land, and we ask for your help in returning to our own proper place.”

  As she finished speaking, a small door opened and two other people stepped out onto the deck. They moved slowly, as if they knew they should not anger me. Good. I nodded at them, but did not need to engage further. If Olivia Jones was in charge of this expedition, then I had all the information I needed.

  I leaned toward the four humans, raking them with a scornful glance. It was gratifying to see that they had some appreciation of how magnificent I was, even when I had the form of a man. Of my four captives, three of them were busy running their eyes over my naked body. I strutted, enjoying it. My form was pleasingly muscular, I knew that well. It was a treat for them to be allowed to look on my strong arms and rippled chest.

  Raised eyebrows, flushed cheeks; these were the compliments a dragon shapeshifter craved in either of his forms.

  I smiled. “Do I arouse you?”

  In answer, they all averted their eyes immediately, blushing even more than before. The younger man had already been watching the boards of the deck intently. The three others had suddenly become so flustered that I knew their answer would have been in the affirmative.

  It was a glorious day, and I had nowhere else I needed to be.

  I would return to my home in the mountains with these silly playthings in hand. They were a waste of my valuable time, but if they wished to ingratiate themselves with me further, I would allow them to do so. The leader, in particular, with her ripe curves and her intelligent eyes, might be worth a few minutes of my attention. The other woman was not to my taste.

  “Very well,” I allowed. “You may decide your answer on the journey to my stronghold.”

  “Journey?” Oliva Jones squeaked. “We are stuck in this sand. There’s nothing but sand in every direction. How would we go anywhere?

  “By dragon, of course.” My interest in these peasants wavered. They were perhaps too stupid to give me much entertainment.

  At any rate, I would protect them from the attentions of other dragons if I had to. It was the decent thing to do, for such helpless insects. “As you are the leader here, you may ride on my back,” I told her. “Each of you others will have a Guardsman come down to the deck for you. Do not attempt to speak to them as they carry you. It is more than likely that you would utter some witless insult and be dropped from the sky.”

  The curly-haired female leader stepped forward, bracing herself for my inspection. “We have no choice, it seems.”

  “No.”

  “Will you help us get back to our proper place? However that can be done?”

  I growled at her. “Of course. Nobody is more anxious than I am to be rid of you tiresome little humans. As soon as I can find the weak link in my security, I will deposit you on the other side of the portal, posthaste.”

  She was about to answer, but perhaps remembered my caution about plunging from the sky. Instead, she lifted her head with an effort at resolve, and nodded to indicate that she was ready.

  I reached into the air around me, gathering the power that I needed to change my form. I could feel the exhilaration of manipulating the very atoms in the air. It never got old, no matter how many hundreds of years I had been doing it. The dry, desert air shimmered around me and twisted. Then, in a release that scratched an ever-present itch in me, I was a dragon again.

  My bright blue, massive dragon form hovered easily above their tiny ship. I extended a strong wing for her to grasp. Wild-eyed, she managed it, and I deposited her on my back with a thump.

  Hold on. I sent her the command with my mind. I knew she received it, for she scrabbled to find a secure spot and she reached her arms down as low as she could on my neck. With no further instructions, I took to the air. The wind rushed past us as I gathered speed.

  I would not truly hurt this small creature. There would be no point.

  Something about her had piqued my interest. What was it?

  I would think on that as we fl
ew.

  Below us, behind us, Cobalt was collecting the other woman from the stranded boat. My Guardsmen would carry the rest of the humans to my stronghold.

  There, I would have two tasks, in no particular order.

  I would find the traitor in my court.

  And I would delve into the question of how anything about this human woman could appeal to me. She was nothing but a peasant. I was the venerated Count of my house, and the most dangerous of the dragons of Elter.

  So why was I feeling so intrigued by this woman, so drawn to her curls and her curves? How was it that I could still smell her scent, even as we flew, reminding me of violets on a spring day? Why did I relish thinking of the next time when we would talk, when she would surely say something else that was ill-advised or excessively forward?

  What was it about her?

  Chapter 3: Olivia

  As we flew through the air, the dry, desert wind rushed past my face. At first, it was terrifying. On our own world, I would never, under any circumstances, have chosen to be up so high. It wasn’t exactly that I was afraid of heights. I didn’t like to think that I was scared of anything. It was more that I was very, very uncomfortable with high places. My element was the ocean. I was a marine biologist, for goodness’ sake! I was supposed to be on a boat, communing with the creatures of the water.

  Instead, I was stranded, however temporarily, on a planet where there was no water of any kind in sight. The flat, golden desert stretched out for miles in every direction. The dry air shimmered in the heat, serving as a warning to anybody who ventured out into this environment that they were crazy. At least, that was what it suggested to me. Perhaps to these locals, who were, as far as I could tell, magical shapeshifters, it was a delightfully welcoming place.

  Not to me.

  The motion of the blue dragon’s wings was comforting in a way, though. I came to understand that Indigo was flying smoothly on purpose, as a courtesy to me. As I grew accustomed to the rhythm of the flight, I began to relax ever so slightly. If I slipped and fell, he would catch me. Right?

  I would.

  The deep voice entered my mind without any words reaching my ears. It made me jump, even though he had spoken to me telepathically a moment ago, as we were lifting off. Great. He could not only talk to me in my head, but he was apparently listening in all the time as well. There would be no privacy here.

  No, that’s not it. I had the sense that he was shaking his head gravely at me. You must stop sending your thoughts in every direction, though. Be more circumspect.

  “Ha.” I snorted. “That is not something I’m known for. My entire adult life is built on the theory that I will succeed by being plain spoken. That’s my thing.”

  Not here. He was serious.

  I settled lower against the dragon’s back and chose not to answer. I was not on this world by choice. Frankly, it was straining my self-control to even admit that I was on another world, without melting down into a puddle of helplessness. I liked to travel, when it meant new places within my own world. I liked resorts that hosted academic conferences, and I enjoyed museums. But, for the most part, I had to admit that I liked living on my own planet. It was more than a little unnerving to have a dragon addressing me as “human.”

  Sorry, the blue dragon snorted, with affable humor. I can understand that. I will use your name.

  He was kind in his way. Just as I had that thought, I felt his blue-scaled body tense under me. He was not used to hearing that adjective applied to himself. Well, I had a different perspective.

  Before I could ask him why he didn’t want to be thought of as kind, I found myself distracted by the sight of the towering mountain ahead of us. My breath caught in my throat. In only a few sweeps of his bright wings, Indigo had brought us to the spiked mountain range that we had seen from our becalmed boat. His speed in flight was breathtaking.

  His powerful wings beat at the air, bringing us even higher than we’d been during our journey. I was undecided between reveling in the wonder of it all and losing my breakfast. We came to rest at the highest possible point, on a flat section of rock that looked like a dragon landing pad.

  I dismounted, brushing sand from my shorts with an attempt at nonchalance. When I had dressed this morning for the boat, I had not thought of how well my outfit would carry over to a dragon’s castle on an alien planet.

  Go figure.

  It seemed like I would always be dressed wrong when it came to attractive men. What would the other women be wearing? At least I wasn’t too hot, I mentally consoled myself. What it we had transported from Cambridge, and I’d been wearing a wool coat and scarf?

  Wait, had I just thought of this crazy egotist as a sexy guy? Maybe he was, but I still tried to pluck that idea from my mind.

  As I swung down from the dragon’s extended wing, I caught a hint of amusement from him. He knew perfectly well that I was nowhere near as comfortable as I pretended to be. He said nothing, though, for which I was thankful.

  Bravado had served me well over the years. I would stick with it.

  In a flash of shimmering light and twisting of matter, Indigo was a man again. As before, he was a jaw-droppingly handsome, well-built, one hundred percent naked man. Damn it, I wasn’t having any success in blocking that out for the sake of propriety. He was so hot that any woman would turn in the street to enjoy looking at him. And that would be with his clothes on.

  Without any clothes, he was mouth-watering. His...uh...equipment was amazing. I blinked at the sight of his thick cock. Well endowed didn’t even begin to cover it.

  Indigo threw back his head and laughed out loud at my inability to keep my eyes to myself. “Olivia Jones, I think I am going to enjoy you after all. Are you unfamiliar with the form of a naked man? You may look as much as you like.” He walked ahead of me with a disregard for modesty that somehow came across as more charming than arrogant.

  So he didn’t have any hang-ups about his body. Good for him.

  I didn’t want to admit out loud that I was indeed unfamiliar with naked men. I’d been too busy with my work most of my adult life to spend much time with them. And then there was the question of my disastrous social skills. I’d traveled extensively and experienced many things, but staring at naked men as they paraded in front of me did not happen to be one of them.

  I would keep that to myself, if I could.

  I followed Indigo along the flat landing platform atop the mountain. The wind whistled in my ears at this height, making me glad when we reached a covered pathway that led inside the rock-hewn castle. As we stepped under cover I could hear the sound of other dragons arriving behind us, and I knew that my colleagues would soon join me.

  Good. They must be going crazy with worry about our situation. I was going to have to set the tone by convincing them that we would get out of this safely. That was fine by me. I could handle this.

  The covered pathway that we trod gave us a new view of the land below the jagged mountain. With foolhardy confidence, I leaned over to try to see what was below us. I could make out what looked like a sprawling town at the base of the rocks. There were houses and roads, but something was off. I couldn’t wrap my mind around what it was that was missing.

  And then my foot slipped. I wheeled my arms behind me, trying and failing to catch my balance. What kind of crazy thrill-seekers would have a walkway like this with no railing? I parted my lips to scream into the wind.

  “I’ve got you,” a deep voice murmured into my ear. Indigo had wrapped a muscular arm around me and pulled me back from the edge, holding me close against his naked body. It would have been strange to be so close to a nude man that I’d only just met, except I’d also ridden him in his dragon form only moments ago.

  This was getting too weird.

  I could only squeak out in response, “Why are there no railings?”

  Indigo chuckled. “We are all dragon shapeshifters here, Olivia Jones. We are never in danger of falling, for we can all fly.”

&
nbsp; I cleared my throat, seeking to recapture any sense of control that I’d had a moment ago. “Please. Stop calling me by both of my names. Just say ‘Olivia.’ That’s fine.”

  Indigo grinned at me and said, “Very well. Olivia it is.” He set me down in the middle of the walkway and gestured for me to follow him as he strode off. I saw that he held a bundle of thick blue cloth in one hand; he really had caught me and saved me from falling with just one arm. It had not even looked hard for him to do. My skin suddenly ached for the feeling of his touch on me. I briskly set that thought aside and hurried to catch up.

  At last, we entered the building that Indigo had called his stronghold. I knew my mouth was hanging open in awe, but I could not seem to close it. I hustled to stay close to him. As we walked, I couldn’t help asking more questions. “Indigo, when you said we were coming here, I pictured some sort of fort. This is a palace! I’ve never seen such luxury.”

  He brushed my words away with a modest hand gesture, but a tiny smirk of gratification lurked at the corner of his mouth. “It is my family home. It is neither grand nor simple, according to the standards of our world. It is merely my dwelling.” The sly upward curve of his lips had given him away, not for the first time since we’d met.

  This sexy dragon shapeshifter was not nearly as heartless as he pretended to be. He might be arrogant and dismissive of humans, but it seemed he also cared what I thought. The contradiction interested me.

  Down a wide hallway, we found a high-ceilinged reception room. It was what I would call, in my inexperienced human way, sumptuous. The decorative pillars met in arches that reminded me of Gothic architecture. Walls and ceilings alike displayed intricate fresco work. Servants hurried to meet our needs, offering food and drink.

  Indigo unfurled the pile of cloth that he had been carrying, revealing a brocaded blue cloak. He settled it absent-mindedly around himself, allowing my mind to focus on something other than his body.

  It was almost a relief not to look at his firm muscles, or the curve of his ass, for a change. Maybe I could start getting my head together now.