Thea Harrison - Dragon Bound

Pia burst out laughing. “You’re talking about the Elves.”

Tricks blinked and wrinkled her freckled nose. “Of course. You want a job?”

“What?”

“I need to hire someone to take over my PR job, with the upcoming assassination and taking the throne and all, and I think you’d be great. Oh, never mind; we don’t have time to talk about that right now. We’ll talk about that over lunch.” The faerie looked over her shoulder. She made a V with the first and second fingers of both hands and waved them like President Nixon. “Two more things real quick. One, just so you know, not everybody’s happy about you being here. A lot of folks are great, I mean, you know, in a Wyr kind of way, but there are also some people that I think are nasty-dangerous characters. Not that I’m talking about anything specific, just . . . There are a lot of predators that work here. That means there are some pretty hot heads and sometimes things blow up without much warning, so you just want to watch out for yourself.”

“Predators, hot heads,” Pia said, watching the faerie in fascination. “Right. I think I do want to have lunch with you.”

“Of course you do!” Tricks said. She lowered her voice in a whisper. “And last but not least. Dragos? Oh my God, he’s so gone on you!” She giggled. “I’ve lived at the Wyr Court for two hundred years and I’ve never seen him this way. Everybody’s freaked because nobody’s seen him this way, not even folks who are way older than me. So, you know, he’s a man and a dragon and all that, and I know that means he’s got communication issues, but hoo, honey, he’s so hot he smokes without ever having to light up, if you know what I mean, so . . . way to be, my mama!” The faerie giggled again and held her hand out for a fist bump. “Okay, that’s what I wanted to say.” She beamed at Pia. “Lunch today, one o’clock, got it?”

“Got it,” Pia said in a dazed voice as she fist-bumped the little hand held out to her. Dragos, gone on her? Really gone on her? Not just having a sexual fling? Not just having a possessive fit?

Oh God, I hope so. Don’t I? Do I? She chewed her lip.

“Gotta go.” Tricks winked at her and bounced out just as Dragos, Rune and Graydon stepped back in. The faerie tapped Rune on the arm. “Be sure to have Pia at my office at one o’clock, hear?”

“Do I look like a social secretary?” Rune said.

Tricks’s eyes narrowed and the happy good humor she had shown Pia vanished as if it had never existed. She pointed at her own face. “Do I look like I care right now? I have a million and one things to do before I go, so don’t give me any grief.”

Rune laughed and gave her a one-armed hug. “I’m sorry, pipsqueak. I know you’re having a challenging week.”

Tricks readjusted her finger aim and pointed at Rune. “Yeah, well, don’t make me come find you either.” She charged away, tiny heels clicking down the hall.

“Looking rather shell-shocked there, lover,” Dragos said to Pia with a lazy smile. He strolled across the room to kiss her. “Tricks tends to have that effect on people.”

“I guess.” Pia’s smile was uncertain.

“When she’s in her manic phase, she’s a little like trying crack for the first time,” Rune said. He blinked at them, his face bland. “Not that I would know what that feels like.”

“Right,” Dragos said in a brisk voice. “I have things to do, Tiago to talk to, a beheading to plan.” He looked at her. “You good?”

She smiled at him again with more surety. “Yes.”

“Good.” He paused. “Thank you for what you did in the teleconference.”

“You’re welcome.”

He looked at Rune and Graydon. “She gets to do what she wants. Got it?”

Graydon looked at his feet with a long-suffering expression and rubbed the back of his neck. Rune pursed his lips and said, “Dragos, that might call for . . . a lot of tactical consideration. Don’t you think it would be wiser to restrict her movements?”

“Why are they talking about her in the third person while she’s standing right here in the room?” she said in a resentful mutter. Hot gold eyes met hers. Was it her imagination or did his lips tighten with some kind of suppressed emotion? Then he turned to give Rune a machete smile.

“Fuck you,” Dragos told him. “I’m not the boss of her.”

He strode out. The conference room seemed to darken and expand at the absence of his nuclear presence. Then Pia stood, looking up at her two huge, stony-faced guards. Oh boy.

“Ms. Giovanni,” Rune said in a smooth voice, as he stared at a point beyond her left shoulder. “For your convenience and pleasure Dragos has sent for a personal shopper to attend to you today. The shopper should be arriving any minute now.”

Pia stared at the gryphon. She turned away, pulled out the chair at the end of the conference table and sank into it. She flattened her hands across the polished surface. Clothing rustled as someone shifted behind her.

Okay. She nodded. Okay.

“Would you both please have a seat?” she asked.

After a moment, Rune took the seat at her right and sprawled long limbs out. Graydon took the seat at her left. The two men exchanged a look. She bet they were wondering what she was going to do next. She was kind of wondering that herself.

Her fingernails had gotten ragged. She rubbed at the uneven edge of her right index finger. Never enough time in a day.

“So,” she said in a quiet voice as she looked at her hands, “is this passive-aggressive smarmy attitude working for you, slick? Because I’ve got to tell you, it’s not working for me. In the last week and a half or so, I’ve been blackmailed, chased, threatened, in a car wreck that would have turned me into hamburger if it hadn’t been for your boss, kidnapped, beaten up and chased again. I was in a showdown with a Goblin army and the Fae King and forty or fifty of his favorite guys, and what life I had has been destroyed.”

She heard Rune suck in a breath. She said, “I’m not finished yet. I’m also stuffed to the eyeballs with autocratic macho behavior since Dragos is all over that one. Just so you understand when I say I’m running low on patience right now. I get you guys don’t want to be babysitting me. You’ve made it loud and clear. I don’t want it either, but it is what it is. So can we do this easy, or do we have to do it hard? I’m trying to be nice, but I don’t have any problem at all with doing it hard if that’s really what you want.”

She looked up at the two men. Graydon had put his elbows on the table. He was watching her. For the first time she noticed he had nice slate gray eyes. She didn’t see acceptance in his craggy face but at least it was no longer outright rejection.

Rune had folded his arms across his chest and narrowed his gaze on her.

“Slick,” Graydon said. “She got you with that one, my man.”

“Fuck you,” Rune said.

“Believe it or not,” Graydon told her, “he’s the diplomatic one of the bunch. Dragos sends him out to do all sorts of smarmy passive-aggressive shit.”

Rune leaned forward and planted his elbows on the table. “Shut up, asshole.”

She bit her lip and refused to smile.

Rune looked at her. “Okay, Ms. Giovanni, let’s try a do-over. See how it goes.”

“Call me Pia.”

He nodded. “Just so you know, though, you do anything to betray Dragos and I’ll disembowel you myself.”

She rounded her eyes. “Wow, slick, that makes us practically BFFs, huh?”

Graydon exploded. After a moment, Rune grinned too. “All right, Pia,” he said. “What would you like to do today?”

She considered him. “We already know I’m meeting Tricks for lunch. What do you think I should do?”