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I have a meeting this morning so when I get out of my shower, I dress in a business suit. I still feel beautiful, though. I mean, I feel feminine and beautiful. I feel aglow. I don’t know, I can’t really explain it other than to say I feel happy and, more than that, I feel certain the happiness is ongoing and not temporary. I don’t think life can get any better than this, and I don’t think anything could happen that would diminish the incredible nature of things now. Everything is wonderful, and that’s what I love.
I meet with a man named Compton Grant. He’s from Toronto Canada and has worked with the Vipera Family for many years. We just wound down the business with him and now he’s a multimillionaire because of the sale of his company. He’s in front of me because he wants to find ways to secure his funds for generations to come and is looking for legal advice. Aiden makes me available to him as a favor, and I find the man charming. Hell, I thought he was charming when I helped work out the transaction documents to sell his manufacturing firm to an aerospace company.
The meeting lasts an hour and when it’s done he says, “You know, I think the thing I’ll hate more than anything else about not being in business with the Vipera family anymore is that I won’t have any reason to meet with you.”
I smile and say, “That kind of charm won’t get you anywhere, Compton.”
“Are you sure?” he asks. “I thought the delivery was great, and I thought the way my eyes flashed did a great job.”
I chuckle and ask, “What would your wife think?”
He laughs and says, “My wife would think a whole lot and then I’d be begging Aiden to let me borrow you again, this time so she doesn’t get more than eighty percent of all my money.”
We’re playful for a while and then the two of us head out of my home office. I walk him to the door and then Charlotte and I walk him to the helicopter pad. I’m still feeling great. In fact, I don’t know how to feel better and I can’t imagine anything taking the feeling away.
Until my world ends.
It ends as we’re walking along the path from the helicopter pad to the path that will take us back to my house. There are three helicopters here. Aiden is escorting someone along the north path. I stare curiously and then worriedly. The woman is stunning in that severe, rich socialite way. She has hair so black it almost seems blue, like a clear sky at midnight. She had a perfect body and she moves with serpentine grace. She wears a cocktail dress that may as well be painted onto her and high heels so high she has no right at all to be able to move so gracefully.
She has her arm around Aiden’s waist and he has his arm around his shoulder. They look far too intimate for my liking but I tell myself she’s probably a relative. I tell myself that until they stop at the appropriate helicopter and she turns around and hugs him. She kisses only his cheek but I see her hand move down to take hold of his ass and she squeezes it as she hugs him and kisses his cheek four or five times in a row.
“Oh, God,” I say. My voice seems small and sad.
Charlotte says, “He doesn’t love her, Brooke. He has no choice.”
I turn to her. “What?”
“It’s an arranged marriage. He doesn’t love her.”
I manage to recover my decorum and say, “Oh, why should I care? It’s none of my business, really. I just work for him.”
She’s not buying that, of course. She smiles sadly and says, “I can’t explain everything to you but I’m going to explain why what you just saw has nothing to do with your relationship with Aiden Vipera or his feelings for you.”
“But my relationship…” I can see in her eyes she already knows. I say softly, “Is it that obvious?”
She shakes her head. “Until I heard your voice after you saw the two of them, I had no idea. How long?”
I swallow hard and I know I’m right on the verge of tears. “Since the day before we got here. Neither of us knew who the other one was and…” My voice is starting to waver. She takes my hand and pulls me along.
“Let’s get you home and I know you’ll feel better after we talk. It’s strange but it’s not what you think. I’ll tell you what I can and… Everything I can.”
Aiden
It is good to be alone. No, it isn’t being alone that is good. It is good that Amelie is gone. It feels strange to perceive my betrothal to her as an inconvenient necessity. I always thought of the need for a human, a pure human, in order to have a child…
Well, that was the inconvenient necessity before now. The marriage itself was never thought of as an inconvenient necessity. It has nothing to do with sex, either. Typically, a dragon will have multiple lovers. It isn’t a betrayal to Amelie if I have an entire harem of women and it won’t be a betrayal of me if she has a harem of men.
But I have one woman.
I have been with no other women since that night I met Brooke as Dana and she met me as Tan. Dragons, though promiscuous with humanity, are actually quite prudish in one regard. Amelie and I will not lay together until after we are married. Actually, that probably has little to do with being a Dragon and a great deal to do with being Dragon aristocracy. This doesn’t, of course, mean, that we are… Well, seeing her naked and her seeing me naked is not perceived as sexual. Nudity is simply a fact for dragons. There are some who never wear clothing as humans.
She was aggressive, though, when we parted. That kind of aggression tells me she intends for us to marry sooner rather than later. She comes from an old family. In fact, prior to the first Vipera uniting the various warring lords of the air, her family was a contender for the kingship. Actually, her ancestors include kings, just not kings of all dragon kind. The marriage makes a great deal of sense politically. It’s damned inconvenient, though. Her father is one of those who believes dragons should reveal themselves to humanity as a whole.
A better way to describe that belief is he thinks dragons should rule over humanity. There are a number who feel that way. They have it in their heads that there was a time in history when we ruled over them. There’s no evidence for that unless, perhaps, if the folklore concept of villages and cities delivering virgins as tribute has a basis in reality. Some make the argument that the humans were delivering women who produce the calling. Some, I think, simply hate living in a world where their dragon form isn’t worshiped. Those days never existed, though, and if they did, they’ve gone the way of the fire. We can’t breathe fire anymore, and we can’t subjugate humanity anymore.
For me, the issue is far simpler. Every second I spend with Amelie now and as her husband is a second of time that I won’t be spending with Brooke. This train of thought is truly silly. I’m allowing myself to worry about something that can’t be changed or altered. I can delay it, I suppose, but the real issue I’m facing now is that in order for me to delay things, I will have to deal with Amelie’s increasingly aggressive displays.
Damn it all, I hate this.
