Page 17 of Siren Sins
Resolve, Sort of
Jet
Watching Sonya sleep was therapeutic, but I knew I’d indulged in a fantasy long enough. This imaginary bond I had with her was just my own pathetic failure. I had to keep my head on straight.
With one last look at the way her hair unfurled over her naked shoulder, I reminded myself that my brother was not only a force to be reckoned with, but he was the dragon’s last hope for a new way of life.
Sonya no doubt wished to be freed from her predicament. In spite of her jabs that she wanted to taste my brother, I sensed her ploy. She wished to seed dissension and undo the alliance my brother had built with the Incubus King.
As I entered the elevator and watched the doors close, I felt another door close in my heart. My own reflection looked back at me in the steely cold of the elevator. My hair was disheveled from her touch and my lips were red from her kisses. I made a mental note to clean up in my own place before I went to my brother, or else display my deed all over my face.
I’d made a huge mistake. I was a young, unruly dragon who lived in my brother’s shadow. But as I stepped onto the wet streets and basked in the neon lights of Shanghai, I knew that he was a necessary evil. I had to think larger than myself. My dragons were a lost people, often angry and miserable. But when I spotted them now, their eyes for the first time had light and excitement. They gave me passing nods as I went, believing that we’d soon be strong enough to explore a world that shunned us long ago.
Filling myself with steely resolve, I ignored the cabs, and jogged all the way to the tower, sweating out any hopes I had for a future with a succubus that wasn’t mine.
Time for Games
Sonya
“It’s time,” Jet informed me. I would have thought our fantastical sex just an epic wet dream if it hadn’t been for the bulge across his jaw as he clenched his teeth. But his eyes were cold and hard.
He’d gone somewhere while I’d been asleep. Shanghai’s musk hung around him and he’d changed in the time we’d been apart.
I’d been asleep and near delirious from our lovemaking. To awake now was a grudging acceptance of lucidity, with the only motivator to taste him again. My body ached in that delicious way after a night of passion. Jet had seared me with his kisses and dragonfire. My insides complained as I shifted to the edge of the bed and let the sheet fall from my naked chest.
Jet flung a shirt over my head. He was in no mood to relive what spark of passion we’d had. “Get dressed,” he snapped.
I snatched it away and glared at him. “What’s wrong with you?”
He didn’t flinch at my biting tone. I noticed the reptilian gaze. He was using his dragon to resist our bond. “Your initiation party is tonight. Jin will expect you clean and fed. I’ve had breakfast sent up. After you’ve eaten, you can take a shower and get ready. There’ll be a hairdresser and makeup artist coming in three hours.”
I blinked at him. “What?”
He didn’t repeat himself, but narrowed his eyes and waited for me to realize that he was serious. Not just that I was supposed to go to some party, but that whatever we’d had was over… for now.
Yanking the bedsheets off of me that still smelled of sex and lust, I growled at him. “So, you’re just your brother’s puppet? Derek’s pet lizard? What happened to you?”
“My people—” Jet began, then sighed. “You couldn’t understand. Just get ready.”
The rest of the morning went on in silence as I digested how hard I’d just failed. Perhaps I shouldn’t have slept with Jet. I wasn’t very good at the manipulation part of sex. That just wasn’t my style. I’d wanted to keep him possessive and jealous, but as my heart twitched when he looked at me, I knew that I wanted something more.
Jet kept up pretenses of bodyguard as I went through the morning routine. After a shower, I caught him looking at me in the mirror, a hint of what we’d had the night before in his eyes, but then it was gone in a flash as if I’d imagined it.
Jet believed that giving me to his brother would help his people, and when I tried to think outside my own shitty situation, I tried to sympathize with him. He was young, by dragon standards, but he’d been cooped up in this city that seemed more like a prison than a home. Dragons were meant to roam the world, not be stuck in one place.
So I decided to play along. With damp hair sticking to my face, I pointed a hairbrush at him. “So, these hairdressers of yours, they coming any time soon? You do not want to see my idea of formal hair. It involves hair gel and spikes.”
He cleared his throat and yanked his phone out of his pocket to check his messages. “Yes, they just arrived. I’ll get them.”
All the primping and polishing was an unusual decadence I’d never tried. I’d lived my life as close to human as I could, but I had to remind myself that I was being sold as a consort to royalty. Life was going to be different, however long I believed I needed to play this game.
If I could just get Jet to cooperate, I wouldn’t be playing it for very long.
“Tell me,” I asked Jet while a woman curled my hair, “what does Derek get in return for this alliance?”
As I suspected, the hairdressers and the woman who dotted a beauty mark on my lip weren’t privy to this kind of conversation. They gave Jet nervous glances as he ignored me.
“I thought Derek needed me to make more crazy-babies,” I said, pitching my voice louder. “Giving me away to your brother means he’s found another way.” I braced myself as Jet stomped through the doorway. “What is your brother giving him that lets him make more—”
