Dragon Thief Read Free Page A

it says nothing that you staked out my cave for two weeks? I fail to accept your logic.”
    “You’re the liar here.”
    “Me?” Suddenly, peril stalked the air. Kal knew he had erred. Never call a Dragon a liar, was the saying. Worse, never spite a Dragoness.
    Now his lips seemed as parched as the shores of a lava lake. Not as pleasing an image as before. “I meant, o Tazithiel, that you aren’t what you seem.” To the arch of a questioning eyebrow, which rivalled the nearby eyelashes for allure, he said, “You haven’t appeared in your true form.”
    “True form? I am truly a woman, as you see.”
    “ Only a woman?”
    “Only? Not enough woman for you?” Tazi’s spine stiffened. “Did you kiss a dream, o scourge of the infirm and elderly, o plague of the Isles? Your hands seemed quite certain of what they held.”
    Well, if she wanted to play games, and he was trapped in a cavern with a sultry image of arguably the deadliest creature in the Island-World, which skulked somewhere as yet undetected–Kal knew he must play for his life.
    He drawled, “Do you have any idea how challenging it is to hold an intelligent conversation with a paragon of nubile womanhood clad solely in the splendour of her own skin? You women are always bleating on about how men should love you for your personalities and your inner qualities, rather than panting about your skirts like hounds on the scent–and here you are, stark naked, cavorting about a cavern with a total stranger. For shame, say I.”
    “I do not cavort.”
    Kal stroked his beard, pretending sage thought. “Not that we are strangers, exactly, after that kiss.”
    He expected her to blush like the suns-set. Instead, he startled as Tazi levitated two rubies and a flower-shaped, emerald encrusted bowl, placing them in strategic locations. The fist-sized rubies were insufficient to conceal her voluptuous charms, and the upturned emerald bowl concealing her loins only conjured up an image that made him squirm like a self-conscious teenager.
    Unholy, smoking volcanoes!
    “Safer?” she smirked, seeming to read his mind.
    “A most fetching choice of outfit.” Kal bowed elaborately. “I cannot imagine what I might have found so diverting, earlier. With that, my lady Tazithiel, I shall bid thee fare–”
    “You shall not.”
    Was that a crackle of real fire in her voice? Whether a trick of tone or a curl of magic, it stopped his intended retreat more surely than a man ramming his head against a boulder, full sprint.
    Kal sighed. Again. “Because I stole your heart?”
    “Because you called me a liar.”
    “Very well. I shall place said heart here, in my pouch, for safekeeping.” Kal pretended to fumble with his belt-pouch while his mind raced at the speed of a swooping hawk. How to not end up a Dragon’s dish? “I regret to inform you, but you did lie when you told me you don’t bite. No Dragoness worth her wings can make that statement.”
    “Now who’s making assumptions about intention, never mind my fundamental nature?”
    Kal tried to decide if the motes dancing in her eyes were amusement, desire, or a prelude to a feast. Lightly grilled Kallion-kebabs served on a bed of saffron-and-herb rice, anyone? He said, “Truth, Tazithiel. Cold, hard reality. The power of your punch is an ode to inhuman strength, and your fiery eyes make the truth a dead certainty.”
    She glared at him, her lips compressed into a hard line. “Have you ever considered why it is called a dead certainty, Kal?”
    He shrugged, a poor disguise for dread churning his intestines into an eel-pit. “The same reason Dragonship Steersmen spit upon navigation by dead reckoning. Reckon wrong, and you’re dead.”
    “Suspecting I’m a Dragoness, you stroll gaily into my lair? I call that dead reckoning.”
    Kal riposted, “Private viewings are more my style. Not for thievery, lest you be tempted to cast further aspersions upon my character, which have wounded me most sorely, might I