Dragos Goes to Washington (Elder Races #8.5)(9)

The wide back of his strong hand had a sprinkle of black hair across the veins. She pressed a kiss to it. “I believe you.”

“Everything is taken care of. All you need to do is shower and eat some breakfast, and then we can leave,” he told her.

The thought of eating made her feel unexpectedly queasy. She pushed it aside as she sat up. “I’m not hungry, but I’d like a cup of coffee.”

He nodded over to the chaise. When she looked in that direction again, she saw the tray sitting on the side table.

“You thought of everything.” She smiled at him.

He didn’t smile back. His gaze had dropped to her bare breasts, and his expression had turned sharp and predatory. Cupping a breast, he stroked his thumb along a darkened suck bruise.

He said in a low voice, “You know, we can always change our minds and go a day later.”

The heat that shimmered between them felt volcanic and beat underneath her skin with a tribal tempo. Reaching hard for self-control, she covered his hand with hers. “And miss the kick off event for the summit at the White House tonight? Much as I would like to, you know we can’t.”

His black brows lowered. “We can.”

The thing about the mating frenzy was, it had no sense. She smiled at him sidelong. “Or we can make love again on the plane.”

His returning smile was quick and gleamed with anticipation. “Yes. Hurry up.”

Chapter Three

Pia showered quickly, and after wrapping the towel around her torso, she went into her closet to choose casual clothes for traveling—a comfortable pair of jeans, sandals, and a fitted, button-down shirt.

When she took the outfit to the bedroom, she found Dragos and their luggage already gone. While she had been in the shower, he had taken the news channel off mute and indulged in one of his bad habits by leaving the TV on.

It drove her crazy when he did that. She was congenitally incapable of leaving the room without turning off the TV first. As she shimmied into her jeans, she looked around the bedroom for the remote.

The news segment changed.

“Following on the heels of the terrible massacre in the Northern California Nightkind demesne this spring, Washingon DC is stepping up security for a week-long summit between the Elder Races demesne leaders and the human leaders of the U.S. government,” the news caster said with a bright smile. “The recent upsurge in Elder Races violence over the last few years has made more than one human official pause, but the mass murder of ninety seven people—most of them human—by one of the Nightkind demesne’s senior member of government has created a crisis for the Elder Races leaders that just won’t go away. Federal lawmakers at the highest levels are calling for accountability for their actions, and all the Elder Races have responded . . .”

Which wasn’t quite true.

Pia paused to glare at the image of the oblivious newscaster.

The truth was, federal lawmakers had called on the Nightkind demesne for an accounting of the multiple homicides, and the Nightkind regent Xavier del Torro had responded by suggesting the summit.

While the slaughter of so many people was quite horrible, over the last few months, her horror over what happened had turned to worried exasperation for how so many of the news channels insisted on making such a terrible crime sound like the Elder Races were murdering humans instead of reporting the more accurate story.

Which was that a dangerous, powerful, psychopathic Vampyre named Justine had killed all her attendants rather than risk letting any of them talk to her enemy, the Nightkind King Julian Regillus, and possibly leak valuable information about her whereabouts and activities. Or that Julian had personally seen that justice was done by hunting Justine down and killed both her and her co-conspirators.

But once the news had gotten skewed that way, other stories were highlighted—the damages in Chicago, when Dark Fae assassins attempted to kill Niniane, damages to various properties in San Francisco when Carling was a fugitive, and even the property damage in New York, caused by Dragos’s roar when she had stolen his penny, were discussed over and over.

Skewed or not, they had a point.

They had a serious point.

And after watching the shit-storm that had hit the media in the aftermath of the Nightkind massacre, all the Elder Races leaders had agreed to the summit.

“But why does every newscast have to be an ‘us against them’ mentality?” she muttered. “Isn’t it time to start talking about solutions instead of endlessly going over the problems?”

Finally locating the remote in the tousled bed covers, she clicked the off button forcefully, and peaceful silence flooded the room.

Yanking a hairbrush through her damp hair, she did a quick tour of the bathroom and their closets, but Dragos had been as good as his word and had packed everything.

In her closet, she paused at her jewelry cabinet. Then, after a few moment’s thought, she opened it up.

What were the chances they might get pregnant? For the Elder Races in general, the chances were slim, and while they had been joking about Dragos’s mighty sperm, the truth was both his nature and hers were so uniquely magical that there was no way to know how that might skew the general statistics.

Last time, she had gotten violently sick after they had been together only a few days. After all the brouhaha of finding out that she was indeed pregnant, and then her getting kidnapped, chased and almost killed, Dragos had given her a diamond pendant, infused with an anti-nausea spell, that had become her lifeline through the rest of her pregnancy. Predator and herbivore genes don’t play together nicely in the womb.