“You think?” Rosamund said. “We’rebothin trouble.” Her heart was pounding in her chest. She was angry and frustrated, but also oddly exhilarated. She’d been kidnapped by a handsome dragon who wanted to marry her, and he was about to whisk her away to his home planet.
She couldn’t marry him, of course, but still…what a crazy adventure! And if she could just get out of this situation without setting off an intergalactic war, she’d have some great stories to tell Talia when she got back.
Ifshe got back.
“I am in more trouble than you are,” Dot-R said glumly. “I should never have run away from home.”
Rosamund stopped and stared at her. “Wait, you ran away? You told me Talia sent you!’
Dot-R stared sullenly at the ground. “I got in an argument with my parental units because they were requiring me to spend four hours a day in knowledge acquisition and wanted to monitor all of my communications with other sentient retro-bots, especially those of the juvenile male-identifying build design. So I used the transporter to get to Agora.”
Rosamund raised an eyebrow. “So…you were fighting about school and boys?”
“They don’t respect my rights and they treat me like I’m still in beta!” Dot-R stamped her foot.
Kodran waved to get their attention. “Lee ra ve vee snar?” he said. Or something like that. He pointed to a door that led out of the cargo bay. His men were already walking through the door, and some of them were carrying Rosamund’s shopping bags.
Rolling her eyes, Rosamund followed him, and Dot-R followed them.
The walls of the ship looked like wood paneling, and the floor was plush red carpet. Alien landscape paintings were set into the walls, and when Rosamund looked at them, they slowly moved, with trees changing seasons and the suns moving in the sky.
“I seriously can’t believe I’ve been kidnapped by a dragon because of a bad translation by a juvenile delinquent robot,” Rosamund griped as they walked into a huge central room. The room had scattered table and chair groupings, and a counter where robots served up food and drinks. People were playing games that looked like holographic chess, eating and drinking at the tables, and chatting with each other.
“I am not a juvenile delinquent! You sound just like my parental units!” Dot-R stormed off in a huff. Rosamund thought about following her, but then shrugged. They were on a spaceship; Dot-R could only get so far.
Kodran stopped and shouted out…something. He pointed at Rosamund. He bowed to her.
Everyone in the room leaped to their feet, clapping and cheering. People began blowing smoke rings and sending out streams of fire and shouting at the top of their lungs.
Had he just told everyone he was marrying her?
“No! Not true!” she called out to them, waving her hands frantically in denial.
They cheered louder.
Great. She’d probably just told them she was pregnant with his triplets, or something even worse.
Grinning, he grabbed her hand and led her out of the room, down a long hallway, and finally into a large, plushly furnished bedroom. She saw that all of her shopping bags were piled up on his bed.
His gigantic bed, which looked as soft as a cloud and was draped in acres of silvery silks. The frame of the bed was made of twisted branches polished to a glossy sheen. They were of some kind of wood Rosamund had never seen before, and she assumed the branches had been cut from trees native to the Draell homeworld. The cabinets that lined the walls had the same organic look, and the carpet underfoot was plush and an expensive-looking shade of sage green.
Altogether, it looked more like a room designed for seduction than the quarters of a starship captain.
Rosamund put her hands on her hips. “I don’t know what you think is going to happen here, but you are very much mistaken, mister!”
He walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a jeweled necklace.
“And furthermore, I will not sell my virtue for some fancy jewelry! Well, it’s not so much that I’m virtuous, but… I mean, I’m notun-virtuouseither, of course…” Where was she going with this argument? Every time she was in his presence, she turned into a babbling idiot.
She wouldn’t have sex in exchange for jewelry. Yeah, that was it. Not even if the man with the jewelry was so drool-worthy that she wanted to lick him from head to toe.
He walked back over to her. In one sudden movement, he dropped the necklace over her head. “Now can you understand me?” he asked. The necklace was a translator!
“Oh, thank God,” she said. “I mean, you big, scaly jerkwad! Why did you kidnap me?”
He frowned at that. “If I understand you correctly, you are saying that I took you without your consent.”
“Yes. Exactly.”