Lines went down the street. It was taking a while to usher in all of the people. While Dragos liked putting on a show, he really hated crowds, even when he was the one who instigated the gathering. He clenched his fists and kept a stern hold on his temper, turning his face away when someone pointed a camera at him.
Cuelebre Enterprises’ new head of PR, Talia Aguilar, was already on site and talking with several camera crews in the main lobby area. Talia was a selkie, a seal Wyr, with a sinuous rounded body, golden skin, brown hair and large, soulful eyes that the camera loved. She had been part of Tricks’s staff when Tricks had been Head of PR.
Last summer Pia herself had recommended Talia for the position, after she had briefly considered whether or not she wanted or even could do the job.
“Why her?” Dragos had asked.
“Because not only is Talia qualified, she’s freaking adorable,” Pia told him. “Have you noticed her? People fall over themselves to do things for her. They open doors for her and shit—and she never says shit. And Dragos, as much as I love you I have to say, you need someone who is really adorable in that position.”
“You’re adorable,” he said.
“Really? Aw.” Pleasure sleeked her down. She gave him a creamy smile. “I’m not, you know. But, aw.”
“Why shouldn’t you take the position?” he asked, curious as to her reasoning.
“For one thing, I’m not qualified,” she said.
“So?” He didn’t care if Pia wasn’t qualified. In this instance, he was fully prepared to act in unabashed nepotism. She would learn the job in time if she wanted it, and in the meantime she wouldn’t screw up too badly.
Pia sprawled across his body, her head on his chest. She liked to draw light circles around his nipples with her soft, gentle fingers while they talked. It drove him absolutely crazy. Plus they had just finished making love. At that point he was inclined to give her anything she wanted. He was most amused to note she didn’t seem to be aware of that fact.
“For another thing, you’ve got people on staff who actually are qualified and deserve the promotion, like Talia,” she told him.
He kissed her forehead, almost closing his eyes as he inhaled her beautiful scent. When they were intimate, he always insisted she take off the cloaking spell that hid her full nature from anyone else. Her pearly luminescence filtered through his dark lashes and lit all the dark corners inside of him.
He said, “I’m still at the ‘so?’ part of this conversation.”
She yawned and told him, “Third, I believe it’s a big mistake to take any position that would make me your employee. You’ll just think it gives you that much more right to run roughshod over me.”
He whispered huskily, “Is that what I do when I’m over you?”
Her throaty chuckle was barely audible. It brought to the forefront of his mind fevered images of what they had just done together. What he had done to her. What he would do to her, with her, again soon. “Seriously,” she said. “I may be your lover and your mate . . .”
“That’s not all you are.” He gathered up her left hand and kissed her fingers where the diamond in the ring he had given her gathered all the light in the room and threw it out in a spray of rainbow sparkles. “You’re going to be my wife too, as soon as we have time to do it right.”
She paused, then said, “Okay, I’m a little intimidated by what you mean when you say ‘do it right,’ and I’ll be your wife at some point, but the real point I’m trying to make is that I have no idea how to be your partner. I think that job is the wrong way for us to go.”
“Fair enough,” he said. And that had been that.
Now he strode through the crowded space of the arena, and Talia registered his presence with a quick, smiling glance, but she never stopped speaking to the reporters in front of her, and he maintained his distance. The selkie was all right, he supposed, as he maneuvered through the crowd to the elevators. There was just one big problem with her: she was scared to death of him.
While that might be a reasonable reaction to him, her fear saturated her scent whenever they were within proximity of each other. He didn’t know a single Wyr who would believe anything she had to say when she was in that state, so at the moment they were limited to televised appearances together—and Dragos almost never did televised appearances.
Plus there was another unfortunate consequence. Her fear drove him crazy. Not a tolerant male at the best of times, he felt the urge to smack her upside the head whenever they got in the same room. It made for a poor working dynamic.
When he reached the Cuelebre Enterprises Executive Suite, he surveyed it with satisfaction. It had been customized perfectly to his specific requirements.