The Impatient Lord by Michelle M. Pillow Page A

swayed on her feet but managed to keep standing.
    “ Are you in pain?” he asked.
    She shook her head in denial. It was a lie. She hurt, but that was secondary at the moment.
    “ Princess Nadja sent some medicines for you to try once you awoke to help with any pain should you start feeling it,” he said.
    “ Nadja from the ship? She’s a princess?” Riona recalled the quiet, dignified woman. That made sense. Nadja was very poised as if she came from money and privilege. “Why would she care about my pain?”
    “ She’s your cousin-by-marriage and wants to help,” the dragon man stated. “She’s been studying plant properties on the planet.”
    He made a move as if to touch her face and she flinched, snapping her head away.
    “Where is this place?” she whispered. Nothing about it made sense. The Draig were primitive people. This was not a primitive home. “It doesn’t look like your planet.”
    “ This is our planet and this is your new home, wife,” the man ground out between his teeth. She felt more than saw the irritation in him. It radiated off every rigid gesture, seeping from his pores. Guilt compounded fear. She stepped back, very aware of how vulnerable she was in her naked state. The room was small, too small. She didn’t answer. How could she? He stared at her for a long moment and then added, “I hope it’s not too primitive for you.”
    With that , he turned and left her.
    Riona instantly regretted the insult meant for Range ’s ears. She’d never have said it to this man’s face. Insulting innocent people was not her style. She knew in that second, his parting look would be one of those rare moments forever emblazoned in her memory. She didn’t know him well enough to read the expression, but the look of it would haunt her as she forever tried to decipher what it had meant.
    He left the doo r open, not trapping her inside. She didn’t follow him, not right away. Instead, she stood looking out into the wealthy home he’d invited her into. There was nothing primitive about it. She had been so sure she was on Range’s ship. A strange sense of relief and worry filled her. At least with Range, she knew what she was up against. He would act in the interest of himself and his crew. This man, this husband , was a mystery.
    A mystery she was stuck with.
    Riona looked down at her side. The bleeding hadn ’t stopped. She swayed on her feet and pressed her hand to the wound. Maybe forcibly yanking medical tubes out of her body hadn’t been the best way to remove them.
    “ Ah, dragon guy?” she whispered as she lifted her bloody hand to look at it. “I hate to trouble you, but…” She half-sank, half-fell to the floor. Riona pressed her head to the doorframe and closed her eyes. “I’m not doing so well.”
     
    * * *
     
    Mirek’s heart pounded, but he wasn’t sure if it was excitement, or fear, or anger that caused the violent reaction in his chest. Her words stung. In his happiness to see her awake, he was tempted to forget what she’d said. But that would be foolish, wouldn’t it? Her motives for marrying him were in those words.
    Mirek wasn ’t like his brothers and cousins. He had an intuitive knowledge from his exposure to other alien cultures. The rest of the universe did not think as they did. It was possible that his bride did not marry for love or for fate. It could be as she’d said, she’d married him for money.
    H is heart argued that it was the will of the gods. His crystal had glowed. This was fate. The gods had brought her to him.
    His mind countered that no one really knew why the crystal glowed. It could be fate or it could be the combination of sex pheromones a nd lack of radiation from the sun at night. He’d had the thought before but had never let himself actually consider it as a possibility. Mirek wanted so much to believe in fate.
    He had to believe in something. He had to believe in the will of the gods. If there wasn’t fate, then what was there? And if