Thrax

 The higher one’s rank, the more of four different colors—black, red, silver, and gold—they wore.  The highest ranking of the Knights were decked in all four colors.  Whatever their rank, the Knights of Lacerta were known as the fiercest, strongest, most powerful and indomitable warriors in or out of human space.

 Their legendary prowess in battle, coupled with their shocking physical beauty, made them figures of the greatest renown.  They were synonymous not only with justice, but with valor, honor, pride, and victory.  Reputation had it that only their foes ever tasted defeat, and very few in the galaxy doubted it. 

It was no wonder, then, that Lacertans in general, and the Corps and the Knights in particular, were the most sought-after, coveted, and prized lovers in known space.  For many humans, to share the bed of a Lacertan was the ultimate fantasy or the ultimate symbol of their own desirability as a mate.  Those who actually married Lacertans were among the most envied people in the galaxy.  But to sleep with one of the Corps, or especially with a Knight, or to marry such a partner, was the rarest prize of all, virtually a Holy Grail.

Agena stepped off the balcony and back into her suite, a place designed for maximum comfort.  Every piece of furniture was all organic lines with no hard edges or sharp corners.  Every piece of fabric was the softest and most luxurious thing to be found anywhere in space.  Every color was selected either for its warm, gentle, or relaxing hue.

 Every part of the spacious room was designed as a place where a coupling could take place, from the bed that could as easily accommodate four people as two, to the plush chairs and sofas, to the rugs, to the nooks in the windows that could double as sleeping (or not sleeping) spaces, to the pillows and cushions surrounding the sunken fireplace.  It was a room designed for s*x. 

A full-length mirror was set into one wall.  Agena studied herself in it.  She was dressed in a form-fitting body suit of solid colors with patterns that showed off her curves.  Her hair was auburn-colored and pulled back into a single thick braid down her back.  Her face was soft lines except for a strong jaw.  Like all Sphereball players, Agena’s most impressive bodily feature was her legs.  She was tall, and her legs were perfectly sculpted things of feminine muscle, honed by the months that it had taken her to train for a game played in a circular room wearing magnetic boots designed and engineered specifically for her sport.  Agena was trained to run up and across walls and play while suspended upside-down.  She had an Amazon’s legs, and the rest of her, including her balance, her reflexes, and her hand-to-eye coordination, were conditioned to match. 

She had come to this planet to find one of the most desirable partners in the galaxy, and her superb physical condition and Sphereball championship status had put her in the running to claim exactly that.  Only the best possible partners were chosen as candidates for the most superb, the most magnificent possible mates. 

Inspecting herself in the glass, Agena was confident that her journey to Lacerta would not be in vain.  There was nothing random about her, not a flaw, not a departure from excellence in any way.  The only thing random would be in the method of the choosing.  That was the only thing that was out of her hands.  But since she had taken everything else about herself and her life into her own hands and made it the best it could possibly be, she assured herself that this one last thing would soon fall into place.

She turned from the mirror to inspect her accommodations again.  Agena smiled softly, fully expecting to put this suite to good use.

*****

The life of a Knight of Lacerta was not a life of leisure.  The dragon men and women who kept the known galaxy under their watch took their rest when they could, when they could.

For Thrax Helmer, at this moment, that meant lying quietly in his sleeping tube aboard the cruiser bound for home.

The streaks of bent light outside the window port that ran half the length of the tube were his only reminder, in the relaxing stillness and quiet, they were the only thing to tell him that the cruiser, bearing hundreds of passengers besides himself to his home planet, was moving through warp space.  That was all to the good.  His passage had started out smoothly and was staying that way, as interstellar journeys almost invariably did.

  Statistically, warp travel from one star system to another was held to be safer than a weredragon flying under his own power in a planet’s atmosphere.  However, one did not become a Knight to play things safe.  Thrax appreciated calm times as much as he did those times when duty called.

Thrax had cast off the top portion of his red, black, and silver armor skin and laid his powerblade and badge on the bed by his side.  He rested now, bare from the waist up, contemplating what he would do when he reached Lacerta.  His mind was not in the here and now; in his thoughts, he was already at his destination. 

Absently stroking the sculpted and honed pecs and triceps of his human frame, he thought of how good it would be to see home again, if only for the short time he’d be spending there.  Even by the standards of dragon Knights, Thrax Helmer was a head-turner.  He was a tall and imposing tower of pure muscle, seemingly wrought from iron and marble and turned to hard, hot flesh.  When he moved with those incredible muscles –, not too massive and not too lean but absolutely perfect — anyone who saw him might almost swear the sinews under his man-flesh were singing with every gesture. 

His pecs were fantastic slabs bristling with hair; his abs like the underbelly scutes of a mighty dragon, even when he was human.  His arms looked fit to pulverize stone with a shrug.  Topping it all off was an absolutely arresting face, crowned with a sweeping wave of almost black hair.  His brows were perfectly horizontal, his eyes narrow and dark and smoldering as if filled with the fire of a mythical dragon’s breath.