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A Gambler's Share

The Manchurian hare doe sat at blackjack table six and looked around while the dealer shuffled the cards and loaded the shoe. It was early evening in Macau, and the casino attached to this luxury hotel was almost empty. Only about a third of the tables were occupied, as the serious gamblers would not arrive until after dinner and whatever show their wives or mistresses had convinced them to partake in. Of the ones present most of them were rich Chinese, mostly from the mainland but a few were from the island of Taiwan as well. Here in the autonomous region of Macau, Asia's playground, their political differences were forgotten. The same could not be said for their attitude towards the Japanese patrons, which were equally represented; old animosities ran deep between the two cultures.

Besides the Chinese and the Japanese there was a smattering of Malaysians, Indonesians and Singaporeans, here to escape the strict mores of their own countries. There were also a few Aussies, or they might have been Kiwis; she had difficulty telling them apart. Both nationalities were dominated by marsupials and they all dressed like Crocodile Dundee when they came here to gamble.

Many of the males in the room were staring back at here, for she was a stunning example of lapin beauty. Her coat was a mix of light brown and silver fur, her eyes were a deep, dark brown, and her figure was full and well-rounded. Her gold lamé gown was cut low in the front, and had to back to speak of. Her makeup was carefully applied to highlight her sharp, Asian features, and her fur was styled to accentuate the angles of her face as well. Her large, round, soft bosom contrasted with her natural thinness, but in a complimentary way. Her ample buttocks, barely covered by the metallic fabric that dipped below her tail, provided the perfect counterbalance to her generous chest. Her species was common in Northern China, Mongolia, East Siberia and both the Koreas. She had passports in different names for four of those countries, all of which were forgeries.

When the dealer indicated that they were ready to begin she placed two-hundred and fifty Hong Kong Dollars down, the minimum for the table, and waited for the only other patron sitting there to bet. She cast a bored glance at the other gambler while the dealer waited patiently for him to decide if he was in or out.

The other patron slid five hundred HKD into the betting box and sat back while the dealer distributed the cards. The hare studied him unabashedly. He was a winged dragon, a rare creature but not an unusual sight in these parts. South East Asia was about the only place you saw dragons these days, and she wondered where he was from. His scaly skin was jet black where it showed outside of his finely tailored tuxedo, but the inside of his ears and wings were red. He had two silver horns curling back on his head. The broad plates of softer tissue across his neck were silver also. She guessed that the same would be true for his chest and abdomen.

She had a pair of fours for a total of eight. The dealer had a Jack up. She signaled for another card. She got a King and stayed with eighteen. The dragon had an Ace and a two, for three or thirteen. He asked for a third card and got a nine, giving him twelve. He took another and it was a ten. He had busted and the dealer took his chips. The dealer revealed his hole card and it was another Jack - twenty to her eighteen. Her chips joined the dragon's on the other side of the table. They each bet the same amounts again.

He was a big fellow, the dragon was, she noted. Even though he was seated she could tell that he was tall by the way his torso towered over the table, basketball player tall, she supposed. But he was not just tall, he was broad and thick and his tux bulged with muscle. Just reaching across the table to place his belt made the cashmere covering his upper arm ripple. He reminded her of those oversized American Football players, the ones that tried to crush the smaller fellow with the ball. Or maybe he was one of those triathletes, she wondered.

The dragon must have sensed her eyes on him. He looked up at her and smiled. His eyes were striking, a deep, unusual shade of blue, like the ocean on a sunny day. They stood out as incongruous against the blacks and red and silver, but they brought warmth to his otherwise fierce features. They were not Asian eyes, however, and it made her wonder all the more what his heritage was.

The dragon busted again on the next hand but the dealer went over too so she made back her money. Both she and the dragon doubled their bets. On the third hand she lost and he won. He was even and she was down five hundred. She had time to kill so she decided to make winning more than him within the next hour her objective. She doubled her bet again.

They played silently for the next thirty minutes. The dragon had caught on to her unspoken challenge. He consistently bet more than her, but the cards were neither hot nor cold for him and he remained about even. She was losing more than she won, but she knew that fortune could change quickly so she stuck with it and continued to bet small and work her way up, waiting for an opportunity to strike big. That opportunity came a few hands later.

During the course of play they had ended up turning their chairs until they were facing each other across the kidney shaped table. She was leaning forward, her breasts suspended above the green felt surface where her cards were dealt, looking at him, gauging how he reacted to the cards. He studied the card the dealer had showing, glanced at his own cards, and then turned his eyes to a point below her chin but above the level of the table. He smiled and his eyes lit up again before rising to meet hers.

"You've got a nice pair." He said in a deep baritone that suited his bulk.

"Thanks." She replied with a weary frown. "I get them from my mother's side of the family."

"No." He laughed. "I meant your cards."

She looked down, sitting back a bit to see the cards that had slid under the shadow of her chest. She had two Aces. She looked at the dealer. He had a two showing. It was a perfect situation for splitting her pair. She did so, placing an equal amount of chips beside the second Ace.

The Dragon had a pair of tens. Conventional wisdom said never to spit tens, no matter what card the dealer had showing, but he spilt his pair anyway. He had a total of two thousand on the table, as did she. The dealer dealt her a ten and a Jack, a pair of Blackjacks paying at one-and-a-half to one. The dealer took her cards and slid three thousand HKD worth of chips her way. The dragon got a nine and an eight, giving him nineteen and eighteen respectively. Not bad cards, especially if the dealer busted. The dealer flipped over his hole card. It was a ten. He was forced to draw another. It was an eight, for a total of twenty. He collected the dragon's chips without changing expression, but the dragon's smile drooped into a stern frown.

"You look disappointed." The doe said, speaking to the dragon for the first time.

He shrugged "I'm not used to losing."

She looked at his diminished stack of chips. "Looks like your luck has run out tonight." As she spoke she turned her body away, indicating that the casino's money was not the only thing he had no hope of taking back to his room this night.

He smiled good naturedly at the silent rejection. "I usually win in the long run, and the night is still young." He pushed a pile of chips into the betting box.

She barked a short laugh. The fellow was certainly persistent. Too bad, she thought, that I have to leave so soon. He looked like he could be an interesting partner for an evening in bed. But not tonight, she sighed. It would be fun to lead him on for a while though.

She placed her bet, reducing it now that she was comfortably ahead of the dragon. The dealer dealt the cards.

"Why do they call them hands?" She asked the dragon as she spread her furry digits across her cards. "Shouldn't they be called paws?"

"It's because the game was invented in fifteen fifty eight in Heidelberg by a fellow named Hans Gruber." The dragon answered nonchalantly.

"That's not true." She chided him. "Hans Gruber was the villain in the movie, Die Hard."

"You got me there." The spackle was back in his eyes. They had reached the end of the six decks and it was time to rotate dealers. The dragon leaned back while the new dealer conducted the ritual of counting the chips and shuffling the cards.

"Actually," he said to the doe, "no one knows who originated the game of Blackjack, or Twenty-one as it's called in some places. Most believe that it is a variant of the French game Chemin de Fer, or Baccarat. But the first mention of the game '21' is found in a book by the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes in a short story he wrote in sixteen-oh-one. Why they call the turns 'hands' is a mystery."

"Interesting." She commented, although she found it anything but. She held out a paw. "My name is May May. Are you staying in Macau long?"

He took her paw, squeezing it a little harder than necessary but not to the point of being painful, and kissed the furry back of it delicately. "Draco, Dante Draco." He said as he released it. "No, I'm just here for the day. I just came here to arrange for the acquisition of some rare gemstones. That's what I do; I deal in rare minerals and jewels. I have to get back to Hong Kong on the last ferry."

"Too bad." She lied. "Are you from Hong Kong originally?" She asked with real curiosity. "The name Draco is not one of the Lao Bi Xing, I believe." She used the mandarin term the 'old hundred names' to refer to the ethnic Han Chinese that had spread from the Yellow River valley in ancient times north to Manchuria, south to the border with Vietnam and west to the Himalayas.

"No, the name is English, from Great Britain." He admitted. "They were descendants of the Pendragons, the family of the legendary King Author, and they settled in Hong Kong when the British took it from China. My Great-great-grandfather married a Chinese dragoness of the Heilong clan, to the shock and dismay of both families. But he was a powerful merchant and she was equally headstrong, so they ignored the scandal and raised their offspring to fight back when bullied. Something they have passed on through the generations. Being bigger than most creatures helps." He smiled, rolling his massive shoulders demonstratively. "That and the tail." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

She leaned over to look. Most of the chairs in the casino were built to accommodate a tail longer and thicker than her puffy little appendage, but the one he was sitting on was no more than a stool. His huge, thick tail would not have fit in any of the conventional chairs. She noted that there were red stripes on it, matching the colour in his ears and wings. Thinking of his wings she studied them. They looked powerful but they seemed too small to lift his bulk.

"I'm curious." She said. "Do those wings work?"

"No, I earn enough to support both of us." He joked before turning serious. "No, I can't fly. We dragons have evolved beyond that. But they do offer some protection in a fight, and an opponent cleaver enough to avoid claws and tail may be surprised to find that the wings can pack quite a wallop too." He flexed them to demonstrate. It was a good thing that the seats to either side of him were empty.

While they had been chatting the place had been filling up. While far from crowded the number of gamblers had roughly doubled in the last hour. They were mostly unaccompanied males with no social or family obligations to keep them from the tables. She looked them over.

One of them caught her eye. It was a large brown bear with a crude haircut and loose baggy clothes. Its slacks were made from a material more noted for durability than style, and its jacket was brown corduroy. A paisley tie on a checked shirt completed the picture of someone who does not put a lot of thought into how they dress. But the bear did not look slow or stupid. Its eyes shone with intelligence as they flew from one part of the room to another, taking everything in. The bear finally focused on one of the roulette wheels and shambled towards it.

The dragon had noticed her interest in the bear. "Russians." He said. "Twenty five years since the Soviet Union collapsed and they still don't know how to dress."

"And China is better?"

"Maybe not on the mainland, but we have some of the best tailors in the world in Hong Kong." He said, rubbing the silk lapel of his tuxedo between his thumb and first digit.

The doe glanced at her watch. It would soon be time to be getting on with the real business of the evening. She wondered if the dragon would get around to propositioning her before she had to leave the table. He was looking her over with those incredible blue eyes and it looked like he was about to say something. She made a silent bet with herself that it would be a suggestion that they take in a bottle of wine in his room, if he had one, and hers if he did not.

"Well May May, I'm afraid that I have to leave." He signaled the dealer to cash out the remainder of his chips. "I have lost enough for one night and I wanted to take in some entertainment before I leave." He took the chit from the dealer and stood up.

She was disappointed to lose her private bet, and seeing him standing there, seven feet tall and as broad and as solid as a church door made her regret that he had to go too. But she reminded herself that she had other matters to attend to and there was no time for fun and games. She stood too, her high heels accentuating the line of her legs while her snug lame dress emphasised the thrust of her bust. She held out her paw and he kissed it again, once more demonstrating his strength with a quick squeeze.

"Good bye, Mister Draco."

"Au revoir, May May." And with that he turned and left the room.

She watched him go. "au revoir" was the French equivalent of "until we meet again", but that was highly unlikely. After her business here in the hotel she would leave Macau immediately to return by a circuitous route to her homeland, where she would receive a hero's welcome. Along the way she would change her name several times, and her clothes. There were no lamé dresses allowed in the Hermit Kingdom, not in public anyway. Blue cotton suits and underwear that itched from the raw laundry soap were the norm there. But after this assignment she could look forward to shopping in the leadership stores and hanging out with party officials in the restricted resorts, where she could practice her tradecraft of seduction on the power brokers of the nation. She smiled coldly.

She turned in her chips too and took her chit to the cashier, where she deposited the proceeds into two bank accounts - one run by the state to pay for agent expenses in foreign lands, and a private one that only she could access. Most went into her account, leaving just enough for the State to keep them from being suspicious. After the transactions were complete she went to the bar and sipped on a ginger ale while she watched the room.

There were tables full of boisterous Chinese or Japanese gamblers that had come in groups. There were tables surrounded by marsupials that were arguing over whether Hugh Jackman or Russell Crowe was the better actor. But the roulette table where the bear was gambling was a mixed bag of Europeans, Asians and Africans, most of who were losing, but not the bear. His pile of chips was growing slowly but steadily larger. And as she watched he turned in five thousand worth for one of the big black and gold chips of that denomination and pocketed it.

It was time. She put down her glass, left a small tip on the bar, and left the room. She walked to the elevators of the hotel, looking straight forward with her ears erect, her small tail bobbing as her buttocks rolled pleasingly behind her, drawing more than one pair of eyes. In this land of high stakes gambling and high priced prostitutes she fit right in. One could almost read the thoughts of the creatures in the lobby as she passed through. The males were full of lust, the females full of jealousy, and not a few of both groups imagined themselves in bed with the buxom hare.

She took the elevator to the twentieth floor because no one else on board was going there. Once she got off she walked to the nearby staircase and took the steps down to the eighteenth floor. Pulling a swipe card out of her dress she turned right and walked twenty feet to the door of room eighteen twenty-two. She inserted the card in the reader and was rewarded with a green light and the sound of the latch opening. She quickly stepped inside and pulled the door closed behind her. The bear should be at the tables for several more hours but it would be best to get this done quickly and get out of Macau before he discovered that he had been robbed.

The rooms of the hotel were all luxurious, but some had special features. Round beds that vibrated could be had, or suites with full kitchens stocked with gourmet foods. For the security conscious, there were rooms with safes where the combination could be set by a locksmith of your choice, ensuring that not even the hotel staff could get access to your money, your jewels, or your secrets. This was one of those rooms.

The curtains were drawn, cutting off the glare of the garish neon signs that lit up the Macau skyline. The doe let her eyes adjust to the dark before she moved to the wall where the safe would be hidden behind a hinged painting. She walked into the main chamber by the dim light cast by the alarm clock easily enough, but there would not be enough light to work with so she turned on the lamp beside the bed on the side where the painting was supposed to be. When it came on she was shocked to see two things out of place in the otherwise tidy room. The first was the safe, exposed and open and empty. The second was the dragon, who was leaning against the wall in the corner by the window, smiling at her with those infuriating blue eyes.

She was shocked, but she covered it well. Her country could hardly be the only one interested in the bear's designs, she supposed. She wondered who the dragon was working for, and how much he knew about the papers he had stuffed under the right side of his tuxedo.

She put on a bored face. "How did you get in?" She asked.

He held up a swipe card identical to hers. "Picked the Concierge's pocket. You?"

"Bribed a maid." She decided to try the direct approach. "Who are you working for?"

"Myself." He said. "Sort of. The papers are for someone else, but they pay well."

"Ha. Do you even know what you have stolen?"

"Yes. It's a set of plans for an advanced laser weapon from Russia. The bear took the only copy of them from his lab outside of Moscow and offered them to the highest bidder. The winning bidder arranged to have him paid by experiencing an extraordinary run of good luck on the tables tonight, delivery to be made when the bear wins fifty million Hong Kong. Unfortunately the winning bidder and my employer are not on good terms, so they sent me to intercept them." He patted the lapel of his jack on the side that was misshapen by the package beneath it. "I take it that your nation also wants the plans, but could not outbid the winner, so they sent you instead."

"They did not bid at all." She commented. "Just paid for the information that brought us both here. And they will pay twice whatever you are getting now if you give those papers to me."

"Oh, I'm not doing this for cash. My employer has promised me a bauble in return, a gem most unique. Ever hear of the 'Stone of Judgement'?"

"No." She took a step closer to him, covering her intent with a random movement.

"It is a pure white diamond shaped like a lens." He made a circle with his thumb and his first digit to indicate the size of the stone. "With it, this laser weapon would be devastating. The folk that wanted to buy the plans also contracted a cartel in Mexico to get the gem, but my employer beat them to it. It's dangerous enough with an artificial gemstone lens though, so," he shrugged, "here I am."

The doe turned toward the wall and put a paw to her face as if the news had affected her deeply. When she turned back toward him she was another step closer. She was beside the room's desk now. There was a decorative letter opener on the blotter. It looked sharp enough to pierce even the dragon's scaly hide. If only she could get a paw on it. "Is that what pleases you?" She asked. "Sitting in a little room admiring your jewels?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact. Although I do sell the more common ones in order to live the lifestyle that I have become accustomed to."

"No friends?" She swayed to the right, inching closer and blocking his view of the letter opener. "No family?" His brow furrowed and his blue eyes darkened. She had hit a nerve. "A lost love?" His lip trembled and he raised his left paw to steady it. Was that a pale shadow where a wedding ring once sat on his third digit? "A family torn apart?"

"Enough!" He exclaimed, clenching his big fists hard enough to make the knuckles crack and he looked away. She used the opportunity to slide another foot closer and slip the letter opener into her paw behind her back. She tested the tip with the pad of her thumb, it was sharp enough to draw a drop of blood.

He was struggling to regain his composure, and when he looked up to the ceiling, perhaps recalling someone he had lost, she made her move.

She planted her feet in the thick carpet and put all her weight behind the blade as it came around and up toward the soft spot under his chin. By the time her arm was fully extended the blade would have split his brain and come to rest against the inside of his thick skull. But her arm did not even get halfway.

His arms shot up faster than she would have thought possible and knocked hers aside easily. The impact numbed her and her paw opened, dropping the letter opener to the floor. She debated trying for it with her other paw but the dragon grabbed her wrists and pulled her up against him before she could decide.

"Nice try May May." He snarled.

She snarled and struggled to break free, but it was useless. He was far too strong or her. If he was open to a bribe and she could not overcome him what chance did she have? Her country punished failure severely. She would be lucky to end up as a pleasure girl in a brothel for the lowest ranking soldiers, she thought, where she would have to use her seduction skills to work her way up to the officers and eventually the Generals if she ever hoped to dress in finery like this again. Thinking of her lamé dress made her realize that it was coming apart, the zipper had come loose in the struggle and one strap had slipped down her arm, exposing the lacy under-cup bra beneath and the curve of one of her breasts. Draco was looking down at it with lips slightly parted and his breath was coming faster than the effort to quell her pathetic resistance necessitated, and she knew what that meant.

She changed tactics. Going limp in his arms she pressed herself up against him, squishing her large, soft breasts against his abdomen and rolling her taut tummy across his groin. She moaned as if in despair and let her hot breath warm him as her head lolled against his chest. She could just make out the bundle of papers inside his jacket, but she avoided touching them in case it reminded him of why they were here. Tilting her head back she looked up into his deep blue eyes with her dark brown ones and managed to produce a tear.

"You have bested me." She sobbed. "Your skills and power are superior to mine, and I am defeated." She managed to slump some more, shrugging off the other dress strap and lowering her breasts to a level below his belt buckle. She threw her head back and forth and her torso followed, making her breasts rub against him down there.

"Don't take it personally, May May." He said. "It's only a job."

He had to hold her wrists to keep her from collapsing to the floor, or so it seemed. She attempted to regain her feet and managed to hook her bra on the edge of his belt buckle. As she stood both of her breasts popped out of their silken case. She had one leg between his now, high up between his solid thighs, where something was stirring inside his trousers. His grip weakened

"You are so big." She breathed as she ran her paws over his chest. "So strong." He released her arms and she encircled him with them. She caressed his back as she continued to work her leg up aginst his crotch. It was definitely having an effect, she noted. Leaning back she let him have a good view of her round, furry breasts with their dark brown nipples. Retrieving one arm she lifted one of those nipples to her mouth and sucked on it until it stood out. Then she did the same to the other.

The bulge in his pants was more than obvious now. She lowered her paw and rubbed it, eliciting a gasp from the dragon. "It seems that you need a little ... relief." She crooned. A flick of her paw opened his belt. A flip and a tug undid the trousers. She used both paws to push them and the boxer shorts he wore beneath them down to his knees. Then she sat down on the bed behind her and pulled him toward her.

His cock was long, hard, and ribbed. It was also thick, as thick as her forearm. The sight of it deterred her, but only for a moment. The seduction classes had taught her that the female body can be very accommodating, that everything snaps back and that the pain goes away, eventually. For now she warmed his prick by squeezing her tits around the shaft and moving them slowly up and down along it. She looked up to gauge his reaction.

"How does that feel?"

"That feels good." He grinned. "You are a dirty slut, aren't you?"

That was a good sign, she knew how to handle the type that liked to talk dirty. "Yes, I am, and I want to feel your cock. I want to taste it." She liked her lips as she rolled her tits on him. "And I want to feel it in every part of me."

"I'll destroy your cunt with it soon enough, but for now I want you to suck it. Suck it hard."

The doe worked up a mouthful of saliva and complied. She put a paw on each of his hips and pulled his prick into her waiting mouth, stretching her lips to accommodate the lance like head. It bumped against the back of her throat when it was only halfway in, but she was able to get her tongue around it and she tilted and bobbed her head as she sucked and licked it. She let her paws wander around his lower extremities. She worked her clever little claws into the chinks between his smooth, hard scales to see if that gave him pleasure. It was hard to tell if it did, and she was having a tough time trying to pry them back to expose the tender flesh underneath anyway, so she switched to his balls.

They were huge, and covered with a pebbly sack that resembled shark skin. She rolled the balls inside between her paws as she sucked on his cock.

"That's it, suck it." He encouraged her. "Deeper. Deeper cunt!" He grabbed her ears and jammed his hips forward. She gagged as his cock blocked her breathing tube. He pulled it back before she gagged on it but then drove it in again, and again. She sucked air through her snout in desperation between thrusts and tried to angle her head so that it went down her throat without too much trouble. But it was stretching her mouth out of shape and the hard knobs that covered it were rough on the tender flesh inside her mouth. She her eyes ran and she let out a small whine while she had air to do it. It only seemed to encourage the big black dragon.

She had to move this along. Ducking her head to one side she avoided his next thrust and lavished kisses and nibbles around the base of his shaft instead. "I want you inside me." She moaned between licking his shaft and sucking on one of his balls. "I need you inside my cunt. Take me, take me now." She leaned back on the bed, releasing his cock. He pushed her roughly down, and she scuttled back to the top of the bed, where the end tables with their lamps and alarm clocks and other paraphernalia were in reach. Once there she leaned back against the pile of pillows and pulled her dress up over her hips. Pushing the material of her panties to one side she stuck a moist finger into her twat and worked her clit as Draco crawled up onto the bed.

"Come and get me, big boy. Come show me what you can do with that club of yours."

Draco mumbled insults about her piety and lineage as he shuffled up on his knees and took his massive rod in one paw to guide it to her sex. He tore the flimsy panties off with the other paw and then used it to spread her mons as his prick closed in.

Damn but he's big, she thought as the ribbed cock started to penetrate. This is going to hur- she screamed as his cock forced its way inside.

Draco wasted no time. His first thrust saw half his length disappear inside her. The second brought his balls smack up against the cheeks of her ass. She could not help but squeal as the tip of his cock came up against the entrance to her womb. It felt to her like her outsides were being folded into her when he pushed it in, and like her insides were being dragged out went he pulled back. But those bumps and knobs! They found ever sweet spot she knew she had and then some.

"Yeah, how do like that slut? You think you can take it all? You can't take shit." He punctuated each sentence with a hard thrust of his hips. She did not respond in words. She just whipped her head from side to side and whined in time to his pumping. It was only partly faked. Each time his thick prick forced its way inside it felt like she was giving birth. And the ripples and ribs were driving her crazy, half her whining was from the stabs of pleasure they were bringing her. The up side was that the sensation was making her secrete juices that helped lubricate that massive dick, easing its passage, making her feel even better.

But she must not forget what she was about.

"Harder." She grunted, flinging her arms to the sides and gripping the sheets tightly. One paw was just inches from the table with the object she needed. "Do me harder." She hissed through clenched teeth.

Draco obliged. He leaned forward to get better purchase on the big bed. He had to hunch over the smaller hare but he wrapped his arms under hers and around her shoulders so he could pull her back on his cock as his legs drove it forward. The combination drove the air from her lungs and she went "Whoof" each time he did it. Her big round breasts bounced up and down, her legs were spread wide, almost bisecting the bed, and her arms flailed about as the tension rose inside her to its bursting point.

"Do me, you bastard, do it, do it, do it."

The dragon lowered his head so it was beside hers and squeezed his eyes shut as he fought to hold off his own orgasm, but he could not resist for long, not with her whining and swearing in his ear. He came at the depth of one great thrust, and the spasms that wracked his body kept his cock moving inside her long enough to tip her over the edge too. She screamed again as her insides liquefied, squirting in jets around the base of the cock that almost sealed her twat completely.

Her paws came up around his abdomen inside his tuxedo, barely able to touch in the middle of his broad back. She held him tight as the waves of pleasure and delicious pain subsided.

Draco was careful to keep his weight on his elbows. Such a small creature could asphyxiate if he just relaxed and lay down on top of her. His breathing was coming fast and shallow, but it was already starting to even out as he tended to recover quickly.

"You okay?" He asked, raising his head.

She curled up in a ball and turned away from him. "No." She choked. "I am shamed and a failure. Please leave me in my sorrow and pain."

"Sure. No problem." He rolled off the bed and used one of the pillows to whip the scum from his deflated dick, chuckling at what the bear would think when he returned to find his treasure gone and his bed soiled. She watched him through eyes closed to slits as he bent and pulled his trousers up, zipped, buckled, and straightened his black bow tie. His last gesture was to pat the bulge under the right side of his jacket. Then he gave her a last, contemptuous glance, and strode out of the room.

The hare leapt from the bed as soon as the door latched. She reached under the pile of pillows and retrieved a bundle of technical papers and blueprints. She quickly confirmed that they were what she was looking for and that they were all there. She stuffed them in a plastic laundry bag she retrieved from the dresser. Then she quickly pulled her bra and dress back into place and opened the door a crack, checking the hallway in both directions. Seeing that all was clear she ran to the stairs and sped down them to the basement parking lot, where her rented car was waiting with a change of clothes and a fresh passport.

She had to hurry and get out of Macau before the dragon discovered that he had made off with nothing more than the room service menu from the night table.

* * * * * * * * *

Draco entered his Singapore apartment and dropped his overnight bag inside the foyer. He had not lied to the hare about being from Hong Kong, but it was not where he lived these days. That was mostly because it was where his family still lived, and that had made it quite clear that they would prefer he live on another continent, if not another planet. One day, when he had regained the honour that they thought he had lost he would go back and claim what was rightfully his from his brother. But for now he was content to live in the city-state a thousand miles away.

He was not surprised to hear classical music coming from his living room, even though he had turned everything off, locked the doors and windows and set the alarm before leaving. His current employer had a peculiar way of doing things, and a bad habit of showing up where he should not be. But just in case he took a large revolver from its hiding place in a flower pot and held it behind his back as he walked down the short hallway.

He stopped in the doorway of the living room. There was a large silver fox on his couch, holding a martini in one paw while the other conducted an invisible orchestra to the sounds of Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture. When the fox saw Draco in the doorway he stopped waving his paw and used the remote to mute the music. He took a sip of his martini before speaking.

"Welcome back Draco." The fox gestured for the dragon to sit. "Do you have a good trip?"

"A most excellent excursion, Silver." Draco chuckled. "And a most successful one."

"Let me see."

Draco reached into his jacket, not the tuxedo he had worn in Macau, and pulled out a thick envelope. The fox opened it and pulled out a wad of technical papers and blueprints. He cocked an eyebrow at Draco. "Are you sure that these are the originals?"

"Well, they are not the fakes you gave me to pass to the hare."

"Hmmph." The fox went back to studying the papers. The ones that he had given the dragon were based on a laser weapon design that his people could never get to work. The North Koreans would be in for a surprise when they tried to use it. Hopefully the ensuing blast would take out a few of their best scientists and a few generals along with them. "How did it go with her?" He asked idly.

"I lost a lot of money at Blackjack convincing her that I was a fool, but I thought that I was going to have to fake a stroke to give her an opportunity to steal the fake plans. But she managed to suck me in, or so she thought."

The fox pulled a velvet sack from out of his jacket and tossed it over to Draco. "Your payment."

Draco opened the bag and poured two large, perfect white diamonds out into his paw.

"As agreed," the fox continued, "we had the Stone of Judgement cut in two equal parts so that it could never be used as a focusing device in a weapon like this." The fox put the papers back in their envelope and slipped it under his jacket.

"That's fine." Draco commented as he examined the unique structure of the crystals by the last of the day's sunlight coming in through the window. "No one knows but us, so maybe they will send her out looking for it and our paths will cross again. Do you know who she really was?" He asked the foreign agent.

"Her real name is Ji Rong Rong." The fox informed him. "She is a very ambitious junior agent, willing to do anything to get the job done." Did Draco detect a note of admiration in the fox's tone? "But she got screwed this time."

"I'll say." Draco chuckled. "In more ways than she knows."

"Oh?" The fox looked up. "How so?"

Draco put the stones back in their bag and put the bag in his pocket before he answered.

"Dragons can't always rely on finding a dragon mate." He began. "We're too rare, but, unlike most creatures, our sperm is adaptable to any number of species' eggs, and our genes are dominant, the offspring will always be a dragon. Our sperm is also three times larger than the average creatures, and very durable, able to survive inside a female's body for months until she ovulates. Once they find an egg they are also very successful at penetrating it; the relatively weak membranes of mammal eggs are no match for them. Impregnation is virtually guaranteed. If we could not cross breed like this we would have gone extinct centuries ago."

"Won't she just abort once she realizes that she's pregnant?"

"She can try, but we're a very hardy bred, and a dragon foetus has a way of, uh, latching on to its host, making most abortion methods fatal to both. Did you ever see the movie 'Alien'? Yes? Then you have an idea of what it's like carrying a dragon baby." He shook his great black head. "She will likely carry the child to term."

"She doesn't strike me as the motherly type."

"No matter. When the time comes I'll go and fetch the child."

"That will take some doing." The fox commented. His left brow, the one bisected by a pale scar, was furrowed in doubt. "Even for a fellow like you."

"I have my ways." Draco smiled. Then he patted the bag in his pocket. "And they will think that I have something to trade. Now if you don't mind," he said, taking the fox's martini glass and indicating the exit with his other paw, "I am tired and I'm don't want this conversation about my species to ... drag on."

"Ouch." The fox said as he headed for the door. "Good night, Draco."

"Good night, Silver."

The character and image of Dante Draco are © Dante Draco

The story and other characters are © Dikran O.