Dragonfly Read Online Free PDF Page A

collecting the bets almost too rapidly for me to follow the game. When the smallest chip is ten thousand sols, time really is money.
    The glass shatterjay lay warm in its strap holster around my thigh, my pulse thudding against it. A glowing blue Lvov martini sat untouched before me on the copper counter. Already, three men and a woman had tried to buy me another one, their gazes roving over me, but none had caught my eye as useful or attractive. Still, I should flirt a bit. I was a thief on the make, after all.
    I cocked a three-inch heel into my stool’s rung and sipped the blue martini. It burned my throat like acidfuel, tart and strong, the fumes rising into my nose. A few more of these and I’d be on my much-admired ass. But I needed the courage. I felt unprepared, and I hated it. There’d been next to nothing in my brief about Dragonfly himself; just a bunch of anecdotes and aliases and some poorly educated guesses that passed for analysis. I still didn’t know what he looked like, what he was planning, if his people had even arrived on Esperanza yet. I didn’t even know his real name.
    I downed the rest of the martini and plonked the glass back on the bar. I didn’t want to know his name. The idea of getting that intimate with him made me cringe. Distance is what codenames are for. He was Dragonfly, the rebel asshole who’d murdered my friends. End of story.
    “Care for another, beautiful?”
    A shiver spidered down my spine.
    Warm blue eyes, deep as space. Perfect lips turned up in a seductive smile, cheekbones like chipped ice, pale blond hair, crisp and crushable. He wore an immaculate black suit, and moved like a dancer, elegant and deliberate. I knew for a fact he was built like one as well.
    My thighs tingled, and I wanted to press them together. He didn’t look a day older. If anything, he looked even better than I remembered. So perfect, the kind of man who’d bring your mother flowers on your first date. Hard to believe so much was so dangerously wrong with him.
    I faked a smile, fighting to stay in character while my pulse raced. “Sure. Why not?”
    Malachite leaned toward me, and his hair brushed my cheek, his familiar smell evoking those warm starlit nights in New Moskva, before I’d realized what he was.
    “We can talk here,” he murmured, “the room is iced. It’s good to see you, Aragon.”
    Liar.
    I flushed. I thought I’d forgotten my anger. I thought I’d forgotten how he’d humiliated me. But I wanted to hit him, and my fingers itched as I pictured the shatterjay tight around my sweating thigh. I clenched my fist, shaking. Calm down, Aragon. Remember it’s not his fault. They make drugs for what he’s got, only Axis won’t let him take them, even if he wanted to.
    There’s a note in his security clearance data, under “Personality” where most agents have “prone to stress” or “borderline obsessive” or “poor anger management”. I know, because six years ago I bribed someone in records to let me see it. What’s wrong with Agent Malachite is called
antisocial personality disorder with extreme psychological violence.
That’s the fancy term for a charming psychopath. It means that he has no conscience. Everything is an act, every word a lie designed to catch you out. He can’t help it, and wouldn’t if he could. You can never, ever trust him.
    Axis like him that way. It makes him such an effective agent.
    The bartender brought my martini. I leaned away so Malachite couldn’t touch me, wouldn’t feel the heat in my skin.
    “My omega brief wasn’t all there. Where’s the rest of it?”
    He sipped his vodka tonic, leaning back on the bar to show off, and a few wisps of blond hair fell in front of his eyes. It looked unintentional, but wasn’t. He does that when he wants to look harmless. When he wants some woman to take pity on him.
    “Charmed to meet you, Lazuli,” he said, ignoring my question. “I’m some rich asshole who’s trying to get up your