Dreamspinner Press Year Six Greatest Hits

by JD Ruskin

  Carefully, Arthur lifted one hand and felt over the spot. It was almost like running his hand over an abalone shell and yet it was softer, alive and warm. Bertie snuffled in his sleep but didn’t wake up. Arthur considered that, then traced a line down one of Bertie’s arms to the end of the long claws that were curled over his chest.

  He touched Bertie’s feathery mane next and then his beard, though he couldn’t reach the small spot in the middle of Bertie’s back where there was a strange dull patch that seemed new. So he returned to Bertie’s neck, to the point where the softer skin became hard and the scales got bigger. Bertie’s head came up so fast that Arthur jumped and flailed and fell back onto nothing but air and then the floor.

  Expensive though it was, the rug didn’t soften anything. Arthur grunted in surprise and pain and looked up. For one moment a dragon as black as the night sky stared down at him and then the air shimmered and blurred, turning the dragon into something indistinct and then into Bertie, who slid to his feet to help Arthur up.

  “So sorry, pet. I take up a lot of space as me and I didn’t realize you were….” He paused once Arthur was standing and rubbing his back. “Petting me?” It was almost a question and Arthur wasn’t quite ready to answer it.

  “I thought it best to confront the beast head on,” Arthur remarked smartly instead. He had been petting Bertie, but maybe that wasn’t done. In any case, he had to look up eventually, so he took a breath and raised his head.

  Bertie’s expression made him warm to his toes. His very naked toes, Arthur realized abruptly, though Bertie’s stare would have made him feel exposed even if he’d been fully dressed. It saw too much. He quickly lowered his head again as he fought the urge to cover up. Bertie was naked too, after all, he told himself. He just looked better that way than Arthur did.

  Arthur could see a red circle on Bertie’s neck now, already fading from the purple hickey it had been. Arthur couldn’t think of a way to ask how long a hickey could be expected to last on Bertie without admitting that he wanted to give him another one, so he swallowed. Bertie licked the edge of his mouth.

  “I could keep you like this for days,” he growled only to quickly glance away when Arthur raised his head to stare at him. Bertie clenched his hands and then relaxed them. When he spoke again the dark, desperate note in his voice was gone.

  “A wash up might be in order I think,” he commented too lightly. Arthur glanced down again and saw the dried come on his thighs. He should agree, but he couldn’t move, not with the memory of that comment, of Bertie’s voice as he had said it making him feel slow and faint. Bertie took his hand. “Let’s get you squared away.”

  They were at the staircase before Arthur realized he was being led upstairs. He didn’t balk, but he looked back at the mess on the couch and shivered. It was one thing to read a story and want to take the place of a dragon’s boy, to admit to wanting it in the heat of the moment, but it was another to live it afterward. He wasn’t that boy. He had responsibilities: his sister, work, school. He couldn’t be that boy. But Bertie would want it. He would want everything, he had said so. Everything, including keeping Arthur covered in his spunk for days.

  Arthur couldn’t breathe.

  “Here we are.” Bertie either didn’t notice his silence or was nervously avoiding it. Arthur squinted as the bedroom lights came on and bounced off all the treasure but Bertie gave him no time to focus on it. “If I could trust myself….” He cleared his throat as if he knew how fierce his voice was getting. “Bathroom, my little human.”

  Arthur wasn’t his, but Arthur didn’t say a word about it as Bertie left him alone in his bathroom and closed the door. His reflection in the giant mirror over the sink startled him, and Arthur frowned back at the wiry muscles of his body, the flushed swell of his mouth, the deep, fierce blue of his eyes.

  He was bruised too, marked with fingerprints and the soft imprints of Bertie’s stubble along his chest, his stomach, even his thighs. He reached down to touch the hot, chafed skin and watched his pupils dilate at the memory of Bertie’s mouth near his cock. He exhaled. Despite Bertie’s doubts about Arthur’s feelings, Arthur had never really been afraid, not of Bertie.

  He jerked into sudden motion at the thought and looked through drawers and cabinets until he found a towel and then he let the water run as he cleaned himself up. The water was cool but he barely noticed it until he was done. Then he shivered and looked at himself again. He looked the same. Not beautiful, not exactly, not like Bertie, but like someone worth looking at.

  “Are you all right in there, Arthur?” Bertie called through the door, and Arthur froze. “I haven’t frightened you, have I? I didn’t mean to this time. But you kissed me, you see.”

  Arthur dropped his gaze to the sink and then to elsewhere until something in an open drawer caught his eye. He identified it with a tiny laugh of disbelief even as he noted that the drawer was a mess and his mind replayed Bertie’s words. Arthur had kissed him. And Bertie reacted like he’d been waiting for it for a long, long time. Arthur took a shaky breath.

  “Yes. Yes, I did,” he called back at last and reached into the drawer. When the lubricant was warmed and slick on his fingers, he leaned over the sink and thought of Bertie as he slid his fingers over his hole and then pushed in.

  He held back his gasp, barely, and then shut his eyes and stretched himself as much as he dared, as much as he had in his bedroom at home while thinking about this, being this boy.

  He worked his fingers in until it burned, until his legs were shaking and he didn’t think he could wait to be fucked for real, and then he pulled them out and washed his hand. He didn’t look in the mirror then, not wanting to see even the possibility that Bertie might reject him, then took the bottle and turned to the door. The small bottle fit right into his palm, and he held it at his side as he stepped out of the bathroom.

  Bertie straightened up. He was still naked. “There you are,” he said unnecessarily as his gaze moved over Arthur and then back down to Arthur’s dick, flushed and half-hard. “And still looking scrumptious.”

  Arthur thought of teeth and bite marks on his skin, of the chafed, empty feeling inside of him, and felt scrumptious. He met Bertie’s gaze and thought Bertie was reading his mind or smelling the changes in the air around him because his eyes went black.

  Some small part of Arthur, some tiny, primitive part that sensed when he was being hunted made him shiver and widen his eyes, as if he was cold when he was anything but. He was hot all over, inside and out, and already panting though the chase was almost over. He turned with the last of his strength, turned his back on the predator who wanted him and walked on shaking legs to the bed.

  There was heat at his neck like heavy breath as he sat on the edge of the mattress but it was only when Arthur felt the warm air across his chest and sliding down over him that he realized the room itself was hot and getting hotter. He felt the itch of sweat and patches of damp on his skin and flicked a look over.

  Bertie was across the room from him. He was staring, watching Arthur with intent, narrowed eyes. His mouth was open, his tongue just visible. Arthur remembered it on his cock and let out an uneven sigh. He wasn’t really made to be seductive, but his limbs were heavy and it seemed only right to place one hand on his thigh and slowly draw it upward.

  He clutched the bedding with his other hand, his stomach clenching in fear and excitement when the room shook. Coins slid to the floor. A sword clashed into armor and nearly tumbled down. Arthur glanced at them and then quickly back at the large, dark shape of Bertie. He no longer seemed all the way human, though he stood on two legs and spoke in a rumbling voice.

  “You look like a maiden waiting to be ravished.” Bertie’s voice wasn’t quite his own anymore either, though Arthur recognized it as the guttural sound of a dragon using human words. He curled his fingers tighter into the bedding and looked up. Then he took a deep breath.

  “What if I am?”

  Bertie took two steps, two impatient
, ravenous strides toward him before stopping abruptly. Arthur saw shoulders, hands, legs, cock, face—Bertie but not Bertie, not human, dragon—and made a small, hungry sound that drew Bertie forward another step.

  “Do not say such things to a dragon, Arthur.” There was no pet name, just fire in the words. Arthur should have been burned but he wasn’t. He blushed and curled his fingers around his cock so Bertie could see how hard he was.

  “I’m not afraid.”

  Dragons had eyes that could ensnare the soul. Arthur couldn’t look away.

  Bertie slid closer. “I would take you and keep you.”

  Arthur lost his breath. “Then do it.”

  He didn’t see Bertie move. He only felt the mattress at his back and the whisper of sheets on his skin as he was pushed to the middle of the bed. Hands slid over him and Arthur went still as his mind caught up to the fact of Bertie pushing his hips up, his legs apart, pulling his hands up by his head and holding them down.

  Bertie’s fingernails were short, but Arthur could feel the edges pressing into him and thought of claws. He shivered for the pressure and the marks they would leave, and then for the wet tease of Bertie’s tongue over his chest, smelling him more than tasting him. Arthur couldn’t stop shaking.

  He turned his head to the side and saw them, just for a moment, in the mirror by the bed, a tiny human wrapped in the arms of something greater. He looked up and shifted to feel Bertie’s cock against him. Bertie’s head was down, but his body heaved, his hands tightening to keep Arthur still.

  “Arthur.” Bertie said it as if speech hurt and Arthur imagined him struggling to hold on, to not simply take, the way dragons did. But Arthur hurt with how empty he was.

  He brought his knees up as much as he could and opened his mouth as Bertie took one hand away from his wrists to lift himself up. There was light reflecting off his skin as if the scales were closer to the surface, but his eyes were dark.

  Arthur moved his hips, the small roll all he could manage with Bertie holding him down. “I’m ready,” he insisted quietly and opened his hand so that Bertie would see the bottle of lube he was still holding.

  Bertie didn’t speak. He slid a hand down and tested Arthur’s words by sliding one dark-tipped finger inside him. Arthur moved despite knowing better. The slick glide made him kick out, his feet trying to get him back up for more and sliding on the sheets. He made a weak noise and shivered when Bertie didn’t answer.

  “I want more. You said everything. I’m ready.” He was all words in the face of Bertie’s silence and the weight that wouldn’t let him move. Bertie’s sound was animal, but his touch inside Arthur was knowing. Arthur couldn’t even squirm, and the thought was almost as hot as knowing what it was doing to Bertie, how Bertie was fighting just to speak like a man.

  “Mine.” He managed a word as he used two fingers to stretch Arthur and stroke deep inside, and Arthur shut his eyes and whined when he couldn’t bend his knees more, couldn’t get his legs wider. Bertie spoke again harshly into Arthur’s skin. “Treasure.”

  Arthur shut his eyes and thought he nodded, but it didn’t matter, not with the sounds he was making, higher and higher pitched as Bertie took him with just his fingers and watched and inhaled the scent of Arthur’s need.

  If Bertie had shifted and wrapped his tail around him, Arthur could not have been more helpless, but it wasn’t fear making his blood pound and his throat dry. “Bertie,” he groaned with his head to the side and stilled, uncomfortable and shocked, when Bertie pulled his fingers out.

  He swallowed before he turned his head back. Bertie’s eyes were black and hot as he continued to hold Arthur’s hands above his head, one-handed, no effort in the gesture at all. It made Arthur think of virgin sacrifices, of girl dragons, of how Bertie might have been with him if Arthur hadn’t demanded this.

  Bertie would have taken his time, would have driven Arthur insane with how slow and careful he would have been. He would have whispered words into Arthur’s skin and pressed into him gently, as if Arthur was precious, and though Arthur was trembling uncontrollably, he shook his head. He couldn’t take that now. He’d break.

  “Arthur?” Hot breath was pleasantly rough on his skin. Bertie’s cock was pressing against him. Arthur shifted and nearly came at how Bertie pushed him down, at the hungry roar when Arthur immediately shifted up, demanding to be taken.

  It wasn’t the kind of thing a virgin sacrifice should probably do, but he needed it to live, and maybe so did Bertie. Bertie looked at him and pulled his hands from Arthur’s wrists to grip his thighs and angle him up.

  Arthur went tense.

  He didn’t mean to, he didn’t want to, but he did, right as Bertie’s cock pushed in, big and iron-hot.

  Arthur arched up and froze with his body straining, his thighs tight with Bertie between them. Bertie went still. He stared down at Arthur and frowned when Arthur shook his head. Bertie wasn’t all the way inside yet and it was already uncomfortable. It was already incredible.

  Arthur was his boy, he could feel it shimmering under his skin. He could belong to this dragon if he could do this. He lifted his arms so his hands could run over Bertie’s skin and feel the power in his shoulders, greater than magic. He pulled it down to him, panting and letting out a whine when the move made Bertie’s cock slide in deep.

  “Arthur,” Bertie rasped in a man’s voice, as if Arthur could be reasoned with, and bit against Arthur’s shoulder. Arthur drew in air and waited, counted the seconds until he could move again, and then he tossed his head. He could be a better pet than this. He could be the best.

  “More,” he ordered, moving up with a slight hiss. Bertie was everywhere, his weight over him, his pulse pounding inside Arthur for another moment before Bertie inched his hips back to thrust back into him. His stubble scratched and rubbed against skin already raw, but the pain was light, a distraction as Arthur stretched and exhaled and burned.

  “Just… yes,” Arthur breathed as it eased, as he just felt full, finally, with Bertie deep inside him, then deeper when Arthur arched up to meet Bertie’s new thrust. He moaned and bent one knee in to his chest, grunting at the discomfort and then ignoring it completely until Bertie lifted Arthur’s leg over his shoulder and pressed in. Arthur made another hungry sound, one after the other.

  He wound his fingers into Bertie’s hair and then ran them down his spine so he could feel the power in every movement. Power, and Arthur got to touch it. Bertie was heavy and solid and Arthur felt like he was splitting in two.

  He grabbed handfuls of Bertie’s back, his ass, anything to bring Bertie in closer, deeper.

  He wasn’t slow anymore. Arthur heard himself whining but only pushed himself back up against Bertie’s weight, needing it on his cock and over him. Everything was slick, even the skin over Bertie’s flexing muscles. Arthur imagined that coiled strength and threw his head back to feel Bertie’s teeth at his throat. He shifted up just to hear Bertie’s roar.

  This was magic, Arthur thought distantly as Bertie surged into him, and spread out his hands to feel it. Sparks filled him. Fire. Life. He looked in the mirror when the direct sight of Bertie made his vision go white. He saw himself, small, and he saw Bertie, glowing like fire, pumping into him. His teeth were at Arthur’s throat. Arthur turned into it so he could stare directly at him, Bertie the dragon king. His dragon king. There was no shame in serving something so beautiful.

  “Arthur,” Bertie called him back and arched over him to grab his hands and pin them back above his head. No effort in the act, only in the words that scraped out of him. “My boy.”

  Arthur couldn’t think, couldn’t respond, could barely breath at the slide inside of him and the brush of his cock against Bertie’s stomach, but it was the grunt, the parted lips and pointed teeth, the hands fierce on his skin that made him try to push up so Bertie could push him back down. Bertie responded by taking him, faster, harder.

  “Bertie.” Arthur wasn’t aware that he was begging until Bertie answered h
im.

  “Mine. I want to see you as mine.” Bertie twisted his head to run his tongue along Arthur’s neck as he drove in deep. When Arthur moaned weakly underneath him, he rose up. Arthur grunted as he felt Bertie pull out of him, and then again as jets of hot come splashed across his thighs and stomach in almost the same moment, shocking him motionless for the second until he saw himself, in the mirror, out of it, dripping with Bertie’s come and shivering all over at the heat of it.

  He hadn’t expected that and couldn’t move for a few seconds except to breathe hard and stare up at Bertie, who was staring hungrily down at him as he caught his breath. He still had Arthur pinned, his face was close, and the pleasure in his expression made Arthur hold still. He wanted Bertie to have his fill.

  But he was hard and when he shivered, his stomach tight with the desire to move and his muscles shaking with the pain of staying crushed under Bertie, Bertie let out a long breath.

  He licked his lips and made a rough, pleased sound when Arthur didn’t move. Arthur’s shoulders and hips ached and he felt empty with Bertie no longer inside him, but he held still and watched and shivered as Bertie leaned in to nuzzle at his cheek. He seemed softer, human, again.

  Bertie closed one hand around Arthur’s cock, which was sticky and wet, and he stroked through his own slippery mess with his breath warm on Arthur’s face. “I should have liked to have prepared you, Arthur,” he murmured seriously as if Arthur wasn’t gasping and thrusting up into his hand.

  “I’m sorry,” Arthur whispered back, his throat dry. That wasn’t how it was supposed to be. He was to be protected and admired, cared for. He shouldn’t have taken that away from Bertie, even if Bertie wasn’t angry with him. But his voice broke and he couldn’t rise up. Need spiked in his blood, behind his eyes, but for all his soft words Bertie was relentless, and he wouldn’t look away as he kept his grip firm. Arthur couldn’t think, not to do more than let another moan stutter out and rock up into Bertie’s deliberate strokes.