The Dragon's Captive (Dragon Brides Book 2)

by Renard, Loki

  “You’re really going to have to show me how to do that sometime,” she said, trying to keep her tone light. In spite of her sore rear and the frustration of being captive once more, she couldn’t help but be fascinated by the ancillary abilities dragons had in their human forms.

  “The way you’ve been behaving, you will not be shown anything at all besides the rod, the lash, and my bed,” Vilka growled. “I will keep you locked to my bed, straining on my leash and I will take every one of your sins out on your flesh. You will beg for clemency, human, and unless your attitude changes, you will not receive it.”

  His threats made her stomach flutter as he tugged at the chain connected to the collar. She felt her neck move, and the rest of her body with it. He now had almost total control of her with the smallest of motions on his part. Wherever he chose to move the chain, that was where she would be.

  “This suits you,” he murmured, running his hand down the length of the chain and wrapping it about his palm. “Almost as if you were made to be captive, but you’re too free-spirited and headstrong to be domesticated or obedient, aren’t you, Kate.”

  “Are you trying to threaten me, or compliment me?”

  “Both,” he smiled, pulling her close and taking her mouth in a passionate kiss that consumed her senses as long as his tongue subjugated hers, his breath hot in her mouth as she sank against him, her erect nipples rubbing against the leather of his armor, her thighs spreading out of instinct, her sex pressing against the smooth, hard line of his thigh.

  His free hand clasped her bottom, the touch of his skin making the welts from the switch sting again, but in a way that felt good. Kate moaned into his mouth as her hips began to grind, Vilka’s hand helping her, urging her on as she rutted herself against him.

  “I should have fucked you in front of my men,” he growled against her lips. “That would teach you, wouldn’t it.”

  Kate let out another embarrassed moan, her pussy squirming against his hard thigh, leaving a trail of wetness against his leg as she kept humping him. He was an unrepentant asshole, but he turned her on. Her appetite for sex suddenly seemed to be insatiable, perhaps because she had waited so long for it. Or perhaps because there were no cultural constraints anymore, even if there were physical restraints involved. Vilka was an erotic beast, and she was no longer a shy little virgin. With him, she was as wanton a woman as ever drew breath.

  “If you attempt to interfere with my orders again, if you so much as think the word portal, I will do it, Kate. I will have you punished and fucked in front of every single man you’re putting at risk. You understand?”

  She answered his question by nipping at his lip and shaking her head. She was close to coming, her clit grinding hard against him in a way that made her lower tummy muscles clench all the harder the closer she got.

  “Little wench!” Vilka let out a growl of arousal and pushed her back against the bed, her legs spreading as he rose over her, chain in hand as he pushed at the leather panel covering his groin. It slid to the side, allowing the thick rod of his cock to spring free.

  This time there was no warmup, no tender oral ministrations. Vilka lined his cock up with her wet pussy and slid home in one long stroke, spreading her pussy around his hard flesh. He fucked her mercilessly, his cock plunging in and out of her pussy, the wet sounds of her cunt being plundered filling the room along with her cries of pleasure.

  The rough thrusting sent them both over the edge of climax in very short order, orgasms ripping through their bodies as Vilka growled and Kate squealed. He soaked her clenching pussy with his seed as she shuddered with her own rough orgasm, and they fell back against the bed together, his hand still wrapped around the chain leading to the collar.

  “Are you going to hold on to me forever?”

  “Yes,” he said gruffly. “But I don’t need to keep this chain in my hand.”

  She watched, breathless and aching as he fastened the chain to the bed frame, using his dragon touch to seal the links into one solid mass.

  * * *

  Satisfied that he had his human contained for the moment, one end of her leash attached to her collar, the other locked to the bed frame, Vilka relaxed. Kate was capable of many things, but disappearing before his very eyes was not one of them.

  They lay together, coated in the sweat of their lovemaking, looking into one another’s eyes. He never tired of feasting his gaze on her. Every single part of this human woman was alluring to him, even the little things like the way her cute lobe met the side of her head with her red hair softly curling about it. He leaned over and put his mouth to that spot and was rewarded as she let out one of her moans of contented pleasure. She was covered in erogenous zones, so it seemed, and he was continuously finding new ways to touch her.

  The exploration went both ways. Her curiosity was just as strong as his, and her observation skills were keen. Even now, in the aftermath of an orgasm that had left her almost insensate, she was looking at him with a curious expression he didn’t quite like. When around Kate, he could almost hear the gears and cogs in her mind whirring, taking in information and transforming it into something useful for her own ends. She was not just smart, she was also a little wicked. He liked that, but it concerned him. Her capacity to work for extended periods of time to bring about changes in the world that otherwise would not have been possible was a strength that could be easily overlooked if he allowed himself to be blinded by her beauty. She was always working on something, this human of his, and he would have to be mindful of that fact.

  “Why do you look at me that way?”

  “You’re different from the others,” she said thoughtfully.

  He stiffened. “What do you mean?”

  “Your eyes,” she said. “You have round pupils. Like a human, almost.”

  “Ah,” he nodded. “That is true.”

  “And your skin,” she said, running her fingers over his shoulders and chest. “It has a much stronger feel to it than human skin, but the others I’ve seen have some scaling over their shoulders and lower, er… regions, and you barely have traces of it. And your dragon form… it is a different color to the others. You have solid markings, they are all two-toned. You are different, aren’t you? Is it some kind of mutation? Do others carry it?”

  “It is not a matter I care to discuss.” The reasons for his differences being known by Kate would only make the situation more complicated.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m sorry if I offended you.”

  She looked a little hurt, which was interesting. She had not been sorry for anything at all since she had arrived, but she did seem sorry about the possibility of hurting his feelings… what a strange creature she was, so brash in some ways and so very sensitive in others.

  “There is no offense,” he said. “It’s… complicated. And this situation is complicated enough for the moment.”

  “I’m good with complicated,” she said, a familiar spark of interest coming into her eyes. “Tell me more… please…”

  “If you can manage to pass more than a few hours without an escape attempt, I will consider telling you.”

  She would not take the deal, he knew that, but that didn’t matter.

  It had always been a matter of time before she noticed his differences, and she was curious and persistent enough to eventually get to the bottom of them. But that was not necessarily a bad thing. If she diverted her mental energies to figuring out his secrets, she might have less time to devote to more dangerous intellectual pursuits.

  “Well, whatever is going on with you, you know you can’t keep me here forever,” she said, returning to her old harping point. “People will notice I’m gone. They’ll look for me.”

  “They won’t find you here. Even if they did somehow realize that a portal had been opened, and that you had gone through it, and even if they were to risk war by opening another portal, which I very much doubt, they still would not be able to survive here. Unlike you, they do not have a treatment which a
llows them to do so.”

  “What if I left a note, telling someone what I’d done if I wasn’t back by a certain time? What then, Mr. Smart Dragon? What if I also left the formula to my radiation treatment as well? What if, instead of keeping me here to prevent others from finding out how to come here, you’re actually sealing that fate?”

  “You didn’t do that,” he said confidently.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes, I do,” he said. “You came here alone. That tells me everything I need to know. Coming here alone was dangerous. You should have had at least one person on the other side of the portal, ready to take your formula and come through to get you, but you didn’t. And if you didn’t have anyone with you then, I doubt you have anyone to leave a note for either. You came here without a safety net, Kate. Maybe because you didn’t want to be saved.”

  “Oh, you just know me so well, don’t you,” she sighed. “After all of three hours, you’ve got my psyche mapped right out.”

  “You’re not as much of a mystery to me as I am to you,” Vilka drawled, provoking a spark of outrage in her eyes.

  “How is that even possible? I’m human. There are no humans here. You don’t know anything about me, so how could I not be a mystery? I am a mystery. You’re just not curious.”

  Vilka restrained a smile as his lovely mate pouted next to him, her pride wounded by the concept that she was not an ineffable enigma.

  He gave a light tug on the chain to snap her out of it and leaned close, his lips just barely touching her ear. “You are my mate now,” he reminded her. “I know you in ways no man in any realm knows you.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t know humans,” she insisted, squirming on her leash. She looked as though she wanted to get up and storm about, but she couldn’t. She was trapped there, her naked body coated with his scent and his seed.

  “Tell me about humans then,” he said, trying not to chuckle.

  “Well, for one, they will come for me, and do you know why? Because we know that this realm exists, and that is all humans need to come here. We’re not a species that likes to live in boxes. We need to explore. So the humans are coming here, Mr. Dragon. Maybe not many of us, maybe not all at once, but people can’t help but want to go where they’re not allowed to go.”

  “So humans are insolent, undisciplined whelplings with no respect for boundaries.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah. We see a boundary and we go right through it. That’s why we live in highly evolved cities and you don’t even seem to have running water. It works for us.”

  “So you say humans are poised for invasion of our realm,” Vilka said, tying her with her own words. “And yet you object to my attempts to stop such an outcome. You are barbaric little things, aren’t you.”

  “The only barbarian is the man who orders gateways between worlds destroyed,” Kate scowled. “That wasn’t just my way home, it was a potential line of communication between our worlds, and you severed it without consulting anybody.”

  “That’s right,” he growled down at her. “Because these are my lands. Here, I rule. I do not know why you find this concept so hard to grasp.”

  “Because it’s stupid! One person, dragon, whatever, can’t make decisions for everyone! You don’t know enough to do that.”

  “I know more than you think,” Vilka said. “I know, for instance, that you are best kept stripped, contained, and well fucked. It is the only time you are not actively causing trouble, I think, when you are beneath me, filled with my flesh.”

  Her blush was bright red and she swallowed deeply, as if she didn’t know what to say, or even how to take his words.

  “Is that what I need to do, Kate? Do I need to fuck you again?”

  His hand slid down her belly. She let out a whimper as his fingers found her swollen pussy. She had been taken twice today. She had lost her virginity and she had been ridden hard. He did not want to hurt her, and had no intention of taking her again, though his cock was already rampant at the hint of the idea.

  “You’re sore,” he told her. “You’re tired and although you don’t want to admit it, you’re weaker than I am. There is no shame in that. It is what you are. It is how you were made. So stop arguing with me for a little while and let yourself get some rest.”

  She bit her lower lip and didn’t say anything. That was probably the closest he was going to get to agreement from her. He slid his hand back and pulled her against his body again, cradling her precious form against his hard frame. He loved how she felt against him, so soft and tender, so sweet in spite of her sour tongue.

  They lay there in silence for some time, drifting in their thoughts. He felt her begin to relax, the tension leaving her muscles little by little.

  “If humans expect to be able to invade any territory they find, are they not concerned that we could be the same way inclined?”

  “I don’t know,” Kate said, lifting her eyes to look at him. “There’s not really anything anyone can do if it happens.”

  “So humans live in fear of a dragon invasion?”

  “Not really,” Kate said. “I mean, some do, I suppose. Some people have bunkers and things and are trying to buy heavy artillery—not that they’re allowed to, and not that they weren’t doing that before dragons came. But in general… no. I don’t think so.”

  “No? That is strange,” Vilka observed. “Did the war not leave a lasting impression?”

  “Yes and no,” Kate said, happy to talk, it seemed. “Most people are sort of in denial about it. I mean, outside the areas which were directly affected. There’s conspiracy theories that there never was an invasion, that the government dosed everyone in California on LSD in the water supply and it was just a grand hallucination.”

  “You cannot be serious,” Vilka snorted. “My father’s legions rained fire over your lands and whole cities were destroyed, if his stories are to be believed. How could such an event be erased from the collective memory?”

  Kate nibbled at her lower lip as she thought. It was a little idiosyncrasy he found quite charming.

  “I think maybe people can’t really live with the thought of giant lizard creatures breathing fire behind every atom,” she mused. “It scares them too much. It’s easier to think that the government is experimenting on its own people than to think that we’re at the mercy of forces beyond all our control.”

  “So nothing has been done,” he said incredulously. “You’re telling me your realm is simply there for the taking?”

  “Don’t get any ideas,” she said sharply. “Obviously we have weapons capable of doing damage to dragons. I’m just saying there’s nothing public or obvious. I’m sure there are other people working on it too; it’s the sort of thing that captures a scientific imagination. And the military, they’re probably working on some things, but they’re also rebuilding after the war and the budgets aren’t really there and…” She shrugged. “It’s just life.”

  “It’s just life,” he said. “To ignore a significant threat on your borders and leave the next foray into the world beyond to a young woman with a death wish.”

  “I don’t have a death wish!” Her eyes widened at him and she looked utterly confused.

  “You certainly don’t have a sense for self-preservation,” he said. “It amounts to the same thing.”

  “It does not,” she scowled. “I just think some risks are worth taking. I guess you can’t understand that.”

  He looked at her, half wishing he could share his secrets, but knowing that someone like Kate would almost certainly exploit them for her own ends. They would have to wait until she accepted her place in his realm. Then he would tell her everything. Until then, he was left with platitudes to express himself.

  “I can understand it more than you imagine.”

  “Sure you can,” Kate said, rolling her eyes. “You think you know everything, but you really don’t.”

  “How frustrating for you,” Vilka deadpanned, “to be in conversation with som
eone who insists they know better even though they seem to know nothing at all.”

  She made a face at him and tucked herself into his arms, her eyes closing as she started to lose the battle against sleep. Vilka’s heart swelled in his chest, a protective, loving urge rising so powerfully in him that for a moment he did not know how to contain it.

  “Good night, my human,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to the top of her fire-red hair.

  Kate mumbled something back. He suspected it was probably something rude.

  Chapter Eight

  The following days and weeks were filled with conversations, or verbal sparring sessions to be more precise. Vilka’s assessment of Kate remained as it had initially been, that she was beautiful, bright, and a great deal of trouble. He watched her like a hawk and kept her on her leash and collar even though she whined and complained about them incessantly. One concession he did make was a woven wrap dress. She was prone to chills. Little bumps would lift on the skin all over her body and she would shiver and huddle into the blankets to avoid the cold. He did not like to see her uncomfortable, though it was difficult to make her entirely comfortable while also keeping her under the kind of confinement she had shown was necessary.

  Unfortunately, the fortress did not run itself. After a few days, Erias gave him a respectful reminder that his presence was necessary for several matters and perhaps the human could be left chained up for a few hours at a time without the world crashing and burning.

  He was right, of course. Vilka knew he was probably being paranoid. Kate had no way to escape now, even if she did get loose again, there were no portals and she had no way of making one. She was a woman adrift in a world of unfamiliar technology. And yet he had an unsettling feeling that simply would not abate that she was capable of almost anything. Those two impulses warred, distracting him in the carrying out of his duties, much to Erias’ hyper-respectful chagrin.