fine-tuned the weather control system on Lacerta was when she thought that she and Rawn could not have picked a better day to do this, then realized that days on Lacerta were generally this way. The sky was a crisp blue, and the temperature, warm on the ground, was comfortably cooler way up here. Mindful of her job, she divided her attention carefully between Rawn and their flight, letting her lenses capture everything that was happening.
She looked up at the arching of his lengthened reptilian neck over her head and the shape of his dragon head above her, which seemed almost like a horned arrowhead pointed in the direction he was flying. From there, she turned her attention to the panorama of Silverwing, the capital city of Lacerta, spread out below them.
They had left the Spires behind and were arcing out over other parts of the city with its gleaming domes, towers, turrets, arches, and bridges, a place built as much for people who flew as much as for people who walked. Here and there in the sky around them, other dragon men and women flapped and swooped and banked past them and below them, and Joanna could pick out uniformed personnel as well as civilians.
Skimming along at lower altitudes were the air sleds of humans and dragon folk who, for whatever reason, were not using their wings at the moment. It occurred to Joanna that people all over the Commonwealth, including her, had seen holorecordings of Lacerta just like this dozens of times before. Of course, what made this one special was that it was being recorded while in flight with a long-lost conquering hero about whose return the quadrant wanted to know every detail. Her report would not be complete without it.
Gliding and curving in one direction, they passed over the great Silverwing Stadium, which was the venue for the major sporting events in the city—as well as the local Courting Lotteries. It was in these Lotteries that weredragons and humans were paired together as mating couples to keep the population of Lacerta healthy and growing: for the mutations that had turned the once-human colonists of Lacerta to weredragons had sharply reduced their birth rate when mating with each other, which required them to mate with humans to produce children more reliably.
Joanna noted that only a short time before the attack of the Scodax, a Lottery had paired the human athlete, Agena Morrow, with the Lacertan Knight, Thrax Helmer, and the two of them had gone from their mating bed to a battle in which their actions determined the fate of the planet. Joanna’s interview with them was still to come. In the meantime, there was Rawn to keep her occupied—though not occupied in the same way as Thrax kept Agena.
In various parts of the city, they found places where buildings and vegetation had been cleared away and new building or new planting had begun, the sign of the renewal of Silverwing in the wake of the battles with the Scodax. The capital, like the rest of the planet, was healing from the violence and horror that had so suddenly engulfed it, and it was a gratifying thing to see.
Despite the attention she was paying to the flight, Joanna could not help but turn in her stray thoughts to the mating of Agena and Sir Thrax, and the many hours and days they must have spent together in bed, doing every intimate thing to one another, but especially the thing intended to help produce the next generation of Lacertans. Held in Rawn’s arms and pressed against his transformed reptile chest, Joanna could not stop herself imagining how it must probably be for Agena even now.
Was she, at this moment, lying in bed with—or under—her lover Knight in his human form, with the weight of his naked and hard-muscled body atop her, receiving the thrusts of his most potent Knightly weapon inside her? She had read that it could take as long for a human/weredragon couple to conceive as it sometimes did for a purely human couple.
How much bliss would Agena know in bed with Thrax before he made her pregnant? In spite of her journalistic need for detachment, just now, Joanna felt a twinge of envy for Agena Morrow, not so much for the prospective pregnancy but for how she was getting that way.
Finally, with a swish of his tail, a twist of his body, and another beating of his wings, Rawn circled his way back in the direction from which they’d come and began to fly them back to the Spires. The city passed beneath them, and Joanna felt the end of their little air journey drawing near. Soon, he took them just past the towers of the Spires and over a little park, on the other side of which was the guest quarters that the Terran News Service had arranged for her.
It was an attractive little house of glass and white stone with ivy on the walls, where guests of the Spires sometimes stayed. All sorts of dignitaries from all over the quadrant had occupied the house at one time or another, including, Joanna guessed, some of those who ahd been there that day when Rawn stood with Drs. Phifer and Sabian when Rawn’s powers—and Sabian’s treachery—were first made known.
The dragon brought them down for a perfect landing in front of the entrance to the guest quarters and folded his wings. He gently set Joanna down on the lawn and held her by one shoulder, giving her a moment to get accustomed to being on the ground again. With a satisfied exhale, she said to him, “That was wonderful. That was actually…very new. Funny, I’ve been to so many places and talked to so many people, so many different beings, and I’ve never done anything like that.”
“The universe would be a sad place,” said Rawn, “if we could never do anything that was new to us.”
“You’re right,” Joanna agreed. “It would be…very sad.” Adjusting her vest and trousers, she said, “Well, I think now you’re home there’ll be a lot of happy things ahead for you.”
“I’ll be most happy,” said Rawn, “when I’m back to my duty—and to the full life of a Knight.” And there was, Joanna sensed, a definite and unmistakable layer of meaning twinkling in Rawn’s dragon eyes when he fixed them on her at that last part.
“Yes,” she said. “There’s still so many years of a great life for you, Rawn. And so many people waiting to welcome you back to it.”
“And for you,” Rawn said, “just now, a report to edit and complete and transmit to your service, correct?”
“That’s right,” said Joanna.
“Then, I’ll leave you to it. I’ll look forward to seeing you again tomorrow, Joanna.”
“Tomorrow,” she said.
Rawn took a step back, lifted his dragon head back to the sky, and unfurled his wings once more, his tail curling and waving behind him. Seemingly without effort, he lifted himself with wings beating from the ground and climbed back into the air. Joanna felt the stirring of the air from his wing beats wash over her, and watched him rise overhead and over the trees. In a second, he was gone.
She lingered there outside the entrance of the guest house, somehow not wanting to go in just yet, wanting instead to let this moment go on a little longer. He was truly extraordinary, this Sir Rawn Ullery. He was a remarkable man, a noble hero, and a great dragon after all.
CHAPTER SIX
Rawn knew it would happen, and now here it was.
Returning to his own quarters after leaving Joanna at hers, he felt uncommonly restless after his time flying around the city with the human mediate. His pulse was still quick, even though he was not exerting himself to take off or land. Morphing back to human, he felt a tingle, almost an electricity, on his human skin. His senses felt heightened somehow. And he knew the reason.
He thought, perhaps, the best way to work off the energy that he felt charging him up would be to go to the Spires gymnasium and do some heavy lifting. Then, he remembered that before he "went away," the Spires had set up special equipment in the gym to accommodate his enhanced weight class. There would be no reason for that equipment still to be there, and the regular lifting and pressing devices would not pose him much more than a distraction.
He needed to be more than distracted. But at the moment, distraction was all that was available to him. For want of anything else, he called up the Stellarnet and settled into a comfortable chair to view the latest feed of holotransmissions and media posts, and check his Interconnect. And in his correspondence account and media messages, there t
hey were: the holograms and recorded messages, not only from well-wishers but admirers. Very, very interested admirers.
He could have predicted it. This was only natural, and he knew it was coming: dozens, even hundreds of messages from women and men alike, not just welcoming him home but
offering him invitations and propositions. Such propositions. Rawn's skin tingled more, and down below, he stiffened and rose to attention at the images of the people greeting him, the things they offered to do to him, the things they expressed an interest in him doing to them, and all the places they wanted to do them.
It had been this way before that great battle in which he had disappeared. Rawn had been on the receiving end of all the sexual attention usually given a Knight of Lacerta, and more. Had he so desired, he could have had a different bedmate or occupied a different bed every night of the week, and there had been some weeks when he'd enjoyed exactly that pleasure.
He had to admit, plenty of the women beckoning to him were exactly the sort he'd be happy to oblige. Quite a few of the men were choice as well, if his interests ran in that direction, which they did not. He had a wealth of options, not only here on Lacerta but across the quadrant. Space was full of doors open and beds turned down just for him.
And, just a few wing beats away, there was one human woman in particular who seemed very much to have caught his eye.
With a grumble that was almost a roar, he called, "Shut off!" At once, the transmissions vanished like soap bubbles suddenly popped, and Rawn was alone in his spacious suite in his comfortable chair, with the bottom of his armor skin now uncomfortably tight from what was straining against the metallic fabric. Growling, he lifted himself up from the chair and flung off the parts of his armor, strewing them across the room in an un-Knightly manner until he was stark naked and the raging length and hardness between his legs reached out like the thick limb of a tree.
He stroked at it, and it pulsed in his hand for want of pulsing in other places--places warm and wet and tight and very specific. Specific to one person. He cast his eyes out to one of the picture windows that he knew let out in the direction of the guest quarters, and he thought of whom he had left there. What if he had done more than just leave her there? What if he had invited himself into Joanna's lodgings--and taken her in his arms once again for a different kind of flight than they had just had? What if he had invited himself into her? Would she have accepted?
?
It was not arrogance, but fact, that Rawn had not experienced being turned down by a woman since becoming a Knight. The women he had wanted had always wanted him in return. The women who had approached him were attractive enough that he had begged off only when duty called. Sex had not been a problem for him, as it hardly ever was for a Knight.
But this Joanna Way, who had been assigned to do stories on him and his homecoming...would she prove to be different? Would she be the continuation of the rule or would she prove the exception? The hot ache and nagging of the male limb that he was stroking told him that he'd like to know soon. He was a Knight, and as he had discussed earlier with Joanna herself, a Knight had needs.
In the years he had been away, he had not been celibate, but his sexual couplings were too few and too far between for the liking of any male weredragon. Erotic readings, holograms, and simulations had been of some help, but they had not been a real substitute for what he enjoyed most and had not had in too long.
Rawn turned on his heel, strode naked with his needing, aching branch bobbing at his crotch, and threw himself across the bed. Lying there on the pillows with eyes shut and legs open, he again took himself in hand and began to stroke. In his mind was the memory of Joanna Way: her face, her voice, the way she'd felt in his arms. And, in his imagination, were other things about her that he'd like to feel.
After so long a time without bedding a female, or so long a time bedding so few females and never knowing one of a familiar kind, what Rawn most wanted to do was put a naked Joanna on her back, spread her legs wide to display the pink, wet treasure between them, put her thighs up around his hips, and plunge what throbbed so urgently and desperately in his hand into that opening, claiming her body and her sex completely.
To be inside a human female once again, to feel her stretching and yielding to the penetration of his massive man-staff, to sense her body attuning itself to his while he thrust his pole hard and fast and deep into her--how glorious it would be to reclaim all those feelings with Joanna Way.
He yearned for her slippery, womanly wetness enclosing his shaft, tightening around his length and girth, the feeling of her arching her back as she received him into her depths, the sound of her moaning mixed with his. He wanted to lower himself down onto her, pinning her down on the bed, to press his great, hard pecs against the warm, full roundness of her breasts and feel the hardening and teasing of her nipples against him. He needed to feel his round and ample sac striking against her mound with every stroke of his erection deep inside her, and feel himself building up to that ultimate moment when he cut loose completely and released his torrent of thick man-milk into her womb.
The force of it, the heat and tingle of it, the sensuous explosion of it--Rawn wanted Joanna under him and submitting to him more than anything. He pressed his shut eyelids hard together and clenched his teeth in an almost animal snarl. The sound that escaped him reached up for the ceiling, even as the searing burst of his solo orgasm gripped his body and sent tremors of release through his muscles.
A great, warm wave of sticky whiteness rolled forth from the blunt tip of his erection and splashed all over his abs. His body clenched in climax, then slowly relaxed until he lay sprawled on the bed, panting, covered with a sheen of perspiration, his stomach frosted with what had poured out of his slowly softening erection.
Rawn let his piece slip from his hand and loll against his thigh, still dripping a rivulet of seed onto his skin. He relaxed completely and did not even bother to clean himself off. He was suddenly fatigued from this solitary indulgence in fantasy, and the last thought before he slipped off into sleep was to wonder what it would take to make it real.
_______________
He guessed that he had been asleep for a couple of hours when his eyes blinked open. Rearing up on his elbows with a groan, Rawn felt the stickiness on his stomach and remembered that he had sunken into his nap without bothering to wipe himself down after his bout of self-pleasuring. Sighing heavily for want of having pleasured himself with certain company, he climbed off the bed and trudged naked into the bath to fill the sunken tub with warm water and then sink himself into it.
Leaning against the edge of the tub with arms wide, he put his head back and shut his eyes again. In the dark shroud that he lowered over his mind, there she was: Joanna Way, as nude and inviting as he had imagined her. He quickly opened his eyes again and cursed at what was happening under the water, the new stirring and strain of a new erection.
Damn it all, he was a Knight. He should have a more disciplined mind than this. But, of course, there was only one thing that could disturb and intrude upon his Knightly discipline: the thought of what he most loved to do when he was not a Knight but just a man.
Rawn called out to the AI, "Bring up the Stellarnet Media News Feed." At once, the space over the tub was filled with holoscreens displaying every news item being fed and streamed from all over the planet. Rawn examined the array of images until he found the one of greatest interest to him. "Select the Terran News Service," he said. At once, all the holoscreens vanished, leaving Rawn with only the screen of Joanna Way's latest transmission.
Her face was rendered in light before his eyes as she gave her report. Rawn turned up one corner of his mouth in a smile when she cut away from the display of her interview with him earlier today to the playback of their flight over Silverwing and the commentary that she had
edited into it. She had little to say about how it had felt to be held in his arms while he flew, and he reasoned that such observations were too personal for
her report. Perhaps, when he saw her next, he would ask her for her impressions of the flight. Perhaps it might lead to someplace he wanted to go--indeed, to someplace he hoped she would want to go.
At the end of the recording of the flight, the display returned to Joanna and her next item. "Tomorrow," she announced, "Sir Rawn will be attending the dedication ceremony of the new wing of the Lacerta Museum of History, where pieces of salvaged Scodax technology, including parts of the android bodies, will be on display. I'll be covering that and the official parade down Fafnir Boulevard to welcome Sir Rawn home.
Later this week, Sir Rawn will be further welcomed at an official formal gala at the Ruling Aerie, which will be attended by Alpha Dragon Toran Veles, First Dragon Marcine Veles, and First Daughter Evette Veles. Be sure to log on for my complete coverage of the homecoming of Sir Rawn here on Terran News. This is Joanna Way, concluding this report."
Frowning, Rawn commanded, "Shut down." The transmission ended, and the holoscreen vanished, leaving Rawn sitting in the water in a quiet bath once more.
A parade. And a gala ball, of all things. It seemed that the people of Lacerta had their hearts set on celebrating him within an inch of his life. It wasn't that he was unaccustomed to such things. All those years ago, during the Chimerian conflict, there was a time when people celebrated him. It was after his first major victory against the Chimerians, when he had led his fellow Knights in battle to free a planet that the creatures had occupied.
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