by Loki Renard
Aria drew her sidearm and unloaded it at the beast, shot after shot making her ears ring as most of the projectiles simply bounced off the creature’s plated body and landed harmlessly in the dirt. Only one made any kind of impact—the one that went up its nose. The dragon reared back, snorted, and then sneezed, covering her in a thick, gelatinous mucus.
“Ugh!” She swiped the dragon-y discharge off her helmet’s visor. “You’re gross, you know that? And ugly!”
“It’s not very polite to speak that way to the one who just saved your life.” A heavily accented, devastatingly deep voice replied.
She had missed the moment of transformation while covered in goop, but the dragon was suddenly gone. In its place was a man, of sorts, standing next to the open cockpit. It was a very tall, very broad, very naked man with hard plating around his shoulders, biceps, and chest. He was handsome. She wasn’t surprised. The dragons who had been spotted in their human forms had all been pretty attractive by human standards. Like most of his kind, the planes of his face were hard and quite angular. He looked like he had been carved rather than born. His eyes had a golden hue and those catlike pupils sent a chill through her.
Her eyes lowering out of an undeniably natural instinct, she looked down and saw his cock, thicker and plated at the base. Essentially, everywhere humans had body hair, this dragon seemed to have plated scales. His hair was shaggy and almost fell to his shoulders, dark and laced with fire-red streaks. His skin was similarly tinted in parts, tan and then a deeper red hue where the scales plated his body.
“Like what you see?”
Aria looked back to his face to see him looking at her with a cocky smirk. He was enjoying this.
“I wasn’t…” She trailed off. She didn’t need to explain herself to him. He was the enemy. The enemy who had just saved your ass, an unwanted part of her mind reminded her.
“Fuck you,” she swore at the… thing. She kept her gun raised and pulled the trigger several more times. It was useless of course. There were no magical bullets in the chamber. She was out of ammunition, and out of luck.
“Are you done?” He cocked his head and smirked at her, enjoying her struggles.
“I won’t be done until you’re dead,” Aria hissed.
“Brave words from a brave little warrior,” he acknowledged. “But you do not have it in you to kill me, human. So put that useless piece of metal down and step out of the machine.”
The wreckage of the Tornado was the last protection Aria had left. No way was she getting out of the cockpit, no way was she getting anywhere near that damn lizard.
“Hell, no,” she refused.
The dragon man raised his eyes to the sky in an expression she found very reminiscent of human exasperation.
“I have to insist,” he said. “It would be a waste of time saving your life simply to see you die moments later.”
“What are you… hey!” Aria screamed as he darted forward, grabbed her, and physically hauled her out of the wrecked cockpit, slicing through her straps with his bare fingers as if they were nothing at all. He carried her kicking and screaming across the desert, running at a good pace.
Thirty seconds later, she understood why.
Fwomp!
What was left of the Tornado caught on fire, ruptured gas from the tanks hitting an open electrical line, probably. She should have thought of that. Would have thought of it if she hadn’t been confronted by a fucking dragon—who now held her cradled in his arms in a way she found very disconcerting.
“You must be terrified,” he mused. “To be prepared to burn in your craft rather than come with me—or extremely stupid.”
Aria narrowed her eyes at him, but did not speak. She had nothing to say to the lizard. These monsters were not to be talked to. They were to be wiped from the face of the planet.
He set her down and she brushed herself off, as if a little dust was the most of her problems.
“What is your name, human?”
Her name and rank she would give. “Aria Thomas-Jones, First Airman.”
“Well, Aria Thomas-Jones, First Airman,” he said. “My war is not with you. You will not come to any harm with me. I give you my word.”
His word was not worth very much as far as Aria was concerned. He was the enemy and she was now a prisoner of war—and the dragons never had signed the Geneva Convention. She was fair game to these reptiles.
“Liar,” she hissed at him. “Go back to your nest… be glad you lived through an encounter with me.”
The dragon threw back his head and laughed, a deep throaty sound. “Oh, your delusions of grandeur,” he chuckled. “Really quite something, the arrogance your kind possesses.”
He shook his head, momentarily distracted by his amusement. Aria took the opportunity to flee, running across the dusty ground as fast as she could. She didn’t have a solid plan for her escape, she had pure instinct and the sense to get away from the dangerous lizard. If she could find some cover, if she could hide, perhaps she could escape and make her way back to the base, perhaps…
Swoosh!
A great shadow passed over her and a moment later great talons wrapped around her, capturing her in their grip. They could easily have crushed her, but instead they held her secure as the dragon soared high into the air. Aria held onto the talons tightly, terrified of the long fall that awaited her if the evil creature were to let her go.
The military had drilled her in what to do in the event of being taken prisoner. They had trained her to resist interrogations. They had taught her to survive in difficult conditions, endure pain and even torture. But they had never taught her what to do when she found herself swept several miles into the air by a beast bigger than a 747.
The speed increased until Aria was sure they were matching, if not outpacing the speed of most jetliners. The dragons were fast, she’d seen that for herself in the dogfights. This one was fast enough to chase a Tornado down. The wind buffeted her face, making it difficult to breathe. She had to hide her face in her arms and take short gasps of the thinly oxygenated air.
They wheeled about and headed across state lines… toward Wyoming and the heights of the Rocky Mountains. She’d heard rumors that the dragons had established bases in the Rockies. It was genius, really. Places too inhospitable for most humans to get to, but easily accessed via flight. Places with natural caves that could serve as storehouses for the resources they were pillaging.
Caught in a hopeless position, Aria could do nothing for herself besides try to survive. She did not know what awaited her in the dragon’s lair. She didn’t even know if she would make it that far. Consciousness was difficult to maintain with her levels of stress and exhaustion and the low O2.
Finally, after what seemed like an endless journey, the dragon began to swoop down for landing at an obvious roost. Part of the mountains had been carved away to make a large flat area perfect for landing a helicopter—or a ten-ton dragon.
Her watch revealed that they had been in the air just shy of three hours. It wasn’t long in terms of flight time, assuming you had a plane, but it was close to forever when you were sailing through the sky seated in a dragon’s clenched claws.
The dragon’s powerful hind legs made land first, his great wings folded behind him and he placed her gently on the ground. She collapsed to the rocky surface, her knees too weak to support her weight. She closed her eyes and said a prayer. Whatever was to come next was unlikely to be pleasant.
“Come,” he said, those deep tones resonating inside her chest. The great dragon was gone again, to be replaced by the thing that looked almost human. There was no fanfare when these things shifted from one form to another. It was just like breathing to them, or maybe blinking. One moment they were one thing; the next, the other. Her mind, addled from fear, found refuge in the question of how that was even possible. It was as if they, the dragons, did not have a body like humans did. It was almost as if they were more the suggestion of a form, and that suggestion could change
at any time. The dragon reached down and grabbed her arm. He didn’t feel like a suggestion. He felt like a command.
She tried to pull her arm out of his hand, not wanting any aid from her captor. He had her firmly though, and he drew her up to her feet in a smooth, easy motion.
“Easy,” he chuckled. “You don’t have much fight left in you, pet.”
“Fuck off,” Aria cursed. Swearing at her captors was not part of the training, but she was exhausted and angry and it felt as if all she really had left was her defiance. It was going to take some time for air command to realize that she hadn’t perished with her plane, if they ever found out at all. Someone would have to check the wreckage for her remains, and sending a pilot out to do that would risk another casualty. Odds were that she had been declared MIA, along with hundreds of other pilots. Odds were that nobody was coming for her. Even if they wanted to, coming into the dragon’s den meant certain death. Aria wasn’t sure why she was alive, but she wasn’t counting her blessings just yet.
The frown on his face told her that he really didn’t like the cursing—weird, given that he could only have been speaking English for a month or so. How the hell the lizards had figured out their language so quickly, Aria really didn’t know.
“That’s right,” she said. “You can fuck right off.”
This time the punishment was more than a stern look. The lizard held her in one hand while his other hand came around and dealt a hard slap to the seat of her flight suit, landing hard enough to bring her up to her toes.
“Behave yourself,” he warned her as she cursed again. “You are in my territory now.”
“You don’t have territory here,” Aria seethed. “Earth is for humans.”
“Humans, hmm?” He raised his thick, dark brows at her. “By our reckoning, this planet is home to almost nine million species. What about them?”
“They don’t count, for this argument,” Aria spluttered. “We are the dominant species.”
“Were the dominant species,” he corrected smoothly. “You’ve fallen from that position. And you’re not taking it very well, I must say.”
Aria stared at him, very much wanting to argue back, but her mind was blank. The impartial, logical, smart part of her brain she would have immediately disavowed if anyone had been able to hear it, told her that he was right. The dragons were superior in a lot of ways, but that didn’t mean they were going to win this war. Humans had clawed their way out of evolution to get to the top of the food chain, and neither she nor anyone else was going to take slipping down a link in that chain lightly.
Chapter Two
Before Aria could think of something clever to say, the lizard took hold of her hand and began to walk into the depths of the cave. It was immediately apparent that the dragons had been doing some work to make the place hospitable for themselves. As soon as she passed the first twist in the rocky wall, she felt a warmth begin to creep through her flight suit. It shouldn’t have been warm. It should have been freezing cold. It should have been too cold for the dragons at all. And yet, here they were.
They had burrowed through the rock to create what she could only describe as a dragon warren. Narrow passages led into larger spaces, most of them unfurnished. It was quite a work they had accomplished, but she was not surprised. Aria had seen them use their powerful teeth and claws before; nothing man or earth made seemed to be able to withstand a dragon’s sheer earth-moving power.
“You are tired,” he observed. “So I will make this as quick as possible.”
“Make what as quick as possible?”
He did not answer her. Instead he led her into a large open area where the rock had been shaped into tiers of seats around the exterior of the space. In the center was a slightly raised platform about eight feet in diameter. It was surrounded by bars, which extended up to a stalactite of rock that created a cell roof. There were shackles tethered at both the top and bottom of the rock. It looked like a cell, but one designed for display.
“What the hell kind of sick shit is this?”
The dragon smiled at her, flashing those impossibly white teeth. “This is where I will show my men that humans can be broken to our will,” he said. “This is where I will tame you, my pet.”
Fuck. That. Aria didn’t know what he meant by taming her. She didn’t know why he kept calling her pet. All she knew was that she was going to resist him with everything she had.
“No!” She kicked him as hard as she could, catching him in the knee with a blow that would have made most men crumble. He didn’t even flinch. His grip on her remained strong as he wrapped her in his arms and carried her quite literally kicking and screaming up into the cell.
Once he had her inside the bars, and the door slammed closed behind them, he took to her flight suit with his teeth. She watched in horror as his mouth descended near her collar and he took a bite of the heavy fabric then pulled back, tearing her clothing apart as easily as she could have shredded tissue paper.
Aria was reminded again that these dragons looked human in their human form, but they were anything but human. The power this creature had at his disposal was frightening. Her flight suit fell to the floor in tatters, looping around her boots. He reached out, ran one finger down her squirming chest, and hooked it in the front of her bra. One little tug sheared the garment from her body and let her full breasts hang free.
“Beautiful,” he murmured. “You humans are so stunning, but so very soft.”
He ran his palm over the sensitive curve of her flesh, cupping her breast. His touch was hot, his skin had a strange texture to it, as if it were much thicker and stronger. Closer to leather than skin.
Aria brought her knee up sharply. It made hard contact with his solar plexus, and if she had done that to a man, he would have bent double. This dragon barely registered her complaint. He put one hand on the back of her neck and held her firmly enough to make her gasp.
“Settle, pet,” he drawled. “You don’t want to be punished so soon, I can promise you that.”
His fingertip slid lightly over her stomach and found the hem of her panties. Blue silk with little purple hearts on them. Not exactly regulation, but Aria liked to feel a little bit feminine.
“Pretty,” he murmured. “But I think what is beneath them will be prettier still.”
He brought his finger down the middle of the panties and they fell away from it as if they had been seared. He was manipulating temperature somehow, and in very small locations. The result was an ability to go through almost anything. The silk of her panties was certainly no match for it.
They fell just like the rest of her clothing, ending up in a silken pool around her feet.
“Take the shoes off, pet,” he ordered. “I want to see you completely naked.”
“No!” Aria refused bravely. “I will not be complicit in your torture.”
“This is not torture,” he laughed. “This is preparation for your new life. I have been watching you humans for some time. You hide away when you are naked. Why? Because you are vulnerable. All of you. You are soft, and delicate, and even the thought of being seen for what you truly are is too difficult for you to bear.”
Aria was reduced to silence again. This lizard was smart. He was getting to know his prey, and he was learning fast.
“With me, you will always be naked. So remove your foot coverings, my little human pet, and we will see you for what you are.”
Her resistance took the form of a sullen silence, a refusal to move at all. The dragon solved that problem by lifting her arms up and attaching shackles to her wrists. She found herself with her arms raised high above her head, her body stretched by the position, every part of it more exposed than it had been before.
“Beautiful,” he murmured again, running his warm, strong palm down the sway of her back and the flare of her hip. “You are so like us in our wingless form, and yet you are so very tender, so very soft. It is a wonder you have survived at all.”
He slapped her botto
m lightly, then slid down her frame to remove her socks and her boots. She would have kicked him in the face, but he was wise to her aggressive attempts to hurt him and he kept the remains of her flight suit around her feet, effectively hobbling her. Once the last vestiges of clothing were gone, he closed the lower shackles around her feet. They were heavy around her ankles, hardly comfortable, but that was likely the point.
The dragon kicked her clothing into a pile, took a deep breath, and snapped his fingers in front of his mouth. The result was a plume of bright flame, much like the effect one might get from a lighter and a can of hairspray. Her clothes caught alight immediately and were soon reduced to a smoldering heap at the edge of the cage.
“There,” he said, turning back to her. “Now you can no longer pretend that you are anything other than a soft human at the mercy of a much more powerful creature. The shackles will remind you of your place. They will tell you that you are owned when you try to tell yourself that you are free.”
“Asshole,” Aria hissed.
“Do not worry, pet,” he said in soft tones that utterly failed to soothe her. “Once you are domesticated, I will have no need of chains for you. You will know you are mine with every breath you take.”
“You’re an idiot,” she said. “And you don’t understand me, or humans as much as you think you do.”
“We will see, pet.”
She quivered in the chains, hoping he would release her from the position soon. It was not comfortable, but it was likely not meant to be. He was trying to break her. He had told her as much. She wouldn’t let him. No matter how much pain he put her through, she would not crumble.
“It just occurred to me that I haven’t introduced myself,” he purred. “My true name would be impossible for you to pronounce. An equivalent in your simple language would be General Vyktor. You may refer to me as Master.”
“I would prefer to refer to you as scum,” Aria hissed.