by Loki Renard
“Why is it expensive?”
“Because people want to live there. So they will pay more.”
“So it’s expensive because people will make it expensive for themselves?”
“I guess,” Aria said. “I don’t really… I mean… it’s complicated. The economy and… I don’t know.”
“Hm.” Vyktor nodded slowly. “Such complexities for such simple creatures.”
“We’re not as simple as we seem.”
A smile passed over his face. “That I can believe, pet. Come, you need your bath.”
The bath was not far away down the winding halls of ‘simple’ carvings that Vyktor did not seem at all impressed by, and that made Aria feel as though she were in the chambers of some great ancient civilization. The world outside the mountain was starting to feel much less real somehow, more ephemeral. Had there ever been places that were lit with incandescent electric light, garishly blaring through day and night? Had there ever been a world where creatures like herself thronged pavements?
Aria shook her head to clear it. She had only been with the dragons for a day, and already she was losing touch with the reality she had known. It was the total isolation from everything that was doing it, and the captivating way Vyktor had of drawing her attention so completely that it seemed there was nothing outside of him.
“These are our communal baths,” Vyktor said, leading her into a cavernous space where several dragon men were lazing in a body of water that looked much like an interior lake, and that was the size of a swimming pool. The humidity in the room told her that the water was being warmed, though how that was happening she was not sure.
They nodded to Vyktor, though Aria did not see what else they might have done as she was too busy closely observing the ground. What felt natural with Vyktor, being on a leash, was soon shameful when the eyes of others fell upon her.
“And here is our private bath.”
He led her to a door in the wall marked boldly with the letter ‘V.’
“You used human script,” Aria noted in surprise.
“I did,” he smiled. “I rather like it.”
“Are you going to get it tattooed on you somewhere?” Aria asked the question with a little smirk. Vyktor’s interest in humanity was quite charming. She had to be careful that she didn’t end up telling him too much and giving something important away.
“Tattooed?”
“It’s when people get ink injected into their skin, so they can walk around with symbols or pictures or words on them.”
“Intriguing.” Vyktor nodded. “No, I admit, I had not intended on marking myself permanently with the V.”
He opened the door, revealing a relatively small chamber that featured a bath-like hollow carved into the floor. It was about twice as large as any bath Aria had ever seen before and it was filled with gently steaming water that flowed from a niche in the wall at one end and drained at the other in a steady flow. She could see claw marks in the walls, indicating that he—or his craftsmen—must have taken their dragon form to create the space.
“Wow,” she breathed. “This is perfect.”
“I am glad it is satisfactory to you, pet,” he said, no small amount of amusement in his voice. “I have also found some lotions of a cleaning nature among the supplies we have managed to forage during our time here. I hope one of them will be suitable for you.”
Aria slid into the warm water, finding it a perfect temperature. Hot enough to make her muscles relax, not so hot she felt as though she was being poached. She leaned back and let herself float in the water, closing her eyes for a moment to simply relax in a moment of comfort.
There was a soft splash as Vyktor slid in next to her, the tub comfortably accommodating both of them side by side with some room to spare.
She reached for the soaps… then burst out laughing.
“What is it, pet?”
Aria giggled, holding up a golden bottle. “This is dishwashing liquid. We use it to clean up after meals.”
“Well, you are bite-sized,” Vyktor replied with surprising alacrity.
She pushed the bottle back onto the ledge and looked at him, shaking her head. “You’ve spoken English for a few weeks and you’re already using puns?”
“Dragons enjoy wordplay,” he said. “We enjoy most play.”
“Yes,” Aria said. “That was what we noticed first when you invaded—how fun you all are.”
Her words dripped with sarcasm, causing Vyktor’s brows to rise. “I hear being punished on wet skin is worse than dry. Shall we test that theory, pet?”
“Oh, yeah,” Aria grinned, her natural mischief coming to the fore. “You’re just so much fun!”
She splashed a little water at him. A few droplets caught him across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. For the first time since knowing him, he looked a little comical and Aria liked it. The fear and embarrassment that had been present for so much of their association was gone. She might have been wearing his collar, and he might have had her leash in his hand, but she suddenly felt a little more equal.
“Naughty pet,” he drawled, wiping his face. He rested his arms along the back of the bath and watched her as she pushed off from the side and glided naked through the water, her progress only arrested by coming to the end of her leash. Vyktor let the links of the chain slide through his fingers and drop to the floor of the tub, which was almost five foot deep. The chain was long enough that it dragged along the bottom of the tub, feeling a little like a very gentle anchor.
“Am I still under effective control?” Aria smirked at him as she swam lazily to the other side of the tub, putting her a good ten feet away from him.
“You’re always under control when you are in my presence,” Vyktor said in deep, gravelly tones. “Whether you know it or not.”
Aria had the unsettling feeling that was probably true. She felt some freedom in the bath, but she was enclosed not only in the bath, but she was still collared, still naked, still entirely at his mercy.
“Come, pet.” He crooked his finger. “Let me wash you.”
Aria considered his offer for a moment, then accepted. Kicking off the side of the tub, she glided back to Vyktor, allowing him to catch her in his hands. The intimacy between them was already intense. She didn’t know why. He had been holding her prisoner for not quite a day, not nearly long enough for Stockholm syndrome to have set in. And yet, when he held her gently as he was doing now, and she looked into his handsome face and those strange not quite human eyes, she felt a bond.
Maybe it wasn’t based on her captivity. Maybe it was the same bond or yearning that had drawn her to the portal storm. Aria didn’t know, and it was too difficult to think about as Vyktor took a soft cloth and rubbed foaming body wash into it.
She sighed softly as he turned her around so she was facing away from him and began to rub the soap over her back and shoulders in a slow, sensual massaging motion that made muscles she had not known were tense begin to relax. His large hands could be surprisingly gentle, and Aria found herself starting to sink into a deeper state of relaxation as he roamed her back with the cloth, clearing away the grime of the previous day’s efforts.
“That feels really good,” she moaned softly.
“Good,” he replied, his deep voice rumbling behind her ear. He pulled her back to rest her bottom on his thigh and continued washing her body, coaxing the cloth around her form. She let out a little moan as he massaged it around and under her breasts, making her nipples stand to attention.
“You are so responsive, pet,” he said. “I confess, I knew humans were tamable. I had no idea how easily they could be tamed.”
“I’m not tamed,” she said, turning in a swirl of water and pushing away a foot or two. “I’m just not stupid.”
He looked at her steadily with his wise face and knowing eyes. “Oh?”
She shut her mouth. If she told him she was only going along with him to make him think she was falling under his spell, then that woul
d introduce an element of mistrust, which totally undermined her entire plan.
Vyktor shook his head and crooked his finger at her. “Come here, pet,” he murmured. “Your pride will not allow you to admit how you feel, but I see it in your eyes. Hatred no longer blazes there as it once did. You should not feel shame for that. It is natural for a weaker entity to depend upon a stronger…”
“Fuck off,” Aria swore. “You are not stronger than me.”
Vyktor threw his head back and laughed with genuine amusement, his deep bellows echoing around the walls.
“What kind of delusion do you have, pet?” He looked at her in the way one might look at a dog with its head stuck in a cat door. “Of course I am stronger than you.”
“Maybe physically,” she said. “And maybe you can speak languages better… but…”
“There is no but,” he replied, cutting her off. “You were made to be my pet. You’re perfect for it. A softly formed body, enough spirit to be a challenge, with a yearning for the sky which made you step into a dangerous craft and imagine you have the wings you humans seem to have an instinctive desire for, but have somehow lost.”
When he spoke that way, she was almost tempted to agree with him. Maybe it was his charisma, his deep rumbling voice that vibrated his truth into her. Or maybe he was just… right. He was so much more powerful, more ancient…
“You’re jealous,” she said as a burst of inspiration struck her. “Your people don’t know how to make electricity, or machines like cars and planes. It wasn’t your people who worked out how to make a portal. That was us. So maybe you should put the brakes on assuming you’re better than us. As far as I can tell, you’re a relic.”
He reached for her, took her by the wrist and drew her to him, creating a small wave of water that splashed over his scaled shoulders. She reached out to steady herself, laying her hands on those very scales, surprised again at how they felt beneath her hands, warm and unyielding, but not uncomfortably hard to the touch.
“A relic who can fuck you senseless,” he growled against her lips before kissing her deeply, his tongue snaking into her mouth.
His kiss made her head spin, her senses completely hijacked by the intensity of his desire. He was a relic, there was no doubt about that, but he was the kind that only grew stronger with age, not the kind that crumbled over time.
She sank against his body, becoming softer for his hardness as he wrapped his hand in her hair and held her there, right where he wanted her, dominating her with every breath he took. Aria’s body responded with fierce, fast instinct.
Her wetness mingled with the water of the bath as the head of his cock probed for and then found her pussy. He ran his hands down her body, gripped her hips, and thrust hard up inside her, filling her with a rough, complete stroke.
Aria squealed into his mouth, her cries cut off by his lips as he held her in place and fucked her with hard strokes, punishing her for her insolence by stretching her pussy around his thick cock. She cried out, not knowing if she herself was making cries of pleasure or pain. All she truly knew is that she wanted more, more of this searing hot rod that made her pussy melt. More of this man, this dragon who cared nothing for human rules of engagement and fucked her as he pleased. For pleasure. For discipline. For whatever he wanted.
The water rippled around her nubile form as he lifted her up and thrust her down, fucking her without the need for her to so much as move a muscle. She was like a toy in his arms, so easily lifted and then pulled down, impaled on the hard rod. Her body was beaded with water as she rose and fell like a nymph in the arms of a god.
There were no words now, not even in her head. There were only images evoked from deep in what felt like a collective unconscious. When she was with him, she was connected to something in them both. She looked into his eyes, saw something there that simultaneously frightened her and gave her a sense of exhilaration like no other. She was riding this dragon, her quivering inner walls thrilling to his cock as she was plundered rough stroke after rough stroke.
He may have set out to teach her a lesson, but her pussy was taking him with an eagerness that made any notion of discipline fly out the window. She was slick with juices that coated his thrusting rod, made the passage of his thick flesh into her body an easy matter. The first time he’d pushed inside her, she’d thought she might split in two. Now she was learning to accommodate him, to relax some muscles and clench others. The erect bud of her clit was grinding against the harder scales at the base of his cock. They were a perfect match for her body, a little roughness to their texture stimulating her in a way no human man ever could.
He must have caught the shift in her body, the way her hips rolled proudly against his thighs, the way she threw her head back and basked in the sensations his pounding was producing all the way from her toes to the tingling of her scalp.
“How does this relic feel inside you, pet?”
He held her down on his shaft, not allowing her to slide up or grind down, or move at all until she answered him.
“Mnnnn…” Aria moaned, doing her best to break free of his hands. His strength was impenetrable though, she really couldn’t move a fraction of an inch.
He let out an answering groan. “Your tightness is…” He hissed a breath and she felt his cock pulsing inside her. Aria realized suddenly that he was on the verge of losing control. He had her collared, chained, locked in place over his hips, impaled on his cock—but her inner muscles were working in ways he could not control and they gripped and milked him in an ancient human way that seemed to trigger an inescapable response in him.
Vyktor threw back his head, a growl turning into a roar of pleasure as his cock stiffened inside her. She felt his cum shooting deep, hot seed coating the delicate inner walls of her sex—the same walls that had broken the resolve of a dragon.
Watching the dragon lose the battle against his own desire triggered Aria’s climax, a torrent of pleasure rushing through her body as she ground against him, her hips rebelling against his grip as her body did what it had been made to do—take the seed of a male as deep inside her hot depths as possible. He was no longer stopping her from moving, so she was free to work herself against his unyielding flesh, working herself to an erotic peak with his cock at her core.
She felt the orgasm in every part of her, the force of it sending her mind to a place beyond places, freeing her to her very soul. The thick rod inside her stayed hot and hard as she writhed against her mate, her climactic gyrations sending waves rolling across the bath until finally she collapsed against his chest, her eyes half closed as he ran his hands slowly over her back and bottom.
“We could bathe forever, but you would still be a dirty little pet,” Vyktor murmured against her ear.
Aria let out a soft little groan as he cupped her bottom and slowly slid his impaling flesh from her gripping lips. She was empty again, aching gently as the dragon’s seed slipped into the warm waters of the bath.
Lying against his chest, totally spent from her exertions, Aria did not resist as Vyktor took up a cloth and began to wash her well-used sex with a gentle touch. She found herself drifting into a semi-sleep state as the dragon’s hands roamed her body, the master reclaiming his pet after her brief erotic triumph.
Chapter Seven
Aria woke to a world with a dragon, snoring next to her in the large bed that she had occupied with him. It had been five days since she had been taken by Vyktor and he no longer kept her caged. He had left the collar upon her, somehow lightly welded around her throat. Metal responded oddly to Vyktor. He could pinch it and it would weld itself together. She theorized that he must have some kind of thermal… kinetic… she didn’t know the terms for it, but there was something in his fingertips, some way of passing energy through them that made metal bend to his will.
“I always know when you’re awake,” he said before even opening his eyes. “You start jingling around.”
“That’s because you practically have me belled like
a cat.”
Vyktor opened one eye to look at her. “Why do humans bell cats?”
“To stop them from sneaking up on birds and eating them.”
“Ah,” he said. “Well, I have no fear of you sneaking up on any little birds. You’re not precisely a predator, are you, pet?”
Aria felt her nostrils flare. She hated the way he seemed to think that she was weak and delicate and incapable of doing harm. Maybe she couldn’t do much to harm him, specifically, but she was plenty dangerous of her own accord.
“You don’t know what I am,” she sulked.
“Perhaps not. We don’t know much about one another, do we, pet?”
“No,” she agreed. “I don’t even know how old you are… how old are you?”
“In your years? Hmm… it’s difficult to make the adjustment. But around four hundred years old, I suppose.”
“Wow, I got the relic part right,” she grinned, earning herself a slap to her bottom that she squirmed away from, using the covers of his bed to wrap her body into a safe little un-spankable cocoon.
“Time passes differently in our realm,” Vyktor said, shaking his head at her antics. “I would estimate my equivalent age to be around forty, perhaps?”
“Still a relic,” Aria laughed. “I’m in my early twenties.”
“In our realm, you would be closer to two hundred.”
“Remind me not to give anyone my age in dragon years,” she smiled. She was enjoying his company. She knew she wasn’t supposed to—especially given the way he had stripped her before his men and put her on display, but he hadn’t repeated the treatment since.
“I think it is time we returned to your training,” he said, as if catching her thought. “You are becoming far too informal, pet. I wanted you to settle a little, which I think you have done.”