by Faye, Amy
This one was raw, unrefined. Honestly, unfinished, he knew. There would be time, to refine it. It would take hours or days or weeks, but eventually, it would be full of details, full of life. Full of Keleth, in its own strange way. But right now, it was raw and little more than an idea sketched out in paint on a canvas. Unrefined.
Somehow, that fit even better than one last finished painting. As if, in his last days, he'd returned to being the artist that still didn't really understand what he was doing, and certainly didn't appreciate it as an art form.
He took a breath. "You did," he agreed finally. "But you hurt yourself."
"It hurts to move too much," Diana confessed. "But I didn't have much else choice. I had to."
"You shouldn't have gone back in," he told her. It was only then that he noticed the rest. She had them all arrayed out, next to the painting. There was a notebook, thick and bound in leather. On top of it was a pair of glasses, the lenses broken and the frames twisted.
On the other side of the painting was a stuffed doll. He smiled when he recognized the shape.
"Is that a dragon toy?"
"It was a gift," she said, without looking up at him. "My mother made it for me, when I was just a baby."
"An interesting choice of gift," he told her. She didn't need him to tell her that, of course. She was smart enough to have already come to that conclusion herself.
"I guess it is."
"Can you walk?"
"I don't know," she said. "I'm tired. I just want to go back to sleep."
"I know you do." Hell, he knew that he wanted to. "But we need to get you out of here, and get you somewhere safe. I'll help you up, okay?"
She turned and gave him an empty look. "Okay," she said, like there was nothing to her at all. And then she settled back down to the ground and closed her eyes. His stomach did a flip, but he forced himself to move his aching muscles and lifted her up by her good arm, picked up the few things she'd managed to save from the inferno, and carried her back around to where Cyanora stood, still watching, her eyes never leaving the building in spite of the flames.
26
It had taken a monumental force of will for Alex Blume to find the energy to convince one woman to come with him, away from the inferno that had overtaken the house; he wasn't going to find it a second time. Particularly not when there were so many unanswered questions about why she seemed so upset about all of this. He could make guesses, but he wasn't such an idiot as to think that they counted for much of anything.
And whatever was going through her head, whatever affect it was having on her psyche, he wasn't going to interrupt that and face the consequences. So he stopped and waited beside her. Maybe it would have been expedient to say something first, something like 'Come on, it's time to go.'
The assumption, though, would have to be that she was an idiot. It wasn't a particularly safe thought to have, particularly when she was the only other one in that room who he didn't have strong reason to suspect might have been involved in the murder. The way she'd tried so hard to kick the hell out of him didn't leave the impression that she'd killed Keleth just for kicks, or something. It left the impression that she was as angry as anyone could be over the death.
The fire was starting to die down, still clutching at what few parts of the house remained standing, when she finally turned away, perhaps an hour after the fire had begin. Perhaps three hours after he'd run off looking for Diana.
"Come on," she said. From her face, she looked rough. She looked like she wasn't exactly sure how she was going to get by after this. But if that was how she felt, it didn't reach her voice. Her voice was hard and almost mean, and he had to ignore it as he roped Diana's arm across his shoulders and pulled himself to his feet.
She could walk, for the most part, but he kept the arm there, enjoying their closeness. Enjoying the feeling of her body pressed up against his, even if it were through all these clothes. He could almost feel the softness of it through all the layers separating them and it gave him all the energy and determination that he was going to need to keep going.
"Where to?"
Cyanora didn't respond right away, just started down the mountain in those ill-fitting boots that looked like they weighed more than anything she'd ever worn in her life from the way that she had to clod along in them.
He followed without prompting for another answer again. In time, maybe, she would explain it to him, but he had his doubts. So the answer would come when they got there. It was a couple of miles to get into her territory, most of it downhill, but it would have been faster to fly. It would have probably hurt a little less. She didn't make any effort to find a clearing, didn't make any effort to transform, and said nothing to explain why she'd apparently decided that was how it was going to be.
He didn't need to think too hard about it, of course. There was easy, readily available magic to summon up clothes out of the ether. If she wanted to wear a dress of the finest silk, then she could have it, and it could show off her body's curves in a way that even made her fully nude form less appealing.
But when you were wearing clothes, made from real cloth, there was no way to bring them with you. Maybe you undressed, which was how he generally did it when the need arose, or maybe you just let the clothes tear themselves to shreds. The transformation was too fast to feel much, and no seams were remotely powerful enough to stop from tearing. If they were, then the fabric around them would tear.
She'd dressed herself, though, and she'd used someone else's clothing to do it. He didn't need to ask whose clothing it was. If Diana had any wonders about why the woman was wearing her father's clothing, then she didn't voice them. She kept her head hung low and stumbled along beside him, drained and clearly in a lot of pain. But she kept up like a champ.
All the way down the mountain, he followed her. It was perhaps ten miles, taken all together like that, and then another two miles across open ground. His head worked on a swivel, watching the skies for trouble that never came.
Thunder clapped in the distance, clouds covering what little there was to see in the rapidly oncoming night sky. In an hour, maybe more, they'd be wet clear through, and if they hadn't found shelter by then, he wasn't sure how well Diana would be able to handle it. There was a stand of trees, off in the distance, perhaps a hundred yards. Cyanora eased her path south until she was headed straight for them, and then stepped into the thicket, and when he followed her through he saw why.
A pickup truck that looked like it was nearly as old as he was sat there, untouched by rust. The paint was faded and in some places had been rubbed away altogether, but it was there, and the door opened for her easily. The dragoness slid her wide hips up into the driver's side of the bench seat, reached behind the wheel, and torqued something he couldn't see, but it didn't take a genius to identify the turning of a key. Particularly, he thought, when the engine came readily to life.
"Get her in," Cyanora said, the first thing she'd said in almost three hours of walking.
He did as he was told without responding, and then climbed up into the bed of the truck and stretched out his long legs. The vehicle started to move before he really got himself settled in, but it made a minimum of shaking and rumbling as it drove out of the trees, across the field, and met up with a dirt road, barely wide enough to fit the wide tires.
The window to the back was open, and it wasn't until they were on the road that someone started speaking.
"He wasn't totally alone up there, you know," she said. Alex wasn't sure who it was that Cyanora was speaking to, but he was sure who she meant.
"No?"
"Aside from Diana, that is." She said it as if the girl wasn't right beside her. Alex's eyes shifted automatically over to her. She leaned against the back window and off to the side, her head lolling limply back. When she slipped into Cyanora's shoulder, it drove home that she was asleep. That, or she was dead, but the rhythmic expansion of her chest nixed that fear in only a moment.
"What, you? T
he two of you?"
"He didn't like it, not at first. Said he wanted to get away from... from people like us."
"You didn't agree?"
"I was hunting. Didn't have to agree. There was nobody trying to stop me, and his land had the best hunt."
"So you trespassed?"
"At first, that's what it was, at least."
"But not after a while."
"Not after a while," she agreed. "There was more to it. I don't want to claim it was something long term. It had only lasted a couple decades, and then only occasionally. Once, maybe twice a year. Sometimes he'd get randy and it would be once or twice a month."
He looked for a sign of movement in Diana's body. He could imagine that it wasn't a conversation she'd like to be a part of.
"So what was it, then? Sex? Something more?"
"I don't want to think about it," she answered. "All I know is, he didn't like it when I came around unless I was, uh, dressed like this."
"No, he wouldn't," Alex agreed. "He thought he could give it up."
"You didn't think so?"
"You know better than that." There was always talk, in any circle, and dragons were no different. When one of them went weird, there was talk. When two went weird, all at once, the talk wasn't just doubled up. He ignored it for the most part, but it wasn't as if he were blind.
"I guess I do," she agreed. "You swear you didn't kill him?"
"I'd have left him a thousand years if he never called me out to see him. Two thousand. I'd have waited to be asked for until time itself ended, if that was what it took."
"He talked about you, you know. Once."
"You two were big on that, then? Talking? Politics, of all things?"
"I wouldn't call it that. It was only the one time."
"I thought he'd forgotten all that. Or... not forgotten. Put it behind him, I guess, would be the way you'd put it. I thought he'd moved on."
"Nobody ever moves on," Cyanora told him. She shook her head, her hair making waves that might have been enticing. "It's strange, you know? Sex. In this body. Everything's so... ticklish."
He didn't want to think about it too hard, so he didn't respond, and she didn't bring it up again.
27
The image of seeing Alex, handsome billionaire, transform into, and then back from, a flying lizard the size of your average Sport Utility Vehicle put a thousand thoughts into Diana Kramer's head, and the number one among them, as well as the one that she knew she shouldn't even have been considering, was how big his cock had to be when he was like that.
"Are you going to transform, or..."
He looked at her like she'd suggested he might want to dress up as Mickey Mouse first.
"What?"
"Would that be weird?"
He raised an eyebrow. "First, it would be intensely weird."
"And second?"
"Second, I don't like to if I don't have to."
"Is it hard?"
"Stop asking questions," he told her, and lifted her by her waist to sit atop the side of the truck. Then he wedged one foot up on top of the back tire and stepped up and into the back, and pulled her in on top of him.
"I can do that," she agreed. Something hard and big pressed at the sensitive spot between her legs. A welcome distraction from the long day that she'd had. A welcome return to the last good thing that had happened to her, and she'd fucked that up by running off. Maybe everything else that had happened, all the craziness of the last eighteen hours, was all karma punishing her for looking a gift-horse in the mouth.
Diana told herself silently that she wasn't going to make that mistake again and shifted her hips. It sent a shock of pleasure running through her as his body rocked up into hers.
"Jesus," she breathed. She wanted more, wanted him to take her right then and there. The fact that he didn't just meant that she wanted it more.
"Suck my cock," he told her, propped up on his elbows. She looked at him a long moment, thinking about all the other things they could get up to. All the better things. Then she reconsidered, looking at his face.
He needed her, and she'd get everything she wanted, but only when he was ready. The way that he expected her to obey, without a threat, without anything at all to push her to do it except for the simple command...
She shivered. It made her feel dirty, in exactly the best way possible. If he wanted to treat her like a whore, then that was fine too. As long as he used her like one, by the time it was done.
She pushed herself back and away and unzipped his pants, pulled his cock out. It was halfway hard and she took a long moment to admire it in her hand, pumping the shaft gently before taking it between her whore lips. The feeling of his hand resting on her head completed the image.
She bobbed up and down slowly at first, taking her time. Acclimating her mouth to his cock. Acclimating herself to the bed of the truck, which wasn't the most comfortable place she'd ever intended to make love. Then again, it was handy and it was under a roof, and that made it better than a lot of places. Better than inside of a tent in a rainstorm, which was one of her less-interesting and yet most-memorable little adventures.
Alex apparently decided she was moving too slowly just in time for Diana to decide it herself. His hand started to move her head for her; she let him. The head of his cock pressed against her throat; her mouth tightened around it automatically, but she relaxed herself as best she could. For him.
He made a sound that told her as clearly as words that he appreciated it. She appreciated the sounds, and her body reacted appropriately. Her free hand found its way down her body and into her jeans, her soft fingers teasing up and down herself. It wasn't enough, and it wasn't going to be, but God almighty did it feel good.
Diana came up for air, holding herself up with one hand. "Do you like that?"
He smiled at her, but there was something else in that smile beyond being pleased. His jaw was tight and his eyes were hard on her. "Yeah. Who told you that you could touch yourself?"
A shudder ran down her spine, and a little voice inside Diana told her that she should stop. Her finger didn't stop circling her clit, and she told the voice that it would be more interesting if she didn't besides. Not that she knew she could stop.
She took his cock between her lips again, instead of stopping. Hopefully, if she serviced him well enough, he'd let her have this little pleasure for herself.
"Look at me," he said. She did, sucking hard as she pulled most of the way off his cock before plunging back down and taking the shaft as deep as she could. He wasn't quite into her throat yet; she'd taken him deeper, before, and she knew that it was just a matter of time. It was a matter of time that she was looking forward to getting done with.
She needed to move on to the next part, to have him replace her fingers with his. To make her cum. She knew, instinctively, that he would. She was his, after all, and the very idea of being taken was enough to send her halfway to an orgasm by itself.
"Stop," he said. "Take your hand away."
She whimpered around his shaft and redoubled her efforts. He took her chin gently and pulled it away, pulled her face up until she couldn't look away from him if she tried. She didn't try, not even as a token show of resistance.
"Stop, Diana. You'll get your turn."
"Oh, but please," she said. Her fingers moved harder, faster, rougher, taking whatever she could get in the moments before he made her stop. He noticed, and his cock twitched below her when he did.
"You need to cum?"
"Yes please," she said. "Please just let me cum."
The begging felt good, almost as good as the feeling of her fingers as they moved lower, dug in between her folds, and started to stretch them out. It would be better if he did it himself, even if it were just his fingers, but she couldn't stop herself. Even a little bit was enough to drive her crazy.
"Take your hand away," he said again. "Or else."
Her eyes fluttered shut, partly at the dangerous edge to his voice and pa
rtly due to the effort that it took for make her hands listen to her. They didn't want to, and she didn't want to make them. But she did as she was told.
"Good girl. Give it here."
She did. She gave him her hand, now slick with her own arousal from allowing herself the indulgence. He took her fingers between his lips and licked between them, sucking gently. Diana's body quivered in anticipation.
"Take your clothes off," he said. She just stared at him. Here? It was a closed garage, to be sure. Nobody was about to drive by and see them, or call the cops. At least, she hoped to hell they weren't. There was nobody to see, as far as she knew.
But there was someone there. Someone who could come in at any minute and ask what the hell was taking them so long coming inside. Someone who would take one look at her, undressed like that, and draw some very sharp conclusions.
"Do I have to?" The thought of the other woman inside made her voice come out in a harsh whisper. "Can't I just leave them on? The top at least?"
He closed his eyes and shook his head. "No."
Diana closed her eyes. Her stomach was filled with a twisting anticipation and felt like there were a thousand butterflies in it, all pulling it in different directions at once. If she wasn't so fucking horny, she'd have felt like she was going to hurl.
Her fingers shook as she hooked them under the hem of her shirt. She took a deep breath and willed herself to pull it up. It didn't happen. Instead, she let out a sickly giggle and tried again. Again, nothing.
"Go on," he said. His voice wasn't angry, but it was hard. Firm. There was no room for her to question him or what he wanted.
"I can't," she said. The panic had reached her voice, and she was dangerously close to squirming off his lap. But she tried a third time. Her arms squeezed tighter around her, pulling it on tighter if anything.
Alex noticed. His eyes darted down, and Diana suddenly realized that she'd pressed her breasts together tighter, and the collar of her shirt had dipped lower, showing an entirely unprofessional amount of cleavage between her breasts. His breath hitched, just slightly. She tried to make her hands move again, and this time they did, and her shirt stripped off, leaving her in her bra in the garage of a woman she'd never met.