Anya's Freedom

by Lisa Daniels

  No prince was destined for her, it seemed. Her chest trembled as the dragon allowed his emerald eyes to scour over her form for a moment, before picking her up and dumping her in the tub. The explosion of warmth over her body from the previously biting cold made her sigh. The dragon helped support her head as she gradually warmed up in the miniature sea of bliss from the tub – which never seemed to lose its temperature.

  What a marvellous enchantment, Marea thought absently, though she was sure if she ever came face to face with the witch responsible for this tub, she'd be cannibalized. The women of the wild were savage, and everyone knew witches to be tricky and mischievous.

  With a perchance for hot tub enchantments.

  Whatever delicacies the dragon gave to her now, she knew that it depended on the dragon himself what would happen to her.

  She originally assumed dragons just kept their princesses locked up in towers, waiting for the knights to come so they could defeat them.

  The fact they could transform into humans added a whole new level onto the situation. One where the dragon could use and abuse her to his whim.

  Naked in the tub, she trembled whenever his rough hand slid over her breast, tangled up in her hair, or dipped dangerously low, to her well-trimmed nether regions. She was powerless in this position, and she didn't know whether to be terrified out of her mind, accepting of the situation, or even to find it thrilling. She was far removed from her protection, locked under the mercy of a dragon.

  At one point, with her eyes shut as she warmed up, he leaned forward to whisper into her ear, “By the way... my name's Kazak.”

  Kazak. How... dragony. Marea assumed he already knew her name, and didn't deign to answer. The insubordinate human who lipped her in the garden, turned out to be a fire breathing shape-shifting dragon. Her heart had already gone through far too many surprises in a short space of time. Marea wasn’t sure how many more she could handle.

  She gasped in the tub when he bit down on her ear, and let his hands glide over her chest for a moment, the water sloshing over the edges. Her cheeks flared, and a part of her soul ignited from the contact, sending vibrations through her spine. She was gradually transforming into an electrical storm on the inside as everything became supercharged, fraught with tension so tight it could be cut with a knife.

  Oh no. He could take me and there’s nothing I can do. I’ll be made impure.

  The thought should terrify her. She wasn't supposed to do anything out of hand, to deflower herself to anyone other than the prince who she'd marry. Not that all the princesses stuck adherently to those particular rules. It didn't make her quail as much as she expected, however. A shameful kind of blush crept through her body. Powerless. At another person's mercy.

  “I should have had you executed,” Marea murmured.

  Kazak laughed, as he went to grab some towels, before he hauled her out of the tub. “I think you would have had a bad time, princess, trying to execute me.” A dark grin lifted his lips as he deliberately allowed his fingers to trail over her left and right nipples. To her annoyance, the nipples pebbled under his touch, reacting to the stimulus.

  The dragon's eyes dilated slightly, before he wrapped the towels around her, rubbing her skin gently with the material. Any moment, against her will, he could take her, but instead chose to act in this suggestive, teasing manner. Testing the boundaries. Seeing what stirred beneath her royal surface, buried under layers of protocol, and the rose mask she wore.

  Those eyes devoured her as she was rubbed dry, his hands firm against her skin, generating an almost painful friction that helped wake up her brain, and remind herself that she was alive, and not a frozen ice stick. When she finally clambered into the bedsheets, with new clothes on her that were slightly too big even for her broad shoulders, she began to calm down. His clothes? Speaking of clothes, she wondered how he came across the uniform he wore. The normal way? Or did he kill someone to wear that outfit?

  She didn't want to think about that as her eyes fluttered shut, and she curled up in the heavy sheets of the bed. Far away from home. Too far to be saved.

  What sort of things would she be subject to? She never studied the lessons about what dragons preferred to do with their princesses. She remembered something about towers, because that was the one basic fact everyone knew, and she certainly was in one now. What did dragons even do, anyway? Just collect treasure and ravage villages? Did they have a society? A reason to do these things?

  All the thoughts whirled in her head like a storm. The warmth of the bed tugged at her, lulling her thoughts into some form of sleep, though she dreaded what the next day would bring.

  She also knew, somewhere in the darkness, as he turned off the enchanted braziers, that he was watching her. Studying his new catch.

  Chapter Three

  It became quickly obvious to Marea that being a dragon's princess, or at least this dragon's princess, was hard work. From the first day, after she'd thoroughly defrosted from her unpleasant night flight, he set her to work. Actual work. He seriously just gave her a broom and a mop and bucket, and told her to clean her tower. Then, after she finished that, to clean the bigger rooms.

  “Princesses don't work!” She exclaimed, and he merely raised an eyebrow.

  “You'll work for me,” he replied. “Or would you prefer I leave you on the side of the mountain?”

  That threat became compounded when he hauled her over his shoulder and proceeded to take her to the entrance, where he warned her any other dragons loitering nearby might enjoy a bite out of her.

  Grumbling, irritated, Marea did as expected, though the humiliation burned deep. Princesses didn't clean. Princesses didn't dust and mop.

  She tackled the floor furiously, and felt massively incompetent doing it, because she didn't know how to work her way around a broom. How to dust, or how to not scream when a huge spider came crawling out of the corners.

  Marea used water from the Tub of Plenty, and soon found additional complications for the mop and bucket, because the mop got dirty fast, and she couldn't wring out the dirt, meaning she kept spreading it along and achieving absolutely nothing.

  Kazak found her frustration vastly amusing. He took a fiendish delight in giving her mundane tasks, just to watch her struggle. Manual labor – the worst thing to inflict upon a princess. Ever.

  Never mind she once felt envious of the castle maidens, so efficiently doing their tasks. Screw it, she didn't want any more part in this. Her soft hands hardened under the labour. Her limbs throbbed. And all the while, though she got food served to her, and was locked up in the tower every single night, she felt his presence. Even when Kazak went away on business, doing whatever it was that dragons did. Probably cackling to himself for capturing a princess and outsmarting all her guards.

  Once, Kazak had friends visiting, and he proudly showed her off to them, and they nodded appropriately, impressed at how Kazak managed to snatch her from the jaws of her kingdom.

  “I had to make do with a nobleman's daughter,” one of the dragons said mournfully. “She can cook, at least, so I make sure she does dinner for me every day. She puts a lot of nightshade in the meal. Adds quite a wonderful flavor.”

  Uh... Marea imagined the dragon's princess throwing all sorts of poisons in his meals, only to find him eat them all with a wide smile and a smack of his lips.

  That must be slightly demoralizing. She refrained from saying anything, and vaguely followed a conversation about an annual convention something, though mostly, she plotted to escape. The dragons seemed to prefer going around the caverns in human forms, rather than restrict themselves to huge fire breathing lizards that probably wouldn't be able to digest smaller portions of food in satisfaction.

  He kept giving her mundane tasks. She struggled through another day of stupid, pointless, arduous labor, when the dragon clearly didn't care whether the caverns had cobwebs draping every inch of the cave or not. She soon progressed to washing dirty dishes and clothes, as her selection of b
aggy, oversized items best suited for a male body ran out.

  Every night without fail as well, Kazak watched her as she slumped into her bed, utterly exhausted from the day's activities, sometimes nursing extra callouses on her soft hands. They were getting less soft, nowadays.

  Any other circumstance, she would have admitted him to be a handsome man. With a body fully under his control and presence of mind, reflected in the way he moved with a prowl, like a predator observing his prey, those green eyes fixated on her. Every night, she saw him undressing her in his mind, along with that awful smirk of his, as if he was just waiting for her to comment, so he could act upon his threats.

  One particularly disastrous cleaning session left her with a ruined carpet and with no effective way to dry it, and she threw down everything in a huff, irritated that she needed to keep doing this.

  He didn't say anything about her loss of temper, but when it came to later on that night, instead of watching her, he approached her. Her heart rate leaped up to almost triple the pace, and she actively shivered, which didn't go unnoticed on the dragon. She squeezed her eyes shut as he leaned forward and whispered into her ear, leaving a burning sensation there, “The more I see you, the more tempted I am to fuck you here and there.”

  Oh, Hell's teeth. The words stabbed inside, turning her into a pool of liquid flame, sending crackles of electricity straight to her core. Her reaction again shamed her. How could she be like this to the one who took her from home, and made her work until the bruises showed upon her hands? He didn't show any signs of affection, just amusement, long glances, and the tantalizing brush over of his hands on her.

  “Have you ever pleasured yourself before?” Now his teeth nibbled at her left ear, and she resisted the urge to jerk back, though a small whimper escaped her throat.

  No. She never had. She wouldn't really know where to begin. Royals weren't supposed to ask such degrading questions. Her mother and father never brought up the topic. They implied she needed to wait for the right prince, and then he would take her maidenhead. Like she was giving him a gift, or something, like she was trading something precious and valuable, that apparently a lot of men wanted.

  She thought all intercourse would be was for producing babies, but Kazak seemed determined to push the line with her, to keep her running in a strange state of empty, as if she needed something to fill her up. The empty settled in her stomach, itched at her core, but she felt too scared to touch down there, because in those moments of empty, it felt so sensitive, that surely nothing but pain would follow her touch.

  Or... she'd like it, like those whores in the brothels, who smiled decadently and draped themselves over the men, spreading their legs for anyone who paid them coin.

  Sinful. Undignified. Nothing to do with royal blood.

  Kazak's lips moved to her neck, exhaling hot air which made her body jerk, her spine contract in heat and arousal – arousal? And her toes curl.

  It's like he's casting a spell over me. My limbs feel so weak. I don't... I don't understand why my body is reacting like this.

  His eyes captured her soul in a gleam of green, and his hand traced patterns in her silken skin.

  “How soft,” he whispered, making Marea think that Kazak was hard, like a chunk of rock, carved out of the mountain he lived on. She was fragile in comparison. She flinched under his touch, her chest heaving, unconsciously widening the gap between her legs as she sighed. If she was soft like lambswool, Kazak was hard like sandpaper, where the wrong pressure would rip away the layers on her skin to reveal the extra soft inside, with all her feelings bundled up in silk ribbons and royal protocol.

  For the first time, and her cheeks ignited with the revelation – she wasn't sure if she wanted him to go away, or to stop touching her.

  What kind of princess did that make her, then? Not one to be proud of. A horrible, decadent person. Decadent. The thought sent a forbidden elixir inside her, one that saturated her already charged bones.

  Kazak wore a lazy, dominant smile, a hint of darkness caught in the firelight that flickered around them. The bedsheets rustled as he moved his hand lower, and ran the very tip of his tongue over her jawline and cheeks.

  “Y-you should stop,” she hissed.

  “What for? You're mine, remember? I can do with you as I wish.” Kazak's smile became impish. “So, you've never pleasured yourself. What a demure lady. And you're quite old for an unmarried princess too, aren't you?”

  The stab at her age infuriated her, and filled her with disappointment, mostly at herself. “So, what if I'm older than your average princess?”

  He smiled in response, his hand dipping lower, now across the bare flesh of her stomach, making her shrink away from his touch as it tickled.

  “I imagine keeping yourself away from temptation for so long... must build up quite a potent energy. The kind where you dream and long, but never dare act upon your thoughts...” his voice dropped to a whisper, and Marea held her breath as his hand brushed into her panties. Her body stiffened. Her heart beat at a frenzied place, and her limbs trembled. She forgot how to breathe, as his finger dipped lower, lower, until it brushed apart the delicate substance down there. He lifted the sheets now, exposing her, and she saw his hand now tugging off her panties, leaving her legs open, and her face on fire.

  “I'm going to do you a favor, princess,” Kazak said. “Because I can almost guarantee you've never even looked at what you have down there. Have you?”

  Of course not! I'm not a whore! She attempted to wriggle away, but he clamped her down.

  “Interesting. A dragon, a completely different species from you, knows more about a woman's body parts than an actual woman. You princesses really are made of air and light, aren't you? I'm doing you a favor right now. The things you've been suppressing yourself from... watch.”

  Kazak helped adjust Marea so that she was sat up against the headrest, her legs parted, and he kneeled between them. She caught a distinctive bulge in his pants – he was clearly enjoying the act. Enjoying the control.

  How did a dragon know about a woman, anyway?

  Only with experience. How many princesses had he captured before, or noblewomen? How many taverns had he frequented under the guise of a human, with that mysterious ability to shapeshift? And could all dragons shapeshift?

  That put a new spin on things. Perhaps their high success rate of capturing princesses came with the shifting. But then, why did no princess mention it when they were rescued?

  “Humans have soft spots along their bodies. Areas that are more sensitive to touch than others. Fetishes, if you will. Some people, for example, love having their feet played with. Others, it's kissing the neck. Others still, it's pain or being stroked on the underside of their arms.” He demonstrated each area as he spoke, the rough fingers of his left hand touching her ticklish foot, her neck, her arms, along with the faint scratch of pain on her shoulders. She traced each movement in her mind and with her eye, often holding her breath, finding every single point of contact pleasurable and scandalous. She also felt disconnected from her body, as if it didn't belong to her, because it didn't respond to any of the voices in her head telling her to get away, to protest, to stop this, somehow. She just lay there, trembling like a mouse as the cat played with her, all the power under his command. It was strange how areas not related to sex could be so arousing.

  “Here,” Kazak murmured, his green eyes flashing as he caught her startled gasp, as his hand dug under her nightshirt and seized her right breast. “Sometimes these are sensitive. And when you are aroused, your nipple pokes out. See?” His fingers circled her nipple, and it stood almost painfully to attention, greedy for his touch. “Some women like to be pinched, but I think a princess like you is rather unused to pain.”

  A princess like me? She didn't know whether to feel insulted or not about that. Her mind was on fire, along with the rest of her body, and she wanted him to hurry up, to reach the part of her that ached for contact, the space between her legs.<
br />
  How horrifying, that she wanted to be used. Violated, even. Was this normal? Did anyone else feel like this?

  “You'll be surprised on how few people truly know their bodies,” Kazak whispered. “It's a shame. People act like their bodies are evil, when their bodies are simply designed to react to stimulus. Like here...” his right hand slid between her thighs, brushing over the trimmed hairs there. “You have a lot going on, here. Take this. Your entrance is here. It's where your blood comes out, your children. It becomes wet when you are aroused. Like so...” his finger glided along her impossible wetness down there, and she heard a soft groan from him. For some reason, that noise turned all her senses to hyper alert, making her far more aware of everything he was doing, and the subtle expression changes in his face. His warmth radiated over her, overwhelming her sense of being with the strength of his aura, the way he stole attention just by walking into a room, drawing her focus without fail like a magnet to observe him.

  “You don't have a hymen. Not all women have one fully developed, or they can be torn from activities. So it's not always a good indicator if you're a virgin. But you are... I can see it by the flush in your cheeks, and the way you shiver.”

  I should get him to stop now. Before he...

  She cried out as one finger slipped into her entrance. He pushed in slowly, to give her time to adjust. “You're tight.” He sighed as he said that, before his long finger touched something inside her. “This... is what is rumored to be your sweet spot.” His finger, buried inside her, pushed against the sweet spot. It felt odd, peculiar, but not unpleasant. It didn't feel as pleasurable as she expected, however, and a wave of disappointment hit. He pressed a few more times, and it was nice, strange, but not sweet.

  “Hmm. Not all women are able to come this way,” Kazak said. He allowed his hand to slip out of her. “Do you know that you don't pee from there?”