by Maia Starr
We weren’t technically married, but Glenn still carried me through the doorway of his apartment all the same, and we kissed, and I realized how long it had been since I had been intimate with somebody.
True, Xavier and I had had sex semi-regularly, but I felt as though I was nothing more than a vessel for him and spent most of the time thinking of somebody else and, if I had the energy, masturbating to completion after he finished and fell asleep.
It was sex, but nobody would confuse it for making love.
There was more intimacy, passion, and emotion in that kiss that Glenn gave me once we went through the door than I had experienced in the entirety of my relationship with Xavier. And, though it seems unfair to compare, the fact is that I didn’t realize how much I was missing until Glenn gave it to me.
He paused when we released from the kiss, and we stared at each other for a moment. I told myself it wasn’t real. It was just brain hormones, loneliness, and desperation, not to mention my long-held desire to be with a dragon.
Real or not, it was clear he felt it, too.
“Would you like to come to the bedroom with me?” he asked.
My brain kept on trying to talk me out of it. “You barely know him, Amelia,” it said. “What would happen if Xavier found out?” And, logically, perhaps, my brain was right. But there’s more to life than just doing the “right” thing, and I knew that, looking back on this, even if it was wrong, it was the kind of wrong thing I wouldn’t regret.
Or, to put it another way, I worried I would regret not doing it much more than I’d regret doing it.
“I would love to,” I said.
He laid me down gently on the bed, lying on top of me so I could feel his weight but without it crushing me. He rubbed his face against mine, letting me feel his soft stubble before giving my lower lip long, delicate kisses that caused my whole body to quiver.
I knew I was ready for him, but I also wanted the moment to last and needed to let everything progress with a natural rhythm.
“You’re shaking,” he said. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
I checked in with myself. I was, indeed, shaking. And I didn’t know if it was fear or excitement or a combination of the two. My heart was racing and I felt like I was doing something wrong, but I also knew that it’s what I wanted to be doing.
So I told myself to make the decision and stick with it.
“I’m sure,” I said. He leaned forward and kept kissing me, each one more passionate than the last. Every time one kiss ended, I didn’t think he’d be able to top it, but then he’d move in again and let his lips take me away to a place of pure emotion and joy.
I felt like a teenager again. Like I could make-out with him forever and never get bored. Nothing seemed to matter other than that moment right then and sharing it with him. We were in perfect sync with each other, with him moving his body along with mine as if we were in a slow, close dance.
I was so focused on his lips that I barely noticed him become hard through his clothes, rubbing up against me, and the blood rushed from my face. My breathing quickened and, for a split second, I worried I might pass out. I didn’t want to miss a second of this.
He moved his hands over my body, caressing my breasts, moving down to the hips of my jeans, gripping me tightly.
“Let’s get these off,” he said.
I tried to say yes, but all that came out was a faint gasp. I nodded my head. He unbuttoned my pants and took them off. I pulled my shirt over my head and laid there in my bra and underwear, watching him as he took a step back from the bed and pulled his shirt off, revealing his tight abs and muscular chest, smooth and perfect, as if somebody had carved him from stone and a lightning bolt came and brought him to life.
A shimmer of scales drifted across his torso, his inner dragon making a cameo appearance. I worried it might take control of him the way other shifters, one I knew in particular, sometimes had trouble keeping their other form in check.
But I wasn’t afraid. He was completely in control of both himself and me.
He moved his hands to my thighs and placed his face between my legs.
“May I?” he asked.
The question alone nearly made me cum.
I slid my panties down and he pulled them the rest of the way off. He kissed my inner thighs, moving higher and higher up my legs until he reached the top and rubbed his tongue slowly up my labia to my clit.
I couldn’t help it: I let out an audible gasp, louder than I expected.
“Feel good?” he asked.
“Keep going,” I urged him, putting my hands on his shoulders as he held my hips down and continued going down on me, taking his sweet time and letting me feel everything as he slowly moved toward focusing on my clit, turning his tongue clockwise around me. A fire burned inside me, and without even trying, my body shuddered with an intense orgasm, and I screamed his name as tears of joy fell down my face.
I didn’t realize just how much I needed that release.
Chapter Seven
Glenn
I loved the taste of her pussy. I could eat her out all day. Her legs wrapped tightly around my head, holding me in place as I moved my tongue around her. She climaxed almost instantly, shouting my name, digging her nails into my shoulders, before falling back on the bed, catching her breath.
It was music to my ears, listening to the pure pleasure she voiced as she came and feeling it pulse through her body. I wanted to do it again and again and again.
“Can I keep going?” I asked.
“Gently,” she said. “I’m going to need a chance to recover.”
I lightly tongued her skin, letting her moans guide my way. It was an effort to hold myself back, forcing myself not to push too hard and to treat her like the delicate flower she was. I looked up at her, the dreamy goddess, eyes closed in a state of pure bliss, and I had to remind myself that she was human.
“I’ve never been with a dragon,” she said. “I couldn’t have imagined…”
I kissed her, right on her clit, and she didn’t finish her sentence.
“I’m just getting warmed up,” I told her.
“Do you know how long it’s been since someone’s done that for me?”
I didn’t and didn’t care to guess. The truth was I knew I had to be careful with her. Yes, for her sake, but also for mine. Dragon-shifters tend to be very monogamous beings, and relationships I’d been in before had all ended because I feared that I was getting too close.
Already, with Amelia, I felt a bond forming. I had felt it from the moment I’d seen her picture. All I wanted to do was make her happy.
She pushed my head away and looked at me.
“I want to see you,” she said. “All of you.”
I took a step back from the bed and pulled down my pants, feeling my hard-on push against my briefs. She saw it, too, from the look in her eyes.
“Those, too,” she said, pointing to my briefs.
I slid them down, standing there naked in front of her, feeling exposed.
“I want you,” she said.
“I’ll be gentle,” I said, moving toward the bed on top of her.
“Not too gentle.”
She was dripping wet, and I slid right into her as she gasped. I made eye contact with her, making sure she was okay. Making sure I wasn’t hurting her. She nodded her head and I pushed my hips against her, feeling her warmth all around my cock.
I bit my lower lip. I wanted to make the moment last, and that meant focusing.
In one movement, I lifted her up and held her on my lap close to me, letting her control the rhythm and take me inside of her as she wrapped her arms around me. With each movement of hers up and down on top of me, I felt myself climb deeper and deeper into her. I kissed her and she kissed back, both of us communicating only through sounds and the flow of our bodies into each other, until it was as if we were truly one being, both of us connected by the sensations we felt, and time stood still.
A seco
nd could have been an hour or vice versa. Any self-consciousness I felt before, naked in front of Amelia, melted away, and I felt like I was myself, not holding up some sort of mask to impress her or anybody else.
I had sex before, in other relationships with people I felt I cared about, but this was a new experience for me. It was the kind of thing you hear about in New Age circles. A transcendent experience, almost meditative. I didn’t want it to end.
“Glenn,” Amelia said. “I want you to take me from behind. I want you to pound me. Hard.”
She lifted herself off of me and turned around on the bed.
“Jesus Christ,” she said. “I’ve never been so wet in my life.”
I leaned up against her and guided my penis to her pussy. “You tell me if I need to hold back.”
“Are you even listening?” she asked. “I said I want you to pound me hard. As hard as you can.”
I didn’t think she knew what she was asking for.
I leaned into her and began thrusting, pulling her to me quickly.
“Slow,” she said. “Slow, but hard.”
I slowed my pace, pushing myself into her, grunting.
“Harder,” she said.
I pushed harder, still holding back so as not to hurt her.
“I said harder, dammit,” she said. “Fuck me hard. I can take it.”
She wanted hard? She was going to get hard. I pushed into her, slamming my body against her ass, pushing my cock deep inside of her.
“Yes!” she screamed. “Like that.”
I pushed and I pushed, holding her in place and hearing her moan with each deepening thrust.
She angled herself a bit against me. “Right there,” she said. “Keep hitting me right there.”
I kept doing exactly what I was doing, slamming into her, my cock into her pussy, my balls slapping against her clit. She pushed her face into the pillow and clenched onto it hard. She screamed as her whole body shook, pushing herself into me until she collapsed exhausted onto the bed.
I pulled out and laid down next to her, spooning her against me.
She took several deep breaths, in and out. “That’s two,” she said. “Let me catch my breath because it’s your turn to cum.”
She turned around on the bed, leaning her body on my chest, drawing little circles with her fingers.
“Is this what the next year is going to be like?” she asked.
“I can only hope.”
“That was intense. That was…that was something else. You’re very, very good.”
She took a few more deep breaths.
“You hear stories,” she said, “about dragon-shifters and you wonder, are they just stereotypes or something? People have to be exaggerating. I don’t know. I couldn’t describe that if I tried.”
I rubbed my hand across her back.
“That feels good,” she said.
“You’re pretty amazing yourself,” I said, knowing how stupid it sounded.
“You’re just saying that.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think this is just a…” I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t say that there was something about her and me. Something about us that made it so good. We had to be together for a year, and then we had to separate. I couldn’t come on too strong. This had to just be sex and, at most, a friendship. I couldn’t fall in love with her.
“I think you’re unbelievable in bed,” I said and left it like that.
She blushed and kissed me, then climbed on top of me.
“I want you to cum for me,” she said, sliding herself easily onto my cock, then began rocking back and forth. “I want you to cum in me.”
She shifted her weight, slowly at first, feeling me inside of her, closing her eyes to focus. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her beautiful curvy body. I stared at her breasts moving along with her movements, following them just a half second behind. I lusted after her perfect skin and wanted to run my tongue over every square inch of it. And her face, full of exhausted pleasure and a thin layer of perspiration—I don’t think I’d ever seen anything more beautiful.
“You feel so good,” she said. “How do you want to cum in me?”
“I want—”
“No,” she said. “Don’t tell me. Take me.”
I took her body and lifted it off of me, then put her on the bed, holding her arms down as I leaned on top of her.
“Yes, yes!” she said.
I kissed her mouth passionately as I took my cock and thrust it into her. I picked up speed.
“Yes! Yes!”
I felt the orgasm building inside of me. It was going to be intense.
“Oh my God,” she said. She grabbed onto my arms, squeezing them tight as I felt my release into her and all the tension in my body melt away.
It was enough for her. She screamed my name and quivered, cumming one last time, along with me. I released her arms and she wrapped them around me as I fell on top of her, exhausted.
We stared at each other and didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then she leaned forward and kissed me hard.
“You have no idea how much I needed that,” she said.
She fell asleep shortly thereafter, but I stayed awake, worried. My seed was inside her. Yes, it was what I wanted, but there was a large amount of guilt to go along with it. We never talked about what would happen if she got pregnant and I feared I was being dishonest to her, as the plan was to take the baby away from her as soon as it was born, to be my heir.
I didn’t know how to bring it up because I didn’t want her to leave me. As much as I hated to admit it, I was already forming a bond with her. And along with that was the same fear that filled me during past relationships. Was I getting too close? Was I going to abandon her just like I did everybody else? And, in her case, was I going to abandon her and take her baby?
I didn’t want it to be that way with her. I didn’t want to fall into my same old traps. I really liked her and didn’t want to ruin this out of fear or whatever else I always fell victim to. I really meant it when I said I wanted to become a brand-new me, and it wasn’t just breaking the habit of using money to control people.
I was getting older, and maybe it was time to start settling down.
I just wasn’t supposed to settle down with her. That was the agreement. Give it a year, Angie said. I’d be sick of her by the end of it. This is just new relationship energy. It’ll fade like it always does. Appreciate it while it lasts.
I looked at her, asleep, curled up beside me. Maybe this was nothing but a chemical response to someone new, but even so, it sure was wonderful.
Chapter Eight
Amelia
The next two weeks were among the very best in my life. Glenn took me out on dates every night and we almost never left each other’s side. I taught him how to cook some simple dishes, and he helped when I worked on something more complicated. Either way, he always did the dishes.
We adopted a vegan kitchen after consulting a doctor to ensure that, as a dragon-shifter, Glenn could still get his nutritional needs met on an entirely plant-based diet. (The doctor said it should be fine, but recommended Glenn and I both take daily multivitamins to be sure.)
And, of course, the sex was unbelievable. It had never occurred to me that I could be with a partner who actually placed importance on my pleasure. Glenn was incredibly giving and, as a nice side effect, I quickly learned to prioritize his pleasure as well. In the past, I’d been with partners where it seemed like we were just using each other’s bodies as sort of masturbation tools and it became a race to ensure that I could reach climax before they did. Even when I succeeded, it was never completely satisfying.
It wasn’t that way with Glenn. For every orgasm I gave him, he’d give me four or five. And each one was unbelievably satisfying and exhausting. There wasn’t a single night where I didn’t sleep well.
Time was going by so quickly that it took me by surprise when Glenn told me that it was already the day we scheduled to get married.
Also, during that time, Xavier had been texting me. I knew I shouldn’t be afraid of him. I was with Glenn and there was no way he could find me, but every time the phone buzzed, a chill went down my spine, sending my heart racing in a completely different way than Glenn made it race. It became a Pavlovian response that took me a few minutes to shake every time. The instant I heard the phone, I was mentally back at the apartment with Xavier, walking on eggshells and fearful that I’d set him off.
The texts had started benign enough:
Where are you?
I’m sorry, Amelia. Please forgive me.
Please call me, Amelia. I’m worried.
Are you there? Just let me know you’re okay.
I could have just turned my phone off, and that’s what I ended up doing a lot of the time, but invariably, I’d turn it back on to check email or keep up with what was going on in the news, and new notifications popped up at the top of the screen.
And they became increasingly threatening, at least in terms of how they felt, though there was nothing I could point to that was a specific threat:
If you don’t call me, I’m going to file a missing persons report.
You can’t hide forever, Amelia. How long do you expect this to go on?
I will find you.
Come back on your own and we can forget all of this ever happened.
I wanted to turn off my phone the day of our wedding. I didn’t want Xavier to interfere with it. I wanted to pretend he didn’t exist, but I had to pick up the dress and head to City Hall, and that meant using the GPS. And what if Glenn had to get in contact with me?