Dragonel

by Tiegan Clyne

  “Ask him if you can cum,” Christopher ordered softly, just as entranced as everyone else.

  “Sir,” Sebastian panted, “may I cum?”

  David pulled off his cock just long enough to answer, “Yes.”

  He swallowed him down again, just in time to catch the torrent of hot seed that Sebastian released. The dragonel purred in his pleasure, the sound loud and rumbling from the center of his chest, and he snapped his hips twice before David stilled them with his hands. The dinner guest followed him through his orgasm, swallowing everything that he could give.

  When it was over, David rose, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. “Best sixty thousand credits I ever drank.”

  Christopher, still staring into Sebastian’s eyes, asked, “What do you say, dragonel?”

  He was panting. “Thank you, sir.”

  David nodded. “You’re welcome, pet.” His hands fell to his belt. “And now I want you to finish me.”

  Christopher nodded to Sebastian. “Get on your hands and knees.”

  He was grateful for the release from the position he’d been kneeling in. He got on all fours as David limbered his slender manhood, already stiff with need. Sebastian took him in his mouth, eager to show the onlookers at the dining room table what he could do. He had never been an exhibitionist before, but now, through whatever alchemy Christopher had performed, he found that he felt their gazes like hands, touching him, adding to his arousal and his pleasure. He concentrated on making David moan, feeling the way the man trembled as Sebastian swallowed him down. He took him all the way to the root and held him there through his own need to breathe, feeling watchers caught up in the moment and anticipating when he would pull back. He felt like he was pleasuring all of them, not just this stranger, and it made him feel both powerful and free.

  David didn’t last long beneath his ministrations, and all too soon he came in a messy burst, painting Sebastian’s face with strings of white. The dragonel licked his lips, and Christopher nodded his approval. Through it all, their eye contact had barely wavered, and it was intact as Sebastian slowly rose up onto his knees and clasped his hands behind his back again.

  David stepped back, putting himself into his trousers. “Belky,” he whispered. “Clean him.”

  One of the other cryptomorphs left her spot on the podium and came to Sebastian. Her four pendulous breasts swung as she enthusiastically licked the dragonel’s face clean. It was all he could do to hold still while she tongue-bathed him, and he heard Lord Ashmar’s hard chuckle.

  “Seems he doesn’t care for the treatment, David.”

  “It’s her job to see to it that my semen never goes to waste,” he answered, still a trifle breathless.

  “Why?” the Countess mocked. “It isn’t as if it’s worth anything.”

  The diners laughed, and it felt to Sebastian that a spell had been broken. He was disappointed that he was no longer in control of the group, and as soon as that thought crossed his mind, he was surprised by it.

  Christopher came forward. “Enough.” The cryptomorph scampered away, and Sebastian’s master cleansed his face with a warm, wet towel. “There.”

  His master smiled briefly and turned away. He discarded the soiled towel with one of the liveried servants and returned to his seat beside the Countess.

  David took a deep draught from his water goblet, then said, “Come, now. I can’t be the only one who wants to sample this new creature.”

  Sebastian realized that he should have been gazing down at the floor, but he was feeling emboldened and instead looked at the people at the table. The Countess was there, looking pleased, which he supposed boded well for him. Beside her sat Christopher, who was doing a good job of feigning boredom. Lord Ashmar sat on the Countess’s other side, his black uniform as immaculate at ever. He was glaring daggers at Sebastian over the lip of his wine glass. On Lord Ashmar’s other side was a plump bottle blonde in a green dress that was just a bit too snug. Emeralds and diamonds encircled her throat and dripped from her ears. Beside her was a little man in a tuxedo whose face was flushed, his fair eyes pinched as he fought some inner battle. He was the man who had carried the clipboard when the Countess had visited Crown Holdings.

  Beside Christopher was a beautiful woman with auburn hair and a low-cut black gown. When she spoke, Sebastian recognized her as Natalie.

  “How did he taste?”

  On Natalie’s other side, David answered, “Delectable.”

  Lord Ashmar sneered, “If you insist.”

  “You should sample him,” David suggested.

  “Lord Ashmar has no taste for dragonels,” the Countess said, smiling at her uniformed companion. “Do you?”

  “Nothing with any dragon blood.” He fixed his hateful glare on Sebastian and on the blue dragonel female beside him. “I hate them all.”

  Frank, who must have been the little man on the end, spoke in a strange, almost choked tone. “Show us your hatred, Lord Ashmar.”

  The blue dragonel at Sebastian’s side froze, and he could smell the terror rolling from her in waves. The uniformed man looked at Frank.

  “Are you offering your dragonel?”

  “No,” the Countess interrupted. “He’s offering mine.”

  A flash of alarm crossed Christopher’s face, but he said nothing. Lord Ashmar looked at the Countess and asked, “You’d truly turn this golden beast over to me?”

  “To you and your cane, yes.” She looked at Sebastian. “He needs to be reminded where his gaze should rest.”

  He hurriedly looked back down at the floor.

  Lord Ashmar stood up and left the table. Cold panic traced an icy path down Sebastian’s spine as the man walked slowly to the platform.

  “Have the other pets leave us,” the Countess ordered. “This is going to be a special treat and they will only be in the way.”

  “Madam,” Christopher began, but he fell silent.

  The other cryptomorphs abandoned the platform, most of them with evident relief, and Sebastian was left alone. Lord Ashmar stalked toward him, a cane tapping against his polished knee-high boots. The cane was thick and black, and the tip was capped with silver. Sebastian couldn’t stop looking at the shining metal as it snapped against the boot leather.

  “Well,” Lord Ashmar ground out, his hand gripping the back of Sebastian’s neck, “this will be very interesting.”

  Chapter Eight

  Lord Ashmar grabbed Sebastian’s collar and pulled him forward so he had to catch himself with his hands to keep from slamming his face into the platform.

  “Keep him that way,” the Countess commanded. “I want to see his face, since he was so interested in all of ours.”

  Sebastian stayed on his hands and knees. He didn’t know where to look, but he knew that he shouldn’t look at the people still sitting at the table. He swallowed hard as Lord Ashmar walked around behind him. He stole a glance at Christopher, who was looking at his plate. The Countess took her grandson’s chin in her hand and forced him to turn toward the spectacle that was about to unfold.

  Lord Ashmar’s cane pressed across Sebastian’s buttocks, and he knew without a doubt what was coming next. His stomach tightened with fear, and his insides began to tremble. He didn’t have any conscious memory of being caned, but his body clearly remembered, and the physical responses that he was having filled him with dread and nausea.

  “How many strokes?” the uniformed man asked.

  “There were seven faces he was not supposed to look upon,” the Countess responded. “One stroke for each, and three more for good measure. I do so love round numbers, don’t you?”

  Lord Ashmar chuckled. “I do.”

  One cold hand ran over Sebastian’s skin, smoothing the areas that the cane would soon make red and raw. Lord Ashmar’s fingers delved into the crack between the globes, then pressed into the dragonel’s clenched hole. Sebastian was grateful that Christopher had lubricated him before, because as much as it hurt to be suddenly breached by f
our fingers at once, it would have been much worse without it. His tormentor thrust his fingers into him three times, then pulled free abruptly. Sebastian suspected there would be more of that sort of attention soon enough.

  Christopher tried again. “Madam, ten strokes…”

  “Are you questioning me?”

  “I merely…”

  “Silence. Do you want ten stokes of your own?” she threatened.

  Christopher answered, “No.” In Sebastian’s mind, he said, -I’m sorry. Be strong. Remember what I told you about moments.-

  Lord Ashmar spanked Sebastian’s ass once, leaving a stinging handprint. “On your mark, my lady?”

  “You may begin.”

  “Count them out,” Lord Ashmar ordered.

  The first blow landed like a thunderbolt, chasing the breath out of his lungs with a blinding flash of pain. Burning heat followed close behind, and he gasped.

  “I said, count!”

  “One!”

  Ashmar grabbed his hair and hauled back on it, craning his neck. “What did you say?”

  “One, sir!”

  He released his hold on Sebastian’s head, and a second stripe landed just below the first. He gasped again, and his voice was a ragged cry. “Two, sir!”

  The cane whistled, and his whole body jolted forward with the force of the blow. His eyes filled with desperate tears. “Three, sir!”

  Ashmar’s hand rubbed the three welts, and he pinched them, increasing the pain. Sebastian whimpered. He knew that Christopher had tried to intercede, but his mind still cried out, wondering why his master was doing nothing to prevent this torment. The strange emotions that had flooded him with Christopher’s touch were fading, leaving him confused, angry, and ashamed.

  Again and again the cane whipped him, and again he dutifully called out the numbers, gritting his teeth to keep from screaming. He knew that the seventh blow split his skin, because he could hear the popping sound, and the smell of his own blood rose around him. He squeezed his eyes shut to hide the fact that he was weeping, but tears escaped anyway, dripping kohl down his cheeks. Blood trickled down the backs of his legs, and there were still three blows to come.

  The cane lanced across his thighs, and he tried to escape the blow, but Ashmar grabbed his hair and held him in place. He forgot to count, capable only of crying out in anguish. Another blow, and another, and then Ashmar’s hand was once more jamming at his hole, forcing between the swollen buttocks and shoving into Sebastian’s body up to the wrist. Sebastian screamed, and Ashmar punched into his body brutally.

  “Stop!”

  It was Christopher’s voice, and Ashmar pulled away, ripping his hand free and stalking out of the room. The cane clattered to the floor in his wake.

  His master was with him then, and Sebastian sobbed onto his shoulder. He scooped Sebastian up into his arms as if he weighed nothing, and he carried him out of the room.

  “Christopher!”

  It was the Countess’s voice, and Sebastian’s owner stiffened at the sound, but he kept walking. Sebastian wept, delirious with pain.

  Ashmar spent a long while in the bathroom of his guest suite, washing the blood and lubricant from his hand. He had left his uniform jacket on the bed, with his sweat-soiled shirt beside it. He had a spatter of orange-red blood on his cheek, sparkling with the infernal gold dust of the dragonel, from where one of the cane blows had opened the monster’s skin and splashed back at him. He wiped the blood away.

  The clicking of high heels warned him of the Countess’s approach. She crossed her arms and leaned on the door jamb, smiling at him.

  “Well, that was quite a display.”

  “I hate them.”

  “Obviously.” She stepped forward and thrust her hand into the waistband of his trousers, reaching down to touch the moisture that pooled in the front of his briefs. She pulled her hand back, and her fingertips smudged with his drying cum. “But you can’t tell me that you hate the way it feels when you beat them.”

  His eyes met hers through the bathroom mirror reflection. “You know that I don’t.”

  “You’re a singular sadist,” she complimented. “That’s why you have a place here in Numea instead of back in Kistral where I found you.”

  He scowled and straightened, drying his hands. “I don’t need to be reminded which city I’m from, Your Grace.”

  “Nor do I.” She put her dirty hand on the back of his neck. “I enjoyed the performance, but next time, do be more careful. He’s the only gold dragonel that I have, and unlike you, I want more of them around. I hope you didn’t break him.”

  The Countess took his hand towel and wiped her fingers on it as she walked away from the bathroom door. He said after her, “If I broke him, you can always make another.”

  She turned and looked at him, and all pretenses of good humor had flown from her eyes. “He is the first that’s been born in seventy years, Soren. If it were that easy to create them, I’d have been done with him by now.”

  “Why do you need them, these drragonels?”

  “Because I want them, and that is reason enough.”

  She tossed the soiled towel onto his bed and walked away.

  Christopher carried Sebastian to his private rooms. It took some juggling to hold his weeping dragonel and punch in the security code at the same time, but he managed. Once they were inside, he kicked the door closed and carried Sebastian into the bedroom.

  He had known as soon as Ashmar asked for him that a line would be crossed. Dinner entertainments were sexual, but they were for pleasure, not punishment. Ashmar, though, loathed all things dragon with a deep, burning hatred, and any time he touched a dragonel, there was always blood. He knew Ashmar would cane Sebastian, but he hadn’t expected the fisting. That had been too much.

  He should have stood up to his grandmother. He shouldn’t have been such a coward.

  Christopher gently laid Sebastian on the bed, turning his golden head so that he could breathe. The injured cryptomorph was crying, and it was the sound that a child would make when he’d been thrashed for something he didn’t understand. It was a pitiable, heart-breaking sound, and hearing it almost made Christopher want to weep, too. if weeping was something that his kind could do.

  When he was certain that Sebastian was as comfortable as he could be under the circumstances, lying face down on the satin coverlet, Christopher grabbed his medical bag. He cleaned and treated the dragonel’s injuries with surgical glue and salves. Sebastian had gone into shock, which in dragonels exhibited itself in high fever. He gave him a fever reducer, an anti-inflammatory and pain medications, and under the effects of the pharmaceutical cocktail, Sebastian slid away into dreamless sleep.

  Christopher bathed him then, using the cosmetic cleanser to clean away the gold paint and make-up. He seethed as he worked.

  The Countess would be coming soon to gloat, and he didn’t want to hear it. Though he knew there would be consequences, he went to the keypad on the main door and reprogrammed the lock sequence. If she wanted to come into his private chambers, she was going to have to work for it.

  Christopher checked Sebastian once more, then went into the bathroom. He stripped, lobbing all his clothes into an untidy pile in the corner to be dealt with later. His gloves were the last to go, and as he stepped into the shower, he stripped them away at last.

  He had no love for Ashmar, and the scars on his hands reminded him of why that was. Christopher had been a rebellious youth, and he had resisted giving the Countess his marker. He had fought for his freedom like the demon he was, and Ashmar, himself no angel, had been part of the group that had broken him into obedience. The palms of both hands bore scars from branding irons, and Lord Ashmar’s silver eagle was now a permanent part of him. On the backs of his hands, a tracery of other scars remained to show the surgical interventions that had been needed to put his hands together once again. His hands would never be as supple as they could have been, a legacy of dozens of broken bones from Ashmar’s screws.
He had worked with them, though, and his kind were hearty, with advanced healing. It was fortunate for him that he’d been able to recover the range of motion needed to be a doctor.

  Not that they called him ‘doctor.’ The word they used was ‘veterinarian,’ because he was called upon to heal the hurts and illnesses of the cryptomorphs created by GenTel. He was good at what he did, and coupled with his familial connection to the Countess, he had become a wealthy man. He had worked hard for what he had.

  It was not so long ago that he’d been pulled up screaming from the Pit, afraid of the sun and blinded by daylight. He had never been intended to walk the human world, just as he’d never been intended to exist out in the Badlands, where the sun beat hot year-round and the scouring wind blew dust and grit into every opening. Christopher had suffered there, chained out in the elements while they taught him “discipline.” He knew that it would take only one utterance from his so-called grandmother to send him back, and Lord Ashmar would be only too happy to see to his re-education.

  Christopher hated Ashmar. He hated the Countess. He hated the circumstances that had led to his being here in this house, no less a prisoner than the dragonel suffering in his bed.

  He stood beneath the shower spray for a long time, the scars in his palms pressed flat against the tiled wall. If he were human, he would have wept; as it was, he felt the silent keening that passed for tears among his kind.

  Christopher was a demon - an incubus, to be precise. And the Countess was a demon, too, but of a different sort. Where he fed on life force and the energy produced by sexual climax, the Countess fed on pain and blood. He had been her meal more times than he chose to count, but in fairness, she had fed him, too. They had lived together for centuries, hiding in plain sight, the non-humans among the humans who sold their fellow creatures into bondage.

  He still didn’t know why she had chosen him, or why it had been so important to her to pluck him from his mother’s arms and out of the relative safety of Hell. Perhaps the Countess had been lonely for another demon, or perhaps she had grown bored with the proto-griffins and demi-minotaurs that kept her company then. It was a mystery that would remain unsolved, because he had learned the painful lesson that the Countess was not to be asked questions.