Chapter 3
three
SAMMY
Doing the long drive from DreamTogether back to my house in the boonies is my least favorite part of the trip. All I can think about is how wonderful my session was today, and how I wish I could do it more than once a month.
Soon the lights of the city fade, and I turn onto my little dirt driveway. I bought this place while I still worked my last job, wanting something as far away from other people as I could get. Don’t get me wrong—I love people, especially my friends—but I prefer it on my own terms. Out here it’s completely silent, and the stars are like thousands of tiny crystals glowing in the night sky.
My little aging house needs some work, and I’ve been doing what I can to keep up with its needs, but there’s always something else to do. I park my dingy car halfway onto the yard, since there isn’t a driveway, and step out into the hot summer sun.
I wonder what my dragon would think of my place.
Of course, I do a pee test every few days to see if it’s stuck yet. I have a whole box of them from DreamTogether, even though the techs were quick to warn me that the tests aren’t perfectly reliable, and every positive result needs to be verified in the clinic.
Still, they only show a single pink line. Negative. Part of me is relieved each time, because it means I’ll get to go back and see him again.
Every week, I go in to DreamTogether for my check-up, where they take my blood and run some scans. Everything is as it should be, with even a nod of approval from the doctor when I explain my diet and exercise routines.
But I’m still not pregnant yet, as hard as we’ve tried.
I thought this would be easier. It’s not that getting absolutely railed by an attentive lover with an extremely huge cock—two of them—is a big ask, but I worry that he’s wasting money on something that might never work. I don’t know him well, but from what I have seen, he’s a good person. Dragon? He likes to be a little filthy when we fuck, but it’s all just a character. Underneath he’s sensitive and caring, and worries frequently for my comfort and pleasure.
Besides, it’s nice to be getting a decent stipend to do, well... nothing, really. And damn, it’s good to do nothing for a while.
I’ve been hustling since I was sixteen, when I worked as a delivery driver and courier. My folks didn’t have much, and it was up to me to make a little extra and save up for my adult life. I went to a cheap state college, got a degree in International Politics, and then discovered it was worthless to me. I was never going to do the Civil Service exam, or work as a diplomat abroad. I knew it, my parents knew it, everyone knew it. My heart wasn’t there.
At least in school I learned how much I enjoyed going to the gym to work out my frustration and stress, and that paved a new path for me as a personal trainer.
I studied and studied, worked and worked, and built a business from nothing with my bare hands. I had dozens of clients, and I attended to them and their needs from sun-up to sunset. I was making a good living.
Until, five years in, the day came that I just couldn’t anymore.
The constant need to smile and nod and hype them up, even when they treated me like furniture, even when they were sexist or racist or simply intolerable...
Eventually, it crushed me.
When I burned out, I burned out hard and fast, like a fucking comet headed down from space. I threw a fit at the gym, then told all my clients I was leaving in a single angry email. I might have even broken some things on the way out. I eviscerated my business, intent on finding something else to do with my life.
I just wanted to rest for a while.
It was like providence that a few weeks later, when I was wondering how I’d pick up the pieces and continue paying my mortgage, I found the advertisement for DreamTogether.
I know that I’m a fine physical specimen, and I take good care of myself. I eat my greens and watch my sugars. I run a few miles every other day, and drink plenty of water. I have good genes, good teeth, good eyes, and I’m taller than most women, too. Based on my size and health, the clinicians at DreamTogether decided that I would be the perfect match for the dragon.
Now I wonder if maybe they were wrong. It shouldn’t take this long, should it? What if they made a mistake and there’s something wrong with me?
Well, mistake or not, I’m going to keep attending the sessions as long as the dragon wants to keep paying for them—or until he gives up on me and chooses someone else.
I detest that idea, and immediately banish it.
It’s become routine now that when I get home from meeting with him, I sit down at the computer and look up pictures of dragons online to try and help me picture him. There aren’t many photographs, because their number are so few, and most of what comes up are illustrations from books. From what I can find, dragons come in many colors, from gold to green to black. None of these must be my dragon, though, because I know what his hands and tail look like, and they’re crimson red.
Briefly, I wonder if it would take me long to find him online—but that’s violating the agreement I signed with DreamTogether. He wanted this anonymous, and that’s why he signed up when he could probably have met someone on a dating app.
I mean, he’s a dragon. That’s fucking cool.
No, all he needs is someone to carry his hatchling, and help him bring forward another generation so that his species might live on. And he doesn’t need to know who I am for that.
It’s also routine that as the days pass after our session, I find I want him again, my dragon. I’ve started thinking of him as mine now, even though I know he’s not. I have no idea what his life is like outside of that sterile room.
But I have a feeling he doesn’t have a partner, the way he fucks me. I don’t think he would be quite so attentive, even loving, if he was in a committed relationship with someone else. It would be much more mechanical.
I wish I could see him more than once a month. It’s been nearly half a year now of this, and though we don’t generally hold an extended conversation before we get down to business, I still feel like I... know him. He’s gentle, but also gives in easily to his instincts. He cares for me in the way that he always ensures I’m ready for him, that I want what he has to offer, that he isn’t hurting me. Even when he’s consumed by need, he tries his best not to damage me.
Except for the bench today. Management wasn’t pleased when they came in and found he’d ripped it right out of the concrete again.
“We might have to put together a special setup for the dragon,” I overheard someone say as I was unstrapped and helped down from the bench. “So it can stand up to him.”
Something about that strength is... incredibly hot. A beast with that much size and power, who can still be gentle and sweet and care for his partner’s pleasure? I’m a sucker.
But as one week drags by since our last visit, and then two, a stone settles in my stomach. Still a negative result. How long can we keep doing this? When is he going to decide it’s no longer worth it?
At least in the meantime, I’m good at keeping myself occupied. My house is falling apart, and it’s needed repairs for some time—ones that I definitely couldn’t pay for on top of student loans. In the meantime, though, I’ve learned some handyman skills from watching videos online, and I’ve started making much-needed updates to my house, replacing rotting wood and saving up for some new windows.
Now, I have much more time for my friends, who always complained before that I never went out with them. These days we see each other every weekend, going dancing, or hiking, or simply lounging in the backyard when the weather’s nice. My friends Jared and Sarah, who have been together since we were all in college, are fascinated by my stories about the dragon—but now there’s a complication .
I wonder if they’ll assign me to a different monster when he finally gives up.
“They said it’s not uncommon for it to take a while, right?” Sarah asks. “He won’t pull out yet.” Then all of us cackle.
I hope she’s right, and he keeps believing this is worth it.
ZAKARION
I spend far too much time sorting through the hoard, trying to decide which priceless treasure I value the least. After much agonized deliberation, I finally choose one: a gold necklace studded with rubies that was acquired sometime during the Renaissance.
Then I head back to the city, toward the seedier part of town where I can find Rodney’s shop. Here everything is tucked very close together, and I need to be careful with my broad wings as I descend to the street. When I land with a thump , I terrify a pair of goblins who look like they’re on a date.
I have to stoop to get in through Rodney’s door, where he sits behind his glass counter, sharpening his nails. He jumps up when he sees me, eagerness glittering in his little beady eyes.
“My favorite customer,” he croons, his tiny, red body slithering up over the counter to stand on top of it. His long, spaded tail swishes back and forth in wide arcs. “What do you have today?”
Reluctantly I bring out the necklace. I don’t hand it over right away, though, dangling it in front of him just out of his reach. Rodney frowns as his little hands grab at it.
“Fifty thousand,” I say by way of greeting.
The imp physically flinches, and rocks back on his heels. “Greedy today, dragon?” he asks, twirling his tail around one finger. “There’s no way I’ll pay that for this.”
“These are whole rubies. Huge ones. Even if you scrapped the necklace, each of those jewels is worth ten.”
He just shakes his head. “Twenty or nothing. This is going to be a bitch to find a buyer for, and I’ll be running a real risk.”
We argue like that, same as we always do, until he settles on thirty-five. Then he swipes the necklace out of my hands and bites down on the jewel to test it before dishing out my money.
This should be enough to last me a little while, at least.
Stashing my cash in my backpack, I head back to my house in town. This is where I’ll wait for the phone call from DreamTogether—either telling me that we’ve succeeded, and my surrogate is pregnant... or that I’ll have to go back again.
Though every appointment forces a harder and harder choice about which of my valuables to part with, I’m thrilled at the prospect of seeing my woman again. I don’t know how long this can possibly last, but DreamTogether seems happy to take my cash—and I’m happy to keep coming in and trying.
Either we conceive a hatchling eventually, or I get to fuck my wonderful woman forever.