Chapter 1 #4
His hands are on her, touching her. He takes her by her hair and he tears away the negligée. She kicks out and catches him between the legs, twisting away when he falls to his knees. She’s a fighter, I’ll give her that.
I step forward and grab him, pulling his head back and slitting his throat from ear to ear.
I let him fall to the ground and loom over the girl who’s huddled naked in the dark corner, looking up at me with wide, frightened eyes.
‘And what do you have to say for yourself?’ I snarl.
‘Let me go,’ she whispers. ‘No one will know. You could just say I escaped.’
I sigh, sinking down to a squat in front of her. I wish I didn’t have to do this, but I have no choice.
‘No,’ I say. ‘I couldn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because not one of my brethren would believe it, girl.’
I pull her up by her arm and she tries to cover herself. I give her what’s left of her clothes, and she puts on the short dress, but it’s ripped to hell. It covers nothing.
I pinch the bridge of my nose. ‘Hold it together,’ I say, not sure if I’m talking to her or myself.
I take her back through the tavern. I know the men who were in here earlier, bar the one I killed outside are watching, but if they’re wondering what’s going on, none of them voice it aloud, though I hear one of them snigger to the other that it seems like I can’t hold onto my woman.
I only notice because I’m specifically listening for trouble.
I push her up the stairs in front of me and back to our room. She doesn’t fight me, but as soon as she’s over the threshold, she turns to face me, her eyes flashing in anger. My lip quirks in spite of my frustration with the human.
‘Find her?’ Orin calls from the bathroom.
‘Yes.’ I roll my eyes and turn back to her. ‘Bathe.’
‘No.’
‘Yes!’
My eyes turn black, I feel it and I’m surprised at myself. I don’t usually have a problem keeping my dragon contained. For a second, hers widen and she looks absolutely terrified, but then she seems to pull her pride up like a hood and gives me a look of disdain.
‘I’m not bathing and if you make me, I’ll run again!’
My retaliation is swift. I grab her by her hair and cover her mouth before she can scream. Marching her into the bathroom, I practically throw her into the tub. She squeals behind my hand at the sudden heat on her cold limbs, but I can feel the water as well. It won’t actually burn her.
I dunk her under the water.
‘Wash her hair,’ I order Orin whose eyes widen, but he hastens to do my bidding, working up a lather and scrubbing at her scalp while she struggles.
And she does struggle. She flails and splashes and squeals behind my hand like a banshee.
But I simply hold onto her, knowing that my reserves are much deeper than hers and, sure enough, after a few minutes, her movements begin to flag. Her motions get sluggish, and it isn’t long before she stops fighting entirely.
Orin finishes her hair, and I wave him away as I see him begin to take more notice of her body. He isn’t old enough to be as immune to her as I am.
‘See where dinner is,’ I tell him and off he goes like a good young drake.
I let go of her mouth and grab the soap.
‘I’ll do it myself,’ she whispers.
I snort.
‘No, you won’t. You lost that right when you started pulling this nonsense.’
I get close to her face and her flinch after her shenanigans today is gratifying.
‘You promised you’d be good when I let the others live, when I killed those men. You lied and now you’ll pay for it. When you do as I say, you’re rewarded. When you disobey, your rights are removed. Start doing as you’re told, as you promised, and this journey won’t go so badly for you.’
I don’t tell her that once we get into our mountains, she’ll have no rights at all no matter how she acts.
It’ll be much the same for her whether she follows the rules, or not.
That’s just how it is for her kind there, at the moment anyway.
Brax and Drey have been trying to change that since the latter took command, but the idea of humans as lower creatures is deeply entrenched now.
Morcai decreed it during his reign, and it was like that for a very long time.
She sits docile as I soap her long hair for the second time.
I’m not gentle, but I’m not overly rough either.
When I’m finished with her head, I turn my attention to the rest of her and, true to my word, I make her stand up and I scrub every inch of her.
I’d rather not, but I have to follow through otherwise she won’t learn that she needs to obey, and in the mountains, that’s tantamount to a death sentence. If she’s lucky.
My touch is impersonal, and I don’t look at her closely.
At least I don’t think I do, but then a certain part of my anatomy begins to make itself known.
Luckily, she won’t see because I haven’t tucked my shirt in, but I take a step back abruptly and look past her, thinking about how she smelled earlier today and willing my cock to shrink.
The smell of her. I almost groan. That’s the problem.
She smells different now that all the dirt is gone.
That underlying scent that I noticed before is more prominent now.
It’s the same sweet tang that my nostrils got a hint of in that clearing earlier today.
Subconsciously, or not, it’s the reason I chose her.
My mouth begins to water, but I don’t want to eat her. .. well, not all of her anyway.
‘Sit down and soak the rest off you,’ I snap, errantly wondering if her pink cheeks are from the heat of the water or from my hands on her.
I chuck the sponge in the bath, turning away as if I’m not about to grab her, part her thighs, and feast on her cunt.
I haven’t felt like this since... I can’t even remember but it was long ago, when the humans still had the run of the world, when their machines still crowded our skies... when I lived among them.
‘Orin!’
My protégé sticks his head into the room.
‘Give the female privacy to finish but ensure she doesn’t try to run again.’
I leave the room without a backwards look.
There’s a tray with three steaming bowls of stew on the table along with a loaf of bread in the middle.
I snort as I make my way over to it and sit down to eat.
Orin brings out the woman a few minutes later. She’s dry but still naked. When I raise a brow at Orin, he shrugs.
‘Not up to me,’ he mutters as he sits down.
The girl, trying in vain to cover her tits and nethers with her arms, regards me as if I’m in the wrong and I roll my eyes.
‘Eat,’ I say, ‘before it gets cold.’
She sniffles a bit as she edges closer.
‘Sit down!’ I bark and she jumps with a small cry.
I close my eyes and look Heavenward, beseeching the universe for patience.
The girl slides into the seat next to me with a huff.
‘You don’t need to yell at me,’ she says.
I don’t answer her, but I slide one of the bowls over to her. Orin tears a chunk of bread off the loaf and offers it to her. My eyes narrow as I watch him, see how bright his eyes are, the way his eyes have begun to dip down to where her breasts disappear at the table’s edge.
Fuck. That’s all I need.
‘When you’re finished,’ I tell him, ‘I want you to scout the mountains. A hundred miles should be enough to make sure there aren’t any other factions encroaching on what’s ours.’
His eyes widen. ‘A hundred miles?’
‘You think it should be more?’ I ask.
‘No!’ He sits back in his chair sullenly. ‘A hundred miles is enough,’ he mutters, and I stifle a grin.
‘If you go before sunset, you might have time to get some elk hunting in yourself,’ I say.
My student brightens a little at the prospect of honing his skills.
He eats his meal quickly after that, filling his mouth with the chunks of meat and potatoes and gulping the liquid left at the bottom of the bowl.
Pushing it away, he breaks off another large chunk of the bread, and, with a final look at the woman, he leaves the room.
I glance at her. She’s staring after him and I wonder for a moment if she was trying to seduce him. Orin is definitely stupid enough to fall for a human female’s antics. He will be until he learns firsthand that they can’t be trusted, and I don’t want him to learn that lesson with this one.
‘Don’t encourage him,’ I growl.
‘He’s your…son?’ she asks, glancing at me.
‘No.’ I let out a long breath. ‘My student. He’s young. Doesn’t know his own strength, even as a human. You should remember that.’
She frowns at me. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘If you use your wiles on him, he could kill you.’
‘Wiles?’ Her face is blank as she looks at me. ‘I don’t understand what—’
‘If you entice him to fuck you, he will slaughter you, woman,’ I snarl and her eyes widen, flicking down almost comically to where my cock would be if she could see through the table.
‘You can… You have…’
‘When we’re human males, we’re human males,’ I say meaningfully, realizing that she hadn’t thought we could be seduced.
So, I was wrong. She wasn’t trying anything with Orin. Orin was just being a young drake.
She seems a lot more nervous now, I note, as she eats her soup, her eyes darting around as if she’s trying to find another way to escape.
‘Why would he kill me?’ she asks in a small voice a minute later.
‘He wouldn’t do it on purpose, not unless ordered to, but, as I said, he’s young. He doesn’t have the necessary control over himself.’
She glances at the bed. ‘You mean…’
‘During sex. Yes, human. He could easily begin to change.’
Her eyes somehow widen even further. ‘But why would he… You’re dragons. I’m a human.’
I snort. ‘That hardly matters. While most of my faction detest your kind, we are compatible with humans when we’re in this form.’
She stares at me, and I think she’s going to keep asking questions, but she miraculously stays quiet, and I’m allowed to continue eating.
We finish the meal in silence and, afterward, hoping she’s learned her lesson about trying to run away, I grab some clothes from my pack.