Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
NISSIA
Idon’t really know why I’m so angry. I’ve been scorned before, obviously, and I didn’t take it to heart quite so deeply then.
But I trusted Ragnakor. I thought it all meant more than this, but I was wrong.
Did he only do it so Vizarios and I would come together? He orchestrated us, and once we did what he wanted, he made himself scarce.
Perhaps it’s that I feel used. Did he ever care for me? Was he ever attracted to me? Or was I just a pawn?
I tell Ari and Zephala everything that night when I return from sparring, down to how I stormed off like a petulant little girl.
“But you have the king now,” Zephala says, perplexed. “Your husband. Why do you need the captain of the guard?”
I don’t know how to explain that it’s not the same, that what I have with Vizarios, while wonderful, doesn’t feel... complete. But it was complete when Ragnakor was with us. For that moment, we were all where we were supposed to be.
Ari puts her arm around me and hugs me against her side. “I get it. You care about him, too. Ragnakor was there for you when you needed it.”
I nod and turn my face into her shoulder. “But maybe he truly doesn’t feel for me in the same way. Maybe everything I thought was between us was just... something I made up.”
“I don’t think so. I’ve seen how he looks at you.”
I raise my eyes to hers. “Me? No, the way he looks at Vizarios, maybe—”
“No, you.” Ari smirks. “He’s always watching, even when you think he’s not. He probably just doesn’t feel like he belongs anymore, now that you and Vizarios are together again.”
“He must know it’s not like that!” I sit up in my chair, incensed. “I want him just as much. And maybe that’s greedy of me, to want both of them, but...”
“But it’s what your heart wants,” Ari finishes.
I nod pathetically.
Quillion leans his head into the room. I didn’t realize we’d left the door open.
“How can you be greedy when the king wants the same thing?” he asks in a gruff tone. “He gets to have it all, but you don’t?”
I blink.
Ari nods at Quillion. “He has a point.”
“Why don’t you go see King Vizarios?” Zephala suggests. “He may know what to do.”
I think her advice is sound. My husband knows Ragnakor much better than I do. Maybe he has insight that could be helpful.
I change into a loose robe with nothing but a tie around the middle and head down the hall. The two guards standing outside the king’s quarters step aside. When I knock on Vizarios’s door, I hear a tired groan.
“What is it?” he calls.
“It’s me.”
Footsteps hastily cross the floor and the door opens, revealing a beautiful green-blue dragon with bright yellow eyes and fangs like daggers. He smiles when he sees me, a true smile, and he gestures for me to come in.
Before I can speak, the door shuts, and Vizarios’s claws find their way to the rope holding my robe closed. He unties it, then shucks the whole thing off to the floor. He’s in his own evening robe, and it’s already starting to lift at his crotch.
I almost forget why I’m here when he falls to his knees in front of me, pushes my legs apart, and licks right at the apex of my thighs.
“I’ve been thinking about this,” Vizarios says, panting. He swipes over my clit again, back and forth, until my legs are shivering underneath me. “How you taste. How I just want to eat you over and over.”
When I’m close to falling, Vizarios gets to his feet again and picks me up, lifting me by the ass so he can carry me to the bed.
He drops me on it, and without taking his robe off, pushes it to one side to expose his cock.
His breathing is fast, his pupils so large they take up most of his eyes.
I feel it, too—this need burning right at the juncture of my legs.
Without any further preamble, he leans forward until the tapered tip is pushing inside me. It’s perfectly shaped to open me up, and I fall back to the bed as he plunges in nearly halfway on his first thrust.
“My queen, you feel”—he reels his hips back, and then sinks in farther, testing my limits—“incredible. Your cunt is so tight, your legs so perfect, and these...” Vizarios lowers his head to nip at my breasts, palming one in his big, clawed hand.
“Will you suckle my dragonling with these? Grow it healthy and strong?”
Why is talk like that turning me on? But it is, and I’m helpless as Vizarios carries both of us off, teasing me with his claws and muttering filthy nothings as he fucks me. Soon he’s on top of me, caging me in with his arms, plunging into me and scraping my collarbone with the tips of his fangs.
It’s wonderful and delicious and yet... it isn’t what it should be. It doesn’t feel whole.
When I come, the power of it rattles me.
Vizarios roars his victory, and he hikes my hips up so he can set an even more blistering pace.
Soon, he’s snarling, drool dripping from his lower fangs as he meets his finish.
He ejects everything inside me, his cock spasming as he falls to the bed on top of me.
But it feels wrong for the two of us to be alone, to not have my Papa with me. I miss his calming presence, his gentle words, his soft touch.
“Nissia?”
Vizarios saying my name draws my attention. He peers down at me with his head tilted.
“You’re crying.”
I gasp, and sure enough, there are fat, wet tears in the corners of my eyes. I hastily wipe them away, and Vizarios rolls off me so he can curl around my side.
“Sorry,” I say, sniffling. “I don’t know what that’s about.”
His brow lifts like he doesn’t believe me for a moment.
“I mean, it was great, it was fantastic, but...” The tears start fresh again. “It’s not the same. It wasn’t... it wasn’t right without him.”
Vizarios does not appear surprised at all to hear me say this. He sighs and slings an arm over my belly.
“Ragnakor has always been a strange dragon,” he says after some moments have passed.
“Perhaps I think he’s strange because he’s so unlike me.
He is never driven by pride, only by honor.
He does things because they’re right, not because he does or doesn’t want to.
” Vizarios lifts himself up onto one elbow to look down at me.
“I’m not hurt that you want him, you know. ”
I nod, because I am coming to understand that.
“Do you want me to speak with him?” he asks.
“Would it work?”
“I don’t know. But I will try for you.” He kisses my forehead and lies down on the bed again beside me. “Because I want him here, too.”
VIZARIOS
When I awaken, Nissia is sleeping beside me, her face surprisingly relaxed. I crawl on top of her as she dozes, teasing one of her nipples through the sheet and then the other. Her face screws up, and she lets out a long breath of air.
“Is your cock always so eager?” she asks with playfulness in her voice, and I am immeasurably pleased to see this side of her, her eyes half-open but a smile playing on her lips.
I am rather aroused, so I’m even happier when she spreads her legs for me and reaches down to guide me inside her.
When at last, Nissia dresses and says goodbye, I kiss her before allowing her to go. I will most certainly have a talk with my captain of the guard today, because I can’t watch her cry like that again.
She never cried like that over me, and I hated seeing it. Her pain makes me want to turn the world upside down to give her everything she could possibly need.
Nissia freezes in the doorway when she steps outside. “Oh. Good morning, Captain.”
She pulls her robe tighter around herself, and then she does something I’ve never seen her do—she runs. As I come out into the hall, she sprints down it and around the corner, leaving me standing beside Ragnakor and staring at where she used to be.
He sighs heavily. “The queen does not care for me much, does she?”
“I think the opposite is true.” I gesture for him to come in. “I need to bathe and dress. Sit down?”
My captain does as he’s told. I call my footman to fill the tub and take a seat.
“It seems that relations are going well,” Ragnakor observes, sniffing the air.
It certainly does smell like sex in here. But that’s not what I wanted to talk about.
“You know, Nissia cried last night,” I say casually, drumming my claws on the table. “I’ve never seen her cry before.”
Ragnakor sits up straight, worry overcoming his features. “Over what?”
“You.”
His shoulders creep up to his neck, and he turns his head away. “I did not intend for that. I should never have gotten as involved in this as I did.”
“It is far too late for that, Rag.” I lean toward him as servants arrive carrying water. “You have gotten very involved.”
He shakes his head miserably. “I have made many mistakes, you mean.”
“And yet, there is such an easy way to repair it.”
Ragnakor cringes. “I cannot give the queen what she wants. You are her husband, Your Majesty. The king. It is uncouth, it’s a violation of my honor for me to—”
“Your honor has never once been in question.” I get up when the servants leave, abandoning my robe. Ragnakor sees everything as I make my way to the bathing room and into the tub. “I don’t know why you won’t just tell her.”
“Tell her what?”
“That you love her.”
I crack a smile at the inevitable expression that crosses his face, which even he cannot guard against—the one that says he’s been found out. He shutters it immediately, but it’s too late.
“Nissia is easy to love.” I soap myself down as Ragnakor slouches over the table, cradling his head in one hand.
“She is your wife,” he says miserably. “You have no objection to another dragon loving your wife?”
“Not if it’s you.” I make sure to soap under my tail and put on a show about it. “Because I love you. Why wouldn’t I want you to be happy? And with us?”
Ragnakor’s mouth falls open, and I think I might have fully taken him by surprise.
“You love me?” he asks, sounding strangled.
I sigh as I turn around in the bath to really look at him. My dragon, who has always watched over me, who has been there for me whenever I needed him. Now he wants something for himself but is too afraid of where he stands to take it.
“Yes, though that is not the point.” I scrub under my arms, and then rinse off. “The point is that you have made our wife feel unloved, and I won’t stand for that.”
“Our...?” He shakes his head. “You are the one who married her. She is royalty, as are you. I am a nobody, a nothing.”
I sigh with exasperation as I step out of the tub and reach for a towel. “Does Nissia seem like a woman who cares about your station? Has she ever treated you as less?”
“N-no, I suppose not. But it’s about what’s right.”
“So what is right, then?” I abandon my towel and stride toward him naked, my cock already having dirty thoughts about what it would like Ragnakor to do to me. “Is it loving someone and then abandoning them when the feelings get too difficult for you?”
He rubs his face with one hand.
“And what about me?” I ask, encroaching on his space. Ragnakor stiffens. “You left me, too.”
“I...” He opens his mouth to speak, flexing his jaw, but the words won’t come out.
“Speak truth,” I snap, growing tired of this back-and-forth. “Tell me why you really did it, Rag.”
At last, it looks as if the remnants of his control have finally snapped.
“I believe that I’ll be left behind.” Ragnakor’s admission spills out of him in a torrent. “I am afraid that once the two of you are happily married and growing your dragonlings together, that I—”
He cuts himself off with a choke, his hand gripping the table. It’s as if he’s slammed the words back down.
I caress his horn, then his chin, encouraging him to continue.
“I fear that I will no longer serve a purpose,” he goes on in a hushed voice. “I cannot let my love grow knowing that eventuality.”
My poor captain. Boldly—and when have I never not been bold?—I sit on his lap, causing Ragnakor to inhale sharply. Then I take his face in my hands and stare into the pair of eyes I hold so dear.
“I cannot promise that we won’t change as we grow, as all creatures do.
My mother always said that life is constant growth.
But you will not be forgotten, Ragnakor.
You have always been at my side, and so you will always be.
” I take his clawed hand in mine and bring it to my chest. “You will always be the dragon I love, until the day I die.”
He swallows hard, his throat bobbing, then he turns away from me. But I grab his muzzle and force him to look at me, to see into me and truly feel what I feel.
“I understand,” he finally says, the tension from his brow falling. “And I will never leave your side, my king.”
I lean down and kiss him, and he returns it unsteadily, his big hands landing on my hips. I just had marvelous sex with my wife, and yet I’m already hungry again for my captain.
But no, there’s a bond to be restored and work to be done for the kingdom. I get up off his lap, then head to my closet to pick out a robe for the day.
“Tonight, we will speak with the queen,” I say with finality. “And you will fix what has broken—won’t you, Papa?”
Ragnakor grits his sharp teeth and nods.