"Is a maiden likely to be a Lord, or a knight?"
Alys sat back in the mud, feeling the wet earth part beneath her legs. She couldn't believe what she was hearing right now, from the lips of the dragon who was supposed to eat her no less, the philosophy of damsels in distress all summed up in one neat package. She frowned, feeling maybe he was using this as a conversation tactic to distract her before he... It... Struck for the kill. But then why had he changed into a human? Surely it would be easier to kill her as a dragon but he was just kneeling there beside her in the mud, carrying on conversation with his meal.
Why? She stared at him, feeling struck by his steady and unblinking gaze. He was so odd. Beautiful but odd.
And, you musn't forget, a carnivore, she reminded herself.
"Are you going to eat me?" She finally said, feeling she would explode with tension if the awkward silence went on any longer. The dragon smiled, his purple eyes flashing scarlet in the torch light.
"A dragon has many appetites."
Alys swallowed. He had not answered the question.
"Come," he broke the silence left in the wake of Alys's even bigger gulp. He got to his feet, and she automatically turned away, trying to save his modesty; when he caught her at it, he laughed a little.
"Poor human girl, what a life they've given you. You're like the horse raised with blinders, only you keep them up yourself. How can you see anything with those on?" He pressed closer to her but slowly, as though she were the wild animal whom should be cautious to startle. He raised his eyebrows, expression inviting her to stop him if she should object. Her curiosity was getting the better of her, because she did not pull away as his hands gently encircled her wrists and he brought them down away from her face.
"Please," she felt her lips mouth the word but no sound came from her mouth; the moment he touched her she felt tiny pinprickles erupt over her skin, like she was cold and hot at the same time. She was soaking wet in her dress but suddenly she felt warmth rush over her chest, she breathed deep, smelling him now that he was standing so close and closing her eyes to identify what it was he smelled like. The meadow after a storm, she decided and then promptly forgot as his hands moved up her arm from her wrists, pulling her closer to him now, sliding down her back to settle around her waist.
In the back of Alys's mind, she felt taken aback by the response displayed by her personage to each of the liberties taken by the dragon. When he touched her, she should have recoiled but she felt enlivened by his touch. Every moment that passed in which he was touching her,her body was too busy absorbing the shock and pleasure to remind her of what had happened this evening. Her father... Her entire life gone.
But this, his fingers digging into her hair, fingers deft against the crown of her head as he pushed his face into the hollow of her neck, his teeth and lips grazing her neck as a growl filtered cleaning through his throat, tickling her inner ear... This was a new and a blessed distraction. It sent the reminders of reality away. And comfort; how comforting his touch was, how strange...
He bent to her ear, angling her head to meet his lips as he began to whisper... What was he saying? It was so soft but in his tenor she could hear the sounds of the forest amplified, water, heavy and thunderous pounding on rocks, no, was that her heart beat? She lost sensation in her legs and the world became a grey swirl around her, his arms tightened around her until she felt an enormous thrust upwards and then the sensation of her feet finding the ground again. But then he was gone from her side, tiny stones stabbed into the flesh of her palms. She was kneeling on a damp, stony surface.
Alys blinked, not understanding how they had gotten here to this... Cave. She bit her lip in consternation, seeing the boy was standing at the edge of a pool lit by pale blue light, light that came from the walls.
"What magic is this?" She wondered aloud.
"No magic," he said, still watching her. "Nature. It's phosphorous light." She raised an eyebrow at him, not familiar with the term. He smiled, gesturing to the cave at length. "Not everything different is magic, not everything different is bad. I've heard what the so-called priests and god-figures tell the children of your world. That your body is sin, that your desires are sin. Our bodies for example," he began, gesturing for her hand to assist her into the pool, "the same bodies for which your christian god tells you to feel shame - are also beautiful, nuanced characters of flesh. Can not both ideas concerning the flesh exist in the same world? Your flesh craves the touch of human upon human contact, yet you deny yourselves the humblest desire for comfort in deference of the attention of your invisible and," he winced a little as he continued, "absent god... But Alys, I must tell you, for I have watched many of your kind suffer under this delusion for a long millenia, and I feel I can help you. Alys, your god is nothing but paper. And I desire your human form the same way that I can taste your desire for this form on the back of my tongue. I smell it and I have never... Thought that I should like to... Reciprocate," he paused. Alys felt her cheeks burn. He knew? He could... taste it? Her fingers knotted together in anxiety. He knew too much about her. But he was silent now, watching her from across the small cave. He seemed to come to a decision and he spoke again.
"I should very much... Like to see you, all of you, if you will let me."
Alys could only stare at him for a moment, unable to vocalize the words to tell him...what would she say? What could she say?
She thought back to the life she had left behind, staked out on that hill, and felt her insides recoil. No. She wouldn't think of that. She had died on that hill, she felt, and the grief of that day was too close, just waiting to ambush her once she was alone with her thoughts. And here he was, the dragon, who was supposed to be the instrument of her death, now asking her to forget more, her morals, the very fabric of that life.
She thought of words she could say to him, but as each argument came to her lips and fell, unspoken, she shook her head minutely. No, she did not belong to that world anymore. So she said nothing. And she made her decision.
Instead, she stepped towards him, pulling her arm from the sleeve of her dress, pulling the wet garment from her torso. She kept her eyes on the ground, because half of her was afraid of seeing a possible expression of disgust at some imperfection of her body cross his face. But the dress fell to the cave floor and she saw his eyes drinking the sight of her body in, his hands curled in and his lips parted in thirst.
"Come here " he said hoarsely, reaching for her hand. She stepped past his hand, getting into the water on her own, feeling the steam rise as her cool skin met the warmth of the underground hotspring. She ducked her head, fully submerging as the dragon entered the water behind her.
"Come to me, please," he said again. Alys kicked off from the bottom, her hands reaching to touch the pool ledge. Selendrile's armed closed around her waist and pulled her to him, settling his body against a rock. He held her against himself but a bit to the side and spoke into her ear,whispering though they were alone. "I should like to show you pleasure..." He began. But said no more as his fingers pressed gently along the sore muscles of her back. She relaxed into the motion, all her dark thoughts swallowed by his touch. Variably, she began to feel his motions change, pressing further south, down her body, to her lower back, then to her thighs. Beneath the water his fingers pulled her legs up and around his waist. She felt the brush of something hard and hot beneath her and she ignored it at first, too nervous to do much of anything except hold on to his shoulders for balance. But he was moving her further down, gradually, meanwhile his fingers were moving over her chest and when he brushed past her nipples, she felt an involuntary squirm of her lower half, which inevitably brought her into even closer proximity to him. But she couldn't help it as her shoulders fell back, exposing her upper half to him completely. He rested his hands beneath her shoulders, settling his lips around one aureola, at first letting his tongue run in suggestive patterns but as he began to teethe her tender skin, he felt her growing hotter around him. She was starting to gyrate in slow circular patterns against him and he edged closer, letting his manhood brush against the hot center of her. As his attention to her nipples became more insistent, he gripped her hips in both his hands and brought her gently into contact with him. She opened her eyes and met his, who watched her unashamedly. Alys's hands gathered atop his shoulders and nodded slightly to him, telling him to go on. Selendrile watched her eyes flutter as he pushed against her, feeling the squeeze of her flesh close over his frenulum. He bent forward again and his teeth and tongue wrote symphonies against her breast. Alys's body hummed with electric heat. She could hear his breathing was labored and expectant, she could feel it hot against her skin as his teeth and tongue wrote symphonies against her breast. Alys's body hummed with the electricity of his administrations. A soft moan escaped from her lips as she felt warmth gather in her abdomen into a tight knot of frustration. Suddenly, she felt him pull away from her and she reached for him with a sound of protest, pulling him back. But he shifted her in the water, turning her on his lap so that she faced away from him. His lips were beneath her ear so as his hands ran down her thighs and up again, she could hear his words.
"Lovely one, do you feel this?" He asked, his fingers dipped into the crevice between her legs and she inhaled sharply in answer, the muscles of her legs tightening. His fingers brushed along the innermost region of her thigh and she found fire followed in his wake. Her head fell back against his shoulder and his lips followed the line of her throat, kissing the concave space of her collarbone as his hands manipulated the soft flesh folds between her thighs. He was exceedingly gentle, his little pulls and pinches along her flesh opening her up until he seemed to find a knot of flesh which practically thrummed with bound tension. "This is you, no? This is what you want..." He whispered against her neck, she groaned, trying to catch her breath enough to reply but finding her words were swallowed by the blood which coursed through her, blood searching for those arcs in her body where she could feel everything. His fingers moved more insistently against her, faster, as if he were moving over the strings of a harp. His breath was ragged now with wanting and she felt feverish in his arms, feeling that if she should not find completion to this circuit of desire she would die in his arms.
Suddenly her body jerked forward, nearly falling from his lap, but he wrapped an arm around her waist, settling her back against him as the fingers of his right hand circled her innermost flesh over and over. Each of Alys's breaths were punctuated by moans now, which grew louder, echoing off the cave walls. Selendrile was gasping and, it seemed to Alys, trying his best to keep his own desire in check as his hands trembled in their course over her skin. There was a moment, a feeling, that all the bound tension in her legs and abdomen seemed to bunch up, like a runner preparing to spring, and then the sensation of that tension releasing out into her body, like warm breath expelling after being held in the lungs for far too long. Alys felt her body relax all over and Selendrile pulled her in close to him, wrapping his arms around her torso, feeling the aftershocks of climax which shook her frame.
Alys turned in his lap, feeling her legs were like jelly. She met his eyes and he smiled to see the expression on her face, of that incredulous surprise and the flush to her cheeks which affirmed what he already knew.
"I want-" Alys began to say but then had to clear her throat because she felt out of breath, still.
"Yes, my little floris?" He asked, his fingers tracing fine paths up her torso. Alys shuddered at the feeling, wondering how to tell him what she was feeling and then wondering if there was any point.
"I want to feel you... too..." She said hesitantly, her eyes now on her fingers curled against his shoulder. "I want to feel you...inside of me..." She whispered the last part, feeling mortified to say the words aloud but also strangely turned on by speaking them to him. His hands settled around her waist, pulling her closer to him. She felt that hard flesh brush her again and she flushed deeper in the soft light.
"Yes," he said. "But let's go slow, no? I should like to take my time." He whispered back and Alys bit her lip. Selendrile leaned forward, letting his lips meet her cheek, then her lips. He kissed her gently and yet Alys felt as though her lips were connected to other parts of her body, as if his kiss followed the same path his fingers had walked, to her thighs, to inside her. She made a sound in her throat. Selendrile's hands on her hip pulled her forward on his lap, until his head met with her warm flesh. He began breathing heavily and then moved his hips forward, pushing himself into her as he had before, small portions, tiny movements. Alys laid her head on his shoulder, letting him guide her down. At times the progression took on the edge of pain but he seemed to feel when this happened and his fingers found clever ways of distracting her, ways which sent blood rushing to her center, seemed to pillow his path inside of her. She was warm and glistening atop him, unaware of anything outside of this moment and his body attuning to hers. Then Selendrile began moving in rhythm, rocking her hips back and forth. Alys was confused by the motion at first but caught on quickly as he body began to respond to this new sensation in a different way than before. The tension which she had felt in her abdomen before had swirled in her thoughts and now settled in her legs, her thighs, her back, her arms. She propped her hands against the ledge of the pool and began to move of her own accord against him and Selendrile took a hard breath, seeming taken aback by her fervor.
"Oh please," he begged, "if you continue, I will..." And she felt a mischievous grin quirk her lips as she began to move faster, liking the desire which suffused Selendrile, who was caught in it like a swelling river. He groaned, his silver hair falling back from his face as he leaned back. But he seemed to waken suddenly and made a decision. His eyes met hers and he smiled in the manner that she had. She stopped moving, taken aback, and he seized the opportunity.
He picked her up by her legs, water cascading down their bodies. He took her to the opposite edge of the pool and set her down in the water, pushing her to face the outermost ledge, to bend down over the stony lip of the pool.
"What are you-" She began to ask but then he bent over her back and she felt him behind her, she felt his hard manhood brush the inside of her thighs and then felt him pushing into her again.
Oh! Was all she had time to think before feeling a new set of sensations overtake her in this position. He moved in time again and for some reason, in this position, Alys saw tiny gold lights drifting at the edge of her vision. Oh, this felt very, very good... Alys's breath was coming harder and she moaned as he picked up speed, wrapping his arms around her torso, as close to her body as he could manage, seeming to envelope her completely. When he did this, Alys's body responded by climaxing, again, which surprised her, as she had thought it would not happen again so soon. The warm golden halo in her head lengthened and widened, encompassing all of her vision and she felt him moving inside of her still, not unpleasantly, until suddenly he pushed very deeply into her and squeezed her tightly against him. He was the one to groan this time. His movements slowed imperceptibly until he was simply holding her against himself, still buried deeply inside of her body. Alys found she quite liked this sensation, but knew it would end when they separated. Slowly, he extricated himself from her body. But then he turned her to face him and he kissed her deeply, his fingers knotting into her long hair, reminding her of how it felt when he had been inside of her, how it felt to be two people at once. He ended the kiss saying, "Well my little floris, that was quite an adventure, no?" Alys blushed, smiling at his name for her.
"What does that word mean, floris?"
"Flower," he answered. "Like a rosebud, you are, with your skin touched by that lovely glow and charming embarrassment," he chuckled softly, his palm enveloping her cheek. "There is nothing to be ashamed of, you are lovelier still, my dear." He held her against his chest. Alys shivered against his body but tucked her head against his neck. She touched a finger to a forlorn lock of his pale hair curled against his shoulder, wonderingly, thinking, So this is what it's like to tame a dragon.