The hot, discomfiting feeling that grew deep under Agnieszka's skin did not go away when she retired to her small chamber up in the tower. As she struggled out of her gown, Agnieszka considered the peculiar working that she and the Dragon had just made, and why she had pulled away so abruptly from the beautiful rose their magic had illusioned into being. She had thought that it was only her proximity to the fearsome Dragon that caused such odd feelings to well up inside her, but she didn't think him quite so fearsome now.
They had made such beautiful things together, their magic mingling just as their hands entwined. It had been oddly pleasant, as strange as it was, and she thought her Dragon had perhaps felt the same. He had certainly looked at her strangely enough, his eyes bright with bemusement and something else.
Agnieszka's own thoughts drifted to that something else—or at least what she thought he might be feeling. Something was changing between them; something new had taken root inside of her and was starting to grow. She didn't know quite what it would be, but for some reason it made Agnieszka recall the words her own mother had spoken to Kasia when her best friend had asked about what happens when a man takes a woman to bed.
It made her recall, too, how Prince Marek had tried to take her without her wanting it, and how she had imagined not ever wanting a man in her bed after that. She had always had Kasia in her bed, if anyone. Now that she knew the Dragon wouldn't use her as the stories had always told, she was certain that she wouldn't lay with a man for the ten years she was kept away in the wizard's tower, and maybe not even after that.
She couldn't imagine herself as a courtesan or a baroness like the bards always sang about, the Dragon girls that went on to be court ladies and politicians, to be in the public eye. She couldn't see what her life would be like.
Agnieszka had no idea what these feelings meant, what that hot, sweet tension low in her belly meant. Her skin trembled, remembering the touch of his hands upon hers, the graceful brush of their magic against one another. She lay on her bed, looking up at the stone ceiling as her hands ran over her stomach, searching for the source of the fluttering. A breeze came in through her small window, raising up gooseflesh on her arms in the chill of the air.
Her night shift was too thin for this cool air, but there was something more to her shivering. Shaking off the wariness, Agnieszka stood to pull the glass of the window closed, shuttering it to keep out the cool winter air. She had come to her room hot and breathy, her skin burning through her clothes though the tower always had a chill to it, the stone cool beneath her toes if she went barefoot. Now, though, she could scarcely keep warm enough, her nipples hardening from the sharpness of the winter air. It was warmer with the window closed, and Agnieszka was sure she could have easily warmed herself with a spell, but instead she crawled eagerly under the covers, shoving her cold feet under a fur to stir them back to warmth.
Agnieszka closed her eyes, savoring the memory of that beautiful rose, their rose, holding her hands out to see with her mind's eye how she had held it gently, the Dragon's narrow fingers guiding and supporting her own. As fierce and firm as he always was, as much as he insulted her, there was something so gentle about the way he had held her hands today. She could remember the feel of his magic inside her, writhing around as if dancing with her own magic.
It was so musical, so light and graceful—her magic was far more elegant than she, and it wasn't elegant at all. It was all confusion and trials, and more often than not it didn't work the way she expected. It certainly befuddled the Dragon, whose attempts to help her left him more confused than ever. There was something else, too, though. Something he had felt that appear to be more approaching awe and astonishment. She liked that her magic was perplexing to him, liked that he didn't know everything, and even the thought that she could teach him a thing or two.
Agnieszka didn't even notice that as she imagined her hands once again within the Dragon's, her own fingers traced the wrinkles of her nightdress, the cotton thin and warming against her flesh. Without thinking, Agnieszka had drawn her shift up, her fingers drifting along her thighs and across her stomach, that now familiar trembling deep within her. She felt as though her heartbeat had dropped into her belly, and an aching had started to burgeon deep within her, down low. It wasn't unpleasant, and something about it drew her fingers into her smallclothes, to search beneath the fabric that protected her womanly place.
She had explored here before, a few times, but never as determinedly as she sought some indescribable sensation now. She and Kasia had shared this when they had reached their womanhood; her friend had told her in hushed tones of how she had trembled in the bed at night with her fingers working at her own flesh. She had even felt the jerks and heard the short gasps of Kasia's ministrations one night when Agnieszka had spent the night at her friend's home. She had talked excitedly about the sensations that burst from her, though Kasia's pleasure had come easier and more quickly than her own. After Kasia had described how pleasant the experience had been, Agnieszka had ventured herself toward that unreachable contentment.
She couldn't describe it as gratification, although she certainly felt indulgent and a little shameful for her actions. But unlike Kasia, it had not left her sated, and a sense of incompleteness had followed her for days after, like she was on edge and could not resolve her own mind. Her motions were more rushed and maladroit the next day, and something about her felt strange and disgruntled, though nothing had transpired to upset her. That next day, she could find no pleasant company in her family nor her neighbors, and even Kasia's sweetness could not raise her spirits. After that, Agnieszka had abandoned this hopeless pursuit, content to hear Kasia's stories of her own indulgence instead.
But now, Agnieszka could feel a difference—with the Dragon (her Dragon!) in her mind's eye, her right hand adroit and teasing, she felt a tremor of something like wanting deep in her core. Her fingers teased through the curls that lay beneath her smallclothes, gently stroking the flesh they covered. It warmed her almost immediately, her chill forgotten, though her flesh still stippled with raised hairs, and her nipples were still tight and small, sensitive under her shift.
She hummed, feeble elation brimming from the tender place, and felt a sort of music moving inside her and carrying her pleasure with it. She stroked the folds of flesh that swelled with heat and, upon gingerly moving her fingers to her entrance, dared again to press inside, finding a slick wetness there that surprised her. It was different than before, when she had tried to find the pleasure Kasia had promised. There had been no fervor within her as there was now, no dampness that heralded her own satisfaction.
She knew from her mother's hushed advice to Kasia that the dampness was meant help finish a man and ensure the woman felt no discomfort, but now Agnieszka could see that it was more than just a convenience. She felt an urgent aching inside herself, growing like a vine that was rooted low and deep in her belly but stretched all the way to her heart, making it beat so strongly she could hear it pounding in her ears; to her head, which throbbed and made her vision waver, focusing and clouding as she jerked beneath her own fingers; it made her toes clench and strain against the cotton bed sheets beneath her.
Her body was betraying her, pleasure singing out through her magic even as her voice was silent. She didn't knowingly do it, but her own power grew like the rosebush had, without her conscious thought to guide it, and a whisper of air whirled around her and deepened her pleasure as incomprehensible syllables escaped her mouth in whimpered breaths.
Unbeknownst to her, Agnieszka's working had whistled through the tower like a draft gone awry, finding its way around the magical wards and the labyrinthine passages, all the way down to the Dragon's bedchamber. He was abed, sleep eluding him but his eyes closed nonetheless, still making the attempt.
The Dragon, too, was preoccupied with the mystifying incident from earlier, though he endeavored to clear his feelings for the girl from his mind. Their magic intermingling had enticed him into believing her more competent and remarkable than he had supposed her to be, and when she broke away from him, he had felt both relieved and utterly disheartened.
When the wisp of her magic—her inadvertent working—crawled into his bedchamber like a mist, he could immediately see that what had perplexed him had brought quite a different response in her. As the air thickened around him and he felt her magic unconsciously reaching out to him again, the Dragon could almost feel Agnieszka's pleasure himself, his own body involuntarily responding with equal fervor. He scowled but knew he would never tell her what her somnambulant magic had done; he didn't want to mortify her and himself in the process.
Reaching down beneath his own bedclothes, the Dragon grudgingly began to work himself in his hand, hearing/feeling/sensing his apprentice's pleasure teeming a few floors above him, her youth and innocence unbelievably stimulating. He hadn't enjoyed his own touch in so long, and felt odd to be pursuing it under such circumstances. He could let this stand, endure the one-sided intimacy of such strangeness, so long as she didn't make too much of a habit of it before getting her newfound organic magic under control.
As his flesh grew and trembled in his hand to his strokes and the rush of Agnieska's release travelling through her magical draft, the Dragon knew he wouldn't be able to look her in the eye tomorrow. He would make plans to avoid her, at least until he could rid his mind's eye of her blushing, tense face caught up in ecstasy, all the while thinking of him.