DISCLAIMER: It all belongs to Joss. I only own my imagination.

NOTES: I have a stressfull, time-consuming job. I hardly have time to write anymore and I hate that. But sometimes the muse awakes ..hope you like!

DRAGONSLAYER

How should we be able to forget…." She whispers ….from far, far away, but still so close that he can feel her skin covering him like warm snow. He can feel her breath, coming and flowing like the tide. She takes him places he has never seen, places where the tide pulls back the ocean beyond the horizon…..leaving the ocean floor bare and exposed …like her.

Her voice ranges from breathy whisper …to pleading whimper….to full fledged, joyful laughter. A cacophony of swelling sound that is almost music.

It's distracting him from what he means to do…to her, to all that revealed skin ...running his lips and hands over it all.

"Those myths that are the beginning of all people's myths about dragons…." The last word is a sigh, drawn out and fragile like brittle glass shivering in the air.

It had taken him a week to understand why he had trouble sleeping. The dreams were gone…the dreams of nimble limbs and soft skin. It had taken him another week to understand that it bothered him more than her brother's snooty babbling.

She's nothing but a breeze, the slightest touch of cool air, yet she returned to his mind with the force of a thunderstorm….erasing any coherent thought he might have harboured about how she knew ….he'd missed her like that.

He'd never say, she'd never tell……they'd both just pretend. If words weren't spoken, did it make things less real?
Her fingers run through his hair, over his shoulders, kneading his back …..So sure of what to do, so sure of when to do it. He's past wondering how she knows what makes him tick, makes him growl and pull in his air with an almost evil hiss.

" …that at the last moment turn into princesses." Her hair tickles him, where it falls over his chest in the dark ….like liquid night.
She's the grass that bends under the clear, dark sky when the storm comes…..bending, never breaking. Knowing how to live to fight another day. She should seem small and frail above him, underneath him, next to him…with that soft voice lulling him into compliance. Her form is ….her body, but she is not.

"Perhaps all the dragons in our life are princesses…."
He has no idea what she is going on about, not a clue …..But he likes listening to her voice, while her dainty hands coax reactions from his body. He likes the taste of her on his lips, like sweet forbidden fruit or candy.
"…princesses who are waiting to see us only once …"
The thoughts never came…not even in the dreams; not even now when her breathy whisper makes his breath catch in his throat…..when the fleeting touch of those hands makes all his muscles jump and twist.

The dreams came back ….right after he realised that he had missed them. Right after he had started counting the hours he waited for sleep to come after their …agreement? Truce?

Her way of not cowering in a corner, her way of not waiting to be saved like a damsel in distress…..was being here with him. Something they could not take away from her …no matter how hard they tried. She was still a girl …she could still do this….she could still feel….all of it. The way she let herself fall over that edge, hurl herself off that cliff without a moment of hesitation, not even the slightest quiver of doubt or regret …..Trusting him with her body and every breath, simply blew his mind. She trusted …where he did not trust himself.

" …to see us only once beautiful and brave."

The way she looks sometimes gives him thoughts of fairy-tales, of princesses and dragons…..with her head tilted back and her lips slightly open when she sighs in delight. She might look the princess. Took him a while to get…. that she did not want him to save her, did not expect it either. Hell...he should have known. River Tam might look the part, but she was not the princess…

Tiny little soft-spoken girl …..Clothed chain mail and helmet……

She might need a little back-up along the way. But she'd save herself….like any good dragon slayer.