Chapter 7:
Marina
I stepped deep into the cave and Tredorphen followed closely behind, setting his hand on the small of my back, fingers splayed out firmly. I entered with a deep breath and began to laugh at the sheer beauty of it.
Aquamarine eggs hung from the ceiling and floors like stalactites and stalagmites. They were gripped to the rocky surface of the cave by black vines. The eggs were about my size, and seemed to glow and hum with life.
I shot a glance to the attractive, muscular Weredragon standing close behind me and blinked with curiosity. “This is it?” I asked genuinely.
“Don’t sound so impressed!” he laughed and led me deeper into the cave. “This is it.”
“So…” My mind reeled. There was such a sense of peace coming from the cave I almost couldn’t focus. “You don’t… mate?”
He raised a brow and a coy smile formed on his perfectly pointed lips. The stubble around them creasing with the movement. “Of course we do,” he laughed. “So, when couples want to breed, they…” he began to twirl his fingers around and give me the eyes as to dismiss him having to finish the sentence.
Which was a shame, I’d thought, since I wasn’t really sure exactly how human they were in comparison. Was their mating process the same?
“You know,” he finally enunciated and continued, “then the female will come here and find a spot.” He then grabbed my hand and took me deeper into the literal love nest.
We traced the ground with our feet until we found a free spot that wasn’t overloaded with the moist, round eggs, and he buried his tail deep into the ground as though it were a tornado. It twirled and tunneled until the rose sheen was planted firmly in the ground.
“The egg is transferred to the cave, and within a few months, a pod becomes visible.”
“Wow,” I smiled, staring down at his tail and feeling a strange pull to him. “What is the gestation period?” I asked.
“That would be… 262 cycles on Dobromia.”
“Fascinating,” I said as I crouched before the pod and grazed my fingers against it: droplets of moisture swelling through the top of the egg and spilling down the sides. The faint blue glow was intoxicating.
Then I looked up at him and watched as he crouched next to me and stared at the pod.
“But, where are all the females?” I asked.
“Most of these are my mothers,” he said with a wisp of emotion overcoming his voice. “But that’s another story.”
“No,” I said firmly. “You told me I was allowed to ask whatever I wanted. You asked for my help coming here. So, I want to know.”
“We are running out of resources,” he said stubbornly. “Happy?”
I winced. “Not really, no.”
“We had a great fire across the land that took out Doe’evv. There are two suns that circle Dobromia. I’ve been alive long enough to know that our planet moves in cycles. A sun comes and circles us, then burns out and, after three years of darkness, a new one emerges to give us light.”
I leaned into him, absolutely captivated.
“But this time the sun never burned out. Now we have two. It is so hot that nearly all of our food is gone. Just, gone. Needless to say, we haven’t been surviving well.”
I stared at him sincerely for a moment and gave a small nod. “That’s why you were looking for food on Ceylara.”
“Our females are dying off,” he continued. If he weren’t so proud, I might have been able to hear the sincerity or the desperation in his tone. Instead, he was completely even-keeled.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“There is my mother and Khrelan’s mother and about a handful of others. And this,” he said, pointing to the breathtaking collection of eggs that crowded around the cave innards like a swarm. “And who knows if there will even be enough resources to sustain them. Some will end up being killed.”
“Not to eat?” I asked with more disgust than I’d meant to.
“No.” He laughed and shook his head; rubbed the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “But for territory, certainly.”
I wrung my hands and stood from the eggs, suddenly overcome with sadness for their terrible plight. “Can’t you just… grow more food?”
“It doesn’t happen overnight. Especially not here. We have dry land,” Tredorphen shrugged and stood from the eggs, walking toward the exit. “Now we move forward.”
I nodded and followed him slowly. It seemed he had decided we were done talking about their plight.
He told me he was taking me back to his place, which, to my surprise, led us underground. Many of the dragons had taken to living underground to protect themselves from the heat. It made sense, but I wasn’t sure what to expect visually.
The caves were beautiful, with sparkling gemstones peeking through the crust of the earth as we descended down into their sub-mountain town. The caves were more like a giant vertical hole in the ground, with apartments lining every inch of the rocky descent. A field of green was at the very bottom; far enough away from the sun to benefit from its light without burning.
Tredorphen told me that only those in good standing were invited into the caves: his father’s Kingdom.
We neared the bottom of the cave, and I began to realize there was a definite hierarchy among the dragons. High-ranking shifters lived at the very bottom, closest to the King’s palace and farthest from the heat.
As we approached his home, he turned to me with a prideful smile and took my hand, leading me in through the doors. The decorations weren’t the primitive furnishings I was expecting. The stone building was full of beautifully carved furniture and a lavish bed with furs covering every inch of it.
I thought we would stop into his home and get to know one another a little better, but it seemed the sexy shifter had other plans for me.
“I find you fascinating,” he said, stopping me in the hall that led to a covered doorway.
“Thanks,” I said dumbly. “I think it’s safe to say I feel the same about you and your people.”
He opened the door, and we traveled down further into the cave until we entered a grotto: a spire of light falling down from the small hold in the top of the mountain.
I stepped into the grotto with bated breath, as it seemed he was as well. His stature became decidedly nervous, and I watched him with an amused giggle as he moved to let me pass.
The cave was stunning, with oil-slick stained rock and makeshift shelves. Only a dozen or so. I walked deeper into the small home and marveled at the strange collection of odd treasures he’d accumulated over time.
“What is all this?” I asked with a wild wonder lacing my tone.
I thumbed over the trinkets he’d found; books, photographs, broken pieces of tech and various figurines. All featuring the Earth.
“This,” he said, picking up an album of photos and carefully peeling the pages back. “Was recovered from a crashed ship I found on Durethnia.” He spoke of a planet to the north of his solar system.
I knew of the ship; I’d heard of its demise. It had been used as a reference point on the importance of hiring proper pilots and learning how to prep a ship for space travel. Apparently, the pilot was a freelancer picked up by the research crew for a cheap price. The man was drunk the entire voyage and, to our knowledge, not one of the crew survived.
My fingers traced the photograph with a bittersweet acknowledgment of their lives lost, and I pushed my lips to the side of my mouth. The photographs depicted various crewmates and travels the album’s owner had across the world. Rice fields in China, the endless waters of my home in Australia, and Irish farmlands. Whoever she was, she had a very full life before she died.
I grazed my fingers across the glossy sheet that protected the images under its hold and looked up at Tredorphen.
“There’s more,” he said and rushed to find a figurine of the spaceship that had crashed. It was weathered and faded, but the glory of its bright gold stripe still loomed over the false metals.
He pulled out a small glass thumb drive and put it into my hand. “It’s a thumb drive,” I said.
“This,” he said as he held up a tablet, “played it for me. But it doesn’t work anymore.”
I blinked down at the object and slipped one of my mini-readers out from my pocket. I inserted the drive and lo and behold, up popped a collection of old movies. Very, old movies. They depicted old westerns and black and white films that spoke of love and very little else. I giggled inwardly at the thought that Tredorphen had holed up in this cave and tried to watch movies by himself.
“They’re movies,” I explained. “They’re just…” I bit my lip. “Actors.”
“What does that mean?” he asked intensely.
“It means… they are people who…” I halted my speech and felt suddenly overwhelmed. I never had children, nor was Athena so much younger than me that I ever had to teach her anything like this. Suddenly, I could imagine us going in a circle of, ‘But why? But why? But why?’ until steam came out my ears.
I pressed my lips thin together and set the reader down to fetch one of the thick novels from his shelf and said. “Did you read this?”
“I tried,” he said, obviously not having a full grasp on reading. “Bits and pieces,” he clarified.
“Well… people write things like this. Like books or scripts and then people act them out for entertainment purposes.”
“Oh,” he said, sounding somewhat disappointed as he glanced over “So, they’re not real?”
“No, but chin up!” I laughed at his suddenly sullen expression. “They still matter.”
“And these,” he said, suddenly sounding all business again. He picked up the photo album and flipped over to the rice fields and tapped the photo gently. “What are these?”
“That’s a rice field. There’s a bunch of them in China and all over,” I explained. “China is a country on Earth, sort of like how you have different continents of land here.”
“Ah…” He ran his hand across his stubble-ridden chin and seemed to scrub against the hairs. “And, what is rice?” he laughed as he asked the question. “Food?”
I nodded and smiled. “Yes, it’s a type of food.”
“And this?” he said, flipping the page over to various other locations around the world.
I explained the majority of them to him the best I could, but couldn’t help but get the overwhelming feeling like something just wasn’t right. Some of his questions were asked with such vigor, and the rest none at all. My stomach lilted with nerves. Were I my sister, I would have gotten out of there immediately.
But I wasn’t Athena, and as I watched his deep blue eyes and dark lashes make their way to mine, I knew I wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon.
He inhaled sharply and traced my jaw line with his fingers: their tips so warm and inviting I wanted to lay one in my mouth and taste him. But I didn’t. I swallowed hard and didn’t turn my head, my eyes flicking up to his in a controlled movement.
“I think you are… like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” he said slowly.
“I think I could say the same, quite literally,” I laughed.
“I need to claim you,” he said, and I felt my stomach flip once more. “Now.”
“Well, that’s romantic,” I taunted and slipped away from my seat next to him. “I think we should just, keep things professional between us.”
“You want me,” he said accusingly as he walked over to me. He grabbed my shoulders and turned me to face him, his breath ghosting over my face like an intoxicating call.
I opened my mouth to speak, but the sentence died on my tongue and refused to come out.
“Your little face is all I think about,” he said with a heavy tone. My face flushed hot, and he grabbed my chin to tilt my lips toward his.
“I’ve thought about you, too,” I admitted shyly.
I knew we had both been playing a game with one another, a wild chase to see who would come out the winner, but I couldn’t see the lines any longer. They blurred somewhere between confusion and lust, and I knew I couldn’t resist them any longer.
“Tredorphen, look…” I began to protest, and before any more words could spill forth, he leaned in and kissed me.
I was so used to him being polite, dancing around this little game we were playing together, trying to get something from the other, that it almost took me back to feel how forceful he was.
He picked me up and set me on one of the rock shelves that jutted out from the cave wall. He lay me on the surface that looked like an oil slick rainbow.
“I hope this thing is sturdy,” I teased, though I was being completely serious. Every noise I heard sent a jolt of nerves through my body as though the whole shelf might crack off and we would fall to the ground in a fleeting mess.
“It is,” he said breathlessly. “It is.”
His tongue flicked against mine and rubbed hard against the length of it, exploring my mouth with haste as though his life depended on it. There was something urgent about our kiss, like if either stopped, it might not truly be happening.
I breathed lustfully into his mouth and let out a moan as he ran his hands up my body and along my large breasts. He unzipped the front of my dress as we kissed and then watched as they spilled out.
His eyes widened at the sight of them, and he cupped them carefully in his hands as though they might disappear. Licking and sucking them was the only thing that took him away from my mouth.
My hands laced through his short curls and drew him back up to my lips. My heart raced at the closeness, to really take in his scent and feel his muscles hard against me, among other things.
I reached my hand down the front of his pants with such haste that it made me blush. He smiled down at me with eyes that let me know I was being naughty and it made me feel wrong.
It was wrong. I could feel it in my bones, but I couldn’t stop.
We were both playing a game, but I knew I couldn't resist any longer. I could see his wings shimmering in the light and watched as he began to retract them.
“Don't,” I said, and he smiled genuinely.
With his wings out and scales glistening, coated with sweat, he leaned in and kissed me, explored my breasts with his mouth and hands as though he’d never seen them before.
Maybe he hadn’t.
The immense girth and the length of him only made me want to continue that much more.
I pushed the front of his pants down and moved my panties to the side of the heat that radiated between my legs, guiding him in carelessly.
The moment was hot and passionate up until when he entered me, his movements suddenly slack as he looked at me seriously. There was something in him that changed and a power, a connection, surged through me that I’d never felt before.
We locked eyes until he knew that I understood the moment and then he leaned in and kissed me before beginning to thrust.
I pulled off his shirt in haste and ran my hand along the defined muscles and golden pink scales, spreading my fingers wide against his skin. I could feel the throbbing desire burning in me and getting ready to explode.
Our breaths intermingled as he pressed his forehead to mine and slowed his rhythmic thrusting, locking his eyes with mine.
He licked across my lips before biting one, pulling it out gingerly with his teeth and I was sent over the edge.
An eruption of moans and breaths followed from both of us
“Just so you know…” I breathed out with a laugh, wiping my sticky bangs off of my forehead. “I don’t plant a seed with my tail now.”
Tredorphen laughed; hot breath ghosting over my face from the comment. He let his body fall on mine just slightly and brushed my sweaty cheek with his hand. “Good to know.”