Chapter Six
Aria woke in the morning to find that she was still naked and trapped in a dragon’s lair. Neither fact pleased her. In the brief moment before she opened her eyes, she’d hoped desperately that she’d dreamed the whole thing and she’d wake up in barracks that smelled of feet and chlorine.
It was not to be.
She was still behind bars and still the captive of the handsome asshole who called her pet even though he knew her name was Aria. And he was standing next to the bars, as if he’d been watching her sleep. Goddamn. Even super-max prisoners got more privacy than this.
He’d disrobed again—apparently dragons only wore clothing for special occasions. It was impossible not to look at his manhood swinging heavily between his muscular thighs, a total distraction.
“Good morning, pet,” he said, making her grind her teeth in annoyance. “Did you sleep well?”
“I slept in a cage,” she scowled. “So, no, I didn’t sleep well.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said in a way she absolutely didn’t believe.
“Sure you are.”
He ignored her attitude.
“Did you have any dreams?”
“What? No. What do you care?”
“I’m simply curious, pet.”
“Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you,” she said, realizing she sounded sort of petulant. It was a weird situation to find herself in. This dragon, her enemy, was trying to make her submissive to him. He had been honest about that. It meant she couldn’t trust anything he said or did, as it was no doubt in the service of his goal. Even a simple question about dreams was probably some perverted thing to get inside her head.
“Are you hungry?”
“Yeah.”
He opened the cage door and let it swing wide. Aria stayed where she was, suspicious. She was right to be.
“You will work for your food, pet,” he said. “Pleasure me with your mouth before you fill your belly.”
“Fuck you,” she growled.
“Later,” he smirked, taking a couple of steps back to sit on the bed. His cock was already thickening, growing before her eyes into an impossibly large rod that was pointing imposingly in her direction. “Right now, I want to fuck your mouth.”
“Suck your own dick,” Aria told him. “I’ll stay hungry.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said in smooth purring tones. “Did I phrase it as a request?” His voice dropped into a commanding growl. “Come over here, pet, and pleasure me.”
“I hate you,” Aria growled right back at him. “And I’m not going to touch your filthy lizard cock with my mouth.”
“Feisty this morning, aren’t we,” he replied with a dark smirk. “Well, pet. Let me present you with another option. You may take me in your mouth and pleasure me. Or you may go over my knees, be thrashed until you are begging for mercy and release… and then take me in your mouth.”
“Asshole,” she snarled.
“Oh, you want me to take you there? Well,” he said, cocking his head to the side. “I think it would be a tight fit, but…”
“No! Goddammit!” He was toying with her. He knew, and she knew, that she didn’t really have any choice. If she did not do as he said, he could do increasingly perverse things to her until sucking his cock seemed like the most pleasant option.
“Come here, pet,” he said, crooking his finger at her. “Before I lose my patience with this little game.”
Cursing inwardly and out loud, Aria stood up and approached him. He was so damn tall that even with him sitting on the bed, she still didn’t have much height on him.
His cock was almost fully erect now, a great beast of a thing between his thighs. She had a reaction to it, one aside from the anger and rebellion. A reaction that made her mouth water in spite of the fact she was still very much intending to refuse to take him in her mouth.
Vyktor reached out and ran his hands over the curve of her hips, his skin hot against hers. “Very good, pet,” he said, praising her for following the command.
“It’s not like I had a choice.”
“There’s always a choice,” he murmured, his hands roaming slowly up and down her body. He grazed against the outer curves of her breast, teasing her into one of those almost hypnotic states of arousal he seemed to be able to produce in her with relatively little effort.
“Kneel before me, pet.”
She stayed standing, the need to rebel greater than the weakness of arousal. Vyktor’s fingers found her nipples and pinched lightly, sending little bolts of naughty excitement converging on her clit.
“There are consequences for disobedience,” he warned her gently.
I hope so. The thought popped into Aria’s mind unbidden, the little spark of mischief she had never been able to entirely tame. She made no verbal reply aside from a small moan that she couldn’t help as Vyktor’s fingertips tightened on her nipples.
“Kneel, pet,” he repeated more firmly, gravel in his voice. Perhaps it should have intimidated her into behaving. Instead, it made a smile appear on her lips, that same smile of reckless abandon that so many of her commanders had seen before and tried their very best to wipe off.
Vyktor answered that smile with one of his own. The fingers of his right hand left her breast and snaked around her neck. He took hold of the nape of her neck and squeezed just hard enough to make her knees begin to buckle. It didn’t hurt, but it did quite literally bend her to his will until she found herself kneeling on the rug beside his bed, the great thick length of his cock standing erect before her face. From this angle it seemed as big as her head, an intimidating thick pillar of flesh with those dragon scales plating its base.
“Take me in your mouth.”
Aria looked up into his handsome face with a smirk on her lips. He could force her to her knees, he could make her body respond to him with his adept pinching, but he could not make her suck his cock. That was an act of will. She knew well enough when she was being given an unenforceable order, and this was definitely one of them.
“Make me,” she sneered.
His dark brows rose at her. “Make you? Are you sure, pet?”
“Definitely. You can’t… oooommnnggg!”
Vyktor took a fistful of her hair and drew her head toward his crotch. Aria growled as the thick flared head of his cock brushed against her lips.
“Open your mouth, pet,” he repeated.
When she did not immediately obey him, he slid his other hand around under her jaw and pressed his fingers near the joints, applying steady pressure until she yielded to it and parted her lips. She squirmed furiously, her bottom and hips wriggling back and forth as he slowly slid the head of his cock between her lips and into the hot, wet cavern of her mouth.
Technically, he had not made her suck his cock, but the technicality was a meaningless one. His thick rod was in her mouth, sliding over her tongue and pressing all the way to the back of her throat.
She would have bit him, but the powerful hands made it almost impossible to close her mouth. Vyktor used her mouth to pleasure himself with the supreme confidence of a creature who knew he had her completely in his control. She tasted the tang of him, something she had never encountered in a human man, a metallic, perhaps earthy taste that was subtle but present.
“I filled your pussy last night,” he said. “You brimmed with my seed. It was beautiful to see the soft lips of your sex coated with my cum. Today you will swallow it.”
He had a way of speaking, that deep, accented tongue that made his crude words sound like poetry and made Aria’s pussy quiver. She hated that reaction. There she was, on her knees, having her mouth fucked for her disobedience and she was growing wet at his words.
The dragon pulled his cock from her mouth and looked down at her, his golden eyes gleaming with pleasure. “Do you need me to hold you open for me? Or will you pleasure me as I ordered?”
Her jaw was starting to ache, and she knew it would be much easier if she simply obeyed him. It wasn’t as if she had a choice; one way or another he was going to fill her mouth with his cock. And yet the notion of submitting to his desire filled her with a heated embarrassment. Her hips were squirming, her bottom rubbing against the back of her ankles as she battled with the question.
“Do let me know, pet,” he drawled, pushing his cock back into her mouth in one long stroke, then removing it again.
He repeated the process half a dozen more times before she finally capitulated, his cock gleaming with her saliva as she whimpered and spoke. “Fine, I’ll do it…”
“You will ask me nicely, pet.”
“What!?”
“Ask permission to suck my cock.”
“Please,” she grated between clenched teeth. “May I suck your cock?”
“You may, pet,” he said, releasing her entirely.
She hesitated, knowing that he would take matters into his own hands again if she did not go through with it. It had almost been easier when he had her head in his hands, then she didn’t have to slide her own mouth onto his member. Then she didn’t have to wrap her lips around his cock herself and take it deep into her hot mouth, her tongue lapping at it as she found herself beginning to enjoy the taste.
“Good pet,” he praised, running his fingers lightly through her hair. “You are very good at sucking my cock, pet.”
Aria blushed. He spoke the words as if they were genuine praise. She was now judged by her ability to pleasure him. Her skills, her many other qualities were irrelevant in that moment. All he cared about was how well she licked and suckled and tended to his thick, hard cock.
She couldn’t help but try to please him. Not because she wanted him to feel pleasure, but because of her inner drive to do well. He had tapped into an easily pervertable desire for success, the same desire that had gotten her so far in life was now channeled into bobbing her head along the length of her most dire enemy’s cock.
Vyktor let out a groan, his fingers curling in her hair. She felt his hard flesh throbbing against her tongue. He began to thrust back, filling her mouth over and over. He was so long he could have easily taken her deep into her throat, but in spite of his command, he did not go any deeper than she could easily take. Her hips squirmed with every thrust deep inside her mouth, as she was reminded time and time again of his strength and her vulnerability.
His grunts and growls were becoming more frequent and intense. She felt his cock thickening in her mouth as his climax drew closer. He was going to come from fucking her mouth. He was using her, and she was responding in a way she barely understood. Why was this so hot? Why was her pussy so wet? Why did she…
“Pet!” he gasped as his cock stiffened and his seed began pumping over her tongue, flooding her mouth with enough volume that she had to swallow in order not to be overwhelmed. No wonder his seed had run so freely down her thighs last night.
“Very good, pet,” he said, releasing her hair so she could pull away, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
The taste of his seed was rich on her tongue. It did not taste like a human’s semen, it was a more complex flavor, maybe a little better tasting, less bitter. She didn’t know. She didn’t want to think about it too much.
His earlier words were ringing in her ears, not just the embarrassing commands, but the reason why he had taken her, and the reason he was giving them. She was the whipping girl for a species. It wasn’t fair, but that didn’t matter to him.
“I hate you,” she growled, wiping his cum from her lips.
“Keep saying that and you may yet convince yourself that you still believe it,” he smiled at her. “You are already beginning to like me, pet. It galls you that someone who treats you this way could also have a place in your affections, but it does not stop it from happening.”
He was such an arrogant asshole. His ego truly knew no bounds.
“In your cage, pet,” he said. “And I will bring you food.”
* * *
After bringing her something to eat, Vyktor left for several hours. Once again, Aria was left to her own devices to try to process what had happened to her. She’d challenged him to make him take her, and he had not hesitated to do so. She would have to be more careful about what she said to him. He didn’t have the same socialization that human men did. He didn’t know or likely care that he wasn’t supposed to do what he had done. He had taken her at her word, and for once in her life, Aria had gotten precisely what she had asked for.
It was easy to forget sometimes that these creatures were not human. Even with his strange eyes and the scaling on his body, his easy albeit accented command of the language made him feel familiar to her. She nibbled on the food he had brought her—a bowl of dry cereal. The dragons must have looted a supermarket at some point and followed the directions on the box. She didn’t know what they were eating, though there were complaints from farmers that cattle and sheep were being taken in the night.
The notion of escape returned to her, but again she could not fathom how she was going to escape down a mountain with only a blanket for cover. There was no way she was getting out without a full set of clothing, most of it insulated. And even then, her odds of survival were low. Vyktor didn’t seem to have any plans to kill or harm her, so the best choice—even if she’d had one, which she didn’t—was to stay put. Stay put, eat her dry cereal, drink the melted snow water and try to think about a way to convince the dragon to return her of his own accord.
When he returned he carefully locked the door of his room, and then opened her cage, allowing her to come out. She didn’t move from where she was sitting. The blankets were the only form of modesty she had, and she was not going to give them up easily.
“What do you want?” She asked the question with more than a touch of attitude, lifting her chin in a cocky pose that was supposed to tell him that she didn’t care what he did to her.
His response made her mouth drop open.
Vyktor stood over her at the cage door, looking all the taller as his golden eyes gazed down at her. “I want you to tell me what life as a human is like.”
“If you assholes stopped burning everything, you’d find out quickly enough,” she said when she had recovered from the shock of a question unrelated to his ongoing erotic mastery of her.
“It is regrettable that so much violence has taken place…”
“So stop it already!”
“That is difficult, given the extreme hostility we have been met with.”
“You lizards came here and started attacking us first,” Aria pointed out.
“No.”
“What? Don’t lie to me, I know exactly what happened. We all do. We saw the portal open. We lost a man in there! And then you all came flooding out…”
Vyktor’s brows dipped for a moment. “Do you really think it was that simple? Do you think we were all milling on the other side waiting for humans to let us in so we could destroy your world? Are humans truly so self-centered that they believe all of life revolves specifically around them?”
Aria got the distinct feeling that she was missing something, though she didn’t know what. He seemed almost insulted by her accusations of dragon aggression, which meant that he was either dangerously deluded or he knew something she didn’t.
“Humans respond to aggression with aggression,” she said. “We didn’t start this war. Well, not on purpose.”
“When the portal was opened, it caught us by surprise,” Vyktor explained with a tone Aria could only describe as patient. He was talking to her as if she was perhaps too dense to understand what seemed to him to be very obvious. “It caused a great deal of damage in the process. The human side of the rift is located in the middle of a desert. On the dragon side, a great chasm suddenly opened in the middle of one of our largest colonies. It took many lives.”
“Oh,” Aria said, feeling compelled to apologize, but thinking that it would not come across as sincere. “I didn’t know that, I am sorry.”
“You mentioned losing a man,” Vyktor continued. “He came tearing through the city and crashed into one of our greatest monuments. He survived the immediate impact, but fell ill hours later and passed within a day. There was nothing we could do for him, though we tried.”
“I didn’t know that,” Aria repeated herself, hating how weak the words were.
“No,” Vyktor said. “You did not, because from the beginning, the human response has been to fly your creations of aggression wherever you please, ignoring the sovereign territory of others, and once there, shoot first and never stop to question anything. So when you begin to hate us, remember, pet. We did not come to you. It was a human action which joined our worlds. It was a human action which led to the first death in this war.”
“It wasn’t my idea to turn the stupid station on,” Aria said, feeling a little defensive.
“No, but it was your idea to try to kill me in the air yesterday. It was you who came screaming toward me in your flimsy little contraption with your exploding missiles.”
She cringed a little inwardly. He’d saved her even though she’d done everything she could to kill him. But he’d had a reason to do that. He’d wanted a human to take and to train. She had been an easy target thanks to the Tornado’s malfunction.
“You would do well to look ashamed,” he growled at her. “When we looked at your planet and tried to understand what had happened, we soon discovered that although you humans resemble our flightless form in many ways, you are utterly different. You have a history, a long history of destroying the worlds of others. The forests and oceans were two worlds apart from people and they have both been decimated. We looked at what you had done to your world, and we knew what would happen to ours. General Eldor came here to destroy humanity. I came with him in the hopes of tempering his blood lust.”
When he put it that way, Aria began to understand the reason for the ferocity the dragons had shown. If they believed they were fighting an unrelenting force, it made sense that they had attacked so vigorously.
“Not everybody supports that kind of behavior,” she argued. “The pilot who flew into the portal was ordered to do so. He didn’t have a choice, no more than I had when I shot missiles at you.”
“He volunteered,” Vyktor said. “We discovered that much while we were trying to save his life. He was eager to explore a new world, so he said. Little did he realize that, much like every ‘new’ world you have ever found, it is much older than you think and it belonged to something else first.”
Aria was starting to feel guilty. Not for her own actions, but for the actions of her species present and past. Then she remembered that feeling guilty for things everyone else had done was stupid and shook her head at him.
“So you’re not totally unjustified,” she said. “But…”
“There are no buts. Is it fair that this falls so heavily on your shoulders? That you should be made an example for the sins of your kind? Perhaps not. But fate is not known for its fairness, pet. And many have suffered a great deal more than you ever will in my care.”
Somehow he was making her feel spoiled for objecting to being caged and treated as a pet. And somehow it was almost working.
“We are not the only ones who have committed atrocities,” she said. “What is happening now is…”
“Inexcusable and entirely unnecessary,” Vyktor said. “The killing must end. Which is why I intend to show the generals that with proper handling, humans are not the threats they seem to be. You are a runaway species who are yet to be properly disciplined, that is all.”
Aria wanted to hate him. Wanted to tell him that he was wrong. Wanted to say that her side had done nothing wrong, but the truth was more complex than that, and there could be no doubt that it was humanity who had opened the portal between the worlds, and it was a human who had breached the border with a weapon of war, engaged with an unknown enemy, and plunged the world into chaos.
“And that discipline comes in the form of your cock in my mouth?” She asked the question with a little smile, trying to break the internal tension she felt sitting at Vyktor’s feet.
“That’s something you understand at the very core of you,” he replied. “It touches you more deeply than anything else could. You have already been trained by your military, conditioned to think and behave in certain ways. I will train you much more deeply, pet. I will train the very heart of you. Come here,” he ordered. “I want you on the bed.”
Aria found herself rising from the blankets and doing as she was told. She wasn’t entirely sure why she was doing as he told her. Nothing had really changed since their discussion, but there was a part of her that seemed to yearn to surrender to him. It was a part she had not felt very often in her life.
How on earth did he understand humans so well? In such a short time?
“How do you know so much? And how do you speak our language?”
“You have a very simple script language,” he said. “It is not difficult for a dragon to understand. Understanding your written word and speech is the same to us as understanding a dog wagging its tail is to you.”
“Oh.” Aria scrunched her face up, feeling vaguely insulted. “Well.”
“Don’t take that as an insult, pet,” he said. “You are what you are, and we have been impressed with how much you have achieved as a species with such simple tools to work with.”
“So glad we’ve impressed you,” Aria said, sounding snotty even to herself.
“It’s going to take some time for you to get comfortable with the fact that you are no longer top of the food chain,” he observed. “Arrogance is built into the human condition as far as I can tell.”
“It’s not arrogance to not enjoy being told that you’re as simple as a dog.”
“I didn’t say you were as simple as a dog. I said your language is clear to us. Come here. We have talked enough.” He crooked his finger at her, then pointed at the bed, keeping his communication simple, she noticed.
Aria left the cage and moved toward the bed, half afraid that she was about to feel Vyktor’s hand across her ass again. She was almost shocked when she made it to the bed without one of the hard slaps from his palm searing its way across her unprotected cheeks.
In spite of her vulnerable nudity, she was beginning to feel a certain level of comfort with this man. No. Creature. His near constant nakedness made hers less odd. She almost wondered if she would feel strange wearing clothes… then she quickly dismissed the notion.
“Am I going to get something to wear?”
“Why do you need clothing? That does seem to be a very strange human habit.”
“We don’t have any protective coats, or layers of sufficient fat. We get cold,” she explained. “And when we get cold, we get sick.”
“But it is not cold in here, is it?”
“No,” Aria admitted. “But it’s still not… hygienic to wander around without clothes. Dirt sticks to our skin and gets into places it shouldn’t. I need clothes. And I need a bath.”
That was true. She had spent a hard eight hours in a flight suit, done battle with a dragon, and been captured and claimed by him. It was all dirty work, and she was coated in what felt like a thin film of sweat and muck.
“Clothes and a bath,” Vyktor nodded. “Not an entirely unreasonable request, I suppose.”
“Is there a bath here?”
“We have created a communal bath,” Vyktor mused. “It is large enough to swim in. That should suit your purpose.”
“Not a communal one!” Aria was quick. “It’s not a pool I need to swim in, it’s a bath… you know, a small area of water, enough to sit in and soap myself in and then get rid of the dirty water when it is done?”
“I see,” Vyktor said. “Wait here, pet.”
He left her outside her cage, unattended in his room while he went to make the preparations for her bath. Standing in the dragon’s lair, a small smile crept over Aria’s lips. She hadn’t planned that, but it couldn’t have gone more perfectly if she had.
She immediately began rummaging through the dragon’s possessions. Small niches had been carved into the wall like shelves, and there were pieces of what looked like very thick paper rolled up on them. They might be military intelligence.
She unrolled one of the papers and frowned. English might be simple to the dragons, but whatever script they used was not simple to her. The marks were thick, bold, and angular, but they meant nothing to her. Disappointed, Aria slipped the paper back where she’d found it. This was an unparalleled opportunity to collect intelligence about the dragons, but she wasn’t going to learn anything from reading. She was going to have to question Vyktor skillfully enough that he didn’t realize what she was doing.
It was a couple of hours at least until Vyktor returned. Aria wondered if he had forgotten about her entirely. She had been through most of the objects in the room by then, finding little that she understood enough to know if they were of value or not. She was almost pleased to see the dragon when he returned, his naked form looking pumped, as if he had been engaged in hard labor. One of his hands was clutched behind his back, giving him a look of formality.
“What, did you have to build the bath with your bare hands?”
“Claws,” he smiled. “Much easier.”
Aria didn’t know if he was serious or not. It didn’t really matter.
“I have had your bath prepared, pet,” he said. “But before we go, come here.”
She approached him curiously and stood before him. If she was going to get information out of him, she would have to be a little bit compliant. Vyktor gently swept her hair behind her shoulders and from behind his back he produced something silver, studded with gold and amethyst crystals. It wasn’t quite a necklace. It was too thick and too short for that. When he looped it around her neck and fastened it at her nape, she realized that what it actually was a collar. A very beautiful one, likely worth in the tens of thousands given the gorgeous cut of the purple gems.
Aria wanted to be outraged, but it was rather difficult given that he had just hung a greater value of riches around her neck than she would ever have earned in years.
“What is this?” She fingered it gently, already half-knowing the answer.
“Eldor wishes you to be under effective control when you are outside my chambers,” he said, producing a chain, similarly studded and made of silvery links with gold inlay and amethyst gems set into the very center of the links. It was utterly stunning, and Aria stared at it with wide eyes as he clipped it to the collar around her neck. He had her on a leash now. She was literally being treated as his pet, but instead of it feeling humiliating and awful, it felt as though she were highly valued and spoiled.
“That is a hell of a magic trick,” she said. “Are you pulling these out of your ass? Do dragons poop jewelry?”
“I made these last night, after I settled you into your bed,” Vyktor said, apparently taking her question of high value defecation seriously. “I enjoy jewel crafting, and you are quite an inspiration.”
Aria tried not to feel too pleased about the dragon’s gift. It wasn’t a gift anyway. These silver, gold, and purple chains were no less shackles than the heavy iron ones that had been closed around her wrists and ankles in the beginning. She inwardly lectured herself not to be taken in by the shiny trinkets, but it was difficult. Even when Vyktor wrapped the other end of her leash about his hand and drew her gently forward, she gave in to the pressure easily, following him outside his rooms and into the halls of the dragon’s nest.
Everywhere she looked, the walls had been carved with ornate patterns and designs. It reminded her somewhat of the way ancient Egyptians had made the walls highly decorative, with inscriptions and carvings depicting dragons becoming men and vice versa, great representations of dragon eyes, fire being breathed over the surface of small worlds…
“Come along, pet,” he murmured, urging her forward.
“I didn’t see these before,” she said. “Why didn’t I see these?”
“You were exhausted and half asleep,” Vyktor replied, slowing to allow her to take the carvings in. “These are but a simple ornamentation. They help us feel a little more at home.”
“They’re amazing,” Aria said, running her finger over the image of a large dragon that was depicted arching its head back, flames issuing from its mouth. There was a ferocity and a majesty to the image that touched her somewhere deep in her heart. She felt a little twinge of the same feeling that had once spurred her to explore the portal storm and to seek its center—a yearning that made little sense and yet was powerful nonetheless. “If these are simple, your homes must be beautiful.”
“They are more focused on aesthetic qualities than most human dwellings we have seen,” Vyktor agreed. “So many of you live in little wooden boxes exposed to the elements. Very strange.”
“Most people don’t have the money or the time to decorate their houses like this,” Aria said. “Most people are very busy and count themselves lucky to have the wooden box.”
“People do not have time to build their houses? If you do not have time to build your house, what do you have time for?”
“Most people don’t build their houses,” Aria said. “They are bought and sold many times. Houses are very expensive.”
“Is it a lack of materials? You seem to have enough wood and stone…”
“It’s a lack of…” Aria pursed her lips as she thought. What was it a lack of, exactly? “People don’t have the skills to build houses. We specialize in our jobs. I flew planes. Other people might program computers, or look after others with medicine, or prepare food. It takes years to learn those skills and there’s no time for house building. So builders have to build them—and the land they’re on is very expensive, especially in big cities.”
“Why is it expensive?”
“Because people want to live there. So they will pay more.”
“So it’s expensive because people will make it expensive for themselves?”
“I guess,” Aria said. “I don’t really… I mean… it’s complicated. The economy and… I don’t know.”
“Hm.” Vyktor nodded slowly. “Such complexities for such simple creatures.”
“We’re not as simple as we seem.”
A smile passed over his face. “That I can believe, pet. Come, you need your bath.”
The bath was not far away down the winding halls of ‘simple’ carvings that Vyktor did not seem at all impressed by, and that made Aria feel as though she were in the chambers of some great ancient civilization. The world outside the mountain was starting to feel much less real somehow, more ephemeral. Had there ever been places that were lit with incandescent electric light, garishly blaring through day and night? Had there ever been a world where creatures like herself thronged pavements?
Aria shook her head to clear it. She had only been with the dragons for a day, and already she was losing touch with the reality she had known. It was the total isolation from everything that was doing it, and the captivating way Vyktor had of drawing her attention so completely that it seemed there was nothing outside of him.
“These are our communal baths,” Vyktor said, leading her into a cavernous space where several dragon men were lazing in a body of water that looked much like an interior lake, and that was the size of a swimming pool. The humidity in the room told her that the water was being warmed, though how that was happening she was not sure.
They nodded to Vyktor, though Aria did not see what else they might have done as she was too busy closely observing the ground. What felt natural with Vyktor, being on a leash, was soon shameful when the eyes of others fell upon her.
“And here is our private bath.”
He led her to a door in the wall marked boldly with the letter ‘V.’
“You used human script,” Aria noted in surprise.
“I did,” he smiled. “I rather like it.”
“Are you going to get it tattooed on you somewhere?” Aria asked the question with a little smirk. Vyktor’s interest in humanity was quite charming. She had to be careful that she didn’t end up telling him too much and giving something important away.
“Tattooed?”
“It’s when people get ink injected into their skin, so they can walk around with symbols or pictures or words on them.”
“Intriguing.” Vyktor nodded. “No, I admit, I had not intended on marking myself permanently with the V.”
He opened the door, revealing a relatively small chamber that featured a bath-like hollow carved into the floor. It was about twice as large as any bath Aria had ever seen before and it was filled with gently steaming water that flowed from a niche in the wall at one end and drained at the other in a steady flow. She could see claw marks in the walls, indicating that he—or his craftsmen—must have taken their dragon form to create the space.
“Wow,” she breathed. “This is perfect.”
“I am glad it is satisfactory to you, pet,” he said, no small amount of amusement in his voice. “I have also found some lotions of a cleaning nature among the supplies we have managed to forage during our time here. I hope one of them will be suitable for you.”
Aria slid into the warm water, finding it a perfect temperature. Hot enough to make her muscles relax, not so hot she felt as though she was being poached. She leaned back and let herself float in the water, closing her eyes for a moment to simply relax in a moment of comfort.
There was a soft splash as Vyktor slid in next to her, the tub comfortably accommodating both of them side by side with some room to spare.
She reached for the soaps… then burst out laughing.
“What is it, pet?”
Aria giggled, holding up a golden bottle. “This is dishwashing liquid. We use it to clean up after meals.”
“Well, you are bite-sized,” Vyktor replied with surprising alacrity.
She pushed the bottle back onto the ledge and looked at him, shaking her head. “You’ve spoken English for a few weeks and you’re already using puns?”
“Dragons enjoy wordplay,” he said. “We enjoy most play.”
“Yes,” Aria said. “That was what we noticed first when you invaded—how fun you all are.”
Her words dripped with sarcasm, causing Vyktor’s brows to rise. “I hear being punished on wet skin is worse than dry. Shall we test that theory, pet?”
“Oh, yeah,” Aria grinned, her natural mischief coming to the fore. “You’re just so much fun!”
She splashed a little water at him. A few droplets caught him across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. For the first time since knowing him, he looked a little comical and Aria liked it. The fear and embarrassment that had been present for so much of their association was gone. She might have been wearing his collar, and he might have had her leash in his hand, but she suddenly felt a little more equal.
“Naughty pet,” he drawled, wiping his face. He rested his arms along the back of the bath and watched her as she pushed off from the side and glided naked through the water, her progress only arrested by coming to the end of her leash. Vyktor let the links of the chain slide through his fingers and drop to the floor of the tub, which was almost five foot deep. The chain was long enough that it dragged along the bottom of the tub, feeling a little like a very gentle anchor.
“Am I still under effective control?” Aria smirked at him as she swam lazily to the other side of the tub, putting her a good ten feet away from him.
“You’re always under control when you are in my presence,” Vyktor said in deep, gravelly tones. “Whether you know it or not.”
Aria had the unsettling feeling that was probably true. She felt some freedom in the bath, but she was enclosed not only in the bath, but she was still collared, still naked, still entirely at his mercy.
“Come, pet.” He crooked his finger. “Let me wash you.”
Aria considered his offer for a moment, then accepted. Kicking off the side of the tub, she glided back to Vyktor, allowing him to catch her in his hands. The intimacy between them was already intense. She didn’t know why. He had been holding her prisoner for not quite a day, not nearly long enough for Stockholm syndrome to have set in. And yet, when he held her gently as he was doing now, and she looked into his handsome face and those strange not quite human eyes, she felt a bond.
Maybe it wasn’t based on her captivity. Maybe it was the same bond or yearning that had drawn her to the portal storm. Aria didn’t know, and it was too difficult to think about as Vyktor took a soft cloth and rubbed foaming body wash into it.
She sighed softly as he turned her around so she was facing away from him and began to rub the soap over her back and shoulders in a slow, sensual massaging motion that made muscles she had not known were tense begin to relax. His large hands could be surprisingly gentle, and Aria found herself starting to sink into a deeper state of relaxation as he roamed her back with the cloth, clearing away the grime of the previous day’s efforts.
“That feels really good,” she moaned softly.
“Good,” he replied, his deep voice rumbling behind her ear. He pulled her back to rest her bottom on his thigh and continued washing her body, coaxing the cloth around her form. She let out a little moan as he massaged it around and under her breasts, making her nipples stand to attention.
“You are so responsive, pet,” he said. “I confess, I knew humans were tamable. I had no idea how easily they could be tamed.”
“I’m not tamed,” she said, turning in a swirl of water and pushing away a foot or two. “I’m just not stupid.”
He looked at her steadily with his wise face and knowing eyes. “Oh?”
She shut her mouth. If she told him she was only going along with him to make him think she was falling under his spell, then that would introduce an element of mistrust, which totally undermined her entire plan.
Vyktor shook his head and crooked his finger at her. “Come here, pet,” he murmured. “Your pride will not allow you to admit how you feel, but I see it in your eyes. Hatred no longer blazes there as it once did. You should not feel shame for that. It is natural for a weaker entity to depend upon a stronger…”
“Fuck off,” Aria swore. “You are not stronger than me.”
Vyktor threw his head back and laughed with genuine amusement, his deep bellows echoing around the walls.
“What kind of delusion do you have, pet?” He looked at her in the way one might look at a dog with its head stuck in a cat door. “Of course I am stronger than you.”
“Maybe physically,” she said. “And maybe you can speak languages better… but…”
“There is no but,” he replied, cutting her off. “You were made to be my pet. You’re perfect for it. A softly formed body, enough spirit to be a challenge, with a yearning for the sky which made you step into a dangerous craft and imagine you have the wings you humans seem to have an instinctive desire for, but have somehow lost.”
When he spoke that way, she was almost tempted to agree with him. Maybe it was his charisma, his deep rumbling voice that vibrated his truth into her. Or maybe he was just… right. He was so much more powerful, more ancient…
“You’re jealous,” she said as a burst of inspiration struck her. “Your people don’t know how to make electricity, or machines like cars and planes. It wasn’t your people who worked out how to make a portal. That was us. So maybe you should put the brakes on assuming you’re better than us. As far as I can tell, you’re a relic.”
He reached for her, took her by the wrist and drew her to him, creating a small wave of water that splashed over his scaled shoulders. She reached out to steady herself, laying her hands on those very scales, surprised again at how they felt beneath her hands, warm and unyielding, but not uncomfortably hard to the touch.
“A relic who can fuck you senseless,” he growled against her lips before kissing her deeply, his tongue snaking into her mouth.
His kiss made her head spin, her senses completely hijacked by the intensity of his desire. He was a relic, there was no doubt about that, but he was the kind that only grew stronger with age, not the kind that crumbled over time.
She sank against his body, becoming softer for his hardness as he wrapped his hand in her hair and held her there, right where he wanted her, dominating her with every breath he took. Aria’s body responded with fierce, fast instinct.
Her wetness mingled with the water of the bath as the head of his cock probed for and then found her pussy. He ran his hands down her body, gripped her hips, and thrust hard up inside her, filling her with a rough, complete stroke.
Aria squealed into his mouth, her cries cut off by his lips as he held her in place and fucked her with hard strokes, punishing her for her insolence by stretching her pussy around his thick cock. She cried out, not knowing if she herself was making cries of pleasure or pain. All she truly knew is that she wanted more, more of this searing hot rod that made her pussy melt. More of this man, this dragon who cared nothing for human rules of engagement and fucked her as he pleased. For pleasure. For discipline. For whatever he wanted.
The water rippled around her nubile form as he lifted her up and thrust her down, fucking her without the need for her to so much as move a muscle. She was like a toy in his arms, so easily lifted and then pulled down, impaled on the hard rod. Her body was beaded with water as she rose and fell like a nymph in the arms of a god.
There were no words now, not even in her head. There were only images evoked from deep in what felt like a collective unconscious. When she was with him, she was connected to something in them both. She looked into his eyes, saw something there that simultaneously frightened her and gave her a sense of exhilaration like no other. She was riding this dragon, her quivering inner walls thrilling to his cock as she was plundered rough stroke after rough stroke.
He may have set out to teach her a lesson, but her pussy was taking him with an eagerness that made any notion of discipline fly out the window. She was slick with juices that coated his thrusting rod, made the passage of his thick flesh into her body an easy matter. The first time he’d pushed inside her, she’d thought she might split in two. Now she was learning to accommodate him, to relax some muscles and clench others. The erect bud of her clit was grinding against the harder scales at the base of his cock. They were a perfect match for her body, a little roughness to their texture stimulating her in a way no human man ever could.
He must have caught the shift in her body, the way her hips rolled proudly against his thighs, the way she threw her head back and basked in the sensations his pounding was producing all the way from her toes to the tingling of her scalp.
“How does this relic feel inside you, pet?”
He held her down on his shaft, not allowing her to slide up or grind down, or move at all until she answered him.
“Mnnnn…” Aria moaned, doing her best to break free of his hands. His strength was impenetrable though, she really couldn’t move a fraction of an inch.
He let out an answering groan. “Your tightness is…” He hissed a breath and she felt his cock pulsing inside her. Aria realized suddenly that he was on the verge of losing control. He had her collared, chained, locked in place over his hips, impaled on his cock—but her inner muscles were working in ways he could not control and they gripped and milked him in an ancient human way that seemed to trigger an inescapable response in him.
Vyktor threw back his head, a growl turning into a roar of pleasure as his cock stiffened inside her. She felt his cum shooting deep, hot seed coating the delicate inner walls of her sex—the same walls that had broken the resolve of a dragon.
Watching the dragon lose the battle against his own desire triggered Aria’s climax, a torrent of pleasure rushing through her body as she ground against him, her hips rebelling against his grip as her body did what it had been made to do—take the seed of a male as deep inside her hot depths as possible. He was no longer stopping her from moving, so she was free to work herself against his unyielding flesh, working herself to an erotic peak with his cock at her core.
She felt the orgasm in every part of her, the force of it sending her mind to a place beyond places, freeing her to her very soul. The thick rod inside her stayed hot and hard as she writhed against her mate, her climactic gyrations sending waves rolling across the bath until finally she collapsed against his chest, her eyes half closed as he ran his hands slowly over her back and bottom.
“We could bathe forever, but you would still be a dirty little pet,” Vyktor murmured against her ear.
Aria let out a soft little groan as he cupped her bottom and slowly slid his impaling flesh from her gripping lips. She was empty again, aching gently as the dragon’s seed slipped into the warm waters of the bath.
Lying against his chest, totally spent from her exertions, Aria did not resist as Vyktor took up a cloth and began to wash her well-used sex with a gentle touch. She found herself drifting into a semi-sleep state as the dragon’s hands roamed her body, the master reclaiming his pet after her brief erotic triumph.