It was not the first time Agena had gone for a nude swim with a weredragon any more than it would be the first time she went to bed with one. Perhaps it was only because of why she was on Lacerta with Thrax, but this swim in Serpent’s Tongue Stream felt like the most special swim she’d ever had.
Per his invitation, she had left her swimsuit on the passenger seat of the hoverboat, and he had left his loincloth on the pilot’s seat, and into the water. naked together, they went. For this swim, however, Thrax did not morph. He remained human—gloriously human.
Agena thought that if there were any consistency about the laws of nature, Thrax’s naked human form should make the water turn to steam the moment his body hit it. But of course, the water was pleasingly cool, not frigid, but just cool enough for comfort—another effect of the planetary climate controls. And it was crystal clear, allowing Agena to see his naked, stroking human form under the surface of the stream as if she were viewing him in a blue-tinted mirror.
Together they kicked and stroked their way down a stretch of Serpent’s Tongue Stream, letting the flowing water carry them along as much as they propelled themselves. For the moment, they seemed to be alone in this part of the stream, as no one else came swimming by. Agena was pleased at this and thought of it as the beginning of greater, deeper intimacies soon to come.
Thrax’s sensuously muscled human form was an inspiration to watch while swimming. He moved with all the grace and confidence he would have had as a dragon, pushing himself through the current, circling up and down around her. She could not know what was going through his mind, but she hoped he was thinking about her body and his together and that this swim was the overture to foreplay that would take them to their consummation.
She sent her imagination from this dance around her in the stream to the times they would soon spend rolling back and forth and up and down on thick sheets warmed by their mutual heat and the heat that Thrax would generate when he lay on top of her. More than ever, Agena knew that his giving her a baby would be a thing more satisfying for her than winning any game or any tournament or receiving any prize. Between Thrax’s legs waited the trophy she was growing to desire more than any other.
They broke the surface and floated there, facing each other, each submerged up to the chest. There was no sound except for the laughing and lapping of the water at the rocks at the edges of the stream and the soft rustle of the wind through the trees. The moment did not seem to need words. For Agena, it needed only the sight of him, his hair slicked flat against his head, his muscular shoulders and upper chest invitingly drenched, his face the most handsome she had ever seen.
Finally, Thrax broke the moment with the question, “Are you enjoying our planet so far?”
“I think it’s beautiful,” she replied, meaning so much more than just his world.
“Would you like to return now to the Chateau? We can dine and rest for a bit. I’m hungry after all this. I hope you are too.”
“Dinner would be wonderful,” Agena said. But “rest” was not the uppermost thing on her mind just now.
They swam across the surface of the stream, back to the hoverboat.
_______________
They had dinner served on the terrace of their suite. At each Courting Chateaux on the planet, the Lacertans spared no expense and withheld no luxury from the paired suitors and aspirants. They were to consider the Chateau their home and enjoy every amenity that the Governing Aerie could provide. If needed, they were even provided with fertility enhancers to help them fulfill their purpose for being here.
Courtship and the Chateaux were not a visitor’s accommodation, like other places on Lacerta. These places, of all places, were retreats where those in residence were catered to and provided for and otherwise left alone to copulate at will—and weredragons had plenty of will—until their purpose was at last accomplished.
Lottery-paired couples were known to stay for weeks and months at a time, engaged in sexual activities in their suites and in designated places in the facilities and on the property. Fertility drugs might have shortened the process, but such drugs were known to interact with the mutagen inhibitors, complicating pregnancies and possibly putting mothers and infants in jeopardy.
So all coupling and conception was done strictly the natural way, and nature was allowed to take its own course in its own time with every couple. Looking out from the terrace onto the grounds of the Chateau, which were replete with gardens, hedges, artificial ponds and streams, and little nooks tucked away on the grounds and up in the boughs of the trees, Agena knew that at any hour of the day and night, couples were urgently humping and screwing away all over the Chateau.
Looking across the terrace table at Thrax, Agena was more than ready to join them.
She had donned a diaphanous white silk gown that flowed and clung in all the right places. It was perhaps the most “feminine” thing she had ever worn in her life. She had undone her braid and let her hair flow freely over her shoulders and down her back to complement the gown. She was dressed and groomed for maximum allure. Thrax had simply donned long, loose-fitting trousers and nothing more, a choice of which Agena quietly, strongly approved. Raising his glass to her, he looked more appetizing than the dinner. She raised her glass in response, and together they drank before digging into a tableful of delicacies imported from Earth.
Sometime during the repast, Thrax began.
“Tell me,” he asked, “what attracted you to the sport you play?”
Pleased at his interest, Agena answered, “Sphereball? Oh, I guess it came naturally. I was basically a hyper-energetic little girl—restless, always moving, always wanting to run and jump. My parents used to describe me as a bolt of lightning looking for something to strike.
They were always looking for something that I could focus my attention on, where I wouldn’t destroy anything and wouldn’t get into any trouble. They signed me up for wall gymnastics and anti-gravity gymnastics when I was in school, and once I got started, they had another problem with me never wanting to stop.
By the time I got to Academy, I was already interested in sphereball and old enough to start playing. When I went to college, I was recruited out of there. It was always about me just being a very physical person.”
After a gulp of wine, Thrax agreed, “Yes…physical. You are very…physical.”
Watching him with a glint in her eye, Agena asked, “That is a compliment, right?”
Gazing at her over the rim of his wine glass, Thrax replied, “Very much so.”
Agena continued, “I’ve played sphereball my whole adult life. It’s what’s given me a life, really; a life that I wanted, a career. I’ve traveled most of human space, met all kinds of people -- different kinds of men…”
“Including some like me.”
“Yes. It doesn’t bother you that I’ve been with other Lacertan Knights, does it?”
“‘Bother?’ As in jealousy? There’s no reason it should. I’m only curious.”
“About what?”
“About the different kinds of lovers you’ve had—and whether we are your favorite. You have been to bed with human athletes as well…”
Agena blinked a bit at the turn that the conversation was now taking. What was he at with this? Was he trying to find out what kinds of memories he would be competing with when they lay together? She did not believe she would actually have to assuage any insecurity in a man as strong and confident as this, but she could not help but wonder where this was all going. She replied, “Yes. Yes, I have. And I don’t know if I’d say Lacertan Knights are my ‘favorites.’ Just that they were all…really, really good. Really good. Are you sure this isn’t awkward for you? I don’t want it to be awkward or uncomfortable…”
Thrax answered frankly, “There may be reasons to be awkward or uncomfortable, but your past is not among them.”
“What other reasons would there be, then?”
With another swallow of wine, Thrax went on. “Allow me to ask you another thing. No, not just one other thing -- some other things. Why did you decide to pursue relations with a Lacertan male to have a child? And why is this a future that you want?”
Agena understood now. Further explanations were in order, and it was a natural question after all. She said, “My career playing sphereball won’t go on forever; I know that. I can stay in top shape even getting older, and I don’t have to stop playing. But there’s always a demand for new, younger players, and as you get older, you’re not forced into retirement, but you start playing lower leagues, going down toward the minor league, and there’s less attention paid to you with the younger players coming up.
I didn’t want to fade away; I wanted to walk away. And that meant I had to decide on something else to do with my life once I stopped playing. That was when I thought I’d like to have a child, to be a mother. And I wanted a child with the best man I could find. If I’m honest, I guess in some ways I can be a bit of vain, proud person. I’ve always wanted the best of everything and always looked for it. And usually gotten it.
Thrax, I’m sorry if that makes me sound like I think you’re some kind of trophy, or something else I’ve won. I don’t want you to think of it that way…”
Thrax nodded no. “That does not offend me either. As a Knight, I take greater offense at settling for mediocrity than at reaching for excellence. We are not trained to settle, either. We are taught that excellence exists; it is in us, and it is our duty to bring it out. We are trained to be the best and to seek the best. The Knighthood is not for the unambitious.”
With a little exhale, Agena said, “I’m glad you understand.”
He continued, “That part I understand. The part that makes me curious is this choice, this exact choice, to become a mother with a man of my type. It is a big galaxy, filled with choices and possibilities. You could have done anything, become anything. If you no longer wanted to play sphereball you could have become a trainer of those new, young players coming in behind you and taught them to be as great as you.
You could have entered a different sport. Or you could have become an explorer, discovering or studying new worlds, perhaps as a member of the Colonial Expeditions. There are so many other things. Why this?”
Agena hoped she did not sound as anxious as she now felt. She was suddenly not liking the tenor of this conversation very much. “All those things are wonderful, Thrax. I agree. But having a child… I guess, once I had what I wanted most in life and I knew it wasn’t going to be forever, I started to think about what else I’d want. And that was when…
Maybe you’d call it something waking up inside of me, something that had been asleep all this time, or something that was there all along that I didn’t know about. I just realized one day that someday I’d like to have some other part of me, not something that I won, but something that I’d made, or created; another life that I could care for and teach and play with and help, that might go out and do something good in the world the way I’ve tried to do.
Or maybe even do something better than I’ve ever done. The love you put into a child goes out beyond you, to everyone and everything the child touches. It’s something I want, Thrax. And I guess I wanted to make that little life with a man who was already something more than I am.”
Thrax now wore the most serious expression she had yet seen on him. “You see me and my kind as something more than human?”
“I guess I do,” she said.
As honest as ever, he replied, “We’re not, you know. We’re as human as you. We have the same fears and hurts and hates as you. It’s only that we’re something else alongside our humanity. It does not make us any more or any less human. The fact that we’ve taken the measures we have to keep our world in growth should tell you that.”
Agena blinked again, her brows arching. “The Lottery, you mean? Are you saying you don’t like the Courtship Lottery? That you don’t approve of it?”
The beginnings of a frown showed on Thrax’s handsome face. “If I am honest, it has always troubled me. I have spent my life from adolescence until now, avoiding it. I’ve deferred it all these years, held it at bay. My status as a Knight and being stationed on other planets has helped me to defer it. Only now, I can’t hold it at bay any longer. It is my sworn duty to serve my world in whatever way I am called to serve. And now I am called to this.”
She was now genuinely alarmed and fighting to stay calm. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing, now of all times. “Then…you don’t actually want a child? You don’t really want to be a father?”
Carefully, thoughtfully, Thrax replied, “Having a child is something that everyone imagines, I think. Even if we never intend to have a family, I think that we all entertain the idea. It’s a natural thing, to try to imagine how it would be to have a child and do what you described: protecting it, teaching it, playing with it, helping it, sending it out into the world and hoping that it will do good things. Loving it. It is the most natural thing in the world. And yet…it is not something I have ever really needed. The Knighthood has always been more than enough for me. I’ve never needed fatherhood.”
Agena felt a sudden chill in spite of the perfectly maintained temperature. She settled back in her seat, hoping she did not look as pale as she suddenly felt. She wanted to open another bottle of wine and drink and drink and never stop. Feebly, she said, “Oh. I didn’t realize…”
“There was no way you could know,” said Thrax. “This Lottery of ours selects people at random, complete strangers with no knowledge of one another, and tosses them together expecting them to produce children to stop our planet’s stagnating. It is a pragmatic thing to do. It is even a pleasurable thing to do. All around us now are people pleasuring one another in the interest of keeping our world vital. But when I ask myself if this is the way it ought to be…I find I don’t care for the answer.”
For one of the few times in her adult life, Agena felt like crying, but she’d be damned if she would give in to the impulse now. Instead, she said, “Then, to you…this is nothing but a duty.”
Thrax’s pain mirrored her own. “I’m sorry, Agena, sorry if this hurts you. But you needed to know. I couldn’t be so dishonest as to not let you know.”
“I appreciate your honesty,” she said, suddenly feeling as hollow inside as she had felt excited and aroused just a few minutes ago. How could everything have changed so quickly?
“Perhaps there is a way I could make you understand me in this,” Thrax said. “You remember the history of Earth, correct?”
“Yes, I know history. What has history got to do with…?”
“Please, just hear me out. You know that hundreds of years ago, in one of the old nations, there was a time when some people in power saw women as things to dominate and control and even use and abuse as they saw fit. And they believed that a woman’s body was not really her domain and that she should have no say in what she did with it, that a woman’s body was rightly the domain of a man or even the state.
And they tried to make laws to compel a woman to reproduce, even if it was against her will. They said it was about the children, but it was actually about the women, about the way women saw themselves and the power that men wanted over them. Imagine yourself in a place where you were told that your body was not your own possession and that it was not for you to say what you did with it. How would you feel?”
Apprehensively, she asked, “So, you’re saying you feel now the way some women felt on Earth when people tried to take their rights over their own bodies away from them?”
“I’m saying that I am a Knight and I’m proud of it. I’m saying that I’ve committed my life to protecting and serving my world and my people. This is the only life I’ve ever wanted, and it is a life that I love. But in commanding me to surrender my body for breeding, my world is telling me that I am not its protector but its property.
I gave myself freely into the life that I lead. Now my world says I must give myself into a different purpose, and not one that I have chosen. If I refuse this duty, I may no longer be a Knight. I’ll be stripped of badge and armor, and the life that I love will be behind me. And I do not know who or what I’ll be then.”
Agena protested, “But you wouldn’t have to give up your whole life for it. You wouldn’t even have to marry me. Thrax, I could keep the child and have full custody. Or we could share custody. If you didn’t want to commit to living with us and raising the child together, you could be as much a part of the child’s life as you wanted. You could still stay a Knight and still do what you love. I’d never ask you to give that up.”
Thrax shook his head decisively. “That is easy enough to say, but think of the child. Think of the absence of a father in a child’s life. No matter how well a mother alone may raise a child, no matter how happy the child may be with only the mother, the absence of the father will always be felt. There will always be that one empty space in the child’s heart that only the father can fill.
And that space, left empty too much, may be a very painful emptiness. I think of the pain and the wanting, and I think of a child wondering where the father is and why the father does not want to be with him or her. And I think of what that can do to a child, however loving the mother may be.
And when I imagine that life for a child of mine, I cannot bear it. The only answer would be my renouncing the Knighthood and the two of us being married. And I say this very sincerely, Agena: in the heart of my heart, I have always believed that the one and the only reason to marry is for love. Not duty, not obligation, not even the well-being of a child—but for love.”
Agena felt something crumbling inside her, whether it was her heart or her hopes or only the fulfillment of her desire for the man across the table from her. She said, “And you and I aren’t lovers. We’re only a couple that the Courting computers chose for each other.”
“Yes.”
“There is one other answer,” she ventured.
“What?”
“As the aspirant, I have the right to select myself out, to back out. I can void the selection and request another Lottery. There’ll be questions asked and there’ll be some noses out of joint, but I can handle that. Would that leave you free to go back to the Knighthood and not have to give up your life?”
He shook his head again. “This is something that very rarely happens, Agena. It happens so seldom that it’s hardly ever discussed. In the event that you voided the selection, we would both be paired with others. You would be free to mate with another Lacertan, even a Knight or one of the Corps if you still wanted one. And the Lottery would simply present me with another human female, and my orders would be to breed with her as I would with you.”
She could only imagine that she now looked as pained as she felt. “Then what are we going to do, Thrax? I don’t want to go into this with you if it’s not what you want.”
“I don’t know what we can do,” he replied sadly. “But I do want you to know one thing. Had you and I met under any other circumstances, had we found each other in any other way…we would even now be on our way to bed. And I would give you nights and days such as you would not soon forget.”
For a moment, she said nothing. She only returned to imagining being in bed with Thrax, knowing that the reality of it would surpass his words. And inside, she continued to crumble. In a sad, low voice, she finally spoke: “I think we both have some things to think about before we go any further.”
“I believe so.”
“This isn’t the way I wanted this evening to end,” she admitted.
“I know, Agena,” he said. “And I know that if we were to go to bed now, we would please one another, perhaps better than anyone has ever pleased us before. I find you exceptionally beautiful, especially now. And only my discipline stops me coming round this table and taking you before we even have a chance to reach a bed.”
She faced him with only an ache left in her heart where her hopes had been. “You’d be wonderful, Thrax. I know you would. And I’d be wonderful for you. I knew that as soon as you came across that bridge and joined me on the platform. I thought, ‘Here is not just the father of my child. Here’s the best lover I’ll ever have.’
I still believe that. But for something that special, it has to be mutual—mutual in every way. If we’re only together in one way, it won’t be everything it ought to be. So we’re both going to have to think hard about what it is we want.”
Agena rose from the table, and Thrax gallantly rose with her. She told him, “We need some time to ourselves, to think it over. I’m sorry you’re in this position, Thrax. I wish I could release you from it completely. But I really hoped I could be something besides just your duty. I’ll be on my side of the suite. Good night, Thrax.”
“Good night, Agena,” he replied. He wanted to tell her to sleep well, but he knew that she would sleep no better than he would tonight.
Thrax watched her step off the balcony and into the suite, and the sinking of his heart matched the sinking of the orange Lacertan sun on the horizon far beyond the grounds of the Chateau. And if the truth be told, his heart was not the only part of Thrax that was sinking. Some other part of him, down lower on his body, felt the same way.
The deep blue and pink sky of twilight yielded to the violet-blue of dusk and finally to star-dappled indigo. Thrax sat back down at the table and looked out over the grounds, now shining with the golden lights of the night.
A soft, warm wind stirred the trees and blew over the balcony, and Thrax thought he could just barely hear the moans of some couple’s thrashing ardor somewhere nearby. He multiplied that soft but urgent sound by however many other couples must surely be conjoining at the Chateau at this moment. And in spite of everything, he wished that he and Agena were joining them.
*
Agena sat up in bed, feeling as dejected and morose as it was possible for her to be.
It had all been going so well. Thrax had been a bit formal at first, yes. And he had been mannered and courtly and decorous. She had accepted that, even found it charming. He was a Knight of Lacerta, after all, and they generally had a way of comporting themselves. Mighty warriors that they were, the Lacertan Knights also tended to be the very soul of civility and dignity. She had learned that from those of Thrax’s peers that she had known.
But she had also learned that there was another side to them. Thrax had told her that there came a point when a Knight was not so decorous and courtly. They were as dominating in sex as they were aggressive in battle. When the armor skin came off and a Knight was ready to deploy the weapon of his maleness, his bedmate became the absolute captive of his desire. And Agena was ready and willing to surrender unconditionally…
…until he had told her how he really felt. And it had killed her arousal as surely as if he had run her through with his multiblade.
That left her where she was now, in bed, sitting up by herself, still in the gown that she had worn for the express purpose of offering herself up for pillage and plunder, where she had expected by now to be naked under his awesome nakedness with her legs in the air, submitting to Thrax’s every thrusting demand.
How had it all taken so sharp and shocking a turn? How had it come to this? Agena cursed herself on some level for being so naive as to expect the course of sex with this weredragon to run as smoothly as it had with the others. And yet, this of all times, it should have been even more certain.
This was not just the meeting of two would-be lovers. This was not even a date. This was arranged, ordained, and sanctioned sex. It was the entire reason they had been introduced. It was not really naive at all to think she should even now be the recipient of Thrax’s pumping, pounding ardor. And truthfully, she could not even blame him for the things he had said, the way he felt. He had a point.
…in commanding me to surrender my body for breeding, my world is telling me that I am not its protector but its property. That was what he had said. And damned if he wasn’t right. Agena realized what he was really saying. The custom of his people was essentially putting Thrax to pasture, using him for stud service. Treating him as breeding stock. Why shouldn’t he object to such a thing? Why shouldn’t he see it as a trespass on his very dignity?
At the moment, the only thing that surprised Agena was that more members of the Knights and the Corps, and more of the Lacertan population in general, did not object to this whole system of Lottery and Courtship. Or, if they did object, that they were not a great deal more vocal about it than they were. There was an element of the violation of people’s rights about this whole thing, and in her eagerness to become a mother, Agena had completely overlooked it.
Lacerta was a free society, after all. It was not a dictatorship; it was not under absolute rule without the consent of the governed. The people of this planet seemed to have willingly entered into this system and been willingly complying with it for generations. Was it only the fear of their society and economy collapsing, their world and their very lives falling into ruin, that had brought such compliance? Was the sheer will to survive really so strong that people would hand over their reproductive freedom for it?
Agena thought long and hard about the question. Mating, reproduction, and child rearing: these were among the strongest and most powerful drives in all of life. They were basic, not only to humans but to every other species that humanity had ever encountered in its travels.
They were a common denominator of existence. The need to be free of any form of oppression was great as well, but the Lacertan way of life suggested very strongly to her that there was at least one thing even more profound: the need for a future, the need to continue. The need to pay forward life itself. In a way, it seemed that not bringing new life into the world was almost a fate worse than death.
These were all very deep and meaningful thoughts, she knew. They explained a great deal about the situation in which she now found herself. But they did not change one basic fact: Agena did want a child. And she wanted to have it by lying under Sir Thrax Helmer in bed or wherever else he wanted to take her.
She remembered her suggestion of releasing him from this pairing and re-entering the Lottery to be paired with another, and her heart wept at the thought of it. She did not only want to bear the child of a Lacertan, and she did not only want to bear the child of a Knight. She wanted Thrax’s child, conceived in a union with Thrax’s body, with Thrax’s erect maleness flooding her with Thrax’s seed.
She wanted this Knight. She wanted his sex. She wanted him.
_______________
Watching the recorded holotransmissions of Agena playing at her sport, Thrax wondered why he had paid so little attention to sphereball all these years.
Thrax, too, lay in his own bed on his own side of the Chateau suite, but he had whipped off his trousers and retired naked as he always did. And the member at his loins throbbed half-erect and nagged at him, reminding him bitterly that it should not be so idle tonight, filling him with a displeasure that he wished were the ecstasy of having it inside the female lying by herself just a short walk away.
By now, he had no doubt, he should be well on his way to his first climax and release from screwing Agena Morrow—the first of many that would go on into the very small hours of pre-dawn. Instead, he was sitting up on sheets that should be thoroughly rustled by his naked thrashing with her and had called up from the Chateau computers’ memory a recorded game of sphereball that Agena had played. The 3D recording hovered over his bed, showing him a tableau of Agena in competition—and how magnificent she was.
Her sport was a demanding one. Sphereball was played in a room shaped like a geode, a large, upright bowl which was sealed with a transparent force field. The force field was in place to prevent the ball flying out during competition. Inside the bowl, two players waited for the ball to be fired from a special launcher into the spherical shape of the chamber. The players wore boots whose soles created a surface tension that enabled them to run up and down the interior of the bowl, even running and maneuvering upside down.
And they wore gloves whose palms formed strong and flexible paddles. When the balls were launched, one after another, into the interior of the bowl, the object was for each player to swat them into a special nook in the center hollow of the chamber. Whichever player scored the most balls was the winner of the match. In playing, the two contestants would run, leap, somersault, and bounce up and down along the inner surface of the chamber, lunging at striking at the wildly bouncing balls as the objects careened off the surface and off the enclosing force field.
It was a game for the stoutest hearts and the fittest bodies. Watching Agena in her game gear, which consisted of a helmet, a top and shorts, the special gauntlets and boots, and knee and shoulder pads, Thrax could see exactly how fit she was. If she only had a dragon body, this human could have entered the Knighthood. He envied his brethren who had lain with her and on her in bed. By rights, he should be doing the same as they had.
What skill she demonstrated, dashing along the curved inner wall of the chamber, lunging and weaving around her opponent to put herself into the path of the flying ball and swat it to send it streaking into the scoring nook. What agility she showed, ducking and rolling under her opponent and springing back to her feet while the other player scored a ball, then springing back into action to take the next careening ball from the launcher a split-second after it was fired and send it ricocheting against the opposite arc of the bowl.
What force she brought to bear with every jump, every swing, and every score. And how the crowds cheered and howled with every victory she claimed, and when the force field was let down and she and the other player climbed out of the chamber. When Agena whipped off her helmet and exposed her full, beautiful face, letting her braid fall free, she beamed with joy and pride at a game well played and well won, and the roars and screams of the spectators showed how they loved her for it. She had won two trophies as a competitor. Thrax was surprised only that she had not won more.
“Stop,” he commanded the computer. At his bidding, the recording stopped and faded from the air over his bed like a ghost or a mirage, leaving him in silence—except in his mind. In Thrax’s mind, the cheers and roars went on. But they were no longer the cheers of the enthused spectators of sphereball. They were the raucous outpourings of the people in the stands at the Lottery, applauding the moment that he was selected for Agena and he presented himself to her, in his armor skin, for the first time.
Now, he was reliving that moment, only hours ago but seeming so much longer after the words that had passed between them at dinner. With a heavy breath, he rolled his memory forward to a later moment, when he and Agena had been aboard the hoverboat over Lake Shimmershine and he had removed his loincloth, showing himself fully naked to her for the first time. He had sensed her desire for him, but he had summoned his discipline and made no outward reaction to it.
Only his discipline had stopped his erection at the sight of her looking him up and down and admiring his muscles and his member. It had stopped his erection, but not his pride. In spite of everything, he had felt proud at that moment—proud to be so wanted and so desired by the woman who had come to his world to be pregnant with his child.
The last thing Thrax wanted now was to be disciplined. He wanted to toss all that away as he had shed his trousers. He wanted to leave this bedroom, cross the common room and the bath, and march to Agena’s side of the suite, where he would find her as alone in bed as he was right now. He wanted to show himself naked to her once again, but this time, climb onto that bed with her, pin her to the mattress, slip his hard and throbbing weapon of passion into her, and pound inside her as no man, human, or Lacertan had ever done before.
But now, he feared he had put an obstacle between them more formidable than Agena had ever faced in sport. And for the first time in his warrior life, he faced a pang of doubt that it was an obstacle he could overcome: for this one was of his own making.
How could he have done it? How could he have actually sat across a table from Agena Morrow and said the things he had said to her? How could he have talked about the things he did, spoken the feelings he did? How could he have filled her with the confusion and disappointment that he saw her take away from that table with her?
He had done it because it was true, because it was the way he actually felt. He was a Knight, and a Knight’s duty was not only to protect and to serve but also to honor the truth. In a Knight’s life, there was no place for dishonesty, no room for insincerity. He took his duty to the truth as seriously as any other duty set down for him. And he did it because he did not want to take those feelings, those conflicts, to bed with them. When he went to bed with Agena, the only feelings he wanted there were the feelings of mutual desire and the mind-dazzling ecstasy of his loins joining with hers.
But the truth of one phrase drove home the reality of his intentions. When he went to bed with Agena… The words reverberated in his mind now until they drowned out the memory of the cheering crowds. Not if he went to bed with Agena, but when. He had thought of it and spoken of it in terms of it being his duty, when in fact, it was something more and something deeper. At the bottom of his heart, at the core of his being, Thrax was now truly realizing that sex with Agena was more than an obligation, more than the fulfillment of the expectations of his world.
He wanted to take her to bed. He wanted to feel his hard, thick length pass between the soft, slick folds of her womanhood and all the way to her womb. He wanted to pump inside her with a force to match the energy that she showed in competition. He wanted the two of them to cry out madly, as enthralled as the spectators at one of her games or the crowd at the Lottery, at the feeling of Thrax beating hard and deep inside her, and he wanted to pour thick gouts of man-milk into her as a celebration of a victory of passion.
But after everything he had told her, how could Thrax go to her now and tell her that he did not see sharing a bed with Agena as something more than a duty? How and where would he find the words? In his life as a Knight, he had never tasted defeat. But now, for the first time, he was truly at a loss.
Throwing back his head on his pillow and cursing in a manner unbecoming a Knight, Thrax seized the now lividly erect staff and began to work his hand up and down it, creating a friction and a heat that only frustrated him further. Gritting his teeth and cursing again, he reached over to the night table by the bed and grabbed a mortar filled with sex jelly that was meant to be used with a partner, not on himself alone. He scooped out two fingers full of jelly and slathered the substance, both cool and hot, onto the stiffness of his root. The tingle of sensation traveled up his root and spread through his body.
Grunting, Thrax returned to stroking and pulling at his now slippery pole, which ought by now to have been slippery from Agena’s juices. He shut his eyes tightly and thought of her, of the breasts and buttocks and bush beneath the gown she wore to dinner, of the enclosing, enfolding wetness of her womanhood that would have been so much sweeter around his erection than the jelly and his stroking fingers.
He imagined the response of her body, her breath against his skin, her hands exploring his muscles, the head of his member hitting her most sensitive spot inside—and the exultation of bringing first Agena to climax, then himself. The imagination turned at once to reality, at least for him, as the head of Thrax’s madly tingling member gave forth a surge of wet whiteness to match the current of Serpent’s Tongue Stream. He grunted long and hard at the feeling of his release and the splatter of warm, slippery wetness that covered his abdomen.
Opening his eyes now, Thrax saw stars spin and flash before his eyes. He blinked them away and looked down at himself, drenched in splashes and dollops of seed that he ought to have spewed not onto his muscles, but into Agena’s womanhood. And he exhaled with a partial satisfaction that he knew could only pale before the reality of what he should have been doing.
An unaccustomed lazy feeling that he hated came over him now. Thrax did not bother to clean himself off. He rubbed his seed into his skin like a lotion or a balm. By rights, he knew, nothing should stop him doing exactly what he wanted to do. In battle, he had faced the most fearsome of adversaries. In the line of duty, he had held the line against groups and mobs of wrongdoers; held the line and pushed it back to their defeat.
He had faced enemies in armor, deadly beasts of other worlds, machines and engines of destruction, and emerged triumphant. Why could he not simply walk from one side of a suite to the other and take a human woman to bed, to the fulfillment of their mutual desire?
Because they had agreed to sleep on it tonight and speak again in the morning, that was why. And because Sir Thrax Helmer was a man and a dragon of honor. Agena had said, I think we both have some things to think about before we go any further. And he had agreed. And now he would be true to that agreement.
But just as well as he knew that, he knew that if for any reason Agena herself were to appear at the threshold of his bedroom and tell him that she had changed her mind and that the time for thinking was over, he would have her under him in this bed, devour her sex, and drive his renewed erection deep into her in the time it took to tell it.
He looked across the chamber at where he imagined her appearing. He wished for what he saw in his mind to be real. It didn’t happen.
With another un-Knightly curse, Thrax laid his head back against his pillow, shut his eyes, and let sleep take him.