Breath of Flame and Shadow

From Irazu, the path led on. She didn’t bother with hopeful dreams of comfort in the arms of a human man again. Wherever necessary, she chose another man to seduce, but made a point not to let her intentions be misinterpreted. The magic trails sometimes led her to wild places where she didn’t speak the language and the people were primitive, but they were somehow even more attuned to her intentions when she arrived. They rejoiced in her presence and treated her like a goddess, sometimes celebrating in ritualistic fashion, catering to her specific needs without even having to be seduced by her breath.

She spent one glorious night in the jungles near Kilimanjaro, serviced extensively by a well-endowed villager who kept referring to her as “sunshine” in his own language.

The longer she flew, the more she understood what it meant to be what she was. Perhaps it was a long dormant instinct that awakened in her and grew stronger with each infusion of magic. She didn’t know precisely why, but Rafe’s friend’s words came back to her time and again. Leave and live as a human if you wish, but you can have no further contact with other dragons.

She’d run from the choice, yet now she understood there was no going back to her old life—her human life. She considered returning to find that dragon—Kol—and confess that she wanted to be a part of their world, but only if she never had to see or speak to Rafe again.

But Rowan gradually began to doubt that any other dragons even existed. She’d been following what she was sure was their secret path through the upper reaches of the atmosphere for weeks, and had yet to encounter a single dragon. At least she believed it had been weeks. She neglected to check the date the last time she paused to replenish her energy.

Somewhere over Southern Asia she encountered a trail of magic that was far more potent than the other fading paths she’d followed so far. This one made a vast swath across the clouds, as though dozens upon dozens of others had traveled it, and recently. Unable to contain her curiosity she followed it. It wasn’t until she reached the end of the path that she felt a sense of uneasy excitement.

Unlike the other convergences of trails that led to desolate mountain peaks and dormant volcanoes, this one led to a very lively and populated mountain. Like her other stops, she approached it in the middle of the night after flying for days. The path of magic led through the air to a concentrated swirl above a well-lit clearing, paved with flagstones and surrounded by stone lanterns. Human figures wandered about in loose robes and for the second time in her life she saw another dragon in its full, native shape. The winged figure took flight from the center of the clearing and quickly dwindled into the distance, a pale blue speck soon blending into the dark indigo of the sky. A shimmering contrail of magic stretched behind it and gradually faded into the air. Rowan was sure that if she flew across the clearing she’d be able to sense that trail and follow it.

This might be a place like those wild villages she’d found where she had been received so eagerly. Still, she wasn’t comfortable approaching from the air even knowing a dragon in its true form wouldn’t cause alarm.

She found a shadowed rocky ledge, the far side of which was concealed by dense greenery, and descended in the darkness. Once shifted, she conjured herself a robe similar to the garb she’d seen on the humans and made her way down the slope.

“Gone on flyabout have you?” a deep voice said from somewhere just above and to one side. Rowan stopped cold in her tracks and turned toward the sound.

The voice cursed softly when she looked up, letting her hood fall away.

“You shouldn’t be here,” the man said.

Rowan could see two figures resting above on the smooth, flat surface of the large rock she’d landed behind. She hadn’t seen them in the dark when she landed.

“Why not?” she asked. She could make out one reclining nude man with inquisitive eyes. An older man stood above him, arms crossed as he stared down at her. Though “older” wasn’t precisely the word. He looked wiser, with sad eyes, and was slightly bulkier than his lithe, silent companion. Both men were stark naked with shaved heads.

It was their eyes that caused her heart to pound harder in her chest. The older man’s eyes blazed with orange light, not unlike how her own had appeared in the mirror when Rafe had urged her into a passionate frenzy. The other man’s eyes smoldered with a pale, yellow glow reminding her of the gas lamps in the historic district of San Diego.

“Because it isn’t safe for you. If you belonged here, you’d have landed in the field like the others.”

“You know what I am?” Rowan immediately felt like a fool for asking the question.

The man only smiled gently and dropped his arms. “Yes. And more than that, we can help you, but not if you take another step down this mountain.”

“Where am I, exactly?” Rowan said. She moved toward the direction he indicated and found worn footholds in the side of the rock that allowed her to climb up. The man who had spoken reached out a hand to her and hoisted her up effortlessly. She stumbled at the top and he wrapped strong arms around her, steadying her.

The second man spoke. “This is the Monastery. The Council lives here, along with a few free dragons, but mostly it’s either bonded humans or dragons like us. Unbound dragons shackled by the Council. We’d die if we lived anywhere else.”

“I remember hearing about you. A dragon named Kol told me—do you know who he is?”

The two men grinned at each other. “Yes. Kol is a good dragon. He’s on our side.”

“I don’t even know what most of all this means, to be honest,” Rowan said, giving them an apologetic look.

The older of the two men pursed his lips and nodded. “Sit and we can talk. First, tell me your name.”

She shared her name, and the pair introduced themselves as Darius and Zak.

“We’re what dragons call ‘Unbound.’ Our parents broke dragon law by breeding within the race,” Darius explained. “So we were taken from them as infants, our magic shackled. There’s no end to our indenture here. If you were to be found, you would end up like us.”

“Was that what Kol meant when he said that freedom was all you wanted? That I can help make a stand against the Council?”

“Yes. But it seems like you have other ideas.”

Rowan grimaced. Her gut roiled with guilt over the urge to run yet again even knowing she might be the key to these two men finding freedom. Rafe’s lack of conviction still stung, but if she kept running she may be condemning other dragons to slavery, and would likely have to keep running, herself.

“It isn’t about that,” she said quietly. “I fell for someone who it turned out didn’t return the feelings. I just need more time to decide what to do.”

Darius shifted closer to her, his eyes cutting through the darkness. He rested a hand on her cheek. His touch was gentle and lingered for a moment. “You’re depleted, aren’t you?”

“Yes. It seems like it takes more effort for me to get full each time I stop. I keep adding more and more to…to my plate but it never feels like enough.” She laughed softly at the analogy, but it truly did feel like she was going hungry and no amount of food could fill her empty belly.

“This is what it’s like for us daily,” Darius said. “We have access to just enough magic to sustain each other, to maintain these human forms we’re bound in. We’re allowed no more than that.”

“What would happen if you didn’t have that?”

Zack snorted derisively, earning him an admonishing look from Darius. He shrugged. “We’d die.”

“Oh God.”

“We will give you what we can, but you’ll have to find another source soon. There are coastal resorts only a few islands away—the kind that cater to particular human tastes.”

“What Darius means to say is that you can find some pretty eager humans down there if you know where to look. Just be careful because those resorts are a favorite spot for unmated dragons to visit, too.”

“If you two were free, is that where you would go?”

Zak and Darius shared a look. With a slow smile, Darius shook his head. “If we were truly free, there’s a female dragon we’d mate. She’s a lot like you, as a matter of fact. She visits here sometimes.”

“Why is it so wrong for two dragons to be together out there? You two are together here, aren’t you?”

Zak replied, “We’re males, and forbidden to mate or breed unless the Council sanctions it. They do use us as breeding stock if it suits them, but the law is the way it is to prevent inbreeding. Except we both know there’s a growing population of hidden purebreds like yourself who are clearly not inbred. Which just proves that we are capable of policing ourselves, keeping our bloodlines varied enough to prevent mutations. No, in here we just use each other for sex.”

Rowan decided she liked the easy honesty of the two men, and regretted her own conflict over helping them. She decided that once she replenished she would fly back to San Diego and find Kol and offer to help. She’d have to face her issues with Rafe at some point anyway.

“The female you love, she isn’t a purebred, I take it?”

“No, if she were she’d be in here with us.”

“Jesus. ‘In here’ makes it sound like a prison. This place is beautiful.”

“A gilded cage. At least we get conjugal visits.”

“Does she visit often?” Rowan suddenly had a slew of questions she’d never even considered that popped into her head all at once. When the men both burst out into uncontrollable laughter she stared at them. “What is it?”

“We can hear your thoughts clear as day. Who was the fool who released your binding?”

“He was a…a dragon named Rafe.” Darius’s brows drew together and Zak grunted, but Rowan plowed on. She needed this. She needed to let go of these awful feelings if she intended to go back and actually try to help them. “He was sweet, really. But he lied to me. That’s really all there is to it.”

“He’s a Shadow. Their MO is subterfuge. I doubt he kept the details from you to hurt you.”

“Then why? Why can he be so perfect one minute and then lie? I mean, we broke his bed. Two dragons screwing are too much for a piece of furniture that old. And he didn’t care. He just…” She couldn’t help but smile at the memory. “He just made love to me again.”

“You’re a dragon.” The pair of them said it in unison, like it was supposed to clear everything up.

“So what?” she yelled back. “I fell in love with the bastard. I don’t fall in love. And then he…said he only wanted me because I’m pure. Because he wants to ~breed~ with me.”

The worst part, that she couldn’t even bring herself to say out loud, was the stark denial that had erupted from Rafe’s mouth when Kol asked him, point blank, if he was in love with her. He’d said no. There she’d been in the dark, listening, after two days of falling in love for the first time in her life and on the verge of telling him as much. But when confronted with the question, he had said no.

She didn’t mean to cry, and it was entirely unlike her. The overwhelming flood of emotions was just too strong to hold back. She abstractly wished she’d spent more time crying when she was younger. She’d at least have been prepared for this. But her childhood hadn’t had room for crying. She collapsed even further into a blubbering mess at that thought, unable to contain it after all the running she’d done from precisely this reaction, and not just her reaction to Rafe, but her reaction to her entire fucked up life. Oh, God, it was all the same, wasn’t it? He was her life. He represented every little rejection she’d ever felt, every endeavor she’d tried and been shot down from. She’d risen stronger from all of them but had always wondered if there was one she wouldn’t recover from.

The strong arms that encircled her from behind did nothing to comfort her until the words hit her ears. “You’re more precious than you know, Rowan. Shush.”

Darius nuzzled the words into her ear at the same time as he swept a deft thumb across her cheek, smoothing the tears away. His lips pressed soft and comforting kisses against her temple, almost paternal, but a little too lingering to avoid hinting at his attraction.

The kiss brought her back abruptly to her current situation. She let out a stuttering breath and let her fingers twine through his where they still clutched her tight against him. His hand was warm and soft and he felt too good pressed against her, holding her with virtually all his limbs wrapped around her after moving close to comfort her. His long legs bracketed both of hers where she sat, and his large arms encompassed her. She felt protected, for perhaps the first time in her life.

“Are you all this big?” she asked in a nasally tone, then sniffed and wiped her eyes. “I mean, I’ve only seen two of you close up before. Kol was huge.” She raised an eyebrow at Zak who moved into her field of vision and squatted down with a concerned look. He was less bulky than Darius but still had the look of an Olympic swimmer, all tall and lanky and with muscles in places she didn’t think muscles should exist.

Darius laughed. “We’re as big as we want to be. This is just the size I’m comfortable with. Once we make a habit out of our human appearance it becomes very hard to change, however. All young dragons start off with a pleasing form. You clearly did, too. You just added to it.”

“Are you telling me I didn’t really need to go to the gym? Well, fuck.”

Darius’s laugh rumbled behind her and his grip on her loosened. His hands slipped down to rest at her hips, but she let herself lean back against his chest, taking comfort in his solid presence. Zak sat cross legged across from them, the moonlight above casting his skin in silver. He watched placidly, but after his few comments Rowan knew he could be opinionated and direct.

“What are you waiting for, Zak?” She asked the question innocently before realizing how it might sound. She’d only thought he seemed like he was waiting for something and she wanted to know what it was. She’d had no illusions that it might be something related to her.

“I’ve spent my entire life waiting,” he said. “For you, perhaps, if you agree to help us.” His gaze slipped over her, seeming to see right through the bulky robe she wore. “And to address your alternate meaning, I think you need to get rid of that ridiculous garment so we can get to the business of helping you in what limited manner we can.”

“I interrupted you two, didn’t I?” Rowan asked, making a move to get up. Darius dug his fingers into her hips, preventing her from moving.

“You’re still in need,” Zak said. “Take what we can give you. You will be giving back so much more by doing so.”

“I don’t want to come between you…what you have…”

“Rowan, what we have is yours, but we’ll never take what you won’t give willingly.” Darius lifted a hand to brush along the edge of her jaw from behind. He hooked one finger in the neck of her robe and tugged at the ties of her robe. Zak’s eyes drifted over her bare skin as the fabric parted. Darius let a fingertip skim down the center of her chest and he slipped his large hand beneath the fabric to cup one breast. His breathing came shallow and quick in her ear. “I can already feel the magic clinging to you. You would be fulfilling us even more. Trust me, having you would be a rare treat. One we don’t commonly get up here.”

Rowan shrugged her upper body free of the robe and reached to place her hands at either side of Zak’s head. The blaze in his eyes had subsided, but there was still a deep amber glow. His eyebrows drew together. She got the sense that he was on the verge of begging and it only endeared him to her further.

“Yes,” she said, and pulled him down into a kiss. He groaned against her lips, letting her slip her dragon tongue into the warmth of his mouth and tease against his tongue. The hand at her breast squeezed gently and Darius’s fingertips plucked at her nipple, making her gasp at the sudden burst of pleasure. While she and Zak kissed, the soft sensation of his hands became apparent. Zak pushed at the folds of her robe until the fabric fell away and pooled beneath her, leaving her utterly bare. Zak moved lower, his lips found her inner thigh and he kissed his way along its length, pushing her legs apart to gain access. The wet, velvet heat of his tongue startled her when he found her already throbbing core and pressed his lips against her.

Delicious zings of sensation tingled between her thighs with each stroke of his tongue against her clit. Sweet Jesus, dragon lovers were so much more adept than humans at this. She rested one hand atop Zak’s smooth head and reached behind herself with the other to find Darius’s thick, hard cock where it pressed against her backside. When she gripped his length, he dropped his forehead to her shoulder, murmuring an incoherent sound of pleasure.

With a nudge of her hand, Zak rose and Rowan turned to face Darius. She stroked Darius’s cock more deliberately and scooted backward on her knees to gain better access. He leaned back on his elbows, watching her with bright eyes gazing down his torso as she took him into her mouth and sucked. The eager, probing tongue returned between her legs from behind this time, but was soon replaced with the welcome thickness of Zak’s cock pressing into her wet heat and sliding deep. She moaned around Darius, becoming lost in the slick, stretching friction of Zak as he moved inside her.

Their hunger for her was the headiest influence. She realized when Darius threaded his fingers through her hair and began thrusting his hips up against her lips that she could sate these two men easily and have more to spare. Perhaps she was spurred on by the memory of being hungry herself as a child and being forced to find creative ways to sustain herself. This didn’t quite resemble the charity work she imagined she might do once she found herself able to give back. This was far more enjoyable an experience because they were just as intent on her pleasure as she was on theirs and she could offer them something even greater. It wasn’t only her power she intended to give, however.

Once she left here, she resolved to make her way back home and pledge her support to their cause. Rafe could go to hell, but the rest of their race needed her. She just wished she could find the conviction to believe that she could ever get over Rafe.

Her heart ached at the sudden thought of giving up even the memory of their few days together. She released Darius from her mouth and looked into his eyes, hoping for reassurance. His response surprised her, the voice ringing clearly through her mind.

“Love doesn’t care about loyalties or betrayals. If he loves you, he’ll find you and it will have nothing to do with his other agenda.”

“Is it terrible of me if I don’t intend to wait?”

Darius smiled and stroked the side of her head. “No. The chase will be good for him, no doubt. It might do Zak a little good, too.” He sat up with a wicked look on his face that was directed over her shoulder. He pulled her close, dislodging her other lover from her rear. She was forced to straddle his hips or else lose balance.

“You shit,” Zak said with a laugh.

“We share everything,” Darius murmured into her ear, the humor in his tone evident and emphasized by the lovely rumble that erupted from his chest when he sank his cock into the space recently vacated by Zak.

“Does he know that?” Rowan asked. She only had a second to glance over her shoulder at Zak’s perturbed face before Darius lay back, pulling her with him.

Zak’s laugh from behind her was her only answer. A second later she heard in her head, “He left me the best part.” The words were coupled with the feel of a tongue probing between her ass and a slick fingertip swirling around the sensitive opening.

Her eyes widened and she stared down at Darius whose grin only widened. “We don’t often have the pleasure of a female. Indulge us?”

“Oh God, you two are so fucking evil.”

She braced her hands on Darius’s wide shoulders, her entire world focused on the thrust of his cock inside her. His mouth latched onto her nipple and sucked, then switched to the other. In between, he looked up at her with raised eyebrows, waiting for her response. He flicked a pointed and very human-looking tongue against the tip of her breast and she realized he had no way to manifest his dragon. She was fortunate to have the freedom she had.

“Yes, okay. Fuck my ass, too. Just… just fuck me.”

The hot tip of Zak’s cock pressed between her ass cheeks. The very slight pressure against her sensitive opening made her clench her pussy around Darius and she moaned at the converging threads of pleasure that raced through her lower body.

“Like this?” Zak rumbled into her ear. His smooth chest was flush against her back but he held his hips back. She could sense his need to penetrate her, and God she wanted him to, but wasn’t quite prepared.

“Yeah, just go slow,” she breathed.

She held still, her heart pounding. Her nails dug into Darius’s chest and she looked down at him. He had one hand on her hip and the other behind his head, watching her as though waiting to see her reaction to having Zak’s cock slide into her ass. He’d slowed down his fucking and his erection throbbed inside her while he waited

Zak nuzzled at the side of her neck, murmuring hungry words. “You have the most beautiful ass. If we had a week, I’d spend every day with my tongue down there, making you come a thousand times.” The slick tip of his shaft finally found its way past her barrier, the tight friction making her gasp. She leaned into Darius, who shifted his hips with a tiny thrust up into her as though he couldn’t avoid moving them. The sensation his small movement caused nearly made her come, and the tentative invasion of Zak’s cock was too much.

“Just do it, Christ! Fuck me!”

Zak gripped her hips tightly in both hands and pushed. Darius threw his head back and let out an otherworldly groan then looked back up at her with fevered eyes as he began fucking her again in earnest.

Rowan couldn’t move and just clutched at Darius’s chest, digging her nails in until she drew blood. They kept her poised on the edge of orgasm while they fucked her, both glorious cocks filling her to bursting. When Darius shifted a hand between her thighs it took a mere caress of her clit and she was flying.

She was sure she’d partially shifted when it happened, and the trumpeting yell she let out was enough evidence of that. She was only half aware of the hot pulses of their orgasms shooting into her and the brief and anemic bursts of energy that came along with it.

Her own well still felt hungry, but the look on Darius’s face told her he’d received a much larger helping of the magic through her than she had through them.

She collapsed against his chest and Zak followed, reluctant to retreat from her just yet. Zak pulled them both to the side and pressed against her, sighing into her shoulder.

“When you find your lover, bring him back here so we can thank him for sending you running.”