To Tame a Dragon (Venys Needs Men)

by Tiffany Roberts

  Elliya was Falthyris’s universe. She perfumed the air that filled his lungs, her warmth seeped into his scales, her hooded eyes kept him enraptured. The splashes of pink on her cheeks and her full lips was all the color he’d ever need, the gleam in her eyes all the light he could crave. The slide of her sex around his shaft was ecstasy. Each stroke made his legs feel weak, made his belly tighten, made his throat constrict and a thrill arc across his body.

  The pressure became too much, the pleasure and pain too strong. Only she could provide him relief. Only she could provide him release.

  He quickened his thrusts, the tips of his claws grazing her scalp. Her sex quivered and contracted an instant before pleasure overcame her. Grasping his face between her hands, she slanted her mouth over his, caressing his lips as she moaned.

  That contact between their mouths, for which he had yearned since the first and only time she’d done it, was the spark that set off the explosion within him. His wings snapped out and swept around Elliya, wrapping her in their embrace. His rhythm faltered, and he growled against her lips as his seed burst from him on a wave of sheer rapture so intense that stars pulsed across his vision and his mind shattered into a million pieces.

  But that did not stop the pleasure, and he’d not had enough. Through pure willpower, he forced his pelvis to keep moving, creating more of that sweet, torturous friction, coaxing out more of his seed and wracking his body with shudders.

  Elliya clung to him, tearing her mouth away to press her forehead to his, her breathy moans ragged in her throat. Her essence flooded him even as her sex greedily milked him for more, and he obliged her body’s demands as best he could.

  When finally there was nothing more to give, and they were simply clinging to each other, chests heaving and breath labored, Falthyris sank onto his knees. The river water flowed cool and gentle around their bodies, easing the heat of their mating.

  “Press your lips to mine again, Elliya,” he commanded.

  She lifted her head and chuckled. The soft vibrations of the sound coursed through her body and straight to his cock, making it twitch inside her.

  “You wish for a kiss?” she asked.

  “Is that what you call it? A kiss?” He grazed her bottom lip with a claw, and her tongue flicked out to lick it. Another spark of hunger roared within him.

  “It is.”

  Falthyris slid his hand back to grasp her hair, angling her face toward his. His heartfire blazed. As great as his pleasure had been, as incredible as this joining had proven, he was ravenous for more of her. “Your mate demands a kiss, female.”

  The corners of her mouth curled up in a wicked little smile. “And if I refuse, dragon?”

  “Then I will plead for one.”

  “Dragon, you do not—”

  Falthyris slammed his mouth against hers, silencing her words, stealing her breath, and claiming what was his.

  12

  Elliya fell upon Falthyris’s chest, panting, her body thrumming deliciously in the aftermath of her orgasm. Her sex quivered around her dragon’s hard cock, which was still buried inside her. Her thighs were coated in his seed and her essence, and the rest of her skin bore a sheen of sweat.

  A contented rumble rolled through Falthyris’s chest. He kneaded her back, thighs, and ass with his clawed fingers, seeming to want to touch her everywhere all at once.

  Like their mating at the river, this time had been different than all the others. The Red Star undoubtedly still held sway over him, instilling his every move throughout their joining with growing urgency, but there was a new tenderness in his touch and the way he’d looked at her—a reverence.

  It was almost too good to be true.

  Too sudden to be true.

  It is the bond. It…it must be the bond.

  And yet, Elliya couldn’t help savoring this moment, this closeness, this intimacy. Was this how things could’ve been if the world was different? Was this what being joined would have meant if the survival of humanity wasn’t dependent upon men taking many, many brides in order to conceive as many children as possible? This was a taste of what she’d always longed for at heart—to be someone’s only, to be loved and cherished. Not simply one breeder among many.

  Falthyris’s tail undulated lazily against her calf.

  Elliya smiled and smoothed her fingers over his chest scales, which were still warm and faintly glowing. His heartfire had flared during their mating, burning brighter than the pair of long torches she’d stood in the sand nearby. Of course, even his heartfire had not been enough to fully illuminate this huge inner chamber, the place that he called his lair—the place his body must have filled in his natural form.

  They’d gathered soft grasses from around the river, and Elliya had woven them into mats to spread on the sand-covered cavern floor. She’d laid out her blanket atop those. Under normal circumstances, she would have avoided the sand entirely. There were too many dangers lurking beneath it out in the desert, things far larger and more dangerous than shorelurkers, but Falthyris had assured her there was naught but solid stone beneath this sand.

  He'd called this little spot she’d arranged a nest, and something about that had seemed right to her—even more so now that he was showing her more kindness.

  It is just the bond!

  As much as she wanted this to be real, beneath the surface, she remained wary. This could end at any moment. He would remember what she’d stolen from him, remember why he should be angry at her, and unleash his rage once again. That quickly, this little taste of affection could become a flood of resentment and bitterness.

  Elliya closed her eyes and turned her nose into his chest, breathing deep his smoky, spicy scent, relishing it, locking it away in memory. She released that breath in a wistful sigh.

  Falthyris’s hands stilled, and his claws grazed her skin. “What is wrong, Elliya?” he asked in that rumbling voice.

  She lay her cheek upon his chest. “What was it like being a dragon?”

  His muscles tensed.

  Elliya cringed, wondering what had possessed her to ask such a thing knowing it would only remind him of what she’d taken—which was the opposite of what she wanted, wasn’t it?

  Falthyris released a sigh of his own, slow and soft. His body eased somewhat, and one of his hands slid up her back delicately. “It was like being myself. It was…me. Even now, some part of me still feels as though it is the world that has changed rather than my body. As though everything else is larger than it is meant to be. It was not I who was large, but everything else was small.

  “I felt powerful, graceful, fast. I drew satisfaction from the way the earth would tremble beneath me, or the way my wings could disperse the air. My roar could make these mountains quake. I felt…above everything.”

  Elliya had experienced that power briefly, had felt the ground shake with his roars, had felt the wave of terror he’d seemed to emit in that form. “What of your mother and sire?”

  “What of them?” he replied with an almost venomous bitterness in his voice. His claws flexed, pricking her skin hard enough to make her wince. He hissed through his teeth and lifted his hands away abruptly. When he returned them to her skin, his touch was again gentle, and he soothed the spots he’d hurt.

  His tone was more neutral as he continued talking. “I was hatched nearly two thousand years ago. My recollection of the time before the comet is…hazy. I recall my mother and my sire, but the memories are distant. He was the one who taught me dragons are akin to gods. That we are superior to all beings, that this world belongs to us. Lessons to which I took readily.”

  Two thousand years? That seemed an impossible stretch of time, unfathomable from her perspective. The oldest member of her tribe was barely sixty years old. But she did not allow herself to get caught up on that; she accepted it for what it was, for the truth, and shifted her focus back to her initial question.

  “Is that all you remember of them? Those lessons he taught you?” she asked, raising her head to
look down at him.

  Falthyris shook his head, expression tightening. “No. There was…affection. For a time, I think we were happy. But that was when I was young. My clearest memory of them remains the night they died. It is the one memory that refuses to fade. It is emblazoned upon my mind as though seared by heartfire.”

  Something constricted in Elliya’s chest, making it difficult to draw in air. Falthyris was fighting hard to mask it, she could tell, but there were powerful emotions running under the surface of his words.

  “I do not mean to pry if you are uncomfortable,” she said, “but…what happened to them?”

  He released a long breath through his nostrils, his eyes suddenly distant—as though he were looking back across all those years he’d mentioned. “As I said, I took my sire’s lessons to heart. I lived them for centuries, carrying out deeds that would ensure mortal and immortal alike could not utter my name without reverence or fear. The humans named me Glassmaker, for my fires could melt the desert sands to glass, they called me Firestorm because I could set the nighttime sky ablaze, and the dragons came to call me Scourge of the Sands.”

  “And did you…kill humans?”

  Falthyris nodded. “From time to time. I found that my reputation went a long way in dealing with humans after a while and leaned on my notoriety more heavily. Most were too scared to oppose me, and there was little reward for putting in the effort to battle them.”

  “I do not know if I should be upset or relieved.” Elliya laid her head back down as that feeling in her chest twisted and knotted.

  “It was the way of the world. Humans killed humans, dragons killed dragons, and at times the two overlapped, and our species killed one another. Of course, the humans always paid a far higher price in lives.”

  Disbelief temporarily shoved aside her other emotions, and her brow knitted. “I saw you in your natural form, dragon. I do not believe that humans could ever have slain something such as you.”

  Falthyris uttered a short, bitter laugh. “Your people had a great many weapons beyond sticks and stones in those times, human. But I digress. As I have said, I had taken my sire’s teachings to heart, and I decided to become the paragon of dragonkind. A king amongst kings. I had challenged the eldest, most powerful of my kind, the dragonlords, one by one. I had defeated all I had faced, claimed their territory as my own, and driven them off in shame.”

  “Is that why you called yourself Lord of the Shimmering Peaks?” Elliya asked softly.

  “Yes. It was not a title claimed in hubris, but one earned. And I had initiated a similar conquest of the Forsaken Sands. There was only one dragonlord remaining to face my challenge, only one more obstacle to overcome. My sire. Despite his objections, despite the protests of my mother, I challenged him, and he could not decline—dragons do not easily part with their pride, as I am sure you have discovered. Several of our kind had come to bear witness.

  “I fought with all the experience and strength I had gained over the years, fueled by no small amount of arrogance—for I was Falthyris the Golden, Falthyris the Conqueror, Lord of the Shimmering Peaks and soon to be ruler of the Forsaken Sands. And despite my prowess, despite my drive…he bested me. It cost him a great deal, but he forced me to yield. I did not realize the severity of the wounds he had suffered during our battle; my damaged pride had blinded me.”

  There was a low, rumbling sound in his chest, the ghost of a growl, and his body tensed beneath her. “It was in the moments after our contest had concluded that Dragonsbane first appeared. We had seen comets in the sky before, but none such as it—and its effects were immediate. We were not prepared. Its influence fell over us, the Red Heat consumed several of us, and chaos erupted on the desert sand.

  “Maddened by lust, the gathered males attacked my mother. She, myself, and my sire fought them furiously, but he and I were spent from our battle, and we were outnumbered. Our efforts were not enough. The moon was stained with blood, and so was the sand. And though we killed all the others, they had ravaged my mother, slain her, and my father succumbed to his injuries shortly after we discovered her lifeless body.”

  Elliya had never imagined his voice could be laced with such pain, such sorrow—it was well beyond the fury and bitterness he’d shown so far, beyond the tenderness and kindness he’d begun showing her today.

  She frowned and lifted her head, meeting Falthyris’s gaze. “That must have been horrible to witness.”

  He brushed her hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ear, which he traced with the pad of his finger. “It was but one horror in a world of many, and yet I suppose it was the first that impacted me. Before that night, I was the force sewing terror throughout the desert. What had I to fear? Yet afterward…I could not separate my fear from my anger. They were too tightly interwoven. I was furious to see dragonkind brought low. Furious that I had lost everything I’d toiled to gain over the centuries in a single night.

  “And I was fearful that I would succumb to Dragonsbane’s power, too. It took hundreds of years, but it finally overcame me this time. It finally won.”

  Elliya frowned. In the back of her mind, her imagination was running wild, stirring up deep, strong emotions—presenting the what-if of her mother’s potential death. She’d never thought about it before. Telani had always been a presence in Elliya’s life, had always been a constant. Telani was in many ways the foundation of the tribe. The grief Elliya would feel when her mother was gone…

  She could not allow herself to reflect upon that now.

  “Dragonsbane is what you call the Red Star?” she asked.

  “Yes, because it accomplished what no other force could—it triggered the slow death of dragonkind.”

  Elliya dropped her gaze to his jawline and lifted a hand, running her fingertip over the bone-like spikes protruding from his jaw. “No creature is without some weakness, from the mightiest dragon to the tiniest insect.”

  “Dragons were not meant to have such weaknesses,” he said, the words laced with a low growl. “I spent a great many years after the comet had come and gone in search of answers, speaking to dragon and human alike. The stories were always similar. The Red Heat driving creatures into frenzies, male dragons seeking to rut females that were mated to others. There were even tales of Heat-maddened dragons seeking out human females. We all knew that the mating bond could be forced, even by humans, and thus had rarely let humans near. I did not want to believe those stories. My pride had been wounded enough. I refused to accept that Dragonsbane was compelling my kind to actively seek that fate, that it was enhancing that one power humans had over us.

  “No one had answers, neither human nor dragon. Dragonsbane had never been seen before, and no one knew what curse it had woven over our world, no one knew what power it had exercised over dragonkind. Even now, centuries later, I have no answers as to its nature.

  “And, as the years passed, I slept for longer and longer periods. What point was there in seeking answers that did not exist? Years, decades…what difference did they make? Why should I have ventured through a desolate world and be reminded of all that was lost? Part of me, perhaps, believed that if I slept enough, I would outlast Dragonsbane. I would one day awaken and never again see its taunting red glare, never again feel its influence upon me.”

  “You slept for decades at a time?” Elliya asked.

  “Yes. I have slept through entire generations of your kind.”

  Fresh emotion coiled in Elliya’s chest, difficult to decipher in the already existent jumble. Was it…sorrow? A sense of loss? Her life had been hard, and she’d had to fight for survival more than once, but it had also been full of so many joyous moments, of so many shining memories. It hurt her heart to know that Falthyris, after however many hundreds of years, had missed out on so much of what she’d experienced in less than two decades.

  She shifted her hand up, smoothing her palm over his cheek. “What is the point of immortality if you spend so much time asleep, hiding from the world? What is t
he point of eternal life if you do not live?”

  Falthyris’s brows fell low, and his frown deepened. “What do you know of immortality? How could you even pretend to comprehend it?”

  It would have been easy for her to take insult from his words, from the bitterness, defensiveness, and accusation lacing them, but there was something more in his voice that prevented her from being offended. Vulnerability. There was just a hint of vulnerability in his tone, a hint of underlying confusion. A hint of dawning realization.

  “I cannot comprehend it,” she replied gently, “but I know that I have lived. I have cherished what time I have been gifted. Whether ten years or ten thousand, why waste it? Why let time fall away like sand sifting through your fingers?”

  “Now I have little time to waste, regardless of how I intend to use it.”

  “So fill that time meaningfully. Make it worthwhile. Make up for all the years you spent asleep.”

  He released a soft huff through his nostrils. “Dragonsbane has toiled to ensure dragonkind knows naught but suffering.”

  “My people have suffered because of it as well. As you said, the whole world has suffered. Dragons were not alone in that.”

  Pressing his lips together tight, Falthyris brushed the pad of his thumb across her cheekbone. “I suspected such as I watched those cities die, crumble, and be swallowed by the sands over the long years.”

  Elliya’s brows furrowed. “What are cities?”

  “You do not know?” he asked. When she shook her head, he released a thoughtful grunt and said, “They were places where humans lived. Your ancestors, many generations ago. They constructed dozens of tall buildings out of stone and wood, creating settlements where hundreds or thousands of them lived and worked. Some of those buildings were taller than I was in my natural form.”

  So many people… Elliya couldn’t even imagine what a thousand people grouped together would look like.