by Hanna Dare
“You didn’t ask me before,” Ormur whispered. “But I wish you would.”
“What’s that?”
“To stay.”
Tris closed his eyes, but he reached out and gripped Ormur’s hand. Ormur lifted it and pressed warm lips to Tris’s fingers.
Tris opened his eyes, still not certain about what to say. It was hard to be sure after… well, everything.
His uncertainty must have shown on his face because Ormur’s face shuttered. He pressed his lips together and nodded to himself before releasing Tris’s hand and getting to his feet.
“Wait,” Tris said hastily. “I’m not saying go or stay or anything. I just don’t know what to do.”
Ormur went to pick up his rucksack. “There is a custom among dragons. When we want to show our intentions toward another are serious, we show them our treasure.”
Tris frowned. “But I thought you didn’t believe in gathering treasure?”
Ormur’s eyes flashed. “That’s because it’s ridiculous. Are we like birds gathering shiny objects to impress a mate?” He took a breath and continued more calmly. “Nevertheless, I would like to show you my treasure. If you’ll allow it?”
Tris nodded uncertainly, some part of him catching on the word ‘mate.’
Ormur knelt and opened the leather bag. He took out Tris’s sweater, a pair of socks he remembered giving Ormur the first night in the mansion, and a small bundle of pine needles tied with a red thread. Finally, Ormur took out the two amulets and laid them on top of the carefully cleaned and folded clothing.
“Those are valuable,” Tris said, indicating the amulets. “Like impressing a king kind of valuable, but the rest is just my old stuff.”
“Yes,” Ormur said softly. “Yours. That’s why I value them above all else.” He twisted his hands together. “I understand if you do not want me anymore. I am angry and often cruel. I’m afraid — all the time, of so many things, mostly of being wrong — while you are the bravest person I have ever met.”
“Shh.” Tris took Ormur’s face in his hands, cupping his cheeks and stroking his thumbs over soft lips. He let Ormur’s warmth spread through his hands, let it reach inside his chest. He let himself feel again. Ormur was like fire, sometimes too hot, but everything Tris needed to live. Now, at last, he didn’t have to worry about being burned.
“Tris?”
“Stay with me,” Tris whispered and kissed him.
Ormur cried out as he opened his mouth to Tris and then he was pulling him close, kissing him back almost frantically. He rained kisses on Tris’s face, hair, hands, any part in reach.
“I’m sorry,” Ormur said. “I never should have left. I was a fool, and I threw everything away.”
“I’m here,” Tris said, pulling Ormur half-onto his lap, running his hands over his back. “You came back. You found me and you—” He stopped. “Oh, shit.”
“Hmm?” Ormur’s tongue was licking up his throat.
Tris stared up at the sky. “You flew into the village and grabbed me off the road. Word will spread like lightning. There’ll be hunters, people with pitchforks, upset sheep. This is a mess.”
“I don’t see why.” Ormur wrapped his legs around Tris’s waist. “We’ve already flown away, so no one can find us.”
“But I need to be able to visit my family. I may not want to live there anymore, but the valley is still home.”
Ormur sighed and rested his head against Tris’s shoulder. “You have attachments, yes. It’s hard for me to undo the habits of decades.” He lifted his head to look at Tris. “What do you want to do?”
Tris rubbed his face. “Go see my parents, I guess. We can make up some kind of story. Say the people who saw us were mistaken or sun-struck or drunk. Maybe all three.”
“Whatever you wish.”
“You not being all demanding is weird.”
“I know. It is strange.” Ormur tried to set his face in a scowl, but it slipped off. “But I’m ridiculously happy and I want you to be too.”
“I am. Truly.” He kissed Ormur again. “Just, uh, be ready to fly at the first sign of trouble.”
He glanced over to the collection of treasures beside them. The stones in the amulets gleamed dully in the sunlight.
“And I guess you should destroy those, to be safe,” Tris said. “Anyone wearing one could call you and bind you.”
“Yes,” Ormur said. “That’s why I want you to wear one. I want something that connects me to you, something that shows I trust you above all others. Will you, Tris?”
Tris was speechless but he managed to nod. Ormur reached out and picked up one of the amulets. It was the one Tris had worn before — he could see a bit of dried blood staining the chain.
He bent his head and Ormur slipped the necklace around his neck. Tris touched the amulet hesitantly. “I don’t feel any different.”
“I could run you through with a sword again and see if it still works.” Ormur’s eyes were bright, the pupils widening as he stared at Tris.
The amulet wasn’t that heavy, but Tris still felt the weight of it. “What if I got angry at you one day and hurt you somehow through this?”
Ormur’s lips twitched. “I can’t possibly imagine doing anything that would ever make you angry.” He added more seriously, “I don’t think you could actually bind me. The Earl was working spells through it and you don’t have that kind of knowledge. But if even you could — it’s you and I trust you, Tris.” He pressed a hand against Tris’s chest, over his heart. “More importantly, I want you to have its protection. Even if you don’t wish to spend it with me, I like the idea of you having a long and healthy life.”
“But could we— Can I have that life with you?”
“Would you want that? A life together? Because I can think of nothing I want more.”
“Aye,” Tris said plainly. “Oh yes, please.”
Either Ormur leaned in or Tris pulled him close, but it didn’t matter because they were kissing each other. Tris savored the feel of those sweet soft lips on his. Their bodies tangled together, wanting to touch more and more of each other until they toppled over onto the soft grass. They rolled and Tris felt the press of the other amulet against his back.
He reached for it. “Better not lose that.”
“I suppose this one I should find a way to destroy.” Ormur flicked the dangling jewel with a finger. “A blast of my hottest fire perhaps, or a volcano — the traditional ways to get rid of a magical object.”
“Actually, we should hang on to it,” Tris said, thinking of how he had started on this path so many years ago. It had begun with another dragon. And Philip. “I have a friend who might have a need for it.”
“A friend.” Ormur’s eyes narrowed.
“Yes,” Tris said, amused that Ormur was jealous. “One who’s with a dragon. Loves him. Like you and me.”
Ormur smiled, his sharp face transformed not with magic but with joy. “Like us.”
Then there was more kissing. And touching. And bodies shifting and grinding against each other in all sorts of delightful ways as clothes began coming off. He felt the tickle of Ormur’s braids over his belly as he moved lower down Tris’s body.
“Ormur,” Tris said, running his hands over smooth shoulders. “Do you have oil in that bag of yours?”
“I may have.” Ormur lifted his head from where he had been nuzzling the crease between Tris’s thigh and hip. He arched an eyebrow with interest. “What did you have in mind?”
“I want you to fuck me.”
Tris said it with confidence and only the slightest squeak in his voice. Ormur started to frown.
“Really,” Tris said quickly. “The other time was lovely of course — the best I’ve ever had — but I thought we could try. I mean, only if you want to do it, of course. That way. Do you?”
“I confess, the thought had occurred to me.” He traced a finger along the trail of hair that went from Tris’s navel to the nest of curls that surrounded his cock. “Just
yesterday I found myself imagining sliding into you and the sounds you would make. I flew into a flock of geese. Feathers were everywhere.”
“Do you have the oil or not?”
Ormur sat up and leaned back to reach for his bag. Tris thought to help, but Ormur stretched out one leg to rest his foot between Tris’s legs. Tris gasped as Ormur’s long and surprisingly mobile toes began to move. Ormur’s rucksack was large and seemed to require a lot of rummaging, but Tris didn’t mind as Ormur tickled and teased his balls. He leaned back and tossed his head from side to side in pleasure.
His eyes blinked open as the toes moved away to be replaced by Ormur’s lips against his inner thigh. Tris frowned.
“Wait,” Tris said. “He’s… looking at me.”
His head was level with the stone eyes of the fallen statue and they stared back, empty and unblinking.
“It’s a statue,” Ormur said.
“He was a king. It feels kinda disrespectful.”
Ormur tossed his braids over his shoulder and spread Tris’s legs a little wider. The small vial of oil was in his hand. “That particular king passed laws against the very thing we’re about to do right now. He also commissioned the first dragon hunters and gave them lands and titles for every dragon they killed. I hope he is watching us somehow. The sight would kill him all over again.”
Tris considered Ormur’s words. He grinned. “When you put it like that.”
Ormur unstoppered the vial and poured a small amount of oil into his hand. His hand, slippery and warm, felt at first good when it was on Tris’s eager cock and then a little concerning as it moved lower. Tris focused on Ormur’s eyes, intent and dark with desire, as a finger pushed inside. It was a bit uncomfortable, but then Ormur twisted his finger and found a spot within Tris that had him arching up and seeing stars.
“How’s that then?” Ormur asked, his lips curving wickedly.
“That,” Tris groaned. “More of that.”
The next few minutes were a haze of sensation as Ormur found new ways to wring pleasure from Tris’s body. He took him to the brink once, twice, three times until Tris lay dazed and pliant on the grass before him. It was only when Ormur pressed Tris’s knees up toward his chest that he remembered that there was more to come.
“Are you ready?” Ormur asked as he positioned himself between Tris’s thighs. Ormur’s cock looked so lovely, flushed dark with blood, but it was also very long and Tris couldn’t imagine it fitting.
“I have no idea,” Tris said, “but I want you so much. I want you inside me.”
“I love you, Tris.”
Ormur began to push forward. Tris shivered, his body resisting, but then somehow he relaxed and Ormur was sliding in, stretching and filling Tris completely in a way that in all his dreams he never would have thought was possible.
“Oh,” he said in wonder.
“All right?” Ormur was panting and his eyes looked wild, but he held himself still.
Tris shifted his legs to wrap them around Ormur’s waist. “Let’s fly.”
They moved together, Tris’s body slippery with oil and sweat. It seemed like it could go on forever, with the blue sky above and the smell of crushed grass, all of it joining to make their love part of something natural and ancient. Even the old king seemed to — well, not approve, but to at least withhold his opinion, his stone face unmoving.
Tris was caught by surprise as he realized that he was close to coming, with his cock being rubbed exquisitely between their bodies.
“Ormur,” he gasped.
Ormur understood because he rose up to take hold of Tris’s cock, pumping it in time with the movements of his own hips. Tris cried out wildly, his hands clutching desperately at Ormur’s arms as he spurted across his own chest. Moments later Ormur called out his name and collapsed on top of him.
Tris was dimly aware of birdsong and his own ragged breathing. He was warm all over and saw no reason to move ever again. But Ormur had other ideas. He rolled onto his back and gently tugged Tris until he lay on top of Ormur.
“Mm,” Ormur purred. “I like this. The weight of you pressing me down. I feel like I’d float away without you here.”
“‘M not that heavy,” Tris protested sleepily, resting his head against Ormur’s shoulder.
“You’re as solid as the earth itself,” Ormur murmured in his ear, “and just as necessary. There can be no sky without the earth to anchor it, otherwise you tumble and spin through the air with no direction. I should know, I’ve done it for years. Now I see everything before me clearly. The whole world. And it is a sight to behold.”
“Is that poetry?” Tris’s eyes were drifting shut. “Thought poems are supposed to rhyme.”
“How about: there once was a man named Tris who knew how to take the piss—”
Tris woke up enough to move his head to catch Ormur’s lips with his own. In the gentle quiet, he let himself enjoy the sun warm on his back and Ormur even warmer beneath him. At that moment it seemed like everything was going to be fine.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“This a disaster,” Tris groaned.
They were flying into the late afternoon sun. Tris was perched on the base of Ormur’s long neck, his body wedged among the spikes that ran from the top of his head to the tip of his long tail. Ormur encouraged Tris to hold tightly onto the spikes and some of the longer ones actually curled over him, so that he felt quite secure, even when Ormur did a quick barrel roll to show off. It was probably safer than riding a horse, but he didn’t mention that to Ormur, thinking that he wouldn’t take kindly to the comparison.
Tris didn’t hold back this time when Ormur first launched them into the sky. He yelled and laughed and whooped with the sheer joy of it. After that, though, Tris calmed down enough to think about what they were flying back to. And then Ormur, flying so high above Shadow’s Vale that the people looked like tiny specks to Tris, announced that there was a crowd in the village square.
“Disaster,” Tris repeated. “They’re forming an army against us.”
“It’s not much of an army.” Ormur circled. “Really, I don’t think it’s that bad.”
“Are there torches?” Tris asked.
“It’s still daylight, torches would be ridiculous. I do see people carrying those things for stabbing hay, though.”
“Pitchforks. They’ll be building a catapult any time now.”
“Don’t be so dramatic.”
“Me? You’re the one who had to swoop in like that.”
Ormur huffed out a sigh. “You keep going on about that. I’m sorry, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Is there a place to set down? One where no one can see us?”
Ormur headed for a clearing on the other side of the valley. As soon as Tris dismounted, Ormur shifted into his human form.
“I assumed this shape was preferable.”
“Just for now,” Tris assured him. “I’ll talk to my family and then we’ll leave right away.”
Ormur took his hand. “I am sorry, Tris.”
“We’ll get it all sorted out,” Tris said with more confidence than he was feeling. “Somehow.”
They walked toward his family’s farmhouse, ducking off the road a few times when Ormur heard people approaching. Even Tris could hear the passing folk talking about the fearsome dragon. No one mentioned Tris by name, so maybe they thought Ormur had snatched — and presumably eaten — some random traveler.
“And that’s better?” Ormur asked as they resumed walking. “For me to be eating strangers?”
“A little?” Tris admitted. “Folk tend to get more worked up over someone they know.”
Soon the familiar thatched roof was in sight and Tris felt the usual mix of happiness and dread upon returning home. Definitely more dread this time.
“Maybe stay outside for now?” Tris stroked Ormur’s arms, more for his own comfort. “Just for a little bit, while I say hello and think of something to say.”
He expected Ormur to make
some remark, but he didn’t even raise an eyebrow, just leaned in and kissed Tris sweetly. “I’ll wait as long as you want.”
Tris nodded gratefully. “I’ll signal you. Just don’t worry if you hear some yelling or crying from inside.” He smiled to show he was joking, but he wasn’t, not really.
Tris left Ormur behind a tree near the front of the house and squared his shoulders as he headed toward the door. He just hoped Lily had managed to get away from the inn to join them for supper like she’d said. He could use the support.
Tris pasted a bright smile to his face as he swung the door open. Four familiar faces turned toward him.
One of them was Marius. He was sitting at the table holding a crossbow aimed at Tris’s parents and sister.
Marius grinned, his teeth gleaming beneath his dark mustache. He was clearly enjoying Tris’s shock.
“Welcome home, Tris. Come on in and shut the door behind you. Hope you don’t mind that I’ve been keeping your chair warm for you.” He winked broadly at Lily. “Among other things.”
Lily’s voice shook with anger. “This is ‘Martin.’ He’s been skulking around the valley for weeks now, pretending to be a spice merchant. This asshole sat in my inn. He drank my ale.”
Marius tipped an imaginary hat to her. “Excellent ale it is too. Almost made the wait worthwhile.” He tilted his head toward Tris, but the crossbow remained steady. “And you have kept me waiting, Tris.”
Tris braced himself against the closed door, his mind still reeling. “But why are you here?” Tris blurted out. Marius’s sword hung in its sheath from the back of the chair and Tris felt a twinge in his stomach to see it. “You tried to kill me, but we let you live.”
Tris’s mother gasped a little at the words, kill me, but his father put a hand on her arm. They were at their most steady, but Tris could tell that underneath they were all scared. His mother had on the apron she always wore for cooking, while his father had his sheepskin vest on over his shirt. He must have come in from checking the sheep in the meadows, ready to help Tris’s mother as she started cooking supper. The rhythm of their days was so well worn that it felt deeply offensive to have Marius here, breaking it with his grins and air of violence.
