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.
CHAPTER FIVE
Come the morning, Thrax was erect again from the thought of Agena being the first thing that entered his mind when he opened his eyes to the light fingering in through the window. Sleep had been long and hard in coming, as he had spent the night tossing about, trying to decide exactly what he would say to her when he saw her again and how he would say it. He thought he knew exactly what words he would use to express his feelings and tell her everything that had gone through his mind since she’d excused herself from the table.
What he did not know was what thoughts had occupied Agena’s mind over these last many hours and whether they had taken her to anything like the place where he was in his head and his heart right now. What would she say when he unburdened himself to her? And where would that take them?
Ignoring the aching need in his loins as best he could, he got himself up, went to the water basin in his bedroom, and used body washes to freshen himself up from the night. He pulled on another pair of loose-fitting trousers and strode out into the common area of the suite, where he found the glass doors open and the morning sunlight pouring in.
There, with his back to him, standing at the rail, she stood in that same diaphanous gown with her hair falling down her back. The first light of day gilded her form, tracing a golden outline along the contours of her hair and the folds of the fabric that she wore and making a soft, subtle silhouette of her body in the gown.
Seeing her this way made Thrax appreciate Agena all the more as both an athlete and a lady—a lady that he now feared he had not treated as a gentleman and a Knight should.
Then again, if he could still have the chance to treat her as he truly wanted, she would become something much more than a lady to him.
Steeling himself with a deep breath, he ventured out onto the terrace, his bare feet making no sound as he touched them to the polished stone floor. He stopped halfway between the doors and the railing and summoned his voice. “Agena…”
She turned to look over her shoulder at him, and her showing him her face for the first time felt every bit like a revelation to him. Her face was fresh, not full of sleep, and he imagined she must have used the water basin and washes in her own bedroom. Her hair fell in neat but sensuous waves, and he guessed that she must have brushed it upon getting up. Had she done it for him or only for herself? It didn’t matter. She was still a revelation.
“Good morning, Thrax,” she said.
He stepped closer, joining her at the edge of the balcony. “I hope you slept well,” he said.
“As well as I could,” she replied, not with anger or frustration, just as a fact. “You?”
“After a fashion, I did sleep,” said Thrax, dismissing the memory of stroking and climaxing himself to the thought of her. “But before I slept…I spent a good deal of time in thought.”
“About…last night,” she guessed. What else would it have been?
“Yes,” he said. “Last night. And all the things we may have both expected. And all the things that were said, and what happened instead.”
Not turning away, but just taking her eyes from his, Agena admitted, “I did have some expectations. And I thought they were appropriate things to expect. Everyone comes into this thinking it’s going to be a certain thing, a certain way, after all.”
“Yes, they do. And for everyone else residing here now, it is. You had every reason to believe it would be so for us as well.”
“I feel a little foolish, actually,” said Agena. “It just never occurred to me that you could possibly feel the way you do. The things you said, the way you said you feel about the Lottery and the Courtship…I just never saw any of that coming. I never would have dreamed anything like that. Everyone assumes a certain thing here…”
“…and I completely overturned everything that you had every right to expect and assume. That’s what I did. And if I offended you in any way, if you are hurt or disappointed in me, I’m humbly sorry.”
She returned her eyes to him now and found again in them no untruth, no insincerity. He meant what he said. “After last night, I think you’re the one who should be disappointed.”
“In you?”
“No…yes. I don’t know.” She shook her head. “Maybe not in me. But maybe in your world, your people. From the way you talked, you should feel disappointed in what’s being expected of you, what your world is calling on you to do. Thrax, you’re thinking of being with me as a duty. And I guess it is. But it’s a different kind of duty than what you became a Knight for. You have a mission—a calling, I guess you could say. But your calling has nothing to do with this. Your heart isn’t in this. And I thought when I was paired with a Knight that I’d be going to bed with someone whose heart was in it. I think that’s the disappointment.”
Gently, he replied, “My heart is always in sharing a bed with a beautiful female and feeling my body join with hers.”
Agena nodded, her brows arching. She understood that well enough. “I know. Your heart is in the sex. It’s just not in the rest of it.”
THRAX (Dragons Of The Universe Book 1) Page 8
