by JJ Jones
Clarissa couldn’t help but to stare in awe. She had seen his dragon form before, but it had been for such a short amount of time, she had been terrified, and he had burst into a flurry of activity almost as soon as he transformed.
The second time, though?
He stood perfectly still once he folded his wings to his sides again, and he cocked his head to one side as he looked down at Clarissa, as if he was examining her with just as much awe as she was examining him. At that moment, she couldn’t help but wonder what the world looked like through the eyes of a dragon in that moment.
He seemed bigger than she recalled. Granted, her first exposure to a dragon had been inside a townhouse, where dragons were not meant to be, and the walls pressing in had made everything else seem smaller. After all, if something could fit inside a townhouse, how big could it really be?
Pretty big, as it turned out. If she reached a hand over her head, she wasn’t even sure she would be able to reach the top of his shoulders, and she didn’t even want to guess how enormous his wingspan was.
“You can just…do this whenever you want,” Clarissa finally observed, a note of obvious envy in her voice. “It’s not even hard for you. You can just decide ‘I think I’d like to be a dragon,’ and there you go.”
He settled down on his haunches, so he could lower his head to her eye level more comfortably, pointing out, “Technically speaking, I am always a dragon. I just don’t always look like one.” When she simply rolled her eyes at him, he added without a fuss, “I take your meaning, though.” He shifted to get more comfortable, until his chest was resting on the ground as well, serpentine neck curved upwards as he spoke to her. “Is that a common occurrence, I wonder?” he mused, thoughtful and distant, as if he wasn’t even sure himself if he was asking Clarissa or the universe at large. “For you to want to be something else, I mean.”
Clarissa shrugged and rested one hand on the end of his snout, the palm of her hand curving neatly over the tip of his nose. “Not common, no,” she answered, aware even as she said it that she was being slightly pedantic. “But I’m pretty sure everyone wishes that they could be someone or something else from time to time.”
Her gaze slid to the side just slightly, to look at one of his wings, and her tone turned distant as she mused, “If nothing else, I can’t even imagine what flying is like.”
“Actually,” he returned carefully, “I think I can be of some assistance with that.”
He turned his head, motioning towards his back with it before he lay his head down on the ground as well.
Clarissa’s eyes got very large and very round as what he was suggesting crashed over her all at once, and for a moment, she simply stood there, as if she had been frozen in place. It took a few seconds before she managed to unstick her feet from the ground and partially circle around him.
She wasn’t sure how one was supposed to go about mounting a dragon. (Well. Not in the literal sense, at least.) Once she was standing at his shoulder, she stepped over his neck with one leg, so it was between her feet. And though she planned to ask what exactly she was supposed to do, Abel instead simply stood up. Clarissa squealed in surprise when her feet suddenly left the ground, and she threw her arms around his neck as she tipped forward, before she would go tumbling over the side of his shoulder.
There was a low rumble of noise, and it took a moment for Clarissa to realize that he was laughing at her, and he didn’t seem particularly inclined to stop when she swatted the side of his neck with the flat of her hand. In fairness, though, she didn’t imagine he really felt it, and it served more to make her fingers sting as they slapped against his armored scales than as any sort of admonishment.
She couldn’t be upset for long, though. She was sitting on a dragon’s back. The back of a dragon who was preparing to take her flying. He turned his head to look back at her expectantly, and she shifted to a slightly more comfortable position, scooting back until the backs of her knees were slightly closer to the joints of his wings and she wasn’t straddling the center of his neck any longer. But she was still sitting close enough to his neck to throw her arms around it like she was clinging to a lifeline, and she did just that as she reported, “I’m ready to go whenever you are.”
He shifted back and forth for a moment, settling her in place just a little more comfortably before he took a last look around to make sure there was no one looking at them right at that moment. She wasn’t quite sure how they were supposed to go about hiding once they were actually in the air, but she wasn’t particularly inclined to care just then. And besides, if he was willing to risk being a little reckless just to woo her, then she felt sort of flattered by that.
(And logically, she was fully aware that people saw strange things all the time. Like every UFO sighting or yeti encounter, they tended to get laughed off, and she imagined someone claiming to have seen a dragon in the sky over Paris would get brushed off in a similarly flippant way.)
Abel didn’t offer any sort of true warning, and Clarissa knew he was going to take off only because she could feel him tense beneath her as his muscles bunched in preparation. Her grip around his neck tightened, and she fought back the urge to hide her face against his scales. For one thing, that didn’t exactly sound comfortable, but more importantly, she was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be a common occurrence, and she didn’t want to miss a moment of it.
With a few beats of his wings, he launched himself into the air with a juddering bounce that felt like a rocket ship getting ready to take off, and as they ascended higher and higher into the air, they bobbed up and down with each beat of his wings. It leveled out slightly as they began to pick up speed, the entire time still rising higher, but it couldn’t exactly be called a smooth ride. And in a distant sense, Clarissa processed that, but she couldn’t actually bring herself to care as she watched the ground steadily get smaller and smaller beneath them as it got farther and farther away.
It seemed to take no time at all before the ground below looked like a diorama, the lights resembling the sparks from a candle, and the cars all looked like minuscule toys. And that was just from looking straight down in the direction they had come from.
It wasn’t until they leveled off, no longer rising, that Clarissa began to get used to the motion, and it still took a few more moments before she managed to peel herself away from his neck long enough to actually look around.
Slowly, she lifted her head, and once again, her eyes grew wide as she stared downward. Everything looked incredible from that angle, but it was the Eiffel Tower in the distance that caught her attention, the entire tower visible all at once, lit up for the night and seeming to glow in the gossamer thin haze of fog that was creeping between them and the ground below. It felt like she could simply reach out and pick it up, if only she stretched her arm out far enough. Before she could control the impulse, she reached out with one hand, fingers outstretched, though she let her hand fall back to her side after only a second.
She had prepared for a lot when she got the news that she was going to Paris, but she hadn’t
prepared for anything even close to this. It was so much better than anything else she might have planned for, and it was so much better than anything she had expected.
The world below began to gradually spin as Abel began to turn, one side dipping in the air until Clarissa swore it felt like they were suddenly flying sideways. Though she knew if she really focused on the angle, they were barely even sloped towards the ground at all.
It took a few seconds before Clarissa realized that they weren’t just turning but slowly spiraling towards the ground, turning in steady, concentric circles. As they got closer to the ground and the scale of everything began to become clear again, it became more apparent that they were slowly heading towards what looked like a park, speckled with lamps but reasonably empty because of the late hour. A safe place to land without attracting dozens -- or hundreds -- of eyes.
It seemed as if the ground was only a few doze
n yards below them when the bobbing motion resumed, as Abel ceased spinning towards the ground and instead began to simply lower himself straight downwards. Clarissa curled her arms more tightly around his neck, expecting him to land with a jolt that would rattle her joints and bones, but when his feet finally touched the ground once again, Clarissa hardly felt it at all. A slight bump, not so different from the way it felt to gradually brake a car.
Abel looked around carefully once his feet were back on the ground, making sure he wasn’t
going to suddenly need to take off again. Only once he was sure that the coast was clear did he lower himself to the ground until his chest was pressed to the grass. Clarissa stood up and wobbled, stumbling away from him on legs that felt like they were made of gelatin and pillow stuffing before she simply sat down on the grass.
Abel rumbled out a low laugh and transformed, kneeling on the grass with his hands on his thighs, still looking as neat and pressed as he had looked when they left the restaurant. By contrast, Clarissa was fairly sure she was windswept and ruffled and she probably looked as if she had just tumbled out of a tornado. Despite that, she couldn’t really bring herself to care just then.
“Pretty incredible, isn’t it?” Abel wondered, shifting until he was sitting cross-legged and facing Clarissa. She almost wanted to point out how expensive his pants were, but she was pretty sure he was fully aware of that and simply didn’t care. His tone was light as he spoke, gentle and
almost giddy, as if he was sharing his favorite secret. Clarissa supposed he probably was.
“Amazing,” Clarissa agreed, her voice little more than a quiet breath as she tipped her head back to look up at the sky. Suddenly, it seemed farther away than it ever had before, even as she told herself that she hadn’t actually been that much closer than she ever was. Not in the grand scheme of things, at any rate. “And you get to just…do that, whenever you want to.”
“More or less,” he agreed, tipping his head back as well to watch a thin wisp of a cloud pass over the moon, thin enough that it hardly even cast a shadow. “Did you like it?”
Clarissa couldn’t answer at first, struck by how absurd the question seemed. He had taken her into the sky, high enough that Paris spread out below her like a glimmering tapestry and it felt as if she could have reached out and plucked a star from the sky, and he was asking her if she liked it. When at last she managed to reply, at first all that happened was a slightly senseless spill of syllables, too many words trying to come out until they all just tripped over each other like a gaggle of puppies all trying to pile out the door all at once.
“Of course I liked it!” she burst out when she managed to get any actual words out of her mouth, breathless and incredulous. “It was the most incredible thing I’ve ever done!”
Abel gave a short and startled laugh, and a grin broke out across his face, until his eyes began to crinkle at the corners. “If you want to try it again, just say the word,” he offered, and in that moment, there was something about his attitude that Clarissa couldn’t help but compare to an eager golden retriever. “Whenever you want.”
“I bet you say that to all the girls,” she returned wryly, her eyebrows rising.
“Of course not,” he replied, feigning a slightly haughty tone as he said it. It softened with
fondness as he added, “Just you.”
Clarissa’s mouth felt dry for a moment, and her eyes felt suspiciously damp. Thankfully, nothing came of it. She didn’t need to ruin the moment by getting too emotional. Instead, she hiked her skirt halfway up her thighs, so it was out of the way as she shuffled forward on her knees until she was right in front of him, just before she crawled into his lap, her legs settling loosely on
either side of his hips.
Her hands trailed slowly up the front of his shirt until they reached the collar, and the tips of her fingers skated lightly along the skin of his collarbones and the sides of his neck, until she
threaded her fingers into his hair. She pulled him down as she tilted her head up, and their lips met easily, comfortably and without any fanfare, as if they were both simply meant to be right there at that moment.
Time seemed to slow down, and the rest of the world seemed to fade away, until it was just the two of them, their mouths together, their hands exploring, and the grass beneath them. Anything else was unimportant.
It was only natural and completely expected when Clarissa realized Abel was beginning to get hard, his cock gradually beginning to strain against his pants. She couldn’t blame him. Her
panties were already damp, and the longer they kissed, the closer she got to shamelessly grinding herself against one of his knees.
She trailed a hand down the front of his shirt, and at last their kiss broke when she cupped her palm over his cock, massaging him through his pants until, when she glanced down, she saw him clearly tenting the front of them. She palmed at him for a moment longer after that, just to listen to the way his breathing stuttered, and to know that she was the one doing that to him. It almost seemed too good to be true.
The rest of the world didn’t start to become important again until they realized that they couldn’t exactly ravish each other right there in the middle of the lawn, or else they would be putting on a very impressive show for anyone who happened to walk along the sidewalk not twenty feet away. And while it could be said that both of them were adventurous, neither of them was quite that sort of adventurous.
Abel cast around quickly, until he pointed towards a small group of trees and shrubbery. “Over there,” he decided, and he didn’t even give Clarissa a chance to stand up before he slipped his hands beneath her and simply picked her up as he got to his feet. She had no complaints on the matter, instead wrapping her legs tight around his middle. Her hands began to make quick work of the buttons of his shirt, her progress slowing only slightly as she began to kiss his neck.
She dragged her nails along his abs once she pushed the last button through its hole and his shirt fell open, until he came to a halt in the middle of the clump of trees. Reluctantly, Clarissa pulled away from his neck to look around. The privacy of the little grove wasn’t perfect, but the park was quiet enough by then that she was willing to consider it good enough.
Abel lowered himself down to his knees, and as he leaned closer to the ground, Clarissa finally loosened her legs from around his middle. The grass was cool against her back as he laid her on the ground, and she tipped her head back as he began to kiss his way along her jaw and down her neck, until he was forced to come to a halt with a quiet noise of irritation when he got to the top of her dress.
With only a bit of fumbling, Clarissa slipped her arms from the thin straps of her dress, and Abel pushed the cups of her bra down, baring her breasts to the air. He peppered kisses all over one as he kneaded the other with one hand, until he switched to kissing the other one. Clarissa squirmed impatiently beneath him all the while, letting him take his time but trying to silently encourage him to get a move on. When at last his fingers found a nipple, pinched it, and gave it a twist, Clarissa was so worked up that she couldn’t help but moan, louder than she would have
expected, so she almost startled herself with the sound.
Abel took advantage of it, closing his lips around the other nipple and dragging his tongue over it before applying just the barest amount of pressure with his teeth as he gave the nipple a tug, and Clarissa writhed beneath him. She lifted her arms to wrap them around his shoulders, nails digging into his back at the base of his neck. She dragged them downwards as she urged him onwards.
As he carried on kissing her breasts, his hands began to venture downwards, sliding down her sides and over her hips, until they got to the hem of her skirt. He began to hike it upwards,
drawing it up along her thighs, until it was up past her hips, draped around her middle. Then, he let it go, turning his attention instead to her panties. He hooked two fingers in the front of them, and Clarissa hitched her hips off the ground as he g
ave them a tug, letting him pull them down, below her ass and along her thighs. Once they were past her knees, she drew one knee up, so she could pull her foot free, and wrap her legs around his middle once again without her panties getting in the way.
Abel paused then, staring down at her as if he was seeing the most wondrous creature he had
ever seen. She was pretty sure she looked a mess, with the top of her dress and her bra tugged down, her skirt pulled up, and her hair in tangles as bits of grass got stuck in it. But she wasn’t going to question him if he thought she was beautiful even then. She certainly wasn’t going to argue with him, and especially not right at that moment.
Abel leaned down, and their lips met once again, sloppy and heated, tongues dancing together for a moment before separating again, even as their lips remained sealed together, until Abel began tugging at his belt and had to lean back when it refused to cooperate with him. At last, he
fumbled the buckle open, popped the button of his pants, and tugged the zipper down. He tugged his pants and his briefs down at once, sighing in relief as his cock sprang free, already hard and beginning to leak at the tip. Clarissa contemplated reaching for it, but she didn’t get a chance.
