by Amanda Milo
“Loom?”
She glances up at me, her lips tugging up with a special sort of happiness. Pride, I realize. It looks different on a human face than a dragon’s, but it’s nonetheless a very pretty look on my Nalle. “Want to see?”
“I would like anything you would show me,” I tell her, staring into her eyes. I blindly set the feathers next to my casting.
Nalle glances away almost shyly. She covers her reaction by clearing her throat and stiffening her spine, striding away from me and approaching her loom like she’s going into battle. “It’s a warp-weighted loom. See those rings?” She points to glazed rings made of stone or clay. Multi-colored strings loop through their middles. “Those are loomweights.”
“Yes,” I say. “What of them?” The glaze on the rings is very shiny. One of them in particular fired a very dark blue-violet, and I would like to keep it. I wonder if I’ll be able to leave it on her loom or if I’ll be driven to store it amongst our treasure collection.
Nelle grabs my arm and steps into me. And then she presses on my shoulder.
Staring at her in consternation, I yield to the pressure and move back.
This is evidently what she wants. She rewards me with another smile. “Stand here.”
She’s placed me on one end of the loom. She takes up a spot on the opposite side—and she hands me a stick.
“What am I to do with this?” I ask.
“Pass the shuttle through the weft threads like I just did until it reaches my side.”
With difficulty, I tear my eyes away from her lovely face to try to focus on what it would please her to show me. “I wasn’t watching your loomwork. Show me again?”
Her cheeks flush a darker shade.
Something taps my hand.
It’s her shuttle. She’s already traversed her maze of threading, and I missed it.
My gaze jumps back to hers. “I’m sorry. Your stick of strings isn’t what I was watching this time either.”
A breathless, self-conscious sound bubbles up from her. It’s like a quiet little laugh, and it is charming. She reaches up and takes hold of my chin.
Is she going to kiss me the human way?
She turns my head until my eyes are in line with her loom.
“Krevk’d,” I curse sadly.
“What?” She’s still holding my chin so I can’t see her, but I imagine she’s shaking her head to clear it because she sounds refocused when she says, “This is what you have to do when you pass it back to me.”
And this is how she teaches me to weave. She holds my face to keep my attention where she wants it to be. Every time she takes her hand from my head, my gaze moves back to her face. Her breasts. Her waist. The curve of her bottom in her lovely earth-toned clothing.
When she catches me looking at her, she’s flustered.
She’s captivating.
She’s also wearing a necklace made of carved bones that is so intricate, I must keep it.
Thankfully, I’m keeping all of her so I won’t be driven to claim it off of her. Ideally though she might agree to reside in the treasure pile we will amass together, the special place where I’ll keep all of my precious things safe.
“Halki?”
She’s staring into my eyes which means I’ve failed at loomwork and have been gazing at her again. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t know if it’s because I find you utterly enchanting or if the upcoming blood moon is affecting my concentration, but I can focus on naught but you.”
“You think I’m enchanting?” she asks, her beautiful brown eyes searching mine.
“You’ve enchanted me,” I tell her. I sweep my thumb along her cheek, enjoying the sensation of her smooth skin against mine.
“Is it because of the bonding?”
I consider that I was drawn to her long before she physically touched me and sparked the mate bond. It was long before moon fever was a consideration either. “I don’t know why it is. I just know that I’ve been entranced by you from the moment we met.”
Her skin stains a shade deeper, flushing with her human blood. Her eyes lower, and I’m not certain if I’ve upset her until I watch her mouth curve in pleasure.
I have pleased my drhema.
When she tries to hand me her loom stick again, I catch her by the wrist, bring her hand to my face, and kiss the backs of her fingers.
All five of them go limp, and before her loom stick can drop from the way they’ve gone lax, I catch it and clumsily pass it back to her like she needs me to in order to complete the weaved set.
Rather than beginning the next weaving line, Nalle clutches her loom stick to her chest and stares at me.
I nearly sneeze as the scent of nervousness permeates the air.
It’s a distinct smell not unlike rabbit thistle.
My focus latches on to Nalle’s lower lip as she draws it between her teeth, and her flat upper teeth bite into the pillow that her plump lip provides.
Simply seeing her do this makes me uncomfortably hard.
Probably the moon fever. If my mate were a dragon, we’d be twined together, celebrating the event’s imminent arrival, mating like lunatics.
Just the idea of being tangled with Nalle, my strange human limbs wrapped around her, and her oddly beautiful human limbs clinging to me as I drive into her body—
Abruptly, I about-face and distract myself by checking on my casting. Because Nalle has proven reluctant to join with me, and coaxing her pleasure with touches as if she were a she-dragon was not entirely successful. I couldn’t even manage to help her to her pleasure peak. She-dragons have refused to be further wooed by males who fail in this manner, and understandably so.
Resolved to properly pleasure her next time, I tuck my casting closer to Nalle’s bedding. Oddly, it was shifted away from it, likely by Nalle on accident.
If I were in dragon form, and by myself, I might cuddle my casting against me to satisfy my sudden-sprung desire to care for a nest of eggs. As I have no eggs to tend to, and since Nalle is watching and it’s a little pathetic to play parent to coughing treasure, I settle for adding more feathers around its base and pushing it even more firmly against the knot of blankets that smell like Nalle.
Your mate doesn’t lay eggs. You’ll never get to partake in incubation.
Humans bring forth life with the female doing all the incubation alone.
Gripping my casting between my hands, staring down at it but not seeing it at all, I snort. So what if my mate won’t be laying eggs that I’ll get to tend to with protectiveness and care? I will be protective and care for her while she is swelled with young.
The vision of Nalle in full swell…
“Halki? Is your vomit chunk okay?”
I frown and face her. “Your human term makes castings sound almost off-putting.”
Nalle’s brows jump and lower. “Yeah, it’s my word choice that makes it gross.” Her shoulders tighten then vibrate.
I stare in consternation. “Did you just shudder?”
She laughs. “I did.”
“Why?”
“Oh, no reason.” She moves to the wall and takes a bucket off of a hook. “I have a lamb that needs me to feed it after I milk it’s dam. Care to come with me while I do my chores?”
I stare at her more. “You milk sheep? Do you drink it?” I’m a little aghast. Sheep’s milk?
Nalle’s blink is slow and her look is pointed. “You regurgitate your food—and keep it. You don’t have any room to judge. C’mon.”
CHAPTER 10
HALKI
“She was born all of three nights ago so she still needs help learning how to drink. It’s a little unnatural for them to take milk from a bucket, but it’s that or she’ll starve,” Nalle explains while I hold the surprisingly hefty creature across my thighs. Following Nalle’s instruction, I carefully dip the lamb’s muzzle into the bucket of warm, creamy milk.
“Drink, you appealing little ruminant,” I tell the newborn creature. “We slaved to bring you
this.”
A flock of sheep, Nalle informed me, would have been reluctant to let me near even if I were human, because sheep are sensitive to strangeness of any kind—let alone a stranger in their midst. As a dragon changeling, it will be a long while before the herd accepts me.
We followed the nervous animals across half the plains—or so it felt—until we came to a corral. A sheepcote, Nalle explained. But rather than enter it like they’re trained to do, the whole flock fled around it—clearly to avoid me—so that I had to stay back and allow Nalle to catch the ewe she needed. Once the animal was tied and being given incentive foods to make her stand still, Nalle milked her and eventually the animal let me approach and feed her, and then attempt milking her too.
It was a poor, poor attempt.
“Squeeze the teat,” Nalle had instructed. “No, no. Grab it from the top and close your thumb against your finger once you’ve trapped the milk. Good. Now pull it down from the bag. You can be firmer than that. Let me rephrase: you’re not going to hurt her. Grab it and squirt that milk out—there you go. Well done!”
I felt like I’d accomplished the nigh-impossible.
Now I hold the creature’s offspring, who is all reluctance about suckling from a pool of milk rather than the source. “Why can’t we feed the little one straight off its dam?”
“Because she rejected her. Most moms are great but this one is a bit dim. Every spring, she delivers her babies then she bunts them away. If we don’t catch her when she’s lambing, the baby dies because she won’t clean it off or keep it warm or let it nurse. And sheep always deliver in the worst possible weather. If there’s a storm, preferably with driving rain or frigid snow, then it’s perfect. Wait til the wee hours when everyone wishes they were dead asleep and the whole flock goes into labor.”
“That’s horrid,” I exclaim. I look around us at the truly mad-sounding animals. While the lambs are the color of a night sky, the adults are snow white with black legs and faces. They look fluffy-soft, but that’s not the case at all once you get up close. In fact, touching them makes your hands come away somewhat greasy. Lanolin, Nalle explained. The scent wasn’t unpleasant, and in truth, it reminded me of Nalle. She smells very sheep-ish, although she laughed when I told her so.
Looking at the herd, I’m unable to determine which of the sheep milling around us is the one we milked. I’m glad I wasn’t born a lamb. The whole flock looks exactly alike. “Why do you keep the female if she’s so poor a mother?”
“Because she’s a decent milker. When a ewe has twins or triplets and can’t keep them fed well, the bad dam’s milk can supplement them. Plus, we can drink it too. And make butter.”
“Butter? What is butter?”
Nalle’s cinnamon bark-colored eyes gleam. “Ohhh, wait til you try it. We’ll add salt to the milk and have you shake it into butter.”
Shifting the lamb on my lap, I consider her offer. “I’m already growing famished just hearing this.”
“Okaaay, back to work. No getting famished while holding the pita-sized morsel. And you just coughed up a bull! Really?”
“What is a pita?”
She gives me a firm stare. “Feed the lamb, don’t eat the lamb.”
“I won’t,” I tell her, and wiggle the bucket to entice my wooly friend. “You must be hungry. Try it, little one.”
I dip the lamb’s mouth in the rapidly cooling liquid, and this time, she begins to swallow it. Her long tail begins wagging wildly.
“What will we do after this?” I ask Nalle, fingers sinking deep into the tight mat of wool on the lamb’s back.
“Figured I’d pack supplies for our journey. I want to be prepared for… for whatever we’ll find when we get my brother back.”
Her brother, ah. Of course her mind is with her sibling. I feel selfish for only looking forward to catching rest beside her. Because I don’t know her brother, I don’t share her urgency to retrieve him. I’m happy to do it, but his plight doesn’t consume my thoughts.
Not like the way fears for him plague Nalle.
“On foot, it would take days to reach the Qippik village. But with you, if you fly me…” she trails off, afraid to ask this favor, I think.
“I will fly you, drhema,” I assure her softly. No matter what she asked of me, I would try to do it.
Her deep brown eyes shimmer as she gazes up at me. “Thank you.”
CHAPTER 11
HALKI
When all of Nalle’s regular chores are done, she looks drawn. Even exhausted though, she is determined to see to her duties, and I admire her fortitude. By the time she allows herself to call this day done, she leads me to a latrine pit, a sandy little outbuilding set away from her clan’s camp center. I follow her in, which seems to unnerve her at first, but then she disappears behind a half wall, crouching down, and I turn around to relieve myself against the pit’s wall. It’s an entirely surprising venture. I no longer have a cloaca that releases an excretory chalk smear fit for marking territory corners.
Instead, I find firsthand that a human male’s sexual organ is also their excretory assistant, like an animal. How unconventional. It is long and wieldy and when I attempt to relieve myself, I spray water down my own leg. I have to grasp the rather sensitive handle and aim it so that I’m not spraying on myself.
The scent is pleasantly strong though. This will do well enough for marking. However, I now have concerns about what will happen once my meal is digested. If I’m passing only liquid here, what will happen to matter that I’ve digested? How does that exit?
“Are we peeing together?” Nalle asks, her voice sounding oddly strained.
“Now that I have the hang of this, seems we are.”
Nalle makes an almost choked noise, but when I glance over my shoulder in her direction, she orders me not to look at her.
“I can barely see you above the partition.”
“Don’t look at me at all!”
Shaking my head at the strangeness of my new mate, I do as she orders and face my own business.
Finally, my water reserves seem to have reached an end. I shake my organ to rid it of drips, and enjoy the sensation of my organ being stretched and bounced. Ha! How do male humans get anything done? I could almost play with this all day. For being an open-air organ, it has a distracting amount of nerves and pleasantly receives the slightest stimulation.
“What the hell are you doing?” Nalle asks from behind me.
I turn, still holding my organ behind the too-sensitive cap. “Watch this flail. The length is ridiculous—here, why don’t you try it?”
“What? No!” Nalle is standing, hands on her hips, brows drawn in, lips sucked between her teeth right up until I make my offer.
Then she’s trying to retreat from me.
“Come here and take hold of it,” I tell in exasperation. “It’s not going to bite.”
“I’m not going to touch it!”
From outside the latrine, one of her clanswomen calls loudly, “Then send him out and I’ll touch it, you greedy cock socket!”
Nalle’s spine straightens and she growls, “Back off, you she-jackal!” to whomever spoke.
I’ve reached her and because she was rebuking her friend, she must not have noticed my approach because when I bump her arm with my organ, she squeals.
“Do you need help in there?” another one of her clanswomen calls.
Yet another woman adds, “I’m volunteering too. I don’t care if that man’s in the damned latrine—I’ll ride him.”
“Perverts!” Nalle hollers, making my ears ring. “GO AWAY!”
When she turns so that she’s facing me and not the latrine wall she was hollering at, I take in her nettled expression and my organ immediately fills up with weight, turning rigid as stone.
“You’ve waited too long,” I tell her. “Now you won’t be able to play with it.”
“Give me five minutes with him and I bet I can make it play with me!” a clanswoman shouts.
“We nee
d to get out of here,” Nalle grits out. “Come on.”
A pulsing need is burning in my lower belly. And I no longer want to play with myself. I want to play with Nalle.
She must see a change in me. Her eyes go wide and she begins to back out of the latrine. “Halki, let’s go back to the lodgehouse and wash our hands.”
“I don’t want to wash,” I tell her. “I want you.”
CHAPTER 12
Nalle
Through no small feat of will, I cajole my dragon to follow me while avoiding his strong, surprisingly skillful hands. We pass smirking tribeswomen who offer all manner of suggestions for what and where I should do Halki next, and I manage to ignore them as I lead him all the way back to my lodgehouse where I cinch the doorflap down behind us.
I fall back against the wall, heaving a sigh of relief.
“You’re going to be walking bow-legged by the time he lets you out,” Sorgenfreiya calls through the doorflap helpfully.
“Are you kidding?” Dunnah laughs. “Did you see the size of that club he’s swinging? She’ll be lucky if he doesn’t split her in two, let alone if she’ll be walking anywhere after he’s done with her.”
My eyes close. “Turn deaf ears on them,” I huff. “All of them are absolute perverts.”
“And proud of it!” Sorgenfreiya cackles on the other side of the flap before she finally leaves.
The graze of Halki’s knuckle over the apple of my cheek has my eyes flying back open.
“I can close my ears to them,” he rumbles. “Especially when I only have eyes for you.” He drops to one knee, wraps his arms around my thighs, and tosses me over one of his thickly muscled shoulders.
I might have shrieked, if I’d had the oxygen. But the wind is knocked out of me the moment I get banged over this surprisingly hard part of him. There is no padding to his shoulder; not an ounce of forgiving fat to cushion his rock-hard muscle.
He marches us to my bench that serves as lodge seating and my bed platform. Without ceremony, he drops me onto it, and I do my best to ignore my proximity to his vomited brick, which is so close, it’s nearly brushing against my leg.
