Dragon's Treasure, page 7
“Bring some closer, I’ll tell you which ones are worth drinking,” I tell her. It’s been a century, but I know I can still smell the difference between good wine and cheap swill.
She obediently brings me three bottles, and I carefully lower my head towards her. She doesn’t flinch, and I sniff each bottle carefully.
“None of these are good enough for you,” I proclaim, flicking my tail. It’s the type of wine you serve to fourth-rate castle guests you’re forced to entertain, not to a future queen.
She puts two of the bottles down and looks at the third, shrugging. “I’ve never had more than a few sips before, so I won’t know the difference.”
“Never?”
“When would you imagine I would?” She responds. “Servants don’t go to parties. Or at least, not to drink the wine.” She struggles with the cork, but gets it open after a moment.
Then, I watch her drink directly from the bottle, taking two long sips, her head thrown back, the column of her throat working as she swallows.
Oh, to be in human form and able to touch that throat. Press kisses into it, cradle it with a hand, hold her and show her my devotion with every touch.
I want to press kisses to her neck after I’ve draped it in jewels. I want to fasten her necklace for her and kiss her skin when I finish.
All of these dreams require being out of this prison.
Maybe I should start conceiving of ways to convince my nephew that he needs me and not that mirror.
I can’t think about that right now, though. Not when my treasure is right in front of me. “Slow down,” I advise her. “If you really haven’t had more than a few sips before, this will be…overwhelming.”
She lowers the bottle. “You sure you don’t want some?”
I hold up one giant, clawed hand—or what passes as a hand on a dragon, anyways. “I don’t think I can maneuver the bottle,” I admit.
Shoving a chicken in my mouth is one thing. I don’t care if it ends up mutilated and pricked full of claw marks first. But I don’t think I can manage a glass wine bottle.
She smiles at me, soft and light in a way that makes my breath catch. So soft. So open. I’ve never seen such a smile from her before, and I half wonder if the wine is already hitting her. But no, it can’t be.
She’s just feeling this way. Soft, and generous, and open. Towards me. It makes something new and unfamiliar build inside me.
“Come here,” she says, gesturing me down towards her with the hand not holding the wine bottle.
“What?”
“Bend down. Bring your head closer to me.”
I have no idea what she wants, but I’m hardly going to disobey the first order my mate gives me. I move slowly, not because I don’t want to follow her command, but because I’m still worried about frightening her.
My head is bigger than her entire body, but she doesn’t so much as twitch when I lower my head beside her.
“Open,” she says, and I obediently open my mouth.
She tips the bottle slowly, giving me a taste of the wine. It’s wasted on a dragon, I’m sure, but it’s sweeter than anything I’ve tasted in a century.
But it wouldn’t be half as sweet as her…
I’d like to blame the wine for the direction my thoughts have taken, but that would be a lie. I can’t stop thinking about it.
A dragon is blessed with two forms. One to protect their mate, the other to love their mate. And I’m useless even as protection, chained as I am. But I ache to love her like she deserves.
I swallow the sweet wine, the bottle barely being a mouthful for me. “Thank you, treasure.”
“Would you like more? There’s plenty.”
“I’m alright, Leana.” My head is already close to her, so I take a risk and lay down around her again, like I did last night. “Did you enjoy your wine?”
She sits down next to me without my prompting, and then shifts to rest against me. She’s so pleasantly warm in a way I wouldn’t expect. No one is ever as warm as a dragon.
She tilts her head, considering my question, and the languid, easy movement tells me the wine she drank is affecting her. “Yes. Thank you for sharing.”
I nudge her side gently. “It’s not sharing, Leana. It’s already yours.”
“How can it be mine? I have nothing,” she protests, her brow furrowing.
“You’re wrong. You have everything I have.” I look around ruefully. “It might not look like much right now, but I assure you, it will be.”
“You’re very confident,” she muses, and I would respond, tell her that I have to be, but she nuzzles even closer into my side, and I can’t form a single thought other than the heat of her body, the soft weight of her, the mouthwatering alluring shape of her presence.
“Are you tired?” I ask, trying to keep my voice soft, a difficult ask of a creature with a diaphragm the size of most rooms.
“A little bit,” she murmurs, and then she turns even deeper into my side. “Do you…mind if I sleep here?”
“I want nothing more,” I promise her, and then watch in awe as my tiny little human treasure closes her eyes, snuggles into my side, and trusts me to watch over her when she sleeps.
13. Leana
I wake up slowly again, warm and relaxed. It likely says something that I’ve never slept as well as I have in this cave, with a supposedly terrifying dragon wrapped around me.
He’s awake when I open my eyes. “Did you sleep?” I ask him, forcing myself to sit up. He really is more comfortable than my bed back at the palace, even with his scratchy scales.
I rub sleep out of my eyes, then feel my hair, half fallen out of its braid. I untie it, letting it fall down. It’s not like I have work to do where my hair could get in the way, after all.
“For a bit. Dragons don’t need as much sleep in this form,” he says.
He’s been chained down here for a century with absolutely nothing to do and doesn’t even have the ability to just sleep the time away. I feel a pang of misery at that.
It’s a punishment, I remind myself. He’s a murderer and he’s not supposed to enjoy his time down here.
But I can’t convince myself to believe it anymore.
The stories of the mad king justly imprisoned beneath the earth just seem so much less believable when I’m faced with the real man that inspired them.
I look around the cavern. The old torches burnt down in the night, so I light my hand, thinking of standing up to light the new ones. Will they last the whole week until we get resupplied?
I rejected Osir’s order to leave him when the light runs down, because I’m never truly in the dark and this is the safest place for me right now. But the truth is, I can’t imagine actually being left in the dark, so far underground.
I worry that it’ll feel like suffocating, and I don’t want to find out.
Would I leave him, if the light ran out? Would I be able to do it?
He’d tell me to, of that I have no doubt. But something tells me I wouldn’t be able to do it. Not even if he, a king, ordered me to.
I move to stand and Osir huffs. “Where are you going, treasure?”
“I’m going to light fresh torches. Get some light back in here.” I stand, and it’s ridiculous that I feel colder when I’m not next to him. “Can you see in the dark?”
“Better than you can. Color is leached from the world like that, though.” Even with just my flames to light the huge space, I can feel his eyes on me. “And I can’t abide a colorless world when you’re here to look at.”
I feel my face heat with a flush, and I very determinedly turn away from him to contend with the torches.
How does he do it? How does he say such things, things I’d never have believed in a thousand years from anyone else, and make them sound so sincere? I can’t doubt him. I couldn’t even if I wanted to, and I alarmingly find myself wanting to less and less.
What would it mean, to be his mate? To be his treasure, to be at his side? If he really escapes from here, like he pretends he’s so confident about. What would that be like?
I set the torches around our space and light them, taking my time to gather my composure. It would be nice to light all of them, to really light up the grim cavern, but I hold almost all of them back, lighting only four, one in each direction. It will be enough light to see, at any rate.
“That’s better,” Osir rumbles as I finish. “A lovely view.” Then he actually stretches, looking once more like the world’s largest cat.
“Of course,” he continues, “It’d be a better view if I could dress you properly. I’m thinking silk, soft to the touch and delicate. And blue would look marvelous against your skin. Or red, perhaps, like the fire in your soul. And jewels, of course. I’ll have you positively dripping.”
With jewels, I expect him to finish. He doesn’t.
Rather than think on that—and all the things I didn’t think of even before I had a dragon offering to show me lascivious pleasure—I clear my throat. “What is your obsession with giving me jewels?”
“You are a treasure who deserves treasure,” he says promptly, like it’s an obvious thought.
I look at my clothes. I’ve worn them for multiple days now, and the grease stain from the chicken last night is the least of my concerns. I’ve climbed in and out of this cave multiple times, sat in the dirt, cleaned rooms, and made the rather hot and sweaty walk back and forth to the castle.
Me, in silk? It’s a ludicrous thought.
He must see it on my face, because he asks, “Have you ever considered why dragons keep hoards?”
“Dragons like to collect things, I thought.”
“I suppose we do. But mostly, dragons keep hoards for their mates. Our mate is the pinnacle of our treasures. The most desired, the most beloved. And nothing will ever give a dragon greater satisfaction than seeing their mate adorned in and enjoying the lesser treasures of their hoard.”
His voice takes on a wistful quality as he talks about it, like the thought of draping me in silk really is his dearest wish, and I can’t help but to think about it.
He huffs, a great, heaving sigh, and I watch him eye the piles of food, wine, and books. “And I’ve presented a rather poor hoard for you.”
For now, I almost say, then catch myself. Apparently his belief that we’ll not only escape but actually begin a life together here is starting to influence my thoughts.
“Would you like me to read to you?” I ask instead, hoping to distract us both. “Since you asked for all these books.” And since we have nothing better to do, I don’t say.
I briefly remember that I actually have a job, that I was sent here for a reason. That I’m supposed to be extracting information from the fallen king.
I dismiss the thought.
His eyes brighten at my suggestion and he lifts his head. “Yes, please. Pick whichever book looks most interesting to you; I’m not fussy.”
That seems untrue to me. But I remember that Noctere said he liked stories and myths. Perhaps he truly does just miss books.
So I find a book of children’s fairy stories. “This one?” I ask, holding it up for him to read the title.
“Bring a bottle of wine. Or two,” is all he says.
I do as he asks, curling up against his side again, and letting the warmth seep into my bones.
∞∞∞
We’re halfway through the fourth bottle of wine when I misjudge a pour into his waiting mouth and accidentally spill wine, splashing it all over my arm and tunic.
“Damn it,” I curse, but the bite of it is taken out by the wine. It’s all under a slight haze, like the world is just so slightly out of focus.
Osir lets out a sound that I think might be a tsk. “When those useless soldiers come back, I’m demanding better clothes for you. Damn what they think of it,” he says.
I clumsily try to pat the wine dry. “I suppose I’ll just smell like a drunk until then.”
“Don’t be silly, treasure. You should bathe.”
I nod, feeling a smile tug at my face that I can’t fight, the idea seeming more funny than it perhaps should be. “Ah, yes. Of course. Can you point me in the direction of the bathing chamber?”
Is it the wine or the way he looks at me that makes me comfortable making such a sarcastic comment? Perhaps it’s a bit of both.
“I’m afraid I don’t have much to present to you, but there’s the spring right over there,” he says, gesturing to the spring just at the edge of the reach of his chains.
“That’s the drinking water,” I protest.
“There’s a bucket,” he says, and I must imagine the droop in his posture when he says this. “It’s not ideal, perhaps, but you can at least clean yourself and wash your clothes.”
I stare at him, something about the moment cutting through the haze of the wine. “I’d need to…” I can’t finish my thought.
What does it matter if I’m naked? It’s not like it would inspire anything in particular to happen. Not with him in this form.
And I’ve been naked in front of others before. Yes, they were fellow servants, and always female, and we’d been too focused on ourselves in usually freezing-cold water to notice much. But I had done it before. I could do it again.
Would it even be that different?
14. Osir
If I was a kind dragon, a good person, I would suggest she fill the bucket and move to the part of the cave outside my cavern, where I wouldn’t be able to see her. That’s where she’s been going to handle the need for a toilet, after all—far more dignified than me simply having to bury it and both of us having to act like she does not notice—and it would be a sufficient amount of privacy.
If I was a good dragon, I would promise her I wouldn’t look. And, more importantly, I would mean it.
I can’t make myself make the promise. Not unless she asks for it.
I’ll follow my treasure’s commands, but I find myself unable to offer it of my own free will.
I try to think of how to comfort her, but then she squares her shoulders. “Alright, then. That sounds like a good idea.”
I watch eagerly as she walks over to the spring, bucket in hand, wondering what she’s thinking. Is she nervous? Or is she excited?
Or perhaps I’m a sex-starved old dragon desperate for my mate, and Leana is simply concerned with getting clean, and I should leave her in peace.
She submerges the bucket, pulling up a frankly pathetic amount of water. If I had my way, she’d have a bath big enough for half a dozen, and it would always be hot, although I suppose she and I could adequately warm a bath on our own. There’d be shelf upon shelf of every soap and bath oil she could ever dream of.
There wouldn’t be any bath attendants, though. That role, I could more than eagerly fill.
I watch with rapt attention as she raises gently trembling hands to her waist, lifting the tunic over her head and setting it aside.
All I can see is her bare back, muscled from her manual labor.
Muscled and tense looking. If only I had human hands. I’ve never given anyone a massage, but I’m sure I could figure it out. The warmth of a dragon’s hands would be soothing, surely.
There’s no clean cloth, no cake of soap, so she makes do with just her hand and the water, cupping it onto her skin, letting it run across her frame before briskly rubbing.
What I wouldn’t give to be the one rubbing her skin…
Then get free, you foolish, stupid dragon, I scold myself. The answer to all our problems lies with that one action.
And then the thought is driven out of my head when she turns sideways, just enough for me to see her in profile.
Her hair is covering most of her face, so my greedy eyes trail lower, to her small, pert breasts. I desperately wish to suck at them, squeeze them, to see if she wants that as badly as I do.
I force myself to keep silent. I won’t frighten her. My purpose is to treat her like the treasure she is, not intimidate her.
I trail my eyes across the rest of her body, stomach that could do with some fattening leading to lush hips that would cradle my human form perfectly. Her hips and the treasure that lies between them are still tantalizingly hidden by her trousers, and I am desperate, nearly feral, for her to take them off.
She finishes sloshing water along her torso, then dumps the last dregs of the bucket before drawing more water. I lean slightly closer, unable to help myself, eager to see what she’ll do next.
Except she doesn’t reach for her trousers. Instead, she reaches for her tunic, and I can’t help myself.
I tell myself it’s because I don’t want her to undo her hard work. It’s not simply because I’m staring like a lecherous old king.
“You’ll get yourself all dirty again,” I tell her.
She jumps, then turns to me, inadvertently giving me a perfect view. Her breasts bounce with the movement, and I think about other, more pleasurable activities we could be doing to make her breasts bounce.
“You were watching,” she says, and there’s accusation in her voice, but, all things considered, it sounds rather mild. Perhaps it’s the wine, although I don’t think she had more than would fill a few glasses. Perhaps she just doesn’t mind me watching that much.
Perhaps, the lecherous old king inside me whispers, she even likes it.
“I was,” I agree, because I won’t lie to her. “You’ll get yourself dirty again if you put that on before washing it.”
She sighs and then submerges the tunic in the bucket of water, lifting it out to squeeze it out before repeating the process. When she holds it up again, she has a slightly stained, soaking wet tunic.
“You’ll catch your death if you put that on.”
“Do you have alternate clothes hidden somewhere?” She asks, testy now, and I spare a moment to be proud that she’d speak to me this way.
