“Mine,” Praxigor growls. “Mine. Mine. Mine!” The last word is a deafening roar. His cock swells inside me, and his thrusts become faster and slicker.

He just came in me.

The dragon just came in me.

The total unreality of this all sends me for another delightful loop around the planet. I’m making love to a dragon.

I have a sudden thought: I’m not a virgin anymore. Is he going to eat me now? Or leave me here? Kill me?

No, I don’t even care. There’s nothing I can do about that now. And seriously, was there ever a better way to go?

He rolls off me, but keeps a hand on my hip. “Was that hard enough?”

“Yes,” I pant, still riding out aftershocks. “Exactly as hard as it should be. Was I soft enough?”

He chuckles. “Soft and wet and noisy. Remarkable.”

“I’m glad you liked it.”

He grunts, his hand still on me, fingers drawing little circles on the skin.

“I’m not a virgin anymore,” I carefully point out.

“I’d be very upset if you still were.”

“You don’t mind?”

He puts one arm behind his head. “Dragons are different. To some, the virgin thing is of great importance. To me, not as much. And believe it or not, I knew the consequences of the act.”

I roll over on my side so I can reach his chest and stroke it.

“Praxigor.”

“Hmm?”

“I have another question, I’m afraid. It’s not an interrogation. I don’t care about your hoard.”

He scratches his chin. “Being around you in the first place is suspiciously similar to being interrogated. I’m getting hardened to it.”

I put my head on his chest. “I sometimes see you carving a piece of stone. What are you making?”

He sighs. “With anyone else, I would be furious about that question because it concerns my hoard directly. But I do believe you don’t care about gold nearly as much as you should.” He feels around us for his pants, finds it and takes something out of the pocket. “This is… ah, the Chalice of the Sun. A small piece, but the first one I plundered myself. I stole it from the Palace of Queen Spru, of a species I don’t recall, on a planet I don’t remember. Oh, how I studied the Chalice! I held it for days at a time, just admiring it. It was the first item that I could lie on and feel the full strength from. Not only was it gold, it was highly valued by its previous owners and had taken a great deal of careto make. I grew four feet in length from the force of that little chalice alone.”

It’s a thimble-sized cup, finely carved from a beige, fine-grained rock. It’s perfectly smooth and covered in an immensely exquisite pattern of thin lines. The workmanship itself would make it valuable.

“But this is not the Chalice itself, of course,” I take a pretty sure guess. “That must be made of gold.”

“Of course!” he snorts. “This is merely a laughable counterfeit of the real thing. A mere trinket, a bauble.”

“But it’s really nice.”

“It’s not. It’s a paltry, worthless piece of congealed dirt. I made it because I am desperate for gold, and I hoped that if something had the basic appearance of a real piece from my hoard, it might give me some of the same force. It didn’t. And yet I keep making them.” He carelessly flicks the tiny Chalice with one claw, setting it ringing with a clear tone that no rock should be able to make.

“Well, I think it’s wonderful,” I tell him. “Can I see more of them?”

He slowly reaches into his pocket and gathers a handful of objects in his hand. “If you must.”

I sit up and hold out my hand. “May I?”