Page 72 of Wings of Frost and Fury
I remember how violent my hunger was during that week, how irresistible. The need tofuck, tobreedsuperseded everything else. Sometimes, a few of the other males and I were desperate to mate when no females were available, and we rubbed our cocks on each other’s bodies for relief. I often saw Ardun and Ianeth fucking each other’s cock slits and anuses. Their coupling did not produce offspring, of course, but they seemed to enjoy it.
With sudden sorrow, I think of Mordessa. Ardun and Ianeth took her in after her mother and father perished, and she became their daughter. This week will be a sorrowful one for her fathers. The joy of mating will be diminished as thoughts of her loss weigh heavy on their minds. Some of the dragons who are my age and older, particularly any who had a preferred companion or a bonded mate, will be spending this mating season in mourning, even as the heat forces them to fuck. I pity them, and yet for once I am relieved that I never found a female with whom to bond.
Strangely, even though the night of the Rib Moon must have passed by now, I do not feel the heat as strongly as I did at age twenty-five. The urge to breed should not abate with age—if anything, it should become more powerful. But I suspect that my years of using alethia for pleasure may have interfered with my body’s sexual rhythms—and perhaps Thelise’s spell had something to do with it, too.
It’s a relief to know that I’m fully in control, that I’m not overpowered by such mindless, reckless need that I would violate Thelise’s body. And yet I am undoubtedly in heat. When I’m in dragon form, my cock is always extruded, always hanging heavily between my back legs or draped along my belly. When I’m human, I’m constantly erect, and I grow hard again just a few minutes after I’ve come.
Thelise grows more ill with every passing day. Her favorite position is on her side, her spine curved and her knees pulled up toward her chest. She says the storm hurts her less that way.
When I’m in human form, she wants me naked, lying behind her, wrapped around her. I remain there for hours, stroking her hip, her arm, her hair. I nuzzle my face against her neck and murmur soft, foolish things into her ear.
Sometimes, when she’s lucid, she asks me to slip inside her. The sensations in her body are so overwhelming that she often begs for my cock with tearful desperation. She likes me to stay inside her for hours, even after I’ve come. The fullness of my length in her channel seems to soothe the painful disturbance of her body’s energy.
I have to coax her to eat, and even with my best efforts, the lush curves of her body begin to disappear, leaving her more angular, with sharper corners. She is beautiful at any size, but I recognize the thinning of her shape for what it is—a decline that could end in death. I fight it with everything I have, tempting her with tasty morsels of food whenever I can.
When she needs to crawl out of the nest to relieve herself, I offer the support of my strength no matter which form I’m in. As a human, I’m able to help her wash herself. She’s especially distressed by the state of her hair, mentioning it often, even though I assure her that it still looks beautiful.
“You’re lying,” she hisses at me.
“I’m not.”
“My hair is dull, greasy, frizzy, and tangled. You don’t get to say that it looks beautiful.” She seethes the words through clenched teeth, but her jaws rattle as another chill shakes her bones.
For a moment, I yield to my own exhaustion. “Fine. Your hair looks wretched and tangled, like dried seaweed or a bird’s nest. Is that what you want to hear?”
She stares at me, and then she rasps a sound—the ghost of her usual laugh. “Shut up and lie down with me.”
I put my cock inside her again, and this time, as my cum pumps slowly into her belly, I feel satisfaction wash over me—the easing of the mating heat, the sense of a job done, a mission fulfilled. The seed I’ve been spilling inside her has finally done its work. She is carrying my offspring.
I cup my hand over her lower belly, closing my eyes in joyful wonder.
“Thelise,” I whisper, but she doesn’t answer. Sex often soothes her to sleep. Someday, when she is herself again, we will make such violent love that sleep will be the farthest thing from her mind. But for now, I am gentle with her. It’s what she needs from me.
Nights and days bleed together during the storm, so I’m not sure how many hours pass… but by the time Thelise wakes again, the mating heat has returned to me in full force, and I understand, with sinking sorrow, that the pregnancy has failed, only hours after it began. It’s the fault of the Mordvorren, no doubt, and its effects on her body.
Over the succeeding days, the same joy and loss occur twice more. I’m silent about it each time, refusing to lay that pain upon Thelise when she is already suffering so deeply. I bear the knowledge alone.
Hatred for the storm grows in my heart like a poisonous vine. It’s not enough that it is hurting my darling—it has alsostolen our chances of sharing offspring this season. I want to destroy the tempest, to ruin it.
When I’m in dragon form, I spew frost-fire out of the cave into the rain and the darkness, very nearly getting speared by the lightning strikes of the Mordvorren. But my frost-fire cannot burn clouds or freeze shadows. The most I can do is incite a rush of steam or transform some of the rain into frozen beads that tinkle musically against the stone.
I’m watching the storm again, letting angry vengeance build in my chest, when I hear Thelise calling my name. Her rich, musical voice is a wisp of its former self. “Ashvelon.”
I choke down the frost-fire I was about to release, and I turn toward the nest.
We’ve been together for days, but for some reason the sight of her shocks me. She’s gaunt, and her brown skin is paler than it was when we met. Her full lips are crusty and cracked, despite my efforts to give her water at every opportunity. Her beautiful brown eyes, once so brilliant and full of life, are dull and swollen, the whites yellowed.
She is dying.
She is dying, and I can’t stop it.
I pace toward her, trying not to let my despair show in the sag of my wings or the tightness of my jaw. “What can I do for you, my love?”
“Eat me,” she murmurs, with a faintly humorous twitch at the corner of her mouth. “Eat me, and end all this suffering. I know you’ve run out of meat. I know you’re hungry… or at least your dragon side is. And I’m so tired, Ash. I can’t do this anymore. I feel myself fading away, and I’d rather be part of you forever than disappear entirely.”
She sounds lucid, but her request is wildly irrational. I lick her shoulder and discover that she’s burning with fever again.
Summoning the cold side of my fire, I puff frosty air above her. Her eyes drift shut, tears sliding from beneath the lids.
