Page 18 of The Dragon’s Captive

“Well, whatever is going on with you, you know you can’t keep me here forever,” she said, returning to her old harping point. “People will notice I’m gone. They’ll look for me.”

“They won’t find you here. Even if they did somehow realize that a portal had been opened, and that you had gone through it, and even if they were to risk war by opening another portal, which I very much doubt, they still would not be able to survive here. Unlike you, they do not have a treatment which allows them to do so.”

“What if I left a note, telling someone what I’d done if I wasn’t back by a certain time? What then, Mr. Smart Dragon? What if I also left the formula to my radiation treatment as well? What if, instead of keeping me here to prevent others from finding out how to come here, you’re actually sealing that fate?”

“You didn’t do that,” he said confidently.

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do,” he said. “You came here alone. That tells me everything I need to know. Coming here alone was dangerous. You should have had at least one person on the other side of the portal, ready to take your formula and come through to get you, but you didn’t. And if you didn’t have anyone with you then, I doubt you have anyone to leave a note for either. You came here without a safety net, Kate. Maybe because you didn’t want to be saved.”

“Oh, you just know me so well, don’t you,” she sighed. “After all of three hours, you’ve got my psyche mapped right out.”

“You’re not as much of a mystery to me as I am to you,” Vilka drawled, provoking a spark of outrage in her eyes.

“How is that even possible? I’m human. There are no humans here. You don’t know anything about me, so how could I not be a mystery? I am a mystery. You’re just not curious.”

Vilka restrained a smile as his lovely mate pouted next to him, her pride wounded by the concept that she was not an ineffable enigma.

He gave a light tug on the chain to snap her out of it and leaned close, his lips just barely touching her ear. “You are my mate now,” he reminded her. “I know you in ways no man in any realm knows you.”

“Yeah, but you don’t know humans,” she insisted, squirming on her leash. She looked as though she wanted to get up and storm about, but she couldn’t. She was trapped there, her naked body coated with his scent and his seed.

“Tell me about humans then,” he said, trying not to chuckle.

“Well, for one, they will come for me, and do you know why? Because we know that this realm exists, and that is all humans need to come here. We’re not a species that likes to live in boxes. We need to explore. So the humans are coming here, Mr. Dragon. Maybe not many of us, maybe not all at once, but people can’t help but want to go where they’re not allowed to go.”

“So humans are insolent, undisciplined whelplings with no respect for boundaries.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah. We see a boundary and we go right through it. That’s why we live in highly evolved cities and you don’t even seem to have running water. It works for us.”

“So you say humans are poised for invasion of our realm,” Vilka said, tying her with her own words. “And yet you object to my attempts to stop such an outcome. You are barbaric little things, aren’t you.”

“The only barbarian is the man who orders gateways between worlds destroyed,” Kate scowled. “That wasn’t just my way home, it was a potential line of communication between our worlds, and you severed it without consulting anybody.”

“That’s right,” he growled down at her. “Because these are my lands. Here, I rule. I do not know why you find this concept so hard to grasp.”

“Because it’s stupid! One person, dragon, whatever, can’t make decisions for everyone! You don’t know enough to do that.”

“I know more than you think,” Vilka said. “I know, for instance, that you are best kept stripped, contained, and well fucked. It is the only time you are not actively causing trouble, I think, when you are beneath me, filled with my flesh.”

Her blush was bright red and she swallowed deeply, as if she didn’t know what to say, or even how to take his words.

“Is that what I need to do, Kate? Do I need to fuck you again?”

His hand slid down her belly. She let out a whimper as his fingers found her swollen pussy. She had been taken twice today. She had lost her virginity and she had been ridden hard. He did not want to hurt her, and had no intention of taking her again, though his cock was already rampant at the hint of the idea.

“You’re sore,” he told her. “You’re tired and although you don’t want to admit it, you’re weaker than I am. There is no shame in that. It is what you are. It is how you were made. So stop arguing with me for a little while and let yourself get some rest.”

She bit her lower lip and didn’t say anything. That was probably the closest he was going to get to agreement from her. He slid his hand back and pulled her against his body again, cradling her precious form against his hard frame. He loved how she felt against him, so soft and tender, so sweet in spite of her sour tongue.

They lay there in silence for some time, drifting in their thoughts. He felt her begin to relax, the tension leaving her muscles little by little.

“If humans expect to be able to invade any territory they find, are they not concerned that we could be the same way inclined?”

“I don’t know,” Kate said, lifting her eyes to look at him. “There’s not really anything anyone can do if it happens.”

“So humans live in fear of a dragon invasion?”