A Dragon's Tale Ch. 23

"So what else?" The honey-blonde asked the blonde.

"Well, there's this thing called a 'hair dryer'..."

Ethan lay there mostly listening and occasionally chiming in as Beth described every detail of Earth to Taloni in exquisite detail. He could tell they were going to be wonderful friends. They were close in age and both possessed near boundless curiosity, which had already seemed to make them fast friends.

"-And that's when we went to bed." Beth finished, after explaining the events of the first day.

"Is that when...?" Taloni glanced at Ethan then back at the blonde, then lowered her voice to a whisper. "Is that when you kissed Alana?"

Beth nodded. "She's a great kisser, and her lips are so soft."

Ethan nodded appreciatively. "Both sets are, and you would know..."

Beth blushed scarlet and covered her face with her hands. "I can't believe I did that."

"Did what?" Taloni looked back and forth between them before settling on Ethan. "What do you mean 'both sets are'?"

"Women have two sets of lips. This set..." He leaned down and kissed her tenderly. "...and theother set." He pointedly looked down to the area between her legs.

The Fey looked confused for a moment before her eyes became as wide as saucers. She looked at Beth, mouth agape. "You kissed her..." He eyes went wide as her voice lower to a faint whisper. "Down... down there?"

Beth's cheeks were the color of a ripe tomato as she nodded, though she did look rather pleased with herself.

"By Illuminar that sounds..." She looked extremely conflicted. He felt a small spike of arousal over their bond, but she looked almost horrified too.

"Don't knock it until you've tried it." Ethan said with a chuckle. "Judging by Alana's reactions, she loved it... more than once..."

Taloni bit her lip.

The Fey looked at Beth with something between admiration and desire. She squirmed slightly against him in a very sensual way that was almost certainly subconscious.

"I think someone likes that idea." He prompted.

The Fey blushed scarlet, but didn't deny it.

"I enjoyed doing it." Beth said nervously. "Alana is such a wonderful girl and I loved making her feel so good." She glanced at the Fey, but couldn't meet her eyes for long. "You're a wonderful girl too."

Taloni let out a tiny squeak.

Ethan couldn't help but smile at the blonde's transparent attempt at flirting. She was clearly slightly taken with his Fey wife, and he felt like they could use just a bit of prodding.

"You know." Ethan said to Taloni as the blood rushed to his loins. "If you ask very nicely, Beth might give you the same treatment."

He could feel her start to squirm against him in both arousal and embarrassment.

"I..." Beth wouldn't look at either of them and spoke so quietly she was almost hard to hear. "I could do that..."

"I..." Taloni took a deep breath. "I mean, when you said 'kissed' I thought you just meant... not that I'm opposed, I just..."

"So maybe start slow now and try other things later?" He suggested, immensely enjoying his two teen wives being nervously attracted to each other but being too embarrassed to admit it.

"Slow?" Beth asked.

"Sure." He replied and then turned to Taloni. "Taloni, do you want to kiss Beth?"

The Fey froze like a deer in the headlights.

"A normal kiss I mean." He corrected himself.

She loosened slightly, but bit her lip and seemed incapable of speaking. He raised his eyebrow.

"Yes master." She squeaked out.

He turned to the other teen. "Do you want to kiss Taloni?"

"Yes Dominus." She said after a moment of gathering her courage. "I would like that very much."

"Then..." He moved his hands to indicate they should.

"Right now?" Taloni whispered in a hoarse voice.

"You certainly don'thave to, but if you both want to, why wait?"

They both nodded.

"So..." He again indicated with his hands.

At the same time, Beth and Taloni looked at each other and both bit their lip. It was adorable. Beth - ever the adventurous one - leaned her head forward so she was halfway across his chest. Moments later, Taloni slowly followed suit, bringing their lips close together.

"I... I've never..." The Fey whispered.

"It's just like kissing Ethan." Beth replied kindly.

Taloni nodded.

Beth leaned in a bit more, so their lips where separated by only a fraction of an inch. Both of them turned their heads fractionally toward him and glanced with their eyes, seemingly to check if he was okay with this.

He grinned broadly.

Taloni bit her lip as she looked back at Beth, who licked her lips just slightly. The blonde leaned in a hair as the honey-blonde's breath hitched. Their lips were almost touching...

CLICK.

They froze as the latch to the captain's cabin door was pulled and the door swung inward, revealing a short chocolate-haired elf and a beautiful redhead. He was struck at that moment just how beautiful their resident mage was.

"I really do think that's..." Alana stopped as she saw Ethan's two younger wives frozen in analmost kiss. The corners of her mouth curved upwards in a delish grin.

Rachel's eye widened.

Beth and Taloni jerked apart so fast you might've thought there was an electric shock.

"I was just... Beth and I, um..." Taloni started to splutter.

"We weren't... I mean, this wasn't..." Beth started to say. Both seemed to be directing their comments not at his first wife, but to Rachel.

"Ladies." He said, resting a hand on each of them to stem the flow of reasons and rationalizations that was assuredly about to be unleashed. He looked at them kindly with an amused smile. "You did nothing wrong, so there's no need to explain yourselves. Understand?"

They both looked relieved.

"Yes Dominus."

"Yes master."

He sat up and looked at Rachel. "Sorry if we made you uncomfortable."

"No, I'm good." She said, though her cheeks were slightly pinker than normal and her mouth parted much less than it usually did when she spoke. He couldn't help but notice that she had nice, full lips.

He cocked his head to one side.

He realized that the first few times they'd met it had been in combat, and after that he'd been too concerned about her recovery to really notice her physically. By the time she'd recovered, she was so much a part of the crew that he'd never really stopped to admire her.

She was beautiful.

She was several inches taller than Alana, and had a few inches on his other wives too - no, not 'other wives' he corrected himself. She wasn't his wife. Her flame-colored hair was about as long as Alana's, and fell in waves down to mid-breast. He couldn't help but notice that she was rather more amply endowed than his other wives too. Whereas Taloni had smaller B breasts, and Alana and Beth had full B maybe edging into C, Rachel was firmly on the large side of C.

There was a confidence in her posture that set off her shapely legs, narrow waist, and slender arms. Yet she didn't have the look of a model from Earth either. She was beautiful, but it was a more subtle kind of beauty than seemed to grow with time, not diminish.

"What?" Rachel asked.

"Nothing." He shook his head as he realized he'd been staring.

*She is beautiful, isn't she sir?* Alana's voice came over their bond.

*Yeah, she is.* He agreed.

"Anyway." He said aloud. "Let's see if we can figure out how to make a magical group chat work."

* * *

Hailey let the soldiers lead her and didn't resist. It hurt to resist, and she needed to save her strength. She was fully conscious, which was almost a shame because that meant she was also fully conscious of the pain radiating from her face. It felt like it had gone ten rounds with a heavyweight boxing champion.

She almost laughed.

Four years ago, she would've folded like a house of cards at the slightest threat of pain. Now... now she was glad that this Smithbond fellow wasn't a sadist. Her previous master had been a true sadist; a connoisseur of pain who derived pleasure from inflicting it.

Smithbond wasn't.

He was decent at inflicting it, but she had been tortured by a master. He could do nothing compared to her experience in the Ten Kingdoms. But his threat to 'interrogate' Melinda...

That made her blood boil.

The soldiers led her to a large steel door, opened it, and unceremoniously pushed her in. She caught herself on her knees and then let herself slump over onto her back on the concrete floor. It had been a long day.

"Hailey!" Melinda shrieked as she rushed to her side.

Moments later, she felt two strong, masculine arms hook under her knees and shoulders to lift her easily off the floor and gently deposit her one of the two cots in the spartan jail cell.

"Are you okay?" Jason asked as he set her down

She was momentarily dumbstruck. His face was close to hers, and they hadn't seen each other this close in four years. Damn he was good looking. He had picked her up like she weigh nothing at all. He was the best man she'd ever known, and even Ethan took a distant second to her Jason-

She stopped.

He wasn't 'her Jason' anymore.

"Hailey, can you hear me?" He asked.

"Uh huh." She nodded, shaken out of her reverie.

"What happened?" He asked.

"Welb, Heb was," she paused, as the blood was making it hard to talk. Melinda got the roll of toilet paper from the nearby toilet in their cell and handed her a few pieces.

"Thankb you." She said, rolling it into two pieces and sticking them in her nose. This was the first time she'd truly missed something about the Ten Kingdoms; any mage could've patched her up quickly.

"What happened?" Jason asked again.

She recounted the story, including Selene coming to her defense.

"Do you think it was an act?" Jason asked.

Hailey paused for a moment, then shook her head. "Ow!" She winced as her slightly headache flawed at the movement; okay, shaking her head was a bad idea.

"Are you okay?" Melinda asked again, for the dozenth time.

"Mels, I'm fine." She said, then added at her friend's skeptical look. "Honestly. This was just another Tuesday when I was in the Ten..." She trialed off at their expressions.

Melinda looked horrified.

Jason looked concerned.

"Just another Tuesday?" Melinda whispered. "Oh Hailey, I'm so sorry."

Jason looked as somber as she'd ever seen him. "Are you serious?"

She nodded, but slowly so she didn't aggravate her headache. .

Jason took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I don't know what to say."

"You're speechless? My Jason is-" She stopped, realizing what she'd said moments after she'd said it. Melinda definitely reacted, but she couldn't tell exactly what the Latina woman was feeling.

"Mels, I'm sorry, I didn't mean-"

There was a scraping sound as the door opened again. Two soldiers carried a semi-conscious Agent Dawson into the room, dropped her unceremoniously onto the floor, and then left, locking the door behind them. Hailey tried struggling to her feet, but Jason wouldn't let her up.

He put his strong hands on her shoulders and held her there. "Stay here and rest, I'll take care of her."

She nodded and he got up and walked over to Agent Dawson. He rolled her onto her back to take a look and Melinda gasped.

Her face was a puffy mosaic of purple and blue.

Her head lolled and there was a bit of blood coming from her nose still. Her white shirt was dotted with flecks of blood that looked like they had come from under her shirt. Hailey had seen enough women beaten to know exactly what had happened; she'd fought until she'd been beaten unconscious. She'd also seen enough women beaten to know that none of those injuries were life-threatening. She'd seen her former owner do far worse and the girls pull through just fine.

Well, finephysically anyway.

Jason whistled. "Holy shit."

"She'll be fine." Hailey said sitting up. "She's going to feel like shit for a few days, and hurt for longer, but she'll be fine."

Melinda looked at her in shock. "How could you possibly know? She looks like she need an ambulance!"

"I know because I've seen worse." Hailey said quietly.

Jason and Melinda stared at her.

Hailey bit her lip.

"It was this bad?" Melinda asked, looking at Hailey as her eyes teared up.

Hailey could feel herself tearing up too and she nodded. Then - she wasn't sure why - but she added in a low voice. "Worse."

"Worse, how could it be worse?" Melinda looked stunned.

"It was only worse for..." Her breath caught and she stopped. She took a deep breath and then finished the sentence. "...for the women."

Melinda looked confused for a moment then comprehension dawned on her.

"Oh Hailey..." She covered her mouth with her hand. "You... you were..."

Thankfully, she was able to honestly shake her head. "No, I got off easy. But not everyone did."

On the floor, Agent Dawson groaned.

Jason reached down and picked her up. She seemed to almost try fighting him, but was so out of it that it amounted to nothing more than a bit of flailing. He set her down on the other cot. She groaned again and seemed to be fighting to stay semi-conscious.

"You... you won't..." She mumbled and tried to put her hands up.

"You can rest here, you're among friends." Jason said, putting his hand on top of her head. She flailed for another moment or two and then seemed to calm down.

"She really took a beating." He remarked when Agent Dawson had calmed down and seemingly fallen asleep.

"Yeah, she was incensed when that suit guy threatened to..." She took a deep breath and looked at Jason. "He threated that if I didn't tell him what he wanted to know, he would 'interrogate' Mels."

Melinda put her hands protectively over her very pregnant stomach. Jason clenched his fists so hard that his knuckles turned white.

* * *

"So, let me get this straight." Rachel asked, trying to fully understand how they had their psychic network setup. "It's like you each have your own fortress around your minds. Then to communicate with Ethan, you imagine a tunnel going from your mind to his, and he does the same?"

"And you need to imagine a door leading into that tunnel, otherwise you can't hear what they're saying." Ethan added.

"Okay." Rachel nodded.

She was sitting on the one chair in the captain's cabin which usually was tucked under the unused deck opposite the bed. As seen from above, the room was slightly "T" shaped, with the top of the "T" being the large window that covered the entire back of the captain's cabin. The bottom of the "T" was where the door was. The bed was on the left side of the "T" and the desk on the right, though it was hardly used.

Sitting across from her on the bed - thankfully no longer snuggling - were Ethan and his wives. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, with the girls arrayed around and behind him. They always seemed to do that, and it seemed natural and subconscious for them to.

"So, can you simply all connect to each other?" The redhead asked after thinking for a moment.

"We've tried that, but I can try again." Alana said, closing her eyes. Rachel couldn't help but notice that she had long, pretty eyelashes. The wood elf kept her eyes closed for several seconds, then turned her head a bit as if looking for something, then opened her eyes.

"Anything?" Ethan asked.

"No, I can't find either of them." She shook her head, then turned to Beth. "Here, take my hand and let me see if that helps."

The blonde took the chocolate-haired elf's hand and then the latter closed her eyes again. She kept them closed longer this time, clearly trying to complete the challenge she'd assigned herself. After almost a whole minute, she opened her eyes again.

"Nope, I just can't seem to find Beth, even while physically touching her."

Rachel frowned. "I bet that the bond allowed you all to find Ethan easily. Telepathy is notorious difficult; one of the most difficult of all magical arts."

"What if they all bonded to each other?" Ethan asked.

Rachel almost laughed at the uncomfortable looks each of his wives gave the others. He apparently felt it.

"So, not something you're all interested in?" He asked, turning around to look at them.

"I love your other wives master, and I'd do it if you told me to, but that's..." Taloni looked very nervous. "That's incredibly..."

"It's like sharing your soul with someone." Alana said. "I really like Beth and Taloni, but that level of intimacy is... it's not something to take lightly."

"Plus, it might be a bad idea." His blonde wife pointed out. "Imagine if we could all feel what the others are feeling all at the same time. We'd feel amazing when things were good, but when they weren't..."

"It would be like a negative feedback loop." Ethan grimaced. "Sorry girls, I'm really not very knowledgeable about this whole magic thing."

"Yeah, you grew up with silly things like science instead." Rachel said with a wink. Having seen Ethan's world, she had to admit they had done quite well without magic.

Ethan chuckled.

"Well," Rachel sighed. "If they can't find each other, then you're going to have to connect them all somehow."

"Like being the server host for a cloud account, so everyone can be on the same server." Ethan nodded.

Rachel and his other wives stared.

He chuckled. "Well, I may not know magic but you ladies don't know the internet, so we're even."

"We might be even if we were on your world." Rachel countered. "Here..."

"Touché." He saluted her.

They all stared again, so he explain it was a reference to some sport called "fencing", which sounded a lot like dueling with blunt swords.

"So, if I need to host, then maybe... Hmm." He frowned.

Rachel was struck for a moment just how strange the situation was. She was the only woman in the room who wasn't married to Ethan. He hadn't asked anyone else to be present, which made sense for Serif and Raklan, but Anthiel would likely be just as helpful she herself could be, maybe more so.

Yet Ethan had singled her out.

As she thought about it, she realized it wasn't the first time that Ethan had treated her with special regard. He always included her when he was talking to his wives. Always. She obviously didn't share a bedroom this them, but otherwise...

She wasn't sure what to make of her reaction to that.

She liked it.

Shereally liked it.

She liked being around Ethan. She liked being included with his wives on virtually everything except the bedroom stuff. Though, given the sounds that had come from his bedroom on earth, she doubted being included in that would be bad at all. Of course, that would require marrying him, which she absolutely had no intention of doing.

But the dreams...

"Rachel? You still with us?" Ethan asked, interrupting her reverie.

"Oh, sorry." She looked at him. "I just got distracted."

Alana eyed for a moment, but said nothing.

"Any ideas?" He asked. "I figure if I have a sort of... no. Maybe..." He trailed off.

"How about an anti-chamber?" Rachel offered as an idea came to her. "It sounds like these 'tunnels' coming from each of your wives go directly to you. What if you had a secondary area which was formed more like an anti-chamber, where your wives could send a message, and then it might filter to each other wife? Kind of like sound in an echo chamber."

"Hmm." Ethan mused. "Let me try."

He closed his eyes and the room was silent for almost a minute. The girls looked around at each other, all basically twiddling their thumbs as they had done when Alana tried.

Eventually, he opened his eyes. "This might take a minute. I get the feeling I need to do some kind of enchanting to make it work."

"You're a dragon so you should be fine." Alana beamed, then added with a mischievous tone. "As long as you aren't made of leather."