Grey Eyes, Green Eyes

The eyes of the two grew wide, then fell to the ground in front of them.

"We are compelled to serve you, my lord," one whispered.

"For how long?" he demanded. "Under what limitations?"

"Until you tire of us, my Lord, until you release us or kill us," the other answered, resignedly. "And without limitations."

"Indeed," he growled.

"What are we to call you, Lord?" one asked.

"'Lord' will do for you two. Do you think I would be foolish enough to provide you with my soulname? How much power do you think I give my bondservants?"

The two were silent, accepting the reproach.

"On the other hand," Aldar reflected softly, "you two will reveal your own soulnames." Seeing the hesitation on their faces, he barked sharply. "Now!"

"Darla, Lord," said the blonde. "Eldrin, Lord," whispered her companion. Aldar could sense no hint of deception.

He waved a hand in front of them. Luminous figures roiled in the air between them and the clearing was suddenly full of the smell of ozone, the very air charged with his power. The two shivered in submission, realizing the extent of their overmatch.

"Well then, Darla, Eldrin," he commanded, "we will seal this traditionally. How ironic that you will get some of that which you sought to take originally."

Bringing his left hand to his mouth, he bit his thumb. Blood pooled on its pad.

"Darla first," he directed. The blonde figure looked at him uncomprehending, but when he pointed to the ground in front of him with his right forefinger, she rose and approached him.

"Kneel."

She did.

"No. Kneel on the backs of your hands."

With some awkwardness, the girl did so. The position was one of utter submission. Her head and neck were stretched well forward, completely vulnerable.

His hand swept her hair off her neck, gathered it, grasped it as a tether. With his bleeding thumb, he wrote an arcane symbol on her nape. The woman wiggled as the blood seethed and began to boil, but he held her firmly by the hair. In seconds, all that remained was his sigil branded into her skin. The dragon watched it impassively as it faded, then vanished, apparently leaving her nape as it had been.

"Sit up," he commanded. She did so. The look in her eyes was dazed, uncertain.

"Now you," Aldar directed, pointing at the taller girl. She hesitated, then, weeping, knelt before him and the process was repeated.

Aldar sat back, surveyed his new servants. His teeth showed, but there was precious little humour in his smile.

"You have been bound to me," he said pointedly. "My magic, my blood and my will now own you both, command you both. Do you not agree?"

The two nodded. Both were weeping now at the shock of their unexpected defeat and sudden subjugation.

"My first order is that you remain in your human forms at all times unless otherwise commanded. I really don't care to look on your true manifestations. Do you understand?"

The two nodded slowly. They were unsure of all that was happening to them, but could sense in him an irresistible power.

"Secondly, you will not harm me or cause me to harm myself or allow harm to come to me if in your power to prevent it. Nor will you attempt to harm yourselves or each other. You will not try to escape or allow the other to do any of these things. Do you understand?"

The two nodded sadly, the totality of their bondage becoming clearer to them.

"Good. My third order is this." Here the man reached into his bag and, after some fumbling, drew forth a grayish egg of village soap. He tossed it towards the two. It was caught by Darla.

"You both stink. There's a stream over there behind you. Go wash."

"What, in the dark, Lord?"

"In the dark. You two are not as blind as you wish me to believe."

"Yes, Lord," they chorused, resignation clear in their voices.

"Nor," he said sternly, "am I as simple as you seem to think."

Pouting but obedient, the two disappeared into the darkness.

Aldar listened to their muffled and low yelps as they entered the glacier-fed stream. His face seemed to relax. He smiled to himself -- perhaps the first smile in a long time which a human being would find amusing.

Presently, the girls returned, now shivering and wet.

Aldar, returning to his position against the rock wall, had broken out a worn blanket to supplement his cloak and was huddled within it. A still-scaled arm reached out from its folds and recovered the precious lump of soap, placing it on a rock to dry.

The two demons stood before him. Their options, they knew, were minimal. Their arms were tight around their chests, more for warmth than modesty. The latter was in any case no more natural to their kind than to cats.

Ancient eyes examined them carefully and they looked away. Curtly he ordered them to turn around. The low light of the small fire flickered over apparently youthful flanks and buttocks as they obeyed.

After a long glance, Aldar flung open his blanket in invitation. "It getting colder," he said, not unkindly now. "Come get warm by a dragon's fire."

Timidly, unsure of what to expect, the two approached. Kneeling first, they turned and slid under his arms. He closed the blanket.

"Oh!" Their surprise was real, shock turning to horror as the young demons realized what the dragon carried between his legs.

The blanket fell away in the struggle. The naked women were attempting to flee when a snake-fast hand captured each of them by the neck. Implacable, inescapable strength turned them back to face him. Their eyes were downturned, frozen on what was rising before them.

"Enough," he said in a bottomless voice. Golden eyes blinked at them; a fringe of scales around his neck rose slightly, fell again.

"It waits for the next to disobey me," he rumbled. "Now pick up the blanket and cover us."

The two fumbled for the cloth, scarcely relaxing as his body transitioned fully back to human. Looking from one to the next, he smiled. Still keeping a grip on their necks, he allowed his body to recline on the improvised mattress.

"Lie down next to me," he commanded, pulling them down as he spoke.

Covered with the blanket and a head on each shoulder, he felt them shiver against him. He smiled softly to himself at their squirming efforts to avoid touching him.

"Lie still," he demanded and felt the two young bodies slide closer, coming to rest against him.

He raised his eyebrows in the darkness as first Darla and then Eldrin again broke into very uncharacteristic sobs. The day had been traumatic for them. Eventually, they slept. Eventually, so did he.

+

The next morning, it was Aldar who awoke first, a head on each shoulder, a warm weight against his body on either side.

Looking down at their sleeping faces, he could almost believe them to be real women -- quite pretty women, come to think of it.

The early morning air was cool and he found himself content to lie in their warmth and watch the clouds drifting overhead. It was pleasant and, in his human form, he could feel a slight stirring in his loins. His mind began twisting back and forth as he gradually came fully awake.

Aldar had sworn off bondservants an eternity before, finding them more trouble than they were worth and being unhappy with the ethical strictures they imposed on him.

Now, damn it all, he found himself stuck with two  of them! While comely enough — tempting, in truth — a millennium of experience told him to be wary of the troubles such temptations inevitably brought.

He'd enslaved the two on impulse, partly in self-defence and partly in anger at their presumption. Now, having rested, having had time to think, he was unsure of his next course of action.

The dragon was, oddly enough, a philosophical and deeply moral creature. That his moral code didn't often mesh with those of other beings was at times inconvenient, but it still guided and shaped his behaviour.

Two of the Higher People had fallen into his lap. Vicious and self-serving, they clearly had no more common sense than his left boot.

Eldrin murmured softly in her sleep, shifted beside him. He felt her pubic bush move against his thigh, felt his sex growing hard. He too had his human side - or at least something simulating a human side. He had, after all, spent a long time practising it. For all the weaknesses it brought, Aldar had learned to appreciate some aspects of it. But, although he took a moment to run his hands along the flanks of both girls, finally cupping firm buttocks with extended fingers, now was not the time.

Turning away from the facade of his human form and its encompassing inclinations, he reflected on last night's events. It seemed clear now that he'd acted with unseemly haste. Dragons are eternal and their deliberations should be...

Or had he? He paused his thoughts, redirected them, examined them with millennia of experience.

There seemed to be a limited number of choices. Last night, he could have merely chased them away with a display of strength. On the same note, he could simply release them from his service this morning.

He frowned - then or now, freedom for these two untamed cubs would bring them to one adamantine destiny -- a mob with torches and pitchforks or its military equivalent. No matter what warnings he gave, no matter what promises and oaths these two delectable creatures (and here he indulged himself with another caress of perfect skin) might give him, if left to run free, they would inevitably be hunted down by frightened and enraged humans. And that would mean not only the loss of two of the People, but also a violation of the Great Convention, a raising of human awareness of Their remaining existence. And that  posed a threat to himself and all his kind.

He sighed. Even dragons can mourn pointless waste.

As a second alternative, he could have killed them last night. It was still an option. His hands ran up under the blanket, flowed over warm soft skin, settled on their slender necks. A quick squeeze, jerk and twist - they wouldn't even know they had died. It would be simple; it would avoid the mob, the hunt - and for him, the renewed risk of exposure. And these two were not of his line; no covenant stayed his hands.

That said, whatever their species, despite their dangerous, ignorant ferocity, they were still possessed of Higher blood, something infinitely too valuable and altogether too rare to be casually sacrificed or tossed away.

Aldar sighed, put the thought aside. It might come to that, he decided, but not quite yet.

The remaining possibility was both the easiest and the hardest.

The two demons were in their human form pleasing enough to his eye. Indeed, more than just pleasing, for Aldar's breath sucked in deeply as the sleeping Darla shifted beside him, her movement drawing both blonde hair and soft breast against his chest. He looked down at her, saw a small pink tongue-tip slip between her sleeping lips. His hardness increased.

He turned his head to the other side, saw Eldrin's green eyes were now open, staring at him. Hesitant, she tried to smile, had to lick her own lips first.

It was a pleasant-enough smile, Aldar thought.

"Lie still, girl," he whispered. "Your sister still sleeps." With that, he closed his eyes and tried to finish his thoughts.

The two would come with him, then, act as his human servants until...

Until what? Until they had accumulated hundreds of years of wisdom and judgement? No, that was hardly practical. Aldar was mildly amused that he didn't really know how long their kind normally lived. in any case, their staying with him over the long term was impossible.

The two were prime specimens, he thought, would be accounted mother-ready by their sort in another decade or two. Perhaps he might find a nest of them somewhere, pass them to their own kind to raise? It would be difficult to locate a nest, but none of the Higher People could afford to ignore their own. Breeding success was too erratic, far too slow not to take every chance.

Aldar thought to his last mating, at the height of the Mage Wars. He and she, far above the green valleys, above even the lichened mountains - swirling, playing, eyes on nothing but each other. A caressing, soaring, spirited climb until the chill air around them had thinned, the stars had become visible and the horizon was plainly curved. Then, at last, she had pulled him into a wing-folded coupling, talons clutching scales, hips locked together, down through mile upon mile of tumbling bliss, into a volcanic explosion of mutual orgasm ending only when wings unfolded at the last moment to avoid the uprushing reality of rocks and trees.

The screams of their mating triumph were still echoing from surrounding cliff faces when she flew off, leaving Aldar behind. He had heard nothing of her since, nor indeed of any other female of his own species. The Covenant worked both for and against his kind. It could be that he was the very last.

Aldar's thoughts were interrupted by a soft hand on his thigh. Turning his head, he saw a slight smile on Eldrin's face, remembered that her species was indeed voracious -- in all things.

"As she is still sleeping, may this one ask how my Lord is this morning?" she whispered, her fingers drifting over his thigh onto his now fully-erect, well, yes, manhood.

"I told you to be silent," he replied softly.

"Oh, you would be surprised at how quiet I can be, my Lord," she laughed quietly. "Unless my Lord doesn't wish..."

By then her fingers had surrounded his length and were pulling soft skin over rigid core. As her thumb reached his swollen head, she swept it gently over the sensitive triangle underneath.

"Shall I stop, Lord?" she whispered, very softly.

Aldar thought for a moment.

Why not?  If they were to journey together, it might as well be enjoyable. These two could not hurt him. Their presence might bring comment later, but for now...

Saying nothing, he replied by letting his head fall back on his improvised pillow.

Eldrin may have appeared naïve to a being of Aldar's perspective, but she was anything but stupid. Before drifting off to sleep, she'd had time to reflect on her situation. Yes, she was now bound to him by both spell and custom, but that did not necessarily mean that her time of bondage had to be terrible. Indeed, she thought, sliding her hand along his length, there could be some advantages...

Be pleasant,   she told herself. The parchment whisper of her mother's voice drifted through her memory. Males can be influenced, won over, even if only briefly.

She smiled; her fingers began to stroke a little harder, a little faster. Without disturbing her stroking, Eldrin shifted, raised her head and rested it on her elbow.

At the shift in her body, Aldar opened one eye, turned it towards her. Seeing his attention, she giggled again, less softly now. Her thumb began to circle and roll over his head at the top of each stroke.

Aldar smiled slightly. He had to admit that Eldrin was good, very good, at this.

As if reading his mind, the girl smiled. "We have many appetites, my Lord -- and many skills." With that, she half-rose, knelt beside him. Keeping her eyes fixed on his, she ran the very tip of her forefinger along the underside of his hardness, lingering on his slit before falling off him entirely, leaving her other hand beginning the same journey.

"Many skills," she repeated.

Leaning closer to his groin now, she could smell his masculine odor, healthy human male, overlaid with something else -- hot bronze, perhaps. She found it surprisingly pleasing to her nostrils, realized with a start that what had begun as an ingratiatory task had become alluring, almost exciting. It occurred to her that, despite her newbound state, it was she  who had the power at this moment. That, too was intriguing, unprecedented -- using power for pleasure.

To her surprise, she felt a weight forming in her loins, a tightening of her nipples, turning to pebble hardness when Aldar's hand clasped one of her buttocks, squeezed softly.

Aldar tucked his other hand behind his head as a rest, allowing him to watch the girl.

Soft fingers circled his crown, down along his shaft, twisting and swirling as they went. One hand clasped his sac, softly rolled his tender eggs; the other stayed on his rigid phallus, squeezing, stroking, playing.

She clasped it harder, slid her hand down his length, watched as the skin bunched under her slow-moving fingers. Aldar growled softly. She froze momentarily, then, realizing it was a sound of pleasure, restarted.

Reaching the base of his cock, she eased the pressure, allowed her fingers to trail over and around his sac, tickled behind it with her nails. Aldar's hand on her bum squeezed harder in response.

Hand now on the middle of his shaft, Eldrin began to pump him faster, her hand floating up and down over him, twisting the skin as she moved. Her other hand gently pulled his balls away from his body, stretching his taut bag.

Aldar could feel his arousal build and groaned softly in appreciation.

At the sound, the smaller blonde form on his left shifted. Darla's breathing changed, paused altogether for a moment. Her eyes opened to see Eldrin's flying, flowing hands on Aldar's prominent sex.

Darla had independently arrived at much the same conclusion as Eldrin in the middle of the night. It seemed clear now that the man, if not the dragon, could be pleased. Her life, she had reflected, might depend on that.

The girl turned her head to see Aldar staring at her. Hesitant, but encouraged by his clear enjoyment of Eldrin's efforts, Darla rose to her knees on the other side of his prone figure.

Tentatively, she leaned towards him, pressed her lips to his. Some males, she knew, liked that. She felt his tongue sweep over her lips and opened her own, met tongue with tongue. He tasted of sunset, smoke and old wine.

The girl's eyes opened wider when she felt his hand clasp the back of her head, pull her in towards him. His tongue pressed deeper into her mouth, twisted around hers, explored her teeth.

His hand released her head and she pulled back slightly. There was a smile on his face.

"Good morning," he said. His eyes closed for an instant of enjoyment at Eldrin's hands, then opened as his arm pulled Darla's mouth back to his.

The girl's whole body shivered. While hardly innocent — not in her society — she had never known a kiss could be so consuming, at one and the same time so demanding and so giving. Her excitement increased as his hand moved from her head and found her dangling breasts. The young woman gasped as strong fingers closed gently on her soft orbs, felt her arousal soar. She hissed in pleasure as Aldar caught a nipple between two fingers and pulled gently.

Wanting more, Darla slid her hand down over his chest, over his stomach, under Eldrin's quick-moving hands. Further down, she felt the root of his cock, slid further down to clasp his sac, gently squeezing and playing with its contents.

She felt the chest under her arm begin to buck as Aldar gasped, heaved, shuddered with his orgasm. His growl was deep, primal. Hot jets coated Darla's hand and forearm. She yelped slightly as his hand squeezed her breast, then both it and his mouth fell away.

Aldar gasped, trying to catch his breath. His eyes closed, he could feel the two women shift, again lie down on either side of him.

Looking across his heaving chest, Eldrin noticed Darla's hand still cradling the dragon's balls. She turned her head on his shoulder, whispered into his ear.

"Have we pleased our Lord?"

A slow smile crossed Aldar's face. Strong arms pulled the two women into him, hugging them deeply and, for him, tenderly. His eyes closed.

The women's eyes met for a moment. Each gave a slight smile before lowering her head to Aldar's shoulder.