The Dragon's Heart

I smiled grimly. "Don't play stupid," I said. I drew my blade back and smashed it down on hers. "Everything you did to belittle me, everything you did to make my life a misery! I thought you'd changed!" I saw the red mist and smashed my blade over and over against hers, as though trying to cut my way through to her, the source of all that humiliation.

Lanissa fell back against the bed, desperately deflecting the rage-filled blows raining down upon her. The anger had fled from her face, replaced with confusion, but I didn't see it. Madness had overtaken me, a strange mixture of anger and frustration and despair. I lunged a final blow at her, not holding anything back, and she barely raised her own weapon in time. My blade struck hers and she gasped, her weapon spinning from her stinging grasp. I leaped on top of her, pushing her back on the bed, the edge of my blade pressed against her neck.

Maybe I had wanted to hurt her. Rage still filled me. But when she didn't cry out or struggle and merely looked up at me with her large golden eyes, I hesitated.

"Why?" I whispered. "Why all this, Lanissa?"

My hand trembled. The blade slipped against the pale skin of her neck, leaving a line of blue. Her blood.

She took hold of my hand. She made no move to push the sword away or disarm me, just held it.

"Why?" she asked. Her frown reappeared and she turned her face away. "Isn't it obvious? I love you, you fool."

The sword slipped from my grasp, but still she held my hand. I trembled. She raised her other hand to her neck, took it away and looked at the blue stain on her finger tips.

"Blood," she said.

My stomach turned with the iciness of guilt. "Lanissa, I'm..."

But she was smiling.

"Marriage duels are to first blood," she said. "I guess you are worthy to be my husband after all."

She grimaced, then, and I remembered I was lying on top of her. I grew aware of the warmth of her body, its firmness beneath the silk of her dress, and I rolled off her, blushing.

She sat up on the edge of the bed and looked at me. The smile had returned to her face. "I knew you weren't weak," she said. "I could never have fallen in love with a weak man."

I stared at her, my mind still reeling. A moment ago I'd been fighting for my life and now she was telling me...

"How long, Lanissa?" I whispered. "How long have you-?"

She squeezed her clawed hands together and wrung them. "Oh, I don't know when, exactly. Not long after I met you, though." Her eyes sought mine and her smile turned fragile. "Do you remember how we met?"

I thought back. The play and the other bullying was all I'd really remembered over the years, but now, having seen her face again...

"I remember," I said. "You were lost, weren't you? I helped you find your class, I think."

She shook her head. "I was crying. You don't remember that?" She lifted a hand to my face. "Yours was the first face at that school that ever smiled at me. I guess that's why I can't forget it."

The touch of her fingers was shy. I brought my own hand up and covered hers. Even with scales and claws, it was a soft hand, feminine and gentle and I felt my blood run faster.

"You don't remember, do you?" she whispered. "How you befriended me? The other kids were scared of me. I was the first dragonewt at the school, and back then there was talk of war between our two countries, almost as bad as things are now. People would call me a 'scaly' in the street. But you... you didn't care about that at all. You were so kind to me."

I frowned. Come to think of it, I did remember. Lanissa's face, smiling back at me with all those teeth, her big gold eyes gleaming. How I'd been fascinated with her wings and tail, how I'd be surprised to find her scales were soft and warm to the touch, nothing like what I'd expected, when my hand touched hers. I remembered how boring my life had been, how how lonely I'd been before I met her.

But why? Why had we...?

A sickening realisation gripped me. I took her hand from my face, placed it on the bed between us, but still held it. I looked away, unable to meet her eyes.

"You... you weren't bullying me, were you?" I muttered. "All that stuff you did. It was just you being... well, you, right?"

I looked back. Lanissa was nodding. Her smile was nostalgic, rueful.

"I... I guess I've always been bad at expressing my feelings," she said. "Even for a dragonewt. Back then I didn't realise that humans did things differently. I was just a kid, a kid who had no idea what she was doing, what she was feeling."

I closed my eyes. "I was a kid, too. And I was weak, Lanissa. I still am, I guess. Weak and scared."

How had I come to hate her so much? It was easy to hate someone if you loved them, especially if you were afraid of loving them...

If you loved them...

Why had I gone along with this marriage? I'd barely made any attempt to slip my way out of it and run, like I always did when presented with some problem I didn't want to deal with. Why had I even entertained the thought of spending my life with this person, if all she'd been to me was a bully?

Memories, long forgotten, came surging back.

"I wanted to know what it felt like to fly, didn't I?" I remembered. "And you were still learning how and..."

Lanissa nodded. "...and I lifted you up from behind. I wanted it to be a surprise."

"It was a surprise," I said and laughed. "I guess it was all my struggling that made you drop me."

Lanissa lowered her gaze. "I was a terrible flier back then. I never should have... I never should have kept trying to make you like it."

I shook my head. "My leg was barely out of its cast when you took me flying again. It was even more terrifying the second time. And you never took no for an answer."

She squeezed my hand. "Please forgive me. It's just... it's just that I had this big idea, of taking you flying with me, to some tiny little deserted island somewhere, a place we could be alone."

"I remember," I said with a chuckle. "I thought you were teasing me. And when I started panicking and you brought me back down..."

"Everyone laughed at you," Lanissa said. "I felt ashamed." Her eyes were pleading. "But I never lifted you up when there was anyone around again after that!"

"So that's why you'd lie in wait for me going home from school," I said. "I thought you were stalking me."

Lanissa blushed. "I.. I guess I was hunting you, after a fashion. I just wanted you to like flying, to like... me."

I sighed. "And the play." I wrapped myself on the head with my knuckles. "How could I be so stupid!"

"No," said Lanissa. "I was the stupid one. If I'd just come out and told you how I felt-"

"But you tried to, didn't you?" I murmured. "Before the play, just before we went out on stage. That was what you wanted to talk to me about."

"It only took me ten years to tell you," she said. She looked up at me through the bars of her dark lashes. "But I still don't know how."

"Lanissa," I said, taking her hands in mine. "For the past decade all I've thought about was you. I mean, I remembered you as a bully, but.." I sighed. "You don't lie there at night thinking about your bully, wondering what she's doing, missing her, wanting to see her... to see her again, do you?"

Lanissa's eyes grew moist. "You... missed me?"

"When I lifted your veil," I said. "And saw your face, it felt like I'd found something I hadn't even realised I was missing."

"So," she whispered. "So this isn't all just a job?"

"I was stupid to say that," I said. "But you know? I've spent my life avoiding things, avoiding responsibilities, but when I knew it was you, running away didn't even occur to me."

"You're just being selfless," she murmured. "Even now. You're doing it to stop the war. To save your people."

"I might not know myself very well," I said. "But one thing I do know is that I don't have a selfless bone in my body."

"So why are you still here?" she whispered.

"Because I love you too, you fool."

With a cry Lanissa melted into my arms - no, melt is the wrong word. Having two hundred pounds of curvaceous dragonewt thrust upon you can't really be called melting. I fell backwards on the bed with her on top of me. I gasped, the breath squashed out of me, and with an embarrassed look of apology she lifted herself off, a hand on either side of my head, and blushed down at me as I drew in a welcome lung-full of air.

"You.. you really love me?"

For once I didn't miss my cue, even though I was half-asphyxiated. I leaned up and brought my lips against hers. I felt the warmth of a wisp of her breath as she gasped against my mouth, and then the daintiest touch of a hot, wet tongue against my own.

This was no chaste wedding kiss, no ostentatious kiss for the stage. It was a hungry kiss, inexperienced but eager, and I let her take the lead. After all, as a dragonewt her tongue was much longer than mine and wrestling my way past her lips was not an option.

At last she broke away, gasping. But the shine in her golden eyes told me she was just catching her breath.

I took my opening. I lifted my hands, cupping her chin so that my fingers touched the gorgeous softness of her neck just below the ears and kissed her, this time taking charge. She gave a half-hearted defence at first, but then with a moan she let me slip my tongue between her lips and into the fragrant heat and wetness of her mouth.

I was surprised by how inexperienced she seemed, but then I realised that kissing has always been more of a human thing. I suppose when you've a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth, kissing becomes a more daring prospect. But Lanissa seemed to have no problem with keeping her teeth out of the way. She proved a natural at kissing and soon realised that there was no need to wrestle so much. Her kisses grew tender, though they lost none of their eagerness. This time I was the one to break away.

She stared down at me, a pleased smile on her lips. Even despite the jaggedness of her mouthful of canines, it was a charming smile, the smile of a little girl proud of getting her own way.

"So that's what I missed out on during the play," she said. "If I'd known it was this much fun, I would have been even madder at you."

I shook my head and sighed. "Again with the play? Maybe this will shut you up."

I kissed her again, longer this time. Her arms drew me deeper into her embrace, crushing me against her ample breasts and I wondered why I'd been so stupid and so blind. I could have enjoyed these embraces long ago if I hadn't been such a child.

My romantic history flew past my eyes. I'd always seemed to go for the tougher kind of girl, the tomboy type, knights and armourers and crafters and the like, tall and statuesque. I'd got a lot of gentle ribbing from my older brothers about it, but it hadn't stopped me. I liked girls with some power and some edge to them. But that type of girl expects a man to constantly one-up them, to beat them at their own game. I always proved a bit too sensitive for them, and the relationships never lasted that long.

Now I realised I'd been chasing a phantom, a memory of my first love, the girl I'd fallen in love with and hadn't even realised it. And now she was in my arms, her lips pressed against mine, murmuring with pleasure as we shared the heated kiss of a man and wife.

I felt myself growing hard. There was no way Lanissa could avoid noticing it, pressed up against her as it was. She broke the kiss and looked at me, startled.

"That's.. that your thing, isn't it?"

"My... thing?" I grinned at the charming childishness of her expression. So the daughter of the dangerous and vicious dragonewt race, the mortal enemies of humans, calls a penis a 'thing'?

She nodded.

"Uh, male dragonewts have 'things' as well, right?"

Her crest bristled and she narrowed her eyes, although her blush betrayed her embarrassment. "Of course they do," she said. "It's just that I don't have any experience with humans."

"You don't have to worry," I said. I drew the palms of my hands across her back. The firmness of her flesh beneath the sheerness of her dress' material did nothing to make my erection go down, and her blushing had made me even harder. "Dragonewts and humans are physically almost identical, and I'm a pretty typical example of a human. I don't think anything will shock you."

Lanissa grew calmer and drew back close to me. I felt a twinge of pleasure from the pressure of her bodyweight on my erection and I kissed her beside her ear. I was pretty sure dragonewt girls would like that, too, and I wasn't mistaken. She made a deep, contented sound in her throat, not unlike a purr and her wings trembled.

"What's that sound?" I asked.

Her eyes flicked open. "What sound?"

"That purring."

"Oh!" It was her turn to smile at my naivety. "That's just the sound dragonewts make when they're happy."

"So you're happy, then?"

She said nothing but just nodded and nuzzled her face into the crook of my neck.

I stroked her hair and we lay that like for a long while, just enjoying each other's closeness. The scent of her was thick, that delicious nostalgic scent I'd had no idea I'd missed so much.

My erection showed no sign of going down and I grew frustrated, especially enveloped in the embrace of such a beautiful woman. I gently pushed her away and sat up. Lanissa gold eyes were questioning.

"Uh," I said, suddenly awkward. "Why don't we have a bath and get ready for bed? I think maybe I got a bit sweaty during our... er, argument."

Lanissa leaned forward and sniffed me. "I like the smell of your perspiration." Then she sat up beside me. Her eyes sparkled with excitement. "But a bath would be nice. That spa looked beautiful, didn't it?"

I stood up and took her hand. "Let's go, then."

She blinked at me. "What, together?"

I chuckled, charmed by her innocence, even if it was all an act. "It's okay, Lanissa. We're husband and wife, now."

She nodded, a resolute expression on her face. But just outside the door of the spa she grew shy again.

"Um, is it okay if I go first?" she asked. "I just need to wash myself a little first. I think I'm a bit sweaty, too. And there's..." She placed a finger below the thin blue line on her neck.

Suddenly guilty, I nodded. "That's fine. Let me know when I can come in, okay?"

Thankful, she ducked inside. I stood there, listening to the sound of the running water and her splashing. Women were the same everywhere, I guess, always trying to outdo each other in coyness. I looked about, growing a little bored, and spotted our night clothes sitting folded in a little alcove nearby where they'd been placed by whoever had organised our room for us. I had my pyjamas, well-suited for the warm nights of my homeland, while beside them was a little square of sheer material - a nightdress and underwear. It was all quite erotic, and I remembered seeing one of the female dragonewts in the wall-hangings in the bedroom wearing something similar.

My erection reappeared, just in time for Lanissa to call to me to come in.

I stripped off and put my clothes together in a small folded pile. I'd have to get used to being a bit more organised with my stuff now I was no longer a bachelor. I waited a short while until my erection went down a little, wrapped a towel around my waist then opened the door and walked in.

The spa room was filled with steam. There was a delicious, sweet herbal scent and the whole place was lit with a deep orange glow like candlelight.

"I'm over here," came Lanissa's voice from deep amid the glowing steam.

I moved forward into the steam. Gusts of it parted as I took each step, careful not to slip on the wet tiles. Soon I found the water and I took off the towel and slipped in. It was incredibly hot and I yelped and pulled myself back out.

I heard gentle laughter to my left and the steam parted to reveal Lanissa's head and shoulders as she swam up toward me. She moved quickly, her long tail flicking behind her- dragonewts, like their smaller reptilian cousins, are adept swimmers. I remembered I was naked and having caught a sense of embarrassment from Lanissa's earlier shyness, I slipped back into the water, biting my lip so that I didn't cry out from the heat.

Lanissa, meanwhile, had swum to the side of the bath and was turning a faucet. Cold water sluiced in and by degrees the volcanic bath I was boiling in shifted back into a temperature my weak human body could tolerate.

"Sorry," she said as she swam up to me. "I forgot that humans don't like their baths quite as hot as us." A gently mocking smile appeared on her lips. "I think there's a lot of things I'll have to try and remember about humans now that I'm your wife."

I smiled back at her. My wife. I was still getting used to the idea. I guess this whole marriage was a lot like the hot bath, a shock to the system I'd have to get used to by degrees.

I lay back, my back against the rocky edge of the bath. Lanissa stayed out in the middle of the bath, waving her hands and wings and tail through the water. The steam had grown thinner with the introduction of the cool water and I could see her clearly, although the effervescence of the bath placed a discrete veil over her body below the waterline.

The top half of her breasts, made buoyant by the water, poked up amongst the bubbles, and I noticed she was even more busty than her low-cut dress had revealed. Her iridescent scales extended down from her neck across her shoulder-blades, but elsewhere her pale flesh had turned pink with the heat of the water, and her dark hair, loosened from the confines of its formal style, lay about her in the water like spilled ink.

My mouth fell open and I left it hanging there. Lanissa was pleased with the reaction and she reached forward and touched my arm.

I looked at her, surprised by her sudden movement, and she gave my arm a squeeze.

"I was worried you'd ended up boiled," she said. "I mean, your skin is almost as red as those cooked shrimps you humans eat."

I laughed. "I think I survived."I pulled my arm through her grip until my hand ended up in hers and I drew her alongside me.

She looked across at me, her eyes wide, and as I leaned forward to kiss her she closed her eyes and tilted her head. This time we kissed like we'd been doing it for years. I drew her closer to me, although she hesitated before letting me. Our bodies came together, slick sliding and hot in the water, as our tongues did, and my heart skipped at the voluptuous luxuriousness of her body.

Lanissa pushed me against the edge of the bath, her kiss growing more aggressive, her tongue dipping into my mouth and I began to feel like I had when she'd swept me off my feet in high school for our impromptu flights together.

Swept me off my feet. It was true. Had I really only arrived at Dragon's Tooth two days ago? Lanissa had swept me up and dragged me along with her fate, and I was the helpless, if willing, victim of that luck of hers which always let her get her own way.

At last she gave up her attack and I slumped back, gasping, against the side of the bath. That mocking, superior smile had slipped back onto her lips.

"I guess you enjoyed that," she murmured. She leaned close to me and her tongue slipped out, sliding over my neck in a single, teasing flick. She considered me with humour in her glittering gold eyes. "You like my long tongue?"

"Very much," I said, still breathless. I was rock hard and my blood ran quick with that itchy tension you get when you're overexcited. Lanissa's control of the situation made me ache for more. But slipping and sliding in the bath, while fun, was not how I imagined we should spend our first time together, especially since that opulent bed with its silks and pillow waited for us. Lanissa seemed a little disappointed when I suggested we get out of the bath, but when I mentioned the bed her smile became shy and she nodded.