Dragon in the Dark (Kindred Tales)

She sighed and nodded.

“Really rough. Like I never could have imagined,” she admitted. “But you’ve been with me every step of the way.”

“Not every step,” Dra’vik admitted. He still felt deep shame for leaving her alone in the checkpoint line. And of course then that bastard Sin’estor had attacked her, but he couldn’t have done anything about that, since his primary heart had been taken out.

It occurred to him that he had healed with remarkable—some might even say miraculous—rapidity from such a grave wound. He seemed to remember a voice whispering to him at the time—a voice that sounded very familiar. But when he grasped for the memory, it faded away. Besides, he was more focused on Iyanna right now.

“If you’re still worried about the checkpoint line, don’t be,” she said, as though she had been reading his mind. “Neither one of us had any idea how horrible that planet is—or how badly they treat their women.” She shook her head. “I guess the first scouts Commander Rarev sent didn’t know since they probably only dealt with other males and weren’t treated to the whole Lix’dorian experience, like we were.”

“The Lix’dorians are fucking disgusting,” Dra’vik growled. “Males who treat their females so shamefully don’t deserve them.”

“Well, not everybody feels the same way about women that you Kindred do,” Iyanna remarked. “Even my ex-fiancé, Ian—he considered himself this big feminist—but he never, er, did some of the things you’ve done for me.”

She looked up at him again and he thought he detected another faint blush.

“Mmm…like calling you a ‘good girl’?” Dra’vik rumbled. He loved watching her reaction when he said those words. She bit her lush lower lip and shivered, a soft moan escaping her.

“Well that, and he never really…” She shifted against him. “You know how you, er, ‘opened’ me with your tongue?”

“You mean he didn’t like to taste you?” Dra’vik couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “What the hell was wrong with him, little girl? Your pussy is delicious! Not to mention the way you moan and beg and pull my horns when I lick you…”

“Dra’vik!” she whispered. “We don’t have a privacy shield this time, remember?”

“Right. Sorry about that—I was just surprised. We Monstrum fucking love to taste our females. In fact, we need to. What kind of idiot was this ex of yours, anyway?”

“He wasn’t that unusual for a human guy,” Iyanna protested. “I mean, some of them like, er, going down, but a lot of them don’t or they just won’t bother because they’re not interested in foreplay.”

“You mean they’re not interested in pleasuring their females,” Dra’vik growled. “And then they get upset and say the Kindred and the Monstrum are ‘taking’ their potential mates away from them. But who could blame a human female for choosing a male who makes her pleasure his first priority?”

“Yeah, human guys aren’t great sometimes, but they’re still not as bad as the Lix’dorians,” Iyanna pointed out. “You know what was the worst part of this crazy mission—the part that made me the saddest?”

“What was that, little girl?” Dra’vik asked warily. He was expecting her to say it was the awful experience she’d had with the two guards in the scan room or the horror of Baronet Sin’estor’s attack on her. So her next words really surprised him.

“What made me saddest,” she said, “was watching what was happening to all the Lix’dorian women around me. I mean, I had a rough time, but in the back of my head, I always knew I was eventually going home. But those poor women…they’re just stuck there.” She shook her head sadly. “I wish there was something we could do for them. Their situation just seems so hopeless.”

“It was pretty fucking awful,” Dra’vik agreed darkly. He also wished they could do something to help the females of Lix’dor Prime. But you couldn’t exactly change an entire planet’s culture just by wishing.

“We saw a lot of awful things but do you know what I think the worst one was?” she continued. “It was that breeding party they had at the banquet. That poor woman, used by all those men like that! It was terrible.”

Dra’vik nodded in agreement.

“I wanted to stop it,” he growled. “But then the little female next to you said it was impossible because of the drugs they had given her.”

“I know! Those drugs—that, what do you call it? Rapid ovulator stuff.” Iyanna’s eyes grew wide. “And the way it made her beg to be ‘bred!’ It was insane.”

Dra’vik nodded, but he wasn’t sure what to say. He definitely agreed with her that the little pleasure slave shouldn’t have been injected with the breeding drugs and forced into multiple breedings without her consent. But was the lack of consent what was bothering Iyanna? Or was it something else?

“And then the way she got pregnant right away—right before our eyes!” Iyanna continued, her own eyes going wide. “I mean, I was stoned out of my mind on that damn fondle-mush, but if I hadn’t been, I’m sure I would have been freaking out. Can you imagine someone forcing you to get pregnant like that? I mean, I’m sure you can’t—you’re a guy. But as a woman, watching that was just damn scary!” She shivered, a look of fear and disgust coming over her face.