Wife

Long lonely hours.

Valentina was lost, left behind in the hoard of Vakenroth but feeling all the more hollow with Vakenroth's absence. She had won.

Valentina had been sacrificed to the dragon, given up by her family as a princess tribute. She had avoided getting eaten, she had survived his attempts at mating. She had even scared him, chased him away to the far corners of the world... or at least well out of the reach of her stride.

And she had been left with treasure beyond imagining. And thirst and starvation. Yet slowly in Vakenroth's absence she had adapted. She had pulled free a cauldron from a shirt, and with it, she carried snow down from the mountain cap, to melt in the lair itself.

Water enough to drink. To wash her face and hair. To regain some amount of presentability. Enough water even to scrub Vakenroth's spilled seed off of the walls and piles of coin.

And she had food, at least for a time. All the bones of the horse Vakenroth had once given her as a meal. Cracked open and sucked clean, and then boiled in a broth which she had sipped, but each day the bones had filled her less.

She had another patch on the tunic, one that promised a donkey and riding gear. And every day she was closer to pulling it free. To eat the donkey and the leather of bridle both. But she held off for now. The donkey could be a way out of here, a way down the mountain if she had to.

A chance to return to what? Civilization?

A kingdom that sold her off for a moment of peace? A family that didn't mourn her? What civilization was that, that treated its daughters as tokens to be bartered and sold? Even if she hadn't been offered to the dragon, it was once her fate to be offered to some other strange man.

But the token was spent, and now walked free. Paced the cave, boots pressed down against treasures unimaginable.

Valentina was lonely. Lonely in isolation, in geography and in role. She was no longer a princess. In quiet moments, she didn't even consider herself human anymore. Or at least, not any human she would have once recognized.

She had killed a horse with her bare hands and then eaten its flesh while it was raw and still twitching. Was this a human action? She considered it for some time, the only company her wayward thoughts.

Humans butchered animals with regularity, all the meat she had ever tasted had come from that barbaric act, albeit practiced butchers had greater skill than her own fumbling fingers.

But what of those who eat meat without soaking their hands in blood? She had been raised to think that such was civilization, that it was noble propriety. That it was a refinement. To not butcher what one consumes. Yet the nobles had no shortage of meat in their pots and in their bellies.

There was an alienation between the eater of flesh and the hand that killed it. Yet now having experienced both, it all felt different. Did she think herself an animal now, a predator, after killing a single beast?

She laughed, her amusement echoing through empty cave. How far her fall, that she considered herself a beast with her first touch with common humanity.

Yet she felt no common ground in the end with the butcher or the cook's assistant, nor even with the hunter. While she had observed such people, while she had even brushed against them once or twice. She did not feel of them.

No. She only felt common ground with the dragon. With Vakenroth. Who had in all truth **** her, who stole her away to this rocky palace in the sky and subjected her to **** and raw sexuality. And then she had returned to him the same.

She used that borrowed strength of her belt to pin him down, to push her arm deep inside him. To make a woman of him, at least for a time. An expression of lust and **** that had Vakenroth scared. Had him panicked.

That even had him try and kill Valentina. And then, when his nerve failed, sent him running. For how long now? A week? Two? Valentina didn't track the days at first. The first few days at least lost to despondency, to apathy, to despair.

To guilt.

That she had done the same to Vakenroth that he had done to her first.

That she cared enough not to truly want to harm the dragon.

That she missed her husband.

That she might even beg for forgiveness.

But in time she started marking the sunrises. She had marked nine days upon the wall, a record of isolation carved into raw stone. An enduring memory that she had been here, even should she be forgotten outside of it.

Would Vakenroth ever return?

Would he kill her when he did? She was stronger, but her reach was so limited, her pace faster than most humans now, but a mere slug compared to her dragon. She had resisted Vakenroth's first attempt to kill her... but at his second, he was ready to exhale and burn her to ****.

Valentina had no way of stopping him. He was ready to kill her. And then he didn't. He fled instead. A mercy perhaps? An act of shame?

Valentina couldn't be sure.

The mountain shook. Something heavy landed outside, letting the stones tremble. Vakenroth had returned.

Valentina stood up, to her full height, what might have been a full five feet in generous light. Trying to prepare herself. She had rehearsed a dozen speeches, a hundred apologies. But her throat ran dry as the beast entered the cave.

That slow crawl inside. Vakenroth’s face marked with blood and gristle of his most recent kill. Dripping from his maw. Scraps of clothing still between his teeth. He had killed people. Valentina had known as much, of course, it was part of the very conditions of her surrender.

She was given to him to spare the rest of the kingdom. Had he violated this agreement? Or had he claimed other humans to kill?

And why did her stomach cramp up at the site of flesh upon his jaws? Was she so hungry now that she considered eating human flesh? That she would lick clean the teeth of her captor?

That she no longer considered herself prey?

Vakenroth stared at her with those amber eyes. There was anger there still, terrible rage, pain hidden away. But more than that, there was expectation. He had returned, he had returned bloody, and that was statement enough.

It was up to her to reply.

Valentina closed her eyes. Not a symbol of surrender outright, but a pause, a consideration of what she said next. Her words a weapon in itself, but one that on this occasion she was careful to wield. Not a killing blade, but a scalpel. Trying to cut free and through.

To let her patient survive.

"My husband Vakenroth." She started, her eyes opening and locking upon his. A deference, but also a statement of possession. Her husband. But did husband also mean master?

"I am glad to see you returned." A diplomatic answer, yet one ringing hollow. "... I have missed you." A truer one, earning a slight nod from the dragon in turn.

"We have harmed each other, both." An acknowledgement, but not in isolation. "Hurt each other. Been... clumsy with each other." Her face grimaced, her teeth held tight, as she tried to hold back the tears. She had truly missed him. His absence had been an agony beyond that of isolation.

"I have failed in our mutual consideration." She did not want to admit fault. The fault did not start with her. "We have made treaty, to lay out the conditions with which my participation will be willing, eager, but we did not make the same considerations for you as well."

Her flesh was still his. Her life was still his to end or consume at any point, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Nor had he made any agreement that he wouldn't kill her in time. Yet, she had told him what he had to do to have her eagerly be his wife, his partner, his ally. And he had largely stuck to said behaviors.

He had never said what would likewise earn his eagerness. And at first, neither of them considered such worth spelling out. Valentina had a few trinkets taken from his hoard, but neither imagined that she could truly overpower the dragon.

Until she did. And he fled. Clearly this wasn't what he wanted. And he hadn't the strength in the moment to stop her. For Vakenroth to demand consideration for his feelings was an admission that his feelings could be hurt. For there to be consideration for his consent, there had to be an admission that such could be violated.

"So tell me, husband." Valentina continued. "What is required for your eager participation?" Not what lines she would not cross, nor any promises that she would spare his life or not consume him. If they were to be partners, she would have the agreement the same both ways.

If he would not promise not to kill and eat her. To not pin her down and rut her flesh, she would not promise not to do the same to him.

Vakenroth stared at her, eyes blinking. Considering. There was still discomfort here. Still pride insulted. Still rage simmering, even if the full extent of it had cooled and calmed.

And so Vakenroth spoke. With teeth and jaws. Lunging forward faster than Valentina could react. Opening his jaws wide and snapping down. Capturing her in that cage of teeth. Laying her out across his tongue, staring face down into the flaming pit of him.

Showing his power over her once more. That Vakenroth could kill her in an instant, could boil her alive. Could devour her piece by piece. The physicality of threat an important message in itself, a gesture of control, of social maneuvering that Vakenroth understood.

And Valentina felt pain. She felt those teeth stabbing into her calves. Her arms. Threatening to crush the bones beneath, drawing out an excess of blood, lingering with Vakenroth's already gore splattered visage. And she looked down into that furnace, that unholy heat that could burn forests and villages. That with enough application could melt stone.

There was no surviving the **** that stared with her. And yet, even in this agony, even in this primal fear, Valentina had found calm. **** was a consequence and potential she had grown used to. A threat that had been dealt with her before.

This wasn't the first time Vakenroth had aimed a knife at her chest. And so far her captor, her husband, hadn't pierced her heart. Even at the height of his rage, after she had defiled his flesh, he didn't have the will to kill her.

And he didn't have it now. She tilted her head up, arching her back, struggling against those bonds of teeth, to finally kiss the roof of his mouth, a gesture of affection, a defiance of threat. A show of calm that made Vakenroth pause.

And then, very slowly, she started to flex her arms and her legs, finding the places where she could move between teeth. The muscles and tendons of hers that still worked, and then very slowly pressing a foot down against his tongue, a hand up against the roof of his mouth. And when her other arm failed to respond, a shoulder instead.

And slowly she pried open the jaws of ****. Staring down at that furnace. The dragon's breath that never claimed her. Vakenroth didn't want her dead. Even now.

"Is this what you wanted, my dearest husband?" She whispered out, barely audible past Vakenroth's exhalations. "To claim me so, and have me overpower you again?" There was no answer from Vakenroth's words. No answer in flame either.

She stood there, inside his mouth, stretching the dragon wide. To the point that pain shot through Vakenroth’s jaw, from the full extension of Valentina’s arm and legs. Vakenroth writhed in her grasp, his jaw stretched, the pain audible, but still no flame burned her. Instead, he answered with a clenching of muscle, his jaw pressing down, forcing Valentina to give slightly.

But her hold didn't break. There was a strange certainty in that resistance. A clear result, instead of the ambiguous scale of before. Even if such strength and defiance was hollow, easily removed with a cutting free of the belt, or the incineration of flame.

Valentina pushed back, and then slipped one foot free, pressed free on Vakenroth's outer gums. And then her other foot followed, braced half outside, those same teeth grazing along her back, protected only thinly by the touch of cloak and tunic beneath.

There was a moment when she pulled her head free that Vakenroth should have snapped and killed her outright, but the dragon showed restraint, if not mercy.

Long enough to let Valentina free. To let her crawl up and along the back of his head. "Now husband. I am bleeding and may die if this is not addressed. Will you correct this?" Not a begging for help, not a surrender. If she had to, she might have been able to fashion bandages further still, even if the damage to her arm and leg was extensive.

There was a low rumbling growl from Vakenroth, his mind lost and unsure. There were parts of him that hated Valentina, that hated how she made him feel. How **** he had become around her, yet those weren't enough to wish her dead, at least not yet. Not so informally.

He would not **** her in a way that did not give him lingering satisfaction.

He brushed his jaws lower, dragging through the coin, sifting through the treasure to finally find another potion. A great cure that could have fixed many injuries, many deep wounds, life, or the potential for more, hoarded away and unused.

He brushed his head against it, indicating which one, but still words did not leave his lips. Valentina sighed and against her training said a few dangerous words. "Thank you." An actual expression of gratitude. She slipped down off the back of Vakenroth's head, nearly stumbling upon that descent.

She grabbed the potion in two hands, and pulled the cork free with ease and downed it just as quickly. The potent magic slowly healing her leg her arm back to functionality, delaying too the **** that Vakenroth had granted her.

She climbed up back onto the dragon slowly, her grip easier now, her flesh no longer bleeding. Some of the wraps she had tied around her legs had soaked through with blood, but such garments were not important to her.

She settled back to rest across the back of the dragon's head, and the dragon let her. She took a moment, and spread her legs a little wider, grasping Vakenroth between her thighs, enough to hold him, but lacking the **** grasp she had on the underside of his neck previous.

"We should speak." Valentina said, patting along the ridges and his scales.

"We are." Vakenroth said in response, the only words so far, the grumpiness evident.

"You didn't like what I did to you." She said simply. It was not an ask for forgiveness.

Vakenroth grunted.

"You can be obstinate if you wish. But sometimes I think you like when I push you around, and sometimes you don't. I'd rather know your true displeasure before you kill me." Not an offer of restraint, just a request for knowledge.

Vakenroth settled his head in amongst the treasures, trying not to articulate, or even think the thoughts that were going through his head.

Valentina crawled across him, up and above his brow, letting her head hang down to stare into his eyes. "Fine. We will make this simple. I will say what I assume. If I am wrong, you don't have to say anything, just keep your eyes shut."

Vakenroth stared back at her. Yet from this angle, the way her head hung down, the princess filled his vision, or at least, all the vision from one eye. Leaving Vakenroth the threatened prey. He blinked, first one membrane and then the other, but he did not shut his eyes.

"You enjoy my company, at least part of the time." She suggested, watching his response.

His eyes remained open.

"You have delayed killing me because you will miss me when you do."

A blink, but the eye remained.

"You have nobody else to talk to."

Vakenroth blinked again, and then closed his eye longer now. Shifting his head to try to look away, to try to avoid the idea of it.

Not everything was as Valentina assumed. Was there another he visited? Another princess? Valentina wondered, a surge of possessive jealousy taking her heart by surprise? Or even worse, another dragon?

She dug her fingers slowly into the scales of his head. A tell of her own, impulsive and stinging. Valentina took a moment to recover from the surprise.

"I am more to you than food."

Vakenroth kept his eyes shut for a time, but then finally, reluctantly opened them.

"I am more than you expected."

The eye stay opened.

"You didn't dislike everything I did to you the night you left."

A flickering of membrane, but the eye stayed open. Vakenroth's tail slowly swished, restless, nervous. Smashing against treasure, crushing a vase in the process. But the eye stayed open.

"You liked being my prey."

Vakenroth closed his eye. He kept it shut for a time. But then slowly it peeled back open. Half-lidded. Not a denial, not fully, but a point of great discomfort.

"What you want and should want aren't the same things." The eye slid fully open.

"I have told you the demands for my eager part in this partnership. And you on occasion abide by them."

The eye remained steady. Was this even a question or a statement to dispute?

"Yet you don't know what your demands are for the same. You don't know what you require to be my eager captive." Valentina, the kidnapped princess said to her dragon, pinned beneath her small frame. Captured by no more than borrowed sorcery and suggestion.

Vakenroth did not close his eye. His breathing was heavy now, steam snaking up past his lips.

"I cannot promise your safety." Valentina continued. "I cannot promise to respect you. To not do with your flesh as I wish." He would make no promises of restraint for her, so why should Valentina extend the same promises?

"Yet if I wish to bring you harm, I would not do so carelessly." Vakenroth listened, his eye open, not sure yet if there was anything to respond to.

"If you give protest before you are roused to lethal anger..." She paused. "I will hear your mind." Not that she would honor such protest, but she wished to consider it before pushing further.

Vakenroth blinked. He considered. There were things he could never ask for. Things he could never demand, could never admit to. But perhaps he could allow them to be inflicted. Even if only for a moment.

He could always kill Valentina should she go too far. But perhaps... a means of protest short of that would be useful. If he wanted her to survive his pleasure.

He kept his eye fully opened in silent answer.

"Good." Valentina said, acting upon long buried instinct, stretching her arms and legs as wide as she could, wrapping her limbs around as much of Vakenroth's head as she could grasp. Sliding herself back slightly and away from his eye.

Letting him see something beyond her. She pulled her tunic up slowly, revealing her thighs, freshly healed, and what lay between, eager from his answers. From his assent, as quiet as it was.

And she started to rub herself slowly against him, seeking out an intersection of scale stretched over bony protrusion. A bit of welcome hardness and resistance to glide against. That slick and pattern of scale, becoming more comfortable and more intriguing than the smooth skin she once yearned for.

"Come up with some signal for me later, some method of protest, and I will listen." She offered, again, not that she would act. Though thinking that far ahead now was difficult. It wasn't just the feel of his flesh beneath her, but also the strange stillness from the dragon.

That willing surrender, or at least acquiescence, to her lusts. When she had imagined a handsome prince, there was never any sexuality like this. Sexuality never had entered the picture, it was a thought not focused on, faded to black even in her own mind.

Before she was kidnapped, she could not imagine agency directly. The idea of having the power to act was inconceivable. The idea of power over another, the surrender of another to her, was a dream all the more impossible.

A princess was one who received, who was claimed, who nobly endured her husband's demands, a prize to be won.

A princess didn't pin her lover down and grind against his flesh. She didn't make him whimper. He didn't suffer for her. He didn't endure her lusts in noble silence.

And yet now, wasn't Vakenroth her princess now? He was holding still until she was done with her rutting, her claiming of him? She flexed the muscles of her thighs, tightening her grip upon the back of Vakenroth's head, offering that affirming pressure.

There was no neck here to ****, no breath to deny. She did not think she had the strength to crush his bones beneath her thighs, but neither did she have the will to. To hold him was enough. Even if with her size, a true pin was impossible.

She could only hold him down with the weight of her demands. She growled, mimicking some of the noises that the dragon would make. An attempt at an aggressive posture. Before kissing along the ridges of his head, the hardened crest beneath scale, the base of his horns. Toying with that intersection of contrasting flesh.

There was more that she wanted from this. More than his surrender. More than his hardened flesh beneath her. She wanted him. She opened her jaw as wide as she could, repeating that dangerous invocation. "Mine."

And then biting down on his flesh, teeth sinking into scale. Valentina resembled more starving gnat than true predator. Yet his flesh still yielded to her jaws. Her teeth sank in, pushing past and breaking scale and finding softer muscle underneath.

And at her urging, his blood flowed, welling up between her lips. A metallic taste that she happily drank down. While not the refreshing chill of snow melt, there was a deeper savor to it. A satisfaction coming from the claim. From the taking of the blood.

A satisfaction deeper still from his squirming beneath. Discomfort perhaps, but not protest. Maybe even anticipation instead. She drank his blood, that little mosquito, taking upon a giant, but making no attempt to hide her predation.

Yet thirst was not enough. Her thirst had largely been sated by snow melt. Her hunger though still plagued her. She had dined on only bones and scraps for the last while. And now between her lips was flesh. Already warm.

She bit down harder. Vakenroth stirred, a panic rising, but no clear sign of protest yet. Her teeth dug deeper into flesh, cutting through. And finally cutting free. A mouthful of dragon, a miniscule loss for the beast below.

A feast for Valentina. Her mind maddened by the very idea of it. Chewing slowly upon that freshly severed meat. Feeling the toughness of hide and muscle. The rich wetness of blood. The texture across her tongue.

Chewing. And swallowing down. The rabbit devouring the wolf.

Leaving the wolf whimpering.

She left a series of kisses behind along the wound. She was hungry for more. Ravenous even. But she would not devour her husband outright. He amused her more alive.

"You didn't protest." She commented as she started to move again, dragon's blood still dripping from her lips. Vakenroth made no objection to this statement. He hadn't protested when getting bitten, when getting eaten.

He didn't protest still.

"You would let me devour you? Piece by piece?"

A power, real or imagined, surged through Valentina, bringing a dangerous vigor to her thighs, rocking herself against her dragon below, thrilled at his responses, or his lack thereof.

"No." Vakenroth finally answered. He wouldn't let her devour him entire.

"Just up to a point." Valentina countered, digging her feet once more into his flesh, applying just a bit more pleasure. Just a bit more pain.

Vakenroth didn't deny that he had allowed her such a privilege. To have him become her prey, though only up to some point yet unstated. The dragon himself was haunted by errant thoughts making their demands across his consciousness.

To be prey.

The gesture had not been understood. But Valentina had reached it out of instinct.

"You are quiet. Unusually so. Are you about to strike again?" Valentina asked, licking along the fresh wound, drawing a little bit more blood to her lips.

"No." Responded Vakenroth. His breathing heavy. His body moving slowly in response to Valentina's own riding. As if her movements were enough to drag his flesh across the treasure hoard below.

Valentina saw through some of this. The meaning that was only hinted at. "What does it mean, that you have let me eat you?" Valentina asked, getting ever closer to her release, high on power and the taste of flesh. Leaving behind a smear of her own affection across Vakenroth's back.

Vakenroth struggled for words. To shape them fully. "Your words are clumsy and imprecise." He offered, yet it was still a language that he knew, that he had been trained in when he was young.

He growled, he whined. Struggling to say the words out loud, even translated into this lesser speech. Embarrassment flush beneath so much scale. "To devour... but then to spare." He began, trembling at the thought.

If dragons could cry, there would be tears.

"Is to claim what remains."

Valentina understood. Giving another growl and then whispering to Vakenroth. "To claim my bride."

Vakenroth made so denials, there was nothing that he could say was untrue with her words.

Valentina roared out, as best as she could, drawing upon a hidden well, of frustration, of denial, of pleasure long denied, of a soul that had been so far chained, finally able to work that same metal to its own ends. And with that roar she came, marking Vakenroth as her own.

Her wife, anointed in blood and grool.