THRAX Page 6

  What nagged at him was something that he could not shake, no matter how hard or how fast he swam, no matter with what force and vigor he cut through the waters of Lake Shimmershine. A thing like this should not be a duty. It should not be an order. A thing like this should be a desire. Of all things in life, this should be something that two people wanted.

  To be sure, Agena wanted it. She was preparing to make one of the greatest changes that a person could make in her life. She was expecting to bear a dragon child and raise it on this planet of dragons, and she would do it with or without a formal marriage; what mattered to Lacerta was only the addition of a new life to the world.

  Thrax had every belief that Agena was ready for him to take her to bed, copulate her with all his dragon might, and produce their part of that next generation. And if he were really honest, he would enjoy doing it as much as he had enjoyed sex with more other females than he could count, his own kind and human.

  But all of those countless other times were for pleasure: his pleasure and their mutual satisfaction. This was something different. And that, he knew, was something that he and Agena would have to discuss. He admitted to himself that he was looking forward to the copulating and would do plenty of it, as much as she could take and then some. He was not looking forward to the discussion in the same way.

  Thrax went on with his swim, meandering along under the water, breaking the surface a couple of times. He could not actually feel the restorative effects of being in Shimmershine, but he knew that the minerals dissolved in the water were doing their job and would help him to keep in prime condition for another few years. After swimming out a few hundred meters and breaking the surface again, he dropped beneath the veneer of the water and gave himself a rest, floating suspended beneath the gentle waves above.

  He hung in the expanse of blue-green calm, his tail barely twitching, and gave thought to what he soon must do. It occurred to him that in all his travels and all his experiences, he had never sexed another female quite like her. She was an athlete, this Agena Morrow. She filled that one-piece bathing suit most impressively. She might actually be as ferocious in bed as he was. He would soon know for sure.

  At length, he was satisfied that he had been in Shimmershine long enough. Perhaps now, it was time to have another swim, to see how the woman who had made a career running up and down circular walls and swatting at bouncing balls moved in a different environment. Yes, he would now take the opportunity to see Agena’s moves in a setting other than a bedroom. Perhaps it would inspire him for what lay ahead. Decisively, Thrax launched himself forward again, with a wake of bubbles billowing out behind him.

  Aboard the hoverboat, Agena absently wondered, as most pure humans visiting Shimmershine must have wondered, what would happen if she were just to leap over the side of the craft and into the water and start swimming. How long would it take before some member of the lake patrol spotted a human female knifing her way across the lake and came barreling in at her in an official craft or swooping down at her from the air?

  How exactly would they wrangle her out of the lake? Would they throw nets on her and drag her into their boat? Would they drop a net on her from overhead, gather her up in it, and bear her off through the air?

  However they caught her, and however quickly, she would then certainly be carted off to some holding facility to stand before a Lacertan court and answer for her reckless disregard for the colony’s laws. She imagined herself being jailed for a time, very likely with some hefty deduction from her share of the Terrestrial Commonwealth as a penalty, then hustled off aboard some dingy, grubby transport ship, banished from the planet and possibly never permitted to return.

  Oh well, she sighed, distracted for the moment by her illicit fantasy, I’d never do a thing like that anyway. I’m a law-abiding citizen, here on Lacerta to have a baby with a dragon man.

  As if on cue, a dragon head lifted itself up from the water in the distance. It swiveled about a bit, tasting the air, before finally pivoting in Agena’s direction. A white churning of water around the head told her that the dragon in the distance was on the move. As it was not turning or veering in any other direction, she could see that it was making directly for her.

  Agena leaned forward in the passenger’s seat, imagining the powerful undulation and thrusting of the mostly submerged reptilian body approaching her, and further imagining how the reptile’s other body could move and thrust out of the lake and in a much more private and intimate setting. She looked forward all the more to experiencing those moves.

  The dragon’s head loomed larger over the next several minutes until it came whooshing up in front of the hovercraft, around to the port side, and made for the back of the craft. Agena sat up straight, turned to follow the dragon, and watched. One of the dragon’s hands reached out to a surface on the side of the craft, and Agena felt the subtle vibration of a ramp extending from the vessel. In a few seconds, the dragon climbed from the water up the ramp and into the back of the hovercraft.

  Thrax in dragon form, soaked and glistening wet from horns to foot talons, was as majestic a sight as ever. He stretched his arms and neck as if awaking from a long and satisfying nap and extended his wings to their full span. The water rolled down his scaly form in sparkling rivulets that made him look almost as if he were perspiring gold in the late-afternoon sunlight. His tail twitched and curled. “That was good,” he said in a husky dragon voice.

  Agena stood up and leaned against the back of the passenger’s seat. “Can you actually feel the water working on you?”

  “Not actually,” replied Thrax, rubbing a taloned hand across the leathery scutes of his chest. “It’s more of a spiritual feeling. But the body knows it’s gotten something good for it.”

  That’s nothing compared to what your other body’s going to get, Agena replied, but only in her thoughts.

  Thrax opened a compartment in the back of the craft, reached in, and pulled out a large towel. He kept his wings open, but loosely, and started to run the towel up and down his scaly, muscular frame. “Can I help you with that?” Agena asked.

  He fixed her with a look from his gold and black dragon eyes and said, “No, that’s quite all right. I’ll just be a moment. Then we can be on our way.”

  Agena followed the motions of his hands and the towel up and down along his body. She watched him gently shake his wings. It occurred to her that many women, indeed many humans in general, were very phobic about lower reptiles, snakes and lizards. Their phobias seldom extended to weredragons. The Lacertans in their morphed forms were viewed far more with fascination than with fear. The melding of human and reptile hardly ever aroused the kind of loathing that some people felt for common reptiles. There was simply nothing “common” about the people of the planet Lacerta.

  “Back to the Chateau?” Agena inquired.

  Thrax held the towel in one hand and lowered it to his side. With a relaxed breath, he let his reptile body go and shifted back to human form. The wings, horns, and tail withdrew back into him; his body resumed its other shape and skin. His cloaca yielded his human male organ and let it hang free and ample from his hair-garnished human crotch once more. Looking at that member and the rest of him, Agena thought, Please say yes, we’re going back.

  Instead, Thrax answered, “I had another idea first.”

  “What’s that?” Agena asked.

  “You were very good to wait while I took my swim,” he said, standing there so casually and insouciantly naked before her. “I thought perhaps before we went back, you might like to swim with me.”

  Agena’s brow furrowed at the proposal. “What, here? Thrax, it’s not allowed.”

  “No,” he replied, “it’s not. But my invitation was not to swim here.”

  “Where then?” she asked.

  He turned and gazed across the lake. “Humans are permitted over there.”

  Agena looked where he was looking, to where Serpent’s Tongue Stream fed into the lake. She understood his meanin
g and looked back at him with a smile.

  “Shall we?” Thrax asked.

  “Yes, I’d like that,” she replied.

  “Good,” said Thrax. “You’ll have no need of your swimsuit, of course.”

  Her smile lingered. “Of course,” she said.

  Thrax reached down and gathered up his loincloth and badge. “I’ll just put this back on until we’re across the lake.”

  Folding her arms, Agena said, “Take your time.” She was still admiring a view that was better than anything the lake and the mountains had to offer.

  Straightening up again, with his loincloth in hand, Thrax gave her a subtle smile

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It was not the first time Agena had gone for a nude swim with a weredragon any more than it would be the first time she went to bed with one. Perhaps it was only because of why she was on Lacerta with Thrax, but this swim in Serpent’s Tongue Stream felt like the most special swim she’d ever had.

  Per his invitation, she had left her swimsuit on the passenger seat of the hoverboat, and he had left his loincloth on the pilot’s seat, and into the water. naked together, they went. For this swim, however, Thrax did not morph. He remained human—gloriously human.

  Agena thought that if there were any consistency about the laws of nature, Thrax’s naked human form should make the water turn to steam the moment his body hit it. But of course, the water was pleasingly cool, not frigid, but just cool enough for comfort—another effect of the planetary climate controls. And it was crystal clear, allowing Agena to see his naked, stroking human form under the surface of the stream as if she were viewing him in a blue-tinted mirror.

  Together they kicked and stroked their way down a stretch of Serpent’s Tongue Stream, letting the flowing water carry them along as much as they propelled themselves. For the moment, they seemed to be alone in this part of the stream, as no one else came swimming by. Agena was pleased at this and thought of it as the beginning of greater, deeper intimacies soon to come.

  Thrax’s sensuously muscled human form was an inspiration to watch while swimming. He moved with all the grace and confidence he would have had as a dragon, pushing himself through the current, circling up and down around her. She could not know what was going through his mind, but she hoped he was thinking about her body and his together and that this swim was the overture to foreplay that would take them to their consummation.

  She sent her imagination from this dance around her in the stream to the times they would soon spend rolling back and forth and up and down on thick sheets warmed by their mutual heat and the heat that Thrax would generate when he lay on top of her. More than ever, Agena knew that his giving her a baby would be a thing more satisfying for her than winning any game or any tournament or receiving any prize. Between Thrax’s legs waited the trophy she was growing to desire more than any other.

  They broke the surface and floated there, facing each other, each submerged up to the chest. There was no sound except for the laughing and lapping of the water at the rocks at the edges of the stream and the soft rustle of the wind through the trees. The moment did not seem to need words. For Agena, it needed only the sight of him, his hair slicked flat against his head, his muscular shoulders and upper chest invitingly drenched, his face the most handsome she had ever seen.

  Finally, Thrax broke the moment with the question, “Are you enjoying our planet so far?”

  “I think it’s beautiful,” she replied, meaning so much more than just his world.

  “Would you like to return now to the Chateau? We can dine and rest for a bit. I’m hungry after all this. I hope you are too.”

  “Dinner would be wonderful,” Agena said. But “rest” was not the uppermost thing on her mind just now.

  They swam across the surface of the stream, back to the hoverboat.

  _______________

  They had dinner served on the terrace of their suite. At each Courting Chateaux on the planet, the Lacertans spared no expense and withheld no luxury from the paired suitors and aspirants. They were to consider the Chateau their home and enjoy every amenity that the Governing Aerie could provide. If needed, they were even provided with fertility enhancers to help them fulfill their purpose for being here.

  Courtship and the Chateaux were not a visitor’s accommodation, like other places on Lacerta. These places, of all places, were retreats where those in residence were catered to and provided for and otherwise left alone to copulate at will—and weredragons had plenty of will—until their purpose was at last accomplished.

  Lottery-paired couples were known to stay for weeks and months at a time, engaged in sexual activities in their suites and in designated places in the facilities and on the property. Fertility drugs might have shortened the process, but such drugs were known to interact with the mutagen inhibitors, complicating pregnancies and possibly putting mothers and infants in jeopardy.

  So all coupling and conception was done strictly the natural way, and nature was allowed to take its own course in its own time with every couple. Looking out from the terrace onto the grounds of the Chateau, which were replete with gardens, hedges, artificial ponds and streams, and little nooks tucked away on the grounds and up in the boughs of the trees, Agena knew that at any hour of the day and night, couples were urgently humping and screwing away all over the Chateau.

  Looking across the terrace table at Thrax, Agena was more than ready to join them.

  She had donned a diaphanous white silk gown that flowed and clung in all the right places. It was perhaps the most “feminine” thing she had ever worn in her life. She had undone her braid and let her hair flow freely over her shoulders and down her back to complement the gown. She was dressed and groomed for maximum allure. Thrax had simply donned long, loose-fitting trousers and nothing more, a choice of which Agena quietly, strongly approved. Raising his glass to her, he looked more appetizing than the dinner. She raised her glass in response, and together they drank before digging into a tableful of delicacies imported from Earth.

  Sometime during the repast, Thrax began.

  “Tell me,” he asked, “what attracted you to the sport you play?”

  Pleased at his interest, Agena answered, “Sphereball? Oh, I guess it came naturally. I was basically a hyper-energetic little girl—restless, always moving, always wanting to run and jump. My parents used to describe me as a bolt of lightning looking for something to strike.

  They were always looking for something that I could focus my attention on, where I wouldn’t destroy anything and wouldn’t get into any trouble. They signed me up for wall gymnastics and anti-gravity gymnastics when I was in school, and once I got started, they had another problem with me never wanting to stop.

  By the time I got to Academy, I was already interested in sphereball and old enough to start playing. When I went to college, I was recruited out of there. It was always about me just being a very physical person.”

  After a gulp of wine, Thrax agreed, “Yes…physical. You are very…physical.”

  Watching him with a glint in her eye, Agena asked, “That is a compliment, right?”

  Gazing at her over the rim of his wine glass, Thrax replied, “Very much so.”

  Agena continued, “I’ve played sphereball my whole adult life. It’s what’s given me a life, really; a life that I wanted, a career. I’ve traveled most of human space, met all kinds of people -- different kinds of men…”

  “Including some like me.”

  “Yes. It doesn’t bother you that I’ve been with other Lacertan Knights, does it?”

  “‘Bother?’ As in jealousy? There’s no reason it should. I’m only curious.”

  “About what?”

  “About the different kinds of lovers you’ve had—and whether we are your favorite. You have been to bed with human athletes as well…”

  Agena blinked a bit at the turn that the conversation was now taking. What was he at with this? Was he trying to find out what kinds of memories he would be co
mpeting with when they lay together? She did not believe she would actually have to assuage any insecurity in a man as strong and confident as this, but she could not help but wonder where this was all going. She replied, “Yes. Yes, I have. And I don’t know if I’d say Lacertan Knights are my ‘favorites.’ Just that they were all…really, really good. Really good. Are you sure this isn’t awkward for you? I don’t want it to be awkward or uncomfortable…”

  Thrax answered frankly, “There may be reasons to be awkward or uncomfortable, but your past is not among them.”

  “What other reasons would there be, then?”

  With another swallow of wine, Thrax went on. “Allow me to ask you another thing. No, not just one other thing -- some other things. Why did you decide to pursue relations with a Lacertan male to have a child? And why is this a future that you want?”

  Agena understood now. Further explanations were in order, and it was a natural question after all. She said, “My career playing sphereball won’t go on forever; I know that. I can stay in top shape even getting older, and I don’t have to stop playing. But there’s always a demand for new, younger players, and as you get older, you’re not forced into retirement, but you start playing lower leagues, going down toward the minor league, and there’s less attention paid to you with the younger players coming up.