Page 22 of The Ballad of the Last Dragon

Chapter Twenty-Two

J aromir’s mouth descends once more. His kiss is soft, exploring—judging and weighing the strength of my feelings. He offered me a precious gift when he spoke so freely, knowing I needed to hear these things.

But Jaromir speaks best with his actions.

His thick hardness rubs against me, and he deepens his kiss with a groan. My skin is on fire, and I’m about to drown. Somehow, these opposing feelings coexist in the strength of his embrace. In the spark of his touch.

He lines himself up, watching with his intent stare as he slowly stretches me and sinks in. When I cry out, he stills, studying my face for any sign of discomfort. I nod and try to push him deeper with my feet against the backs of his thighs. His dark eyes drift back to where we’re joined, where he’s splitting me, achingly slow.

“Fuck,” he says, still watching the sight with rapt attention.

“ Jaromir .” His name is a needy whine in my throat, and he actually smirks at me.

“Slowly,” he says. “Don’t… want to hurt you.”

But I’m lost in the liquid slide of him filling me with such care and devotion. I can’t wait. I need more. I grab at his firm backside, trying to pull him to me, and he scrapes out a stuttered laugh. He bottoms out, groaning as the last of him fills me.

Sharp pleasure sparks in my belly. It’s a fuller feeling than I’ve ever experienced, and I’m dizzy with the sensation. I’ve never given much thought to our difference in size, but the sheer fullness of our joining, and the way his body engulfs mine, makes me realize how much larger he is. I don’t feel vulnerable, I feel cared for. That thought makes my body clench with liquid pleasure, ripping a deep moan from his chest. When he begins to withdraw, I whimper, and he shoves back in with a firm thrust.

Oh.

He doesn’t withdraw too far, just enough to make me mourn the depth of his length, and with each plunge he punctuates the strength of his pleasure.

Settling into a beautifully tortuous rhythm, he circles his hips each time he drives all the way in. Canting my hips to meet his, my vision blurs from the onslaught. Every nerve in my body sings. I rake my nails down his back, seeking relief from the exquisite torment of his ministrations.

He bites my neck before soothing the spot with his tongue.

There’s something so pure about the unfiltered pleasure stealing my vision and hardening every line of his body. A song untainted by the pressures of the world and the expectations of life. It’s nothing but his body responding to mine, and mine lost in the instinctive rightness of our joining.

I couldn’t possibly write a ballad to match the beauty of this raw moment.

My mouth finds his in a messy kiss, sliding down to his jaw, his neck. The sting of his beard only sends my nerves alight. Nothing exists outside of this need, this pleasure. Jaromir lets out a guttural groan, lifting to his knees and pulling my body with him. He slams me down hard on him, circling deep until I see stars. There’s a brutality in this. A desperate cry of need, of life, of love, and I’m falling.

His hands, his mouth, his tongue, his teeth. They’re everywhere. Everywhere as he fills me and drives in deeper, deeper. My heart squeezes, and my stomach clenches.

“Jaromir,” I sob, unable to articulate how I’m drowning in pleasure, in need.

His thumb finds the spot that makes me clench as waves of euphoria crash over me again, and again. With a shout, he slams deep, holding himself within me as his release empties and fills. Warm, wet heat floods me as he slowly lays us back on the bed, back down to earth, back into the rapid beating of my heart.

Gentle kisses caress my face as he leans over me, still inside, and brushes my hair out of my eyes. His thumbs wipe my cheeks, and I sigh into his touch.

Words are my life. My calling. And there are no words for what I just experienced. Maybe the best things can't be described in spoken or written word. Maybe they can only be felt.

Jaromir watches me, hovering above as if waiting for my reaction.

“That… was…” My words stall because there are none.

He exhales a breath of a laugh. “Yes, it was.”

Finally, he withdraws, lying beside me and pulling me to rest my head against his chest. His fingers card through my hair, sending shivery comfort through my head.

“Is it normal to feel… drunk?”

I don’t need to see his face to know he’s smiling. I can hear it when he says, “That’s a good way to put it.”

I snuggle deeper against his sweat-slicked skin, placing a kiss against his collarbone.

“Don’t sleep yet.” His low voice is hypnotic against my ear. “I promised you a hot bath.”

I’d almost forgotten about the hot basin of water in our room.

I leap up, collapsing almost immediately, since my bones are now liquid. Jaromir scoops me up and carries me over to the tub. I lean my head against his shoulder, unable to name the emotion that fills my chest.

It’s remarkable how much joy one can find in a hot bath. Especially when a handsome man who just pleasured you to near insanity is washing your hair.

This is a luxury I could get used to.

The familiar scent of black currant fills the tub, as I lean against Jaromir’s naked chest. The basin is large enough for us both to fit, me caged between his knees. There’s a domestic intimacy to this. It’s less urgent than the animalistic coupling from earlier, but it fills my body with a humming sense of pleasure, of safety. He rinses the soap from my hair, massaging my head, neck, and shoulders as I slowly fade to a blissful oblivion.

I’ve just finished describing the forests in Smarighad, where I used to run and play as a child. Where the trees grow taller than the eye can see and giant oyster mushrooms hover above, wider than the roof of a house and perfect for climbing.

“My childhood was a thing of magic… until it wasn’t. My parents tried to shield me as best they could, but one by one, everyone I’d grown up with seemed to disappear. My friends… our neighbors… everyone just left. No goodbyes, no explanations.” I tilt my head to the side as Jaromir finds a particular tense knot in my shoulder. His attentions and the weightlessness of my body give me courage to continue. “It was as if something sucked them into the sky, and they floated away. I didn’t understand at the time, how we could go from trusting the forest and playing freely to hiding in fear.”

“The elven raids,” Jaromir murmurs solemnly.

I nod. It was a bloodbath. After The Great Loss, elves fell to the lowest rank of society, and an uneasy peace had settled over the land. But for generations, the distrust of elves had been building. There had always been stories of elven magic and how dangerous it was. It was our belief that, centuries ago, the ancient elves possessed great power, but no echoes of this power had trickled through to the elves of present day.

It didn’t stop the humans from telling their tales. How an elf could control thoughts with the mere sound of their voice, or how they drank the blood of innocent human children. It was ridiculous, and for a time, we relied on logic and rational thinking to keep us from harm. No one of sound mind would truly believe those things, so it went ignored.

Until enough dissent was sown, and any peace we thought we had, vanished. It started with land disputes. It was easy enough for town magistrates to side with a human on their word over an elf’s, because elves were forbidden to speak in official councils, just in case the stories were true, and they could sway their minds with magic.

Then came the accusations. An elf hypnotized me into bedding them. I never would have traded that fabric for so cheap, she must have wielded her elven magic.

The raids weren’t far off after that. Elves lost the right to hold titles, including land. Those who refused to relinquish property and move into the cities where we would be subject to searches and curfews were branded as fugitives. And for a taxation fee, humans were given license to hunt fugitive elves for sport. Some of the hunters even wore ears on a chain around their necks like trophies.

Though we were tied to the land, with memories and generations of ancestors laying our claim, it was no longer home. Those who could, left, fleeing our land to find safer shores. But the price to escape was steep, and there weren’t many vessels willing to transport elves to the continent.

We could only afford one boarding pass. I had to leave my parents behind, knowing a life of imprisonment faced them, or worse.

Here, the hate and mistrust of elves isn’t so blatant. I don’t fear for my life simply walking down the road. But I double check my cap before every performance to make sure my ears are covered. I never know how widespread that fear has traveled or when it might strike again. Fear is a powerful thing, capable of making monsters of us all.

I don’t wish to think of this. I don’t even know why it came to me now.

I lean into Jaromir’s touch, grateful that he seems to always know when to push and when to let me take control of what I share. It’s hard to believe we’ve only known each other a month.

Well… I’ve only known him for a month.

“So,” I say, “you really carried a torch for me for two years?”

He doesn’t pause his attention, bless him, as he answers. “I did.”

“Then why did you hate me at first?” The memory of the day he, Aeron, Cadoc, and Neith waltzed into The Rusty Nail fills my mind. I’ve come to learn scowling is his face’s natural disposition. But Jaromir wouldn’t even look at me, his fists clenching as if he was in physical pain. He was rude and didn’t even toss a coin in my cup.

“I wasn’t expecting to ever see or hear you again.”

“But wouldn’t you be happy? I mean if you were madly in love with me for two years, and fate brought you into my tavern whilst I was giving a wonderful performance.”

“I was caught off guard.”

Relief and disappointment war for dominance at his casual ignoring of my dropping the word love. “You didn’t seem off guard. You seemed angry.”

He presses his thumb into the base of my neck, and a groan slips loose from my mouth. “Perhaps I was a little. Seeing you tormented me with what I couldn’t have. Doesn’t excuse my behavior, though.”

It still feels like I’m missing something vital to understand his initial reaction that day, but what do I know? My beautifully hulking, scowling man emotes in strange ways.

“Jaromir?”

“Hm?”

“Are you… mine?”

It occurs to me, we’ve exchanged no vows or promises, only shared mind-blowing pleasures and moments of intimacy. Whatever we are, it started as a challenge for physical touch, one I leveled as an insult, but it’s always been more. I’m not sure if it’s unfair to ask, if he’ll feel pressured to answer contrary to what he feels because of what we’ve just shared. But I need to know so I can stop thinking of him as my anything. If he isn’t really mine, I need to disentangle before I grow any more attached.

His mouth finds the curve of my neck, placing an achingly soft kiss and exhaling against my skin. “For as long as you’ll have me.”