Now that I’m aware of it, I can’t ignore the power surging through my veins. It seems to come from some deep part of me, welling up from darkness, from the origin of everything. As if a portal opened up to the entire universe and it’s trickling in bit by bit.
Asterius watches closely, and I can sense he’s taking care to pay attention to my magic as much as I am. But when he skims his fingertips down my belly and grazes them over my mound, I shudder, and the entire cavern shudders too.
He glances up, frowning.
“I’m sorry. I’ll try not to do that.”
“I don’t think that was you,” he says.
That’s when I notice ripples skimming over the surface of the water, lapping at his torso where he kneels chest-deep in the water. They become waves within a moment, and I find myself holding my breath. But a deeper craving takes hold—the same craving I had last night when Asterius and the others started to introduce themselves. My inner exhibitionist rejoices, and I glance down at the horned man on his knees before me.
“Don’t stop.”
He nods and drags the wet cloth off his shoulder, dips it in the water, then raises it again. Water cascades from the cloth when he glides it up between my thighs. He parts me gently and I widen my stance, breathing faster as he rubs the cloth lightly between my folds.
“Do you want soap?” he asks, and I’m almost too preoccupied with anticipation to register. “It’s very mild,” he adds when I look down.
“Okay.” Then my attention returns to the shadows and reflections of torchlight rippling across the water. The cavern is so massive I can’t see the other side, but unless I’m imagining things, there’s a turn in the darkness far ahead, and whatever is in here with us is coming closer.
The floral scent of the soap reaches my nostrils again, and this time Asterius glides soapy hands up my inner thighs and doesn’t stop. He pushes the edge of his hand against my folds, parting me, then gliding his slippery fingers through my channel. I let out a gasp, stepping wider still, but otherwise avoid moving—the anticipation is too exciting.
It’s just the edge of his finger, but the friction against my clit sends jolts of pleasure through me with every bump of a knuckle gliding over it. He pushes all the way to the back, rubbing gently between my ass cheeks and over my sensitive rear hole before gliding the soapy digit forward again. I’m panting when he does it again, and again, and with each stroke between my thighs, the waves crest higher around us, tremors accompanying each lap against my feet.
The rhythm is disconcertingly in sync with the beating of my heart, which seems to be concentrated in my core. It grows, then ebbs when I’m sure I see a massive shadow loom against the far wall, just past the corner.
Then it stops, the waves subsiding. Asterius drops his hand into the water and lifts the cloth again.
“Why did you stop?” I ask, breathless.
He glances over his shoulder, then nods and looks up at me.
But he doesn’t speak. Instead I hear Erebus in my mind.
“Typhon requests permission to speak before he shows himself to you. You’ll need to reach out to him, because he can’t kiss you the way I could. But he is open; all you need to do is find him.”
Asterius begins the utterly distracting process of rinsing the soap off my pussy while I attempt to close my eyes and focus. I reach out my mind the way I did when I sought out Erebus earlier. I can sense his dark presence, a silent observer in a mental corridor, but move past him, seeking a more prominent presence farther away.
What I find is confusing at first. The presence reaching out to me feels enormous, but the image projected to my mind is just a man. A very handsome, very young man. He’s dressed in nothing but a simple loincloth-style wrap like Asterius wore, and he’s fit and handsome, but with a lean, lithe body still soft around the edges like he’s just barely hitting adulthood. He’s almost angelic in appearance, with golden curls and blue eyes, and he looks positively anxious.
“You don’t have to be afraid,” I find myself saying, which is ridiculous because I’m the one who should probably be scared.
“I have waited a long time to meet you. I don’t want to mess up,” he replies, his voice smooth, but deep.
“If what I’ve been told is true, we’ve already met.” I move closer, closing the mental distance. He’s only a little taller than me, so it’s easy to meet his gaze.
He studies me with uncertainty, then lifts a hand and traces my cheekbone with one finger, gliding it down to my chin. “You are more beautiful than I remember.”
“I don’t even know if what you see is really me. I’m pretty sure this isn’t you, is it? It’s just a mental projection.”
We both take in his shape, and he shakes his head. “No, but I’ve had centuries of practice creating the ideal human shape I would assume, if I could.”
“I thought you were a dragon. Can’t dragons take a human shape?”
“I am a dragon, and more, but that magic has eluded me. This is why I wanted to speak with you this way—to give you a chance to know me as something other than the monstrous shape you’ll see when you open your eyes. And if you still want me, this is what I will show you when we are connected mind to mind.”
“I’ve learned that it takes a lot to frighten me,” I say. “Let me see you, Ty.”
With that, I open my eyes and wait, staring into the distance. Asterius has stopped touching me and stands, then turns to sit on the ledge I’m still standing on, the warm water cascading over us from above. My pussy tingles and throbs; he left me hanging, but I’m not bothered. I kind of love that we have the freedom to take this slow, that I have no obligations at the moment, other than getting to know these creatures whose images I managed to conjure from my mind before I even learned they were real. There is no real urgency other than my desire to understand them and my place in this world.
“That may change once Vesh tracks down our quarry, so don’t get too comfortable,” Erebus warns, but I brush him off.
“Let me enjoy this, okay?”
When Typhon finally appears, I hold my breath. The shadow on the wall behind him confused me with its mass of darkness and writhing shapes, but then his heads come into view, followed by his enormous, magnificent body. His tallest head nearly reaches the cavern ceiling, an enormous dark green dragon head on a thick, scaled neck. His slitted eyes meet mine and he dips slightly, as if bowing.
Then the writhing mass of smaller, serpentine heads appear, and I think my brain breaks. I inhale a sharp breath and grab hold of the horn at hand beside me.
“Sorry—sorry,” I blurt when Asterius glances up at me. “I’m not scared,” I call when Typhon retreats a step. “Just … a little surprised. You’re beautiful. You’re… resplendent.”
The torchlight glints off his shiny scales, and the jewel-like effect is truly dazzling. Every one of his heads is a different color, some shimmering with a spectrum. Every pair of eyes that watch me are a different color too, and they are all fixed on me.
The effect is electrifying, and I absently stroke my palm up Asterius’ thick horn, aware of the tactile rush. He casually wraps his hand around my ankle and slides his hand up my leg.
“Shall we get back to what we were doing?” he inquires.
“Wait,” I tell him, then to Typhon, I say, “Please come closer. I trust you.”
I step down into the water, letting out a little yelp of surprise when I discover it’s not as shallow as I thought, but my head and shoulders are still above the surface at least. It’s easier to swim, though, so I breaststroke across the span of water between us.
The closer I get, the harder my heart pounds, and I slow and rest my feet on the floor a few yards away from Typhon’s legs; any closer and I’ll be underneath his heads.
“You’re huge,” I say, striding a little closer. “I’ve seen dragons, and they’re big, but I’ve never seen one this big. Not even Stuart, Gray, or Murdoc, and they’re Guardians. They’re supposed to be the biggest, aren’t they?”
“I am not just any dragon.”
I startle when his voice emerges, rumbling and resonant from somewhere deep in his chest. “You can talk like this?” I ask.
His central head—his largest, and the only one that looks like a proper dragon head, complete with beautiful green-black horns—tilts and lowers to my level. All the others twist and writhe above me, reptilian eyes blinking, forked tongues darting out to taste the air.
“Like I said, I’m not just any dragon—I am a creation of Chaos. He made me in his attempt to seduce the Mother Dragon, to birth a new race with her. I was meant to be a gift, to show the majesty of what they could create together, but she rejected me. She rejected him, and Fate was offered the honor instead. And now he’s mated to the Mother Dragon’s daughter, so I suppose that’s justice.”
“I suppose it is,” I say with a smile. I reach out, and he lowers his head farther, stretching to let me touch the end of his nose. He’s smooth and butter-soft, his eyelids dropping when I stroke my palm up the center of his snout and back down. He lets out a rumble of pleasure.
“You are the first female in thousands of years to touch me.”
“You deserve to be touched. Everyone deserves to be touched, if that’s what they crave.”
I reach out with my other hand and slide both along his lower jaw. He tilts his head, the shift disconcerting because it’s bigger than my entire body, but I can still sense the young man within him. A warm gust of steamy air puffs out of his nostrils, sending ripples across the water. He tilts his head when I step back, and one of his enormous eyes takes me in. I’m perfectly reflected in the dark pupil—every last, naked inch. Even though I’m mostly submerged, the water is clear enough that nothing is left to the imagination.
I take another step back. “Do you like what you see?”
“Yes. But I liked being inside you more. If only my brother were here so I could borrow his body. I would love to fuck you again, to feel you shatter the world when you come.”
My body becomes a furnace of need again. The ache between my thighs had subsided, but returns now with a vengeance.
“I think we can find other ways to satisfy each other, don’t you? I’m willing to try.”
His big eyes brighten perceptibly. “You would… experiment… with me?”
My belly does a flip in anticipation of what I’m about to do. I glance back at Asterius, who’s sitting on the ledge, simply watching. He’s no longer hard, but his hungry look suggests that won’t last long. I take a good long look at him anyway—at his large, muscle-bound body, brown skin glistening with moisture—at his angular face, so human in some ways, but so primal in others—and at his majestic horns, arcing up toward the high ceiling. The shower still streams down onto the stone behind him, splattering against his back.
He’s waiting for me, but I’m still processing this situation. I’m about to climb him like a tree and fuck him while a creature conceived by Chaos watches us. And I’m so fucking turned on by the idea that the ache in my core borders on painful.
The second I turn and wade back toward Asterius, he sits up straighter, his cock rousing as if it had been patiently waiting for me to make a move.
He starts to stand when I get close, and I shake my head. “You just sit right there.”
“As you wish,” he says. “And what should Typhon do?”
I look back at the monster behind me. He watches with focused interest, his big central head stretching forward. “A creature as big and beautiful as he is can do whatever he wants.”