Page 18 of The Dragon's Pet
“We are not the only ones who have committed atrocities,” she said. “What is happening now is…”
“Inexcusable and entirely unnecessary,” Vyktor said. “The killing must end. Which is why I intend to show the generals that with proper handling, humans are not the threats they seem to be. You are a runaway species who are yet to be properly disciplined, that is all.”
Aria wanted to hate him. Wanted to tell him that he was wrong. Wanted to say that her side had done nothing wrong, but the truth was more complex than that, and there could be no doubt that it was humanity who had opened the portal between the worlds, and it was a human who had breached the border with a weapon of war, engaged with an unknown enemy, and plunged the world into chaos.
“And that discipline comes in the form of your cock in my mouth?” She asked the question with a little smile, trying to break the internal tension she felt sitting at Vyktor’s feet.
“That’s something you understand at the very core of you,” he replied. “It touches you more deeply than anything else could. You have already been trained by your military, conditioned to think and behave in certain ways. I will train you much more deeply, pet. I will train the very heart of you. Come here,” he ordered. “I want you on the bed.”
Aria found herself rising from the blankets and doing as she was told. She wasn’t entirely sure why she was doing as he told her.Nothing had really changed since their discussion, but there was a part of her that seemed to yearn to surrender to him. It was a part she had not felt very often in her life.
How on earth did he understand humans so well? In such a short time?
“How do you know so much? And how do you speak our language?”
“You have a very simple script language,” he said. “It is not difficult for a dragon to understand. Understanding your written word and speech is the same to us as understanding a dog wagging its tail is to you.”
“Oh.” Aria scrunched her face up, feeling vaguely insulted. “Well.”
“Don’t take that as an insult, pet,” he said. “You are what you are, and we have been impressed with how much you have achieved as a species with such simple tools to work with.”
“So glad we’ve impressed you,” Aria said, sounding snotty even to herself.
“It’s going to take some time for you to get comfortable with the fact that you are no longer top of the food chain,” he observed. “Arrogance is built into the human condition as far as I can tell.”
“It’s not arrogance to not enjoy being told that you’re as simple as a dog.”
“I didn’t say you were as simple as a dog. I said your language is clear to us. Come here. We have talked enough.” He crooked his finger at her, then pointed at the bed, keeping his communication simple, she noticed.
Aria left the cage and moved toward the bed, half afraid that she was about to feel Vyktor’s hand across her ass again. She was almost shocked when she made it to the bed without one of the hard slaps from his palm searing its way across her unprotected cheeks.
In spite of her vulnerable nudity, she was beginning to feel a certain level of comfort with this man. No.Creature.His near constant nakedness made hers less odd. She almost wondered if she would feel strange wearing clothes… then she quickly dismissed the notion.
“Am I going to get something to wear?”
“Why do you need clothing? That does seem to be a very strange human habit.”
“We don’t have any protective coats, or layers of sufficient fat. We get cold,” she explained. “And when we get cold, we get sick.”
“But it is not cold in here, is it?”
“No,” Aria admitted. “But it’s still not… hygienic to wander around without clothes. Dirt sticks to our skin and gets into places it shouldn’t. I need clothes. And I need a bath.”
That was true. She had spent a hard eight hours in a flight suit, done battle with a dragon, and been captured and claimed by him. It was all dirty work, and she was coated in what felt like a thin film of sweat and muck.
“Clothes and a bath,” Vyktor nodded. “Not an entirely unreasonable request, I suppose.”
“Is there a bath here?”
“We have created a communal bath,” Vyktor mused. “It is large enough to swim in. That should suit your purpose.”
“Not a communal one!” Aria was quick. “It’s not a pool I need to swim in, it’s a bath… you know, a small area of water, enough to sit in and soap myself in and then get rid of the dirty water when it is done?”
“I see,” Vyktor said. “Wait here, pet.”
He left her outside her cage, unattended in his room while he went to make the preparations for her bath. Standing in the dragon’s lair, a small smile crept over Aria’s lips. She hadn’t planned that, but it couldn’t have gone more perfectly if she had.
She immediately began rummaging through the dragon’s possessions. Small niches had been carved into the wall like shelves, and there were pieces of what looked like very thick paper rolled up on them. They might be military intelligence.
