Releasing the Dragon Read online

  “Please enjoy this murk roassst,” Slo’vv hissed from the head of the table. “Prepared in the true Shade tradition and ssserved extremely well done.”

  Well done? More like burnt to a crisp! Annie thought. It looks disgusting. From the carefully-guarded looks of the other masters at the table, she was pretty sure she wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Nevertheless, they all picked up many-tined forks and strange cutting implements that looked like mini circular saws and started gamely sawing away. Soon the air was filled with the high, mechanical whine of the tiny saws and chips and flakes of the black murk roast flew everywhere.

  Dru did as everyone else, though he whispered a warning for Annie to sit back while he cut the meat.

  “I don’t want any shards flying into your eyes,” he murmured which made Annie think of charcoal again. The outer layer of the meat crumbled and the interior lump that he cut off looked as tough as leather but Dru popped it in his mouth and began to chew anyway, his strong jaws moving with the effort.

  Annie didn’t ask for a piece this time. Instead, she made herself as scarce as possible, trying to shrink back behind the cushion, hoping that Slo’vv wouldn’t notice her. But as before, he seemed to be watching her.

  “Come, Drugair—do not keep the meat course all to yourssself. Give sssome to your little pet!” he exclaimed.

  Wordlessly, Dru carved off the smallest piece he could and held out the many-tined fork to Annie. His eyes warned her not to say anything as she accepted the bite and started to chew…and chew…and chew.

  To say the meat was as tough as leather was an insult to leather, Annie thought. And while its flavor wasn’t nearly as unpleasant as the “soup,” it still tasted faintly fishy, like shrimp beginning to spoil. It was fairly awful and Annie was glad to get a sip of water to wash it down when she finally finished chewing the tough lump and swallowed.

  Dru kept cutting the meat into smaller and smaller chunks, though he never ate more than one or two. All around them, the other dinner guests were doing the same, Annie saw. Sawing the meat into tiny pieces and pushing it around their plates. She wondered if Slo’vv noticed this. A quick glance at the Shadow-being showed that he did. She could see him watching from those yellow eyes of his with apparent satisfaction as he ate his own food with gusto.

  He knows what he served us is inedible, Annie thought indignantly. He knows it and he doesn’t care. In fact, I think he likes the fact that no one at the table likes it. He wants to make all his guests uncomfortable. Why?

  She also wondered why the people at the table put up with it. From Dru’s earlier warning she knew this kind of dinner wasn’t unusual at the Shadow Palace. So why did the masters come, bringing their sex-pets with them?

  Probably for power, she decided, looking around. Clearly Slo’vv could do a lot for someone if he took a liking to them. He was able to grant wealth and favors and apparently the other masters at the table were willing to put up with his awful food to gain his good will.

  The inedible meal continued, the next course being a dingy gray sorbet that looked like a ball of dirty snow. At Slo’vv’s insistence, Annie tasted it and worked hard not to make a face. It was leathery and salty and grainy.

  Like licking a boot that stepped in slush, Annie thought.

  After the slush course, there was a pile of long, black stringy things that might have been pasta or might have been worms—Annie was too afraid to ask. They looked like a shiny tangle of licorice laces on Dru’s plate and tasted like burnt toast and blood. Even the salad course consisted of wilted maroon and gray leaves that tasted like library paste. It was uniformly awful.

  Which was why Annie was so surprised when the dessert course arrived. When the servers whisked the lids off, she saw a candy-colored confection that seemed to be some kind of cake. It consisted of several brightly colored geometrical shapes balanced on top of each other. There was a cube about as big as Dru’s large fist on the bottom with a sphere sitting on top of it. The sphere had a slightly smaller pyramid balanced on it and the tip of the pyramid supported another, smaller cube.

  But the most interesting thing about the dish, in Annie’s estimation, were the colors. The sphere and cubes and pyramid were as bright and vivid as the other courses had been dull and dark. Also, the colors kept changing. As she watched, the bottom cube went from lime green to hot pink to banana yellow and the other shapes changed as well. It was enchanting! Especially after the meal they’d just had which was like something out of a Tim Burton movie.

  A delicate, pastel steam emanated from the shape-cake, as Annie was starting to think of it, as though it had just come out of the oven. It curled enticingly sky-ward instead of slinking over the side of the dish in the way the weird black vapor from the Shadow broth had.

  “Oh, it’s gorgeous!” she breathed, leaning closer. As the steam reached her, a heavenly scent tickled her nose—it smelled like walking into a candy shop. Cinnamon and chocolate…caramel and strawberries…vanilla and marshmallows and other sweet things she didn’t even have a name for all called to her.

  Sugar and spice and everything nice, Annie thought, her stomach rumbling. After the horribly unappetizing meal they’d just had, the brightly colored dessert made her mouth water.

  She didn’t have to be told to try a bite this time—she eagerly accepted a spoonful of the shape-cake from Dru and practically begged for more.

  “You seem to like this, teeska,” he murmured, smiling at her eagerness.

  “It’s delicious,” Annie whispered back. “It almost makes up for the rest of the meal. What is it?”

  “I do not know—I haven’t had it here before,” he confessed. “It does have a very agreeable taste.”

  “Anything would after everything else we’ve eaten here,” Annie breathed. But she was careful to keep her voice low, for his ears alone. She could still feel Slo’vv watching her with those creepy yellow eyes he grew from his blank oval face whenever he was interested in something. Ugh!

  Everyone at the table was eating eagerly for the first time that night. Everyone except Zar’ren, Annie suddenly saw. For some reason, he hadn’t touched his shape-cake—nor had he given any to his x’aan-chows. She stopped chewing for a moment and frowned. What was going on with that? Did he just not have a sweet tooth? But how could he resist the shape-cake when it smelled so damn good?

  She nudged Dru and nodded at Zar’ren.

  “Look—why isn’t he eating?”

  Dru frowned and put the bite of cake he’d been about to raise to his own lips down.

  “I do not know.”

  Slo’vv suddenly rose—more like floated—up from the cushion he’d been sitting against.

  “I hope you are all enjoying thiss fine dessert,” he hissed, causing everyone to stop in mid-bite. “It has a sspecial ingredient given to usss by my good friend, Zar’ren.” He grew an arm out of his chest and gestured at Zar’ren who nodded gravely back. “He has asssured me that while it will have no effect on the mastersss in the room, it will greatly affect your x’aan-chowsss, so be certain to sssave them a bite or two.”

  “What? What effect?” Annie looked up, startled, and Dru was frowning too.

  “I expect to see all of you come join me in my private salon for after-dinner drinks and smoke-tubes,” Slo’vv said without answering the question. Then he drifted away like a black cloud on the wind.

  Annie looked around for some explanation but Zar’en’s place was empty. He and his two pets had somehow slipped away while she was preoccupied with the wonderful cake. The cake which she now didn’t trust at all.

  She looked up at Dru. “What’s going on?”

  “I do not know.” He sounded grim. “But I don’t believe we ought to eat anymore of this confection.” He pushed the plate away and turned to her more fully. “Do you feel all right, Annie? Slo’vv said the effects—whatever they may be—would be to the females.”

  “I think I’m okay,” Annie said slowly. “I don’t feel faint or dizzy o
r sick or anything but…oh!”

  “What? What is it?” Dru demanded anxiously.

  “I’m okay,” she told him quickly. “I just…had a, uh, twinge.”

  “A twinge? A twinge where?” he demanded.

  Actually, the twinge had been in her breasts but Annie didn’t like to talk about that in a crowded room.

  “Not here,” she murmured, looking up at him. “Is dinner over? Can we go now?”

  He frowned. “We can but we are expected to spend some time in the private salon again after Last Meal is over. Come—maybe we can make a quick appearance and then go back to our rooms.”

  He stood and scooped her up, cradling her in his arms like a baby as he carried her out of the dining area.

  Annie appreciated his obvious concern and care for her but she couldn’t help feeling nervous—especially when her nipples continued to tingle and twinge under her thin silver top. She tried to tell herself it was just the nipple jewelry she was wearing but how could that explain the things that seemed to be happening to her? Especially the way her breasts were beginning to feel full and tight, almost as though they were filling with some liquid…

  Stop it, she told herself sternly. Stop it, Annie—you must be imagining that. It’s too crazy to be true…right?

  Seventeen

  There was something wrong with her—Dru could tell. Annie was shifting uncomfortably in his arms but when he asked if she wanted him to put her down, she shook her head almost frantically and pressed close to him. He wished to the Seven Hells that he could just take her back to their rooms and tend to her but if they skipped the after-dinner drinks at Slo’vv’s private salon, they risked offending their host gravely.

  We will make a quick appearance and then leave, he decided. Within, his Drake roared unhappily. It was worried about Annie too. But there was nothing either one of them could do for her until they had some time to be alone.

  They got to the private salon and he couldn’t help noticing, as he settled on a couch with Annie in his lap, that the other x’aan-chows were acting very strangely. Several of them were fighting—actually fighting—over the self-pleasure stations. He watched as a thin x’aan-chow with floppy canine ears and a short tail got pushed off the station by another with feline accoutrements. The displaced sex-pet crawled to her master and began rubbing frantically against his leg, begging for attention. She pawed open his trousers and began sucking his shaft as though she was dying to taste his seed while her bemused master looked on in surprise.

  In fact, as he looked around the room, all the pets who were unable to get on a self-pleasure station were all over their owners. Some of the masters didn’t seem to know what to do with such enthusiasm but others were servicing their x’aan-chows vigorously.

  Just then, a soft sound of pain drew his attention away from the room and back to Annie, who was cuddled in his lap.

  “Annie?” he asked, looking down at her anxiously. “Teeska? Are you all right?”

  “I don’t know.” She shook her head, a hazy look in her big brown eyes. “I feel so…so strange, Dru.”

  “Strange in what way?” He lifted her chin and looked into her eyes. Her pupils were dilated to a drowning black and her cheeks were flushed. Was she all right? Damn it, what had been in that cake? Whatever it was, Annie had eaten a lot of it and now he was afraid she might pay the price.

  “I feel…feel so empty inside. Here…” She gestured to the place between her legs. “And my breasts feel full. So full they hurt.”

  “Let me see.” Dru pulled down the loose silver top she was wearing to expose her breasts. Though he didn’t like to do this in public, no one was paying attention to them anyway—all the other masters and x’aan-chows were completely occupied.

  What he saw made him frown in sympathy. Annie’s lovely full breasts appeared to have grown somehow—so much so that the gold link chain affixed to her nipple jewelry, which had been loose earlier—was now taut between her pink peaks. This new tension meant the golden springs he had placed around her nipples were now cruelly tight.

  “It hurts!” Annie moaned softly.

  “I imagine it does,” Dru said. “Here, sweetheart…” Quickly, he unwound the golden springs from her nipples, freeing her breasts completely. “There—is that better?” he asked, looking at her anxiously.

  “Some…” But she still looked unhappy. “It’s just…they’re still so full.”

  “Full?” Frowning, he looked down at her breasts again, which Annie had made no move to cover though she was completely exposed. That in itself told him something was wrong—she was normally much more shy and retiring than she was acting right now.

  Both her pale breasts, dusted liberally with godddess kisses, still looked bigger than normal. Then Dru saw something strange—a bead of pale amber liquid was perched on one of her tight nipples. As he watched the bead grew larger and then broke. A trail of the amber liquid ran sluggishly down the bottom curve of her breast and a new bead welled to take the place of the first. Then her other breast started leaking as well.

  “What is that?” Dru muttered to himself. “What in the Seven Hells…?”

  Looking around the room, he saw several other sex-pets who also had leaking breasts. Most of these were the ones who were fighting for the self-pleasuring stations—possibly because they contained suction cups capable of sucking out the strange liquid which seemed to have filled their breasts.

  “Dru, please—help me!” There was real pain in Annie’s eyes now and her small hands were cupping her swollen chest. “Please, it hurts.”

  “It’s all right, sweetheart—everything will be all right. I’m going to help you,” Dru promised. He frowned to himself. Clearly there was only one thing to do.

  “Come…” he said to Annie and rearranged her so that she was sitting up in his lap facing him, with her legs straddling his hips.

  “What…what are you doing?” she whispered, looking at him with hazy, uncertain eyes.

  “Helping you,” Dru said firmly. Then he pulled her to him and took one of her tight, pink nipples between his lips.

  “Dru, I don’t know about this. I—” she began and then he sucked—pulling hard to draw the thick, syrupy liquid from her throbbing nipple.

  “Oh!” Annie threw back her head and thrust out her breasts, pressing them into his face to give Dru better access. Her little hands found their way to his shoulders and then he felt the warm wetness of her pussy rubbing against his shaft through the leather trousers he wore. She was pressing down hard against his aching shaft.

  “Dru!” she moaned. “Yes, Master—please!”

  Dru felt his shaft surge in his trousers. When he had started this, his only thought had been to ease her pain. But every time he drew another mouthful of the sweet, syrupy liquid from her breast, Annie moaned and pressed against him, riding the hard ridge of his cock with her sweet, slippery pussy. Gods, if only he was inside her right now! He could feel his Pleasure Barb throbbing with the desire to sink into her flesh.

  Dru pushed the thought away. This isn’t about that—it is about easing Annie’s pain. Helping her get over the effects of whatever was in that damn cake.

  When the first breast began to produce less and seemed empty, he turned to her other one but Annie stopped him.

  “Wait, Dru…” Her eyes were still clouded with need and it seemed to be an effort for her to get the words out.

  “Yes, teeska?” He looked at her anxiously. “Does it not help for me to suck your breasts?”

  “It does—it helps my breasts, anyway,” she said. “But it seems to make the emptiness here worse.” She pointed between her thighs again, which were spread wide so that the short silver skirt she was wearing rode up high. Dru was able to see the little patch of dark red curls that decorated the mound of her pussy and even the wet, pink interior of her slippery inner folds.

  The sight, and the warm, feminine scent of her sex—the scent of a female in heat—made his cock feel so hard he thought
it might break off in his trousers.

  “Please, Dru…” Annie’s soft voice drew his attention back to her face. Her lovely brown eyes were wide and filled with pain and need. “Please,” she pleaded. “I need…need something inside me when you suck my other breast. Something I can…I can hold on to. I know that sounds like I’m asking you to…to take me but…” She shook her head, apparently unable to continue from embarrassment and her cheeks went bright pink.

  Dru’s heart twisted at this sign of her shame. Clearly it was hard for her to ask this. But Gods, he really wanted to help her—and not just for the selfish reason of touching her beautiful, full-figured body. He wanted to ease her pain because he cared for her so much.

  Because you love her, whispered a little voice in the back of his head but Dru pushed the idea aside. He had promised himself never to Claim her—he couldn’t be in love with her. It was impossible—right?

  But personal feelings aside, he still needed to help her. Needed to fill her. Gods, he wished it could be with his shaft!

  His Drake roared in agreement but Dru shut it down. He couldn’t risk his darker half coming out in such a small, crowded area. And even if the Drake behaved and stayed inside where it belonged, he couldn’t bond Annie to him—she deserved better than to be mated to a male who went into danger for a living. And even if he had decided to bond her and make her his own, he couldn’t do it under these circumstances. She was half out of her mind with lust—there was no way she could make a coherent decision right now.

  “Dru, please…” The pain in Annie’s voice pulled him out of his thoughts and he knew he had to do something for her.

  “It’s all right, sweetheart,” he murmured. Reaching between them he cupped her pussy, loving how hot and wet and open she felt in his hand—how ready for him she was. “Everything is going to be all right…”

  He stroked her inner folds delicately, finding the throbbing little button of her clit and tracing around it gently with one fingertip.

  “Oh!” Annie threw back her head again, her hips bucking at his touch. “Oh God, Dru—yes! But please—inside me!”