Thrax

Thrax frowned, “I do not get drunk.”

Both females looked at him—Agena skeptically, Meline knowing better.

With a frustrated sigh, Thrax added, “…any more.  I’m not a fledgeling, you know.”

“I should say not,” said Meline with a final chuckle.  “And I know you’re due for your gene washing, Thrax, so I’ll let you get on with it.”  To Agena, she said, “I’m very pleased to have met you.  I have to fly another circle of the lake now, but I offer you my sincere congratulations on your Courtship.  Honestly, the Lottery could not have selected a finer suitor for you.  You’re very, very fortunate, Agena, and I’m pleased for both of you.”

Sensing no cynicism or bite under Meline’s words, Agena allowed herself to relax a bit.  “Thank you, Meline,” she said.  “I appreciate that.”

The female Knight stepped back and said to her comrade, “Good courtship, Thrax.  Happiness to both of you.”  And she returned to dragon form and lifted off with strong beats of her wings, swaying up and into the air again.

Once Meline was gone, Thrax said to Agena, “Truly, she and I have never been anything more than the greatest of friends.  We trust each other with our lives, but we have never known each other in any other way.”

Agena let go of her tension and said, “I know, Thrax.  And there’s really nothing for me to say about it, even if you weren’t just friends.  That’s one kind of relationship.  Ours is something completely different.  And besides…everyone has a past.”

“And everyone has a future,” Thrax said.  “And mine comes after I’ve known these waters once more.  So, getting back to where we were…”  He took a couple of steps back on the deck toward the port side of the hoverboat, and once again, he moved his hands to his loincloth. 

Agena watched, her heart fluttering as if it had wings of its own, as he pulled the meager garment down and away and let it drop to the deck.  And there it was, the thing she had glimpsed dangling behind and between his buttocks, suspended from a thick and bristling patch of dark hair.  Seen full-on, it was even more stunning.  In its flaccid state, it truly was a proud and powerful thing.  Agena had no doubt that when erect, it would become the most formidable weapon of s*xual conquest on this or any other world.  She swallowed reflexively, self-consciously stifling a gulp.

“Relax while I’m gone,” Thrax told her.  “Enjoy the lake.  I’ll see you again soon.”

Thrax turned around, again showing her his glorious glutes, perfectly tapered torso, and magnificently muscled back.  She would enjoy the lake well enough—after enjoying the scenery right in front of her.  That view, however, was short-lived, as Agena watched the wings erupt from his upper back, the tail unfurl and drop from above his buttocks, the flesh turn from human to reptile, and the body parts morph and change, until what faced her was the back of a naked dragon man.

 He first stretched his wings wide, then contracted them and folded them tight against his back and sides.  He stepped up to the rim of the deck, the massive tail twitching behind him, then stretched out his arms before him and gave a leap up off the hoverboat.  His dragon form arced gracefully through the air and down, slicing the surface of the water with a splash as perfect as if he were one of the Olympic divers of Earth, and he was gone.

Agena stepped to the edge of the craft and looked down at the ripples Thrax had made in the water.  He was in the embrace of Lake Shimmershine now, and she must wait her turn.

Alone in the hoverboat now, Agena looked out over the water and up over the mountains to the sky.  She certainly would not be bored while waiting for Thrax to return.  She had a stunning panorama to keep her mind occupied.  She also had the sight of his fully naked and exposed human form to do the same.  How wonderful would it be when she had him back in the suite and she could get her hands on the beast that had emerged from under that loincloth? 

Her hands, and her lips, and her tongue.  And it would be even more wonderful, she knew, when he put it to work inside her.  She returned to the passenger’s seat to dwell on the prospect of fulfilling her purpose in coming to Lacerta, and admire her surroundings a bit as well…

…and she failed to accomplish either thing.  She was vexed to find that there was something else on her mind.

How could she have reacted that way to his friend Meline?  It was so off-base, so out of line.  How could she actually have been…?  No, she refused to put the word to it.  There was no way she could possibly have been that.  It was completely out of the bounds of reason that she should be…  Again, she dismissed the word, frowning and cursing at it.  Both the word and the feeling were unwarranted.  Weren’t they?  There was no justification for her to be…

The word could not be ignored.  Jealous.  And it made no sense at all.  Of all things, jealous.  She had actually felt a twinge, a pang, a stab of jealousy.  Why?

After all, Agena thought, the situation hardly called for it.  What she was doing was called a Courtship, but they were not courting in any sense of the word to which humans had been accustomed for hundreds of years.  What she and Thrax had was actually an arrangement.  It had been brokered and facilitated by the government of the planet for the express purpose of maintaining their population and driving their economy.  It would certainly lead to incredible pleasure once she got Thrax between the sheets, but it was an entirely pragmatic thing.  Or so it was, in principle.

The trouble was that once it came to the intimacies that would fulfill the purpose, it would no longer be so pragmatic.  Those intimacies had feelings attached, feelings that Agena could only guess would be very strong and run very deep.  It could not be any other way.  There would be pair-bonding.  There would be an inevitable sense of attachment, if not actual romance.  She was setting out to have him give her a baby, after all.  The feelings accompanying that goal could not help but be proprietary.  She was already starting to feel that way, she realized.  Even though it was a brokered, pragmatic arrangement, the feelings that it brought up were something else again.

Which brought up the question of whether Thrax felt the same way.

Agena sat back in the passenger’s seat, now at best only half aware of some of the greatest scenery in known space, and puffed a hot breath into the perfectly climate-controlled air over the lake.  If only her own feelings could be managed as easily right now.