Finding the Wolf(The Dragon's Hoard #1) (2 page)

Nyle had been sent to find and return the missing human prince. Instead he had found a boy with lust in his body and something wild peeking out of his eyes. A caged thing, Nyle thought as he studied the young man for a long second, desperate for escape. 

"You are the third prince, Leon, of the human court?" Nyle inquired politely, decidedly ignoring the way the boy yanked Nyle's hips forward so their lower bodies touched. He thought for a second about using his magic, even though it really wasn't polite to do so to human royalty or to the leaders of any other races, to convince Prince Leon to answer instead of allowing these strange actions to continue. A mixture of his unwillingness to purposefully enchant a prince and his sheer confusion about Leon's actions had his mind reeling in too many directions for any magic to occur without accident. 

"Mhmm, but you can call me kitten because in a few minutes all we'll be doing is purring all over each other," Leon said with a sensuous growl in his voice. "Come on, dragon dear. I have a room we can use. It even has a bed."

Nyle was pulled along by the hand, his confusion keeping him from halting the insanity that was occurring. Humanity was a numerous race that multiplied daily. They required strong leadership that could handle the constantly changing demographic and culture of the community. Nyle's own kind, the dragon race, was the most powerful race and ruled over everyone and everything. But the humans required a more delicate touch, so the human royal court was created.

When the prince had vanished and the humans had been unsuccessful at locating him, the dragons were petitioned for aid. Nyle, being the youngest, had the fewest personal pursuits already in progress and was therefore sent to locate the errant prince and to help him finish the task he had been set when he disappeared.

Nyle wasn't sure that either task included the prince whoring himself to Nyle, but he still followed Leon out of the red light district, up a set of outside stairs, and into a small, two room apartment.

"You ever have sex with a man before?" Leon asked as he delicately bit his lower lip. 

"I have not," Nyle replied stiffly, trying to find some sort of equilibrium to balance him in what had already become a truly odd situation.

Leon looked triumphant as he stepped forward and began unlacing Nyle's peasant style shirt. "I'm happy to be your first," he purred, the wild thing inside him seeming to calm now that whatever goal Leon had in mind appeared to be occurring.

As his shirt fell to the ground, Nyle knew that he had to say something to halt the debacle before the wildness won.

"Dragons do not have sex," Nyle murmured.

Leon froze, his hands still gripping the waist of Nyle's pants. "Never?" he gasped out. "You've never had sex? You poor thing. I'll be very gentle." He resumed divesting Nyle of his pants. Soon they were both naked and Nyle knew that there was precious little time to rectify what was about to be a very uncomfortable situation.

He opened his mouth, only to be met with Leon's lips covering his and Leon's wet tongue delving deep and massaging the roof of his mouth. The kiss deepened as Leon sucked Nyle's tongue into his mouth where they dueled and rubbed deliciously.

Leon pulled away for air and Nyle tried opening his mouth for one final protest.

"Shh," Leon hushed with a finger over Nyle's mouth. "Don't be nervous. I'll take care of everything." As he spoke, his knees bent and Leon was suddenly kneeling on the floor in front of Nyle.

Leon licked his lips and took Nyle's half hard length into his mouth. One suck and Nyle's back arched. His thighs tightened as he forced himself to remain standing. Leon seemed to understand Nyle's troubles as he pushed against Nyle, forcing him to sit down on the bed behind them.

Leon sucked and licked and bobbed up and down, carefully scraping his teeth along the sides, until he had Nyle bucking helplessly underneath him. With a shout, Nyle's balls contracted, something warm and wet shot up his spine, and Leon got a mouthful of whatever was shooting out of him.

Leon sat back on his heels and licked his lips. "Was that your first time coming?" he asked with a toothy grin. He didn't wait for an answer; instead he stood and pushed Nyle further onto the bed, climbing on after him. "I won't ask you to do the same," he added, one hand on his own hardened length. "I'll have my own fun in a bit."

When Nyle's head was comfortably nestled in a stack of pillows, Leon returned to Nyle's softening length. Instead of taking Nyle back in his mouth, Leon hoisted Nyle's legs over his shoulders and his mouth went further down to Nyle's opening.

Wet, warm heat probed and Nyle shivered, wondering why it felt so good. After a while, Nyle felt pressure and realized Leon had pushed a wet finger inside him. The digit probed and pushed until it was joined by a second. They bumped something inside Nyle and suddenly he was hard and gasping for air again.

Leon smirked. "Found it," he purred. There was more wet and more pushing against that oh so sweet spot and Nyle realized that somehow the burn of three fingers in his ass was going to make him come again.

Except, again Leon seemed to read him and those fingers disappeared. Before Nyle could get out a full whimper of displeasure, Leon's weight settled on top of Nyle's body and something hot and hard pushed its way deep inside.

Nyle's legs were still on Leon’s shoulders and Leon wrapped his arms around Nyle’s thighs for leverage as he pushed in further, then retreated and returned, over and over again.

Nyle's hips bucked in time with Leon's thrusts and his own length bounced hard and heavy on his stomach until Leon gripped him with strong fingers.

A few more thrusts of Leon's hips and pumps of his fist and Nyle came again. He covered his stomach in white goo as Leon grunted and lost control of his steady rhythm. Nyle felt wet inside when Leon stopped moving and didn't hate the feeling. It was odd and somewhat slimy, but not bad.

Leon pulled out and rolled over onto the bed on his stomach next to Nyle, panting from exhaustion. Nyle felt an arm go around his midsection and couldn't stop his body from curling around the limb like he was still a hatchling.

"You're a cuddler, huh," Leon murmured tiredly, that odd sense of wild strangely gone from his sedated voice. "Well that's all right. So am I."

Nyle felt Leon curl his body around his own and closed his eyes at the comforting feeling.

*~*~*

"Dragon, draaaaaagon."

Nyle blinked and wondered when the sun had come up. Surely he had not fallen asleep, except there was no other possible explanation.

"Draaaaaagon." An oddly familiar, gentle and cajoling voice sounded in his ear.

Nyle looked over at the person calling him and blinked again. Leon was still in bed with him, Leon's long hair tousled and knotted, his eyes lidded with sleep, and his relaxed mouth turned up slightly in a soft smile. That strange untamed sense Nyle had felt last night from Leon was absent, the gem-blue eyes clearer today in the sunlight than in the fires of the red light district. There was still something more to Leon, but calmness was firmly and happily in control.

"Good morning. Can I have my arm back, now?" Leon asked, gentle humor sparkling in his eyes.

Nyle looked down at what he was clutching to his chest and immediately let go when he realized he had been holding Leon's arm tight to himself.

"Thanks," Leon said as he retrieved his arm, using that hand to stroke Nyle’s sleep-tangled hair behind one ear. "You're a quiet one, aren't you?"

Nyle shook his head, still a bit surprised by how gentle the wild creature from last night was this morning. "I am not entirely sure what to say."

"Oh," Leon replied. "Well, I have something to ask that may answer those questions you don't know how to raise." He waited for Nyle to nod before continuing. "Why don't dragons have sex?"

Nyle felt taken aback for a moment but was inclined to answer. "Well for one, dragons carry too much mass to ever copulate like we did last night. We would flatten one another. Additionally, dragons do not have a need for intercourse. A female lays an egg, a male fertilizes it, and the female spends a century warming the egg until hatching occurs. As very few females have any wish to lose a century of possible research to an egg, this has not happened since my hatching three hundred years ago."

"But you have a human form," Leon waved his hand over Nyle's body. Nyle was tall and thin for a human with tight muscles that complemented his lean frame. His eyes were golden as all dragons' eyes and his hair was the color of spun gold as well. In human form, Nyle looked to be the same age as Leon.

Nyle shook his head. "It is an offense to traverse the dragon mountain in such a form. Only amidst humans do my kind shift smaller."

"Well that makes sense." Leon stretched on the bed, drawing Nyle's attention to their lack of clothing and close proximity. "So, because dragons don't need to have sex to procreate, and because it is such a hassle, you don't bother. I guess that explains how you were a virgin at … did you say three hundred?"

Nyle nodded but decided it was time to do what he had been sent to do. His task was much more important than the mysteries of sex and wildness.  "We must go to the human court at once to assuage their fears of your death. Then we must find what has caused the disappearances of so many young human men."

Nyle suddenly sensed a change in the room. It wasn't temperature or anything so overt; rather it felt like the malice level suddenly rose. Nyle looked at Leon and unexpectedly wasn't sure there were any humans in the room any longer. All trace of calmness disappeared, replaced by that different sort of wildness Nyle remembered from last night.

"You will not bring me back to that place." The voice that came out of Leon's mouth was much deeper than usual, with a hard growl that made it difficult for Nyle to comprehend what Leon was saying. "Do you understand what would happen?" The threat in Leon's voice was clear.

The abrupt change was one shock too many: Nyle was done. Enough was enough. First he was pulled away from his peaceful life to locate the royal whelp who did not appear to be lost after all. Then he was pulled into confusing and, admittedly, pleasurable sex for a reason he could not discern. Leon practically foaming at the mouth because Nyle was simply doing as he had been ordered was the last straw.

Nyle had always thought that dragons did not have tempers. Yet he knew that Leon was about to be flattened by dragon-style anger.

"No!" Nyle snapped. "No, I don't know. I clearly know nothing about what has been occurring for the past day! I don't know why you disappeared or why I had to look for you in that cesspit of human depravity. I don't know why you dragged me into this sex thing. And I don't know why you are growling at me, but I won't have it! You know where the castle is. You can go tell them to stay away yourself."

There was smoke coming out Nyle's nose and mouth and he knew he was seconds away from lighting Leon, the room, and most of the human city on fire. Such a shameful display could not be allowed.

Nyle turned around and walked out the door, smoke trailing him in a cloud of bad temper. When he could see the sky, Nyle shifted into his dragon shape and shot into the air, letting his wings pump him away from killing hundreds of obnoxious humans.

He didn't care what Toel or any of the other elders would say. Nyle was going to spend the next few decades sequestered among his pretties. Someone else could deal with the confusing humans and their crazed prince.

*~*~*

Rubies, Nyle mused, were the color of fire without all the heat. Such a strong gem deserved to be his head pillow. He shifted and felt the hard points of his emeralds dig wonderfully into the itchy area between his belly scales.

Nyle's hoard room was large, but his bed dominated the space. Carefully separated heaps of gemstones whose piles were then pushed together to make one giant mass in the center of his cave comprised his bed. There were wardrobes and trunks as well as shelving scattered throughout the rest of the cave. Nyle used them to hold all sorts of things, from statues made of precious materials to unusually beautiful clothing or tapestries.  He was quite proud of his hoard, even if it wasn't too extensive in comparison to the hoards of some of the older dragons. Hard work and copious amounts of shining kept everything perfect and Nyle did his very best to keep it that way. 

For three days Nyle had been lavishing attention on his pretties and everything shone in the sunlight that fell into his cave from a skylight he had carved for that purpose fifty years ago.

Elder Toel thought Nyle was in deep contemplation of his task. Hatch-mother Gail had told Nyle to stop sulking. Nyle shifted onto his side, his wings spread out over his jet inlaid jewelry and tried not to think about how close the color jet was to someone's onyx colored hair. He was also not thinking about his sapphires in conjunction with eyes. In fact, Nyle was trying very hard not to think at all.

He dozed in the sunlight, comfortable on his bed of jewels.

A paw on his face woke Nyle just as the sun moved past his skylight.

Nyle snorted awake and blinked at the creature sitting in front of him. A wolf the size of a pony, with deep black fur panted widely just below Nyle's jaw. Nyle knew that canines did not come in that size … ever. Clearly the wolf was not a normal creature.

"You do not belong here," Nyle said to the wolf as he quickly and surreptitiously checked to make sure that the wolf was alone and that all of his pretties were still in place.

The creature snorted, sat back on its haunches, and began to shift forms.

The process sounded and looked painful for the creature, bones snapping and reforming, muscles sliding around under skin, and fur receding. When Nyle shifted forms it was a smooth transition from dragon to human—nothing like the display of agony before him.

When the change stopped, Leon lay naked and panting on Nyle's floor.

"Dragon," Leon said once he had caught his breath. "We need to talk."

No doubt about that. Nyle had been sent to locate and return the missing
human
prince, not a werewolf.