Flame Daddies Read online

  Canavan found it curious that the humanoid seemed so riled up by him stating the facts. He supposed it made her uncomfortable to be presented with a reality where the truth wasn’t quite what it first appeared.

  “I had no idea the elves were doing bad stuff, okay? All I knew about dragons was they were mentioned by elves, but there are species of humanoid who come out with all sorts of odd beliefs, and I didn’t know there were real dragons here. And I never helped anyone exterminate you. Good grief! You know what? You have an amazing ability to make people feel bad about themselves!”

  “Is your rear still sore?” Canavan asked, trying not to smirk.

  “Yes. Thanks for asking.” She didn’t sound grateful for his inquiry.

  “Then I suggest you allow me to put you in my pouch before I decide to inspect the state of your ass.”

  She breathed in sharply, but then visibly stood in a less hostile manner, and Canavan was able to pick her up with his forearms and lift her into his pouch. Her body felt soft and pliant against his belly, and he thought he would quite like to spend more time touching her in his humanoid form. Perhaps being in his dragon shape wasn’t always ideal after all. If he tried to fuck her when he was this size, he was almost certain he would kill her. His cock was currently the same girth as a tree trunk.

  Why did his mind have to dwell on the practicalities? He was almost certain Brynn or Sharpe would have simply enjoyed the moment with the beautiful princess. Wait, was he getting embarrassed at his own thoughts? And what was this warmth coursing through his cheeks? He was usually so suave and smooth when it came to female elves; he was the only one of the four dragons who had a regular and active sex life. Why would he suddenly be overcome with awkwardness? It didn’t make any sense.

  After feeling his pouch to check the humanoid was still there, he stepped forward to the edge of the cave entrance and gazed out over the mountains. The snow was getting heavier. The thing Canavan hated the most about their current living arrangement was the coldness. He was a true dragon, through and through, and much preferred the warmth. When they had lived further south, in the tropical heat of the central continent, it had been far more amenable. One day, Canavan thought, the dragons would carve out a home for themselves, so they weren’t forced to hide in caves anymore.

  He leaped into the blizzard, immediately unfurling his wings so he could glide away from the rocks before he changed direction to find some deer. At least down in the valleys where the animals lived, the weather would not be quite so freezing.

  Still, now there was a girl living with them, he thought he should offer to snuggle with her for warmth tonight. It was the polite thing to do.

  His belly tingled where her warm body pressed against his, and he wished it was night time already, so they could return to the cave, and he could show her how amazing it was to sleep with a dragon.

  ***

  Canavan flew down into a valley and swooped on a deer that bravely stood grazing in the open grassland. Alora screamed as Canavan’s huge dragon maw opened, then fire rained down in a circle around the surprised animal, stopping it from escaping. Seizing the moment, Canavan grasped the startled animal in his claws and was twenty feet in the air before he pinched the creature’s neck and broke it.

  Alora was startled. She knew animals died for food, and that hadn’t ever bothered her; it was the speed and efficiency of Canavan’s dragon form. She had expected hunting to take hours or possibly, even the rest of the day. Humanoids, after all, would slowly and quietly advance on their prey and take it down with great care. Canavan’s attack had been brash and full-frontal, but what had surprised her the most was how effective his strategy had been. The deer had been dead less than a handful of seconds after Canavan had descended upon it. Certainly, it had not suffered.

  Gripping either side of Canavan’s pouch with her hands, Alora felt extremely small in comparison to his huge dragon form. She had seen Brynn’s swift flight when he’d taken her for a ride earlier, and Argon’s speed had been obvious when he plucked her from the freezing mountain, but in the context of acquiring food, she now knew the dragons were effective and ruthlessly efficient. She vowed never to do anything that might cause a dragon to hunt her like that. She wouldn’t last long enough to regret it.

  Unlike Brynn, who seemed to fly for sheer enjoyment, Canavan was quite businesslike. Alora got the impression he wasn’t always in such a great hurry to return, but his general demeanor was confusing her. One minute, he was friendly and almost trying to have his way with her, and a moment later, he was saying all sorts of strange things that put distance between them. It was nothing short of confusing. But she couldn’t deny he was very attractive with his glittering amethyst eyes which were nothing like the lilac irises of some Earth humans she’d seen on Nidia (the color was a genetic mutation that took place in Earth humans at some point in the past). His eyes were more like gemstones, so brilliant and such a deep pigmentation of purple, that she could stare into them forever.

  He flew them straight back to the cave and landed carefully on the sandy ground. After putting the deer down, he removed Alora from his pouch and transformed back into a humanoid shape. She stared at him for any signs of his dragon form, but none came.

  “Like what you see?” he asked easily. She hadn’t been looking at his naked body before, but his words prompted her eyes to inadvertently flicker over his body, lingering on the convex shape of his incredibly well-toned abs.

  “Why don’t you magic yourself some clothes when you change back?”

  He sighed and shook his head. “That’s not how dimension folding works. It folds things that are already there, like organic matter. It’s science, not magic.”

  Alora decided not to ask any more questions about that when she probably wouldn’t understand the answers. Instead, she asked, “How do you all stay so fit?”

  He looked down at his body and chuckled. “I suppose it’s a side effect of the dimension folding; everything is firmly held in place. When we are dragons, we sometimes have races or play-fight in the air, and that’s a sight to behold. Although come to think of it, we’ve not done a lot of that since the elves redoubled their efforts to wipe out all the dragons.”

  “Why did they do that? I just don’t understand it at all.”

  “There was a female dragon who fell in love with an elf. She didn’t want him to know what she was, so she maintained her humanoid form for as long as possible. Eventually, though, her true shape burst forth—it takes a lot of energy to sustain the humanoid form over weeks—in the center of their town. She panicked, and as she tried to flee, she accidentally killed some people. Then she laid an egg. Just the one, which is unusual for any female. Some elves found her hideout and took the egg, giving it to the father, who raised the child amongst elves. She was so desolate, she went on a furious rampage, razing an entire village to the ground. That was about thirty years ago. Since then, elves have really been trying to wipe out the dragons.”

  Alora stared at him. The things that happened to dragons on a regular basis... they were so awful, so unnecessary, she did not understand why any sentient races could do such things. She didn’t know what to say.

  “If there was anywhere else for dragons to live, we would let the elves have Telia II. It is our planet too, but we would rather resettle in peace than to constantly live in fear for our lives.”

  “When I get back to Nidia, I will investigate what can be done. We will find somewhere habitable. I promise.” She gazed into his eyes and wondered if he knew how sad she was at this situation.

  “There is a rumor that Telia I would be ideal for dragons,” Canavan said.

  Alora nodded, remembering what she’d heard about the first planet in this star system. It was closer to the sun, and warmer, so dragons would thrive. “So I’ve heard from one of your brothers.”

  “If we hadn’t damaged our ship after rescuing you, that’s where we would have gone.”

  “Wait, when you found me... Sharpe s
aid you were all trying to rescue dragon eggs.”

  “Only after we were already in space. We were trying to go to Telia I, but the ship’s navigation wasn’t very accurate... I mean, it picked up dragon DNA on that ship, and there was just you and the slavers on there.”

  Alora sighed. Another thing to feel guilty about. Being around oppressed people was an uphill battle all of its very own. “I’m sorry you didn’t make it to Telia I. When will you try again?”

  “We sustained heavy damage rescuing you. The ship needs a lot of repairs before it will move again.”

  “Wait, where do you even keep a spaceship in this cave?” She looked around the empty cavern as though there was some sort of large ship in here that she’d missed. Canavan laughed.

  “Oh, the others didn’t tell you where we store things?”

  She shook her head. “Brynn made it seem like none of you have anything to keep, and Argon has his room full of books.”

  “Watch.” Canavan touched one of the tattoos on his body. Alora stared as a pair of leather gloves seemed to emerge from Canavan’s skin without even stretching it as they broke the surface, then he held them in his hands.

  “How?” She couldn’t stop staring at the gloves. If it was a trick, it was an ingenious one.

  “Dimension folding; the same way we change between being dragon and humanoid but used differently. In this case, the object turns into a two-dimensional image of itself, a tattoo on my body which is all that remains of it in this world, and the real object is stored in a pocket dimension. It’s how dragons get around without needing suitcases,” Canavan explained.

  “Your tattoos are... your luggage?” She was still staring at the gloves. Reaching out, her fingers brushed the leather, and she emitted a small gasp. Half of her had expected them to be an illusion or a hologram.

  “Yes, in very simple terms, our tattoos are our luggage.”

  “I like simple.” She shook her head in disbelief. “And... you can store anything like that?”

  “We can store most things. Living things pose a difficulty because they cannot survive in the other dimension. I had a pet bird when I was a very small hatchling, and I tried to store it, so it was always with me, but it came back dead. Worse than dead. Looked like all its atoms had been mixed together. Fucking mess. I cried all day. I felt so guilty. That was before I learned the two rules of dimension folding; only living things can be reshaped and only non-living things can be stored.”

  “So, what if someone else touched you? Would they steal your stuff?” This was the most bizarre and unbelievable ability she’d ever come across, and she’d met tentacle monsters in the course of her duties who preferred to communicate by touching the insides of any orifice they saw. In Alora’s case, the tentacle went up her left nostril and made her sneeze, but not enough times for anything interesting to happen. For his part, the poor tentacle monster had been furiously embarrassed and spent the rest of the visit trying to make sense of humanoid anatomy to avoid any other embarrassing gaffes in his quest for a big stretchy communication hole to slide a tentacle inside.

  The ones who lived on the humanoid planets were different, and they tended to learn to follow humanoid social rules like not sticking one’s tentacles inside another person’s mouth, but some of the ones who occasionally tried to invade... she shuddered at the thought.

  “Nobody else can take my belongings. When I put something into the pocket dimension, it recognizes my DNA. So, if it’s not my hand touching my tattoo—if there’s a difference between the DNA of my finger and my body—it will not allow me to retrieve the item. Try it.”

  He indicated a tattoo. Tentatively, Alora moved her hand toward him, slightly afraid of what might happen. She touched the tattoo of the shapeless square thing. It glowed yellow when her fingers made contact. A fluffy towel appeared in front of her. Shocked, she withdrew her hand as the towel fell to the ground. Canavan caught it swiftly, frowned at it, then fixed her with a gaze.

  “I swear, I don’t know how I did that!” she exclaimed in disbelief. “I’ve never even heard of people carrying their baggage as tattoos before. I mean, metaphorically, people do, but not literally!”

  “There’s something very unusual about you, Alora.” He was still looking at her very strangely. “Buggered if I know what it is.”

  Alora was used to being different from everyone around her and didn’t think it was such a big deal. “I wonder if it’s to do with me being the daughter of the Emperor-Paramount. I may have some odd nanotech inside me or something. Who knows?”

  “Even another dragon couldn’t do what you just did. It’s just not possible. If Argon had a towel stored somewhere on his body, and I touched it, nothing would happen, and he’s my own brother.”

  Alora didn’t know what to say, but as she was wondering about the polite thing to say to someone whom one had accidentally robbed during a conversation, her eyes fell upon the deer. Perhaps the best way to fill the awkward silence was to change the subject.

  “I have another unsolved mystery. Why didn’t you kill the deer with your flame?”

  “It would have been burned so much, it would be inedible. Better to kill first, skin, then cook.” He turned his attention to the deer, and Alora was glad. She had no idea what she just did or how it worked, but she never wanted it to happen again. It would be far too embarrassing to take the dragons’ belongings accidentally, just by touching them.

  Canavan quickly skinned it using an elongated claw. Once it was ready, he breathed a white-purple flame on the deer, and it cooked it, rather than burning it. Alora was amazed. The dragons were so precise with their fire and so careful. If she had fire breath, she was sure she would accidentally set her own eyelashes on fire one day.

  She was also curious Canavan seemed able to control the temperature of his flame.

  “Can other dragons use cooler flames?” she wondered.

  “It depends on the type of dragon. I’m amethyst, so I am able to regulate how hot my flame is. Sharpe’s flame can be hot or cool as well, but our flames don’t get as hot as Brynn’s or Argon’s. They have powerfully hot fire, and they hate that they can’t change it even though they’re better at burning stuff. Sharpe and I have good abilities though. His cool flame heals people.”

  “And yours?”

  “It depends on the temperature. Mine can either intoxicate people, put them to sleep, or fill the air with lust.”

  “That’s... quite a repertoire.” She wondered what it would feel like to be under a lusty haze courtesy of Canavan’s flame. “Does it hurt?”

  “My cooler flame? No. It’s like Sharpe’s healing fire, only mine’s a little more... sensual.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How about if I show you? But only after you eat. Our little humanoid will not go hungry on my watch.”

  She colored red as he called her little, then accepted some cooked deer from his hand, feeling very cared-for. This was the strangest way she had ever eaten a meal, and she wondered if dragons had the same nutritional requirements she did. Probably not.

  “Say, what do you all do for vegetables?”

  “We leave them for the other animals to eat. Then we eat the animals. They consume enough vegetables for us all.”

  “But what about the nutrients you miss out on?” she persisted.

  “Our diet is complete as long as we eat enough meat.” He bit into his own food, and she watched him attempting to be civilized and failing miserably. He was eating the deer he’d killed with his own hands and cooked with his dragon breath, and he ripped the meat from the carcass without use of a plate, cutlery or carving equipment, and now, he was chomping on it with no special interest in locating a napkin.

  Alora couldn’t help giggling as he kept his pinky up, gripping the animal bone in his thumb and forefinger as he devoured the food.

  Chapter 6:

  After they ate, Canavan left her for barely a couple of minutes while he carried the deer further into the cave
and left it for his brothers.

  “You two seem to be getting along quite well,” Argon remarked. “Did you really allow her the first feeding from your kill?”

  Canavan frowned as he realized he’d done exactly that. “Apparently so.”

  “Are you interested in her then?” Brynn asked. Canavan nodded.

  “I found her first,” Sharpe pointed out.

  “And I found her hottest,” Brynn countered. “I’ve never been so attracted to a woman my entire life.”

  Argon shook his head. “I think she’s too naughty.”

  “I know what you mean, I just want to spank her when she sasses me, hug her, tuck her into bed with a blankie, and tell her the sort of stories our fathers used to tell us,” Canavan observed.

  “I want to treat her like a little girl too,” Brynn said.

  “And me,” Sharpe added.

  “I certainly feel myself falling more into the role of disciplinarian around her,” Argon mused. “What could be bringing out our fathering instincts?”

  “She’s so cute,” Brynn pointed out. The others all nodded, but Argon shook his head.

  “I do not think that’s the entire story. There’s something different about her, and I don’t know how to identify it,” Argon mused.

  “She took my towel,” Canavan supplied. The others all looked at him in utter confusion, and truth be told, he did not blame them. “I had a towel stored on my chest, and I was showing her where we keep things and how each of us can only retrieve his own belongings from his own body. But when she touched me, she was able to take my towel. She was more surprised than I was.”

  “That’s impossible.” Argon’s eyes widened, and Canavan had never seen the silver dragon look so unsettled.

  “Believe it. It happened.” Canavan pointed at the empty space on his body where his towel had formerly been. Not that the others would see it, but he wanted to make a point.

  “Is there anything in the galaxy that can do that?” Brynn asked.