I give it some thought, but end up shaking my head. “I assumed you’d rescued me while I was passed out from the shock of losing my limb.”
The way Darcy smiles at me, like he’s proud of me, empowers the part of me that had to learn to love myself. “You rescued yourself. You’re a shifter. You turned into a Hell dragon and dug your way up from the dungeon to the courtyard. You killed Adam—the motherfucker that abducted us—and then we went dancing in the volcanic spires. You passed out after eating the fires of your home turf and shifted back to your human form. That’s when I saw that they’d cut off your leg. By then the spires had already healed it, so I couldn’t do anything about it.”
I shifted into a Hell dragon. That’s… incredible. “I wonder why I don’t remember that?”
Darcy rumbles thoughtfully. “You don’t have much Hell dragon in you. The ancestor of yours that was one bred into your line eleven generations ago. He’s why y’all only throw boys. Helldragons evolved to only reproduce boys because the females were always infertile. It’s been a million years of evolutionary selection that made it so that Hell dragons only breed males—well, mostly. There’s always that possible one-off when a daughter is born, but that only happens once in a thousand years anymore.”
Surprised that he could possibly know any of that, I ask, “How doyouknow?”
Darcy’s expression falls flat as he deadpans. “I’ve got blood magic running through these veins, Peach. As soon as I tasted yours, I knew what you were. I can smell power running through the vein.”
“Oh. Who knew a little bit of blood magic was enough to tell you my genetic history?”
He huffs a soft laugh. “Very few people can do it, and I ain’t letting a single one of the others near you.”
“Thank you for protecting me, but why don't I remember?”
Darcy rubs his hand up and down my wet belly and presses a kiss to my sternum. “The human brain is a complex system, and sometimes it chooses to forget the things it doesn’t think it can process, but more than likely it’s because humans can’t see magic.”
“I can see your array,” I remind him.
“Sure, but you can’t talk to the gargoyles, which is the standard for inclusion in the intergalactic community, which means that at least some of the human blindness to magic is still active for you. The translation spell is glitchy with humans. Sometimes it translates everything for you, sometimes it only translates some languages for you. What I’m wondering is how you shifted at all if you can’t remember doing so. That’s the strangest part of this whole thing.”
While I think about that, I reach for the body wash, pouring some onto a washcloth. Darcy takes it from me, and I balancemyself on the shower rod and the tiles as he scrubs the washcloth over my body, front to back. It’s nice being pampered like this, and gives me a moment to dive deep in my own head.
What happened when I shifted? I remember waking up in the dungeon and the pool of magma. I remember how much pain I was in. It was infuriating that they stole my implant, that they ripped it out of me. I was thinking about…
“I was furious that they stole my implant. Ripped it right out of me. I couldn’t believe they would take my leg like that. Who fucking does that to a person? I asked them to leave it alone, and they just ripped it right out of me. I was so angry. I still am; I’m furious with them for doing that to me.”
“Implant?” he asks.
Oops. I never did tell him about my situation.
“I lost my leg when I was a baby. I had an osseointegrated prosthetic, which just means that they put the attachment for the prosthetic limb into my bone. It’s sort of like having dental implants.”
“That’s no less alarming than them cutting off your leg,” he growls, and I agree; no matter that it wasn’t made of flesh and bone, they took my foot and it’s just as bad as if they had cut off my other foot. “What happened next?”
“I wanted to get out, but I knew you were coming for me so I wasn’t worried about that, but the anger… I don’t remember anything after that.”
“The big emotion probably set you off. You shifted because you were furious. In danger and angry. Makes sense. You were beautiful as a dragon, Peach. The prettiest one I’ve ever seen.”
I smile at the compliment. “Next time take a picture so I can see myself.”
“If there is a next time, I will,” he promises, moving under my arms to wash the back of my body.
We fall silent for a time as I experience the intense pleasure of having someone else wash me. My lovers don’t usually stick around long enough to get an invite to shower with me, and Stalker Steve never wanted to be reminded of my short leg, so he didn’t join me.
Darcy cleans me thoroughly, washing every inch of skin from my neck to my toes, and all the cracks and crevices between and leaves me with an unsatisfied erection. I’m not even mad, because he's just as hard as I am when he slips around to my front again. He’s going to stick it in me when we’re done here, I just know it. Well, I should ask.
Did I ever think I was a big dick kind of guy before meeting him? No. I did not. I liked seeing them, but having them in me was a pipe dream, and I was fine with the ones I’d had. After the dicking down he gave me, I’m pretty sure that I’ll be missing Darcy’s for the rest of all time.
“Please fuck me,” I beg softly, bending a little to press my forehead to his.
Darcy reaches out to run his fingers over my cock. “Peach, I’m planning on fucking you for days.”
“Oh, good.” I was hoping this would turn into an extended sleepover.
He backs away and opens the curtain for me, holding my hand in a tight grip. “Step out and get yourself dried off while I wash up. I’ll meet you on the bed, and you better have three fingers in that ass when I get there.”
