“You can legally fly over, but touching the wreckage is where the unsavory part starts.” The lawman stood still and Ghreid nodded.
“I’ll fly tomorrow, land when I get permission. I’m investigating only.” Ghreid stalked off, face twisted. “And arrange for something for me to eat.”
He climbed the stairs once more, the metal beneath his feet humming with want of crumbling. It would betray him one day, but that day was not soon to come. He wanted to stare at the wreckage and listen to his inner beast complain about wanting to investigate.
“There will be more treasure other places.” Ghreid found an ideal perch on a rail, and against better judgment, let his tail free with a slight adjustment to his belt. The counterbalance and wrapping it around a railing helped.
But still, the growling in his head assured him there would be no better treasure than what awaited him.
Chapter Four
Varis
When the sun set that evening, the glow of the lighthouse flared to life in a way it hadn’t in seasons. The shine of it filled with magic that made his heart thump in his chest.Beautiful…
Varis watched the dark waters and dove for his evening meal. And while eating, he watched the glow of the lighthouse, the subtle hope that welled in his chest, growing faster by the minute. Something needed to happen, like he wanted to crawl from his own skin.
Instead of focusing on it, he traversed the ships that night. A belly full of fish and mind set on anything. As if he’d not searched every ship twice over in the time he’d been there, he always reasoned with himself that new things could have floated up or drifted by. In fact, as he slipped below the deck of one ship, one of the oldest ones, a clink of glass caught his attention. Bobbing bottles of wine congregated at the side. “Joy!”
He swam the flooded depths and shouldered the netting bag he carried, carefully depositing the bottles neck down so they stuck out of his sack but kept separate. As he swam through the busted hull of one ship toward the bow of another, a lacemaker beast swam by, dark eyes full of insurmountable stupidity, raw hunger, rage, and the occasional horny rampage where, among other rough-scaled lacemaker leviathan beasts, they engaged in the world’s most intriguing coital rituals… And to that day, Varis had no idea which were the males or females. Nor if anyone was consenting. Or even if it was really mating… The last few times he’d seen it, tiny lacemaker beasts followed a few months later, so, perhaps?
Though, many of the other lacemaker beasts ate smaller ones, so their children didn’t last all that long. Varis likenedthem to the leaf-wrapped parcels of fried minced vegetables they sold on the street in his home country. His belly ached for a taste of something besides fish, but it was fish or risk being sent back home, or worse, tried for crimes against a nation.
The lead-lined box that nestled securely in the hold of his ship held millions of gold worth of the rare silks meant for the skin of kings only. Varis’s only consolation was that the seal on the casket hadn’t been broken. That was his only bargaining chip.
As he returned to his ship, he stowed away his findings, pushing the few bottles to the side so that come someday soon, he could imbibe and lounge. Not that he did much more than lounge, repair his clothing, swim, and sleep, anyway. But the plus side had been the Monsmount sun. What little of it there was, had given him the most oddly beautiful tan, blossoming over his once noble-pale flesh.
As he lay on the bobbing deck, staring up at the starlit sky, a great shadow darkened the horizon, and he glanced over to pay heed to a cruising wyvern. Unlike those of Rammolia and those reared by the Wyverncrest family, this beast was a sparkling white, and the rider upon it had a golden hue to him that Varis couldn’t quite get a good look at from his angle.
Still, Varis hid from the flier by tucking his body under the lip of a bench. Broad shoulders, stocky form, and so much gold. Just the sight of it made Varis long to fly as well, body aching to taste a sky that called him in his dreams.
The beast circled his ship a few times; the banking rider’s face was obfuscated by whipping golden hair. But atop his head stood golden tines like that of a rather impractical crown, and something made Varis’s heart stutter, cock twitching for no reason whatsoever.
Seriously, prick? The first male we see in almost a year, and you get all rodded up?Varis adjusted his hips and tuckedhis cock between his thighs. At least if he got hard that way, it’d not tent up the bit of cloth he wore to cover himself. Uncomfortable? Yes. But if he rocked his hips and got hard, it made for an interesting sensation… He bid the thought away and shook his head.
The circling rider stared pointedly at where he’d been only a moment before, and Varis swore under his breath when his strong jaw and chiseled features came into view.Holy fuck, if this man is not a lover of flowers, I will die.
He fought every urge to wave the interloper down.
Varis waited for the flier to leave and found himself growing tired, unusually so. The softly lapping waves drew him into uneasy sleep.
He yawned and tucked himself in, using some discarded netting as a pillow.
***
In the nightscape of a dream, he woke in a silken bed; his lithe form spread among pillows and intricate embroidery on textiles as fine as the ones he guarded—a sinful thing to imagine. Like royalty, he shifted hips draped in a swath of deepest purple set against his skin like charoite, silken and sensual.
In his dream, hot kisses decorated his body like jewelry, each brand leaving a glowing phosphorescence in its wake, like the creatures of the deep sea that skirted the darkest depths, or the algae that made halos around one’s feet when they walked on the sodden beaches and splashed in their waters. The kisses turned filthy, a hand sliding under his silk, a mouth grazing branding lips over his maleness. He rose to full hardness, tenting the material, precum darkening the thin, flowing fabric. “Gods…”
“You will cry to no gods.” Lips parted, hot breath dancing, fingers traveling up his thighs, over his hips.
Varis flexed his hips and whimpered, the touch lasting forever, lips not kissing further. He ached for a cock inside him, sweat making the silk stick to his skin, body shaking.
“Your name.” The hungry growl from the vision came into full view—a beacon of gold and wonder.
“Aah!” Varis cried out. “A—Varis!”
“Avarice… Greed and Avarice.” The snarl of wonder encompassed him in unending pleasure, and with the unholy screech of a seabird perched upon a mast, Varis woke.
