A Dragon's Forbidden Taste of Mortal Flame

The first thing I noticed was the heat—dry, ancient, and wrong for this high meadow where snowmelt still pooled between rocks. I’d come to the Dragon’s Spine to die, though I hadn’t admitted it aloud. The pact was older than my village’s oldest song: every generation, a tithe to keep the mountain’s wrath from raining down. Not gold or grain, but a life. They called it an honor. They called the chosen one the “Bride of the Peak,” weaving flowers into our hair before they tied us to the stone. I’d seen the procession three times in my eighteen years. The girls never returned. The mountain stayed quiet. A fair trade, the elders said.

My village sent its yearly “tithe”—a polite word for sacrifice—and this season the lottery arrow landed on my name. They marched me in ceremonial chains, sang the hymn of placation, then left me lashed to the standing stone like a ribboned gift, a virgin offering to an appetite no one understood.

I’d spent the night rehearsing screams. None came. When dawn bled over the peaks, I was still alone, wrists raw, pride shredded. Then the air shimmered, and the dragon stepped out of it in human shape: seven feet of bronze skin, hair the color of forge-smoke, eyes glowing ember-gold. Horns no longer than my thumb curved above his temples, the only hint he wasn’t born of woman.

He circled me slowly, barefoot on frost-rimed grass, steam rising where his soles touched. “So they still remember the old tax,” he said, voice like velvet dragged over steel. “What name do you carry to my table, little morsel?”

I meant to whimper. Instead I lifted my chin. “Elara. And I’m not little.”

A flicker of amusement. “You’re mouthy for breakfast.”

He stopped an arm’s length away. Heat pulsed from him, crisping the wild alyssum at his feet. I felt it seep through my thin gown, waking nerves I’d thought frozen dead. He inhaled— tasting the air, tasting me—then frowned.

“Fear usually sours the blood,” he murmured. “It makes the meat tender, passive. You reek of… defiance. It’s cloying.”

“Sorry to spoil your appetite.” My pulse slammed against my ribs, but the words kept coming, sharp stones down a cliff. “If you’re going to eat me, do it. The suspense is undignified.”

His laugh shook the meadow, more vibration than sound, a deep rumble that made the ground hum. “Eat you? Is that the story they tell below?” He leaned closer, his breath a warm caress against my chilled cheek. “The tithe was never about sustenance. It was about obedience. A reminder that your kind lives because we allow it.”

I stared, the old tales unraveling. “Then what happens to them? The others?”

His glowing eyes held mine. “They are given a choice. Most choose a swift return to the earth. A few… linger, as servants, until time claims them. None have ever tasted my fire as you are about to.”

“Why?” The question escaped before I could cage it.

“Because,” he said, tracing a claw-tipped finger along my jaw, “they bowed. You bristle. It’s a rare vintage, defiance in the face of annihilation.” In one motion he snapped the rope with his claws, caught me as I stumbled, and pressed me to the standing stone. Warm stone—because he leaned against it.

“Humans,” he said, almost tender. “So impatient for endings.”

My wrists burned where the rope had been; his thumb traced the abraded skin, and the hurt vanished, replaced by tingling warmth that ran straight between my thighs. I bit back a gasp. He smelled of pine sap and sulfur, smoke and something metallic, like starlight hammered into scent.

I’d expected teeth. Instead he studied my face as if it were parchment written in a lost language. Minutes passed, maybe centuries—dragon-time, I learned later. At last he released me.

“I revoke the tithe,” he declared to no one, to the sky. “Tell your village the pact is broken.”

My knees buckled. He caught me again, effortless, and swung me into his arms. “Easy, little spark. I’m not sparing you out of mercy. You interest me. That interest has a price.”

He carried me upslope, each stride eating yards. I should have protested—struggled, demanded, something—but the cradle of his arms felt inevitable, like gravity had waited my whole life to pull me here. I saw the world from a new height: the distant, pathetic smoke of my village, the brutal beauty of scree slopes and jagged peaks, the eagle circling on a thermal.

“What is your name?” I asked, my voice small against the wind.

He looked down, ember eyes glinting. “Kaelith. Keeper of the Southern Crag. Last of the Fire-Drakes who treated with your ancestors when they were mere huts in the mud.” There was a weight to his words, a loneliness as vast as the ranges around us.

We entered a cave mouth hidden behind a waterfall that roared with spring melt. Inside, the air shimmered with heat. Furnace breath. Walls glazed black by centuries of his presence, veins of raw crystal pulsing with a faint inner light. He set me on a ledge of polished obsidian, warm to the touch, and stepped back.

“Rules,” he said, the word echoing. “While you’re in my domain, you belong to me. Body. Thoughts. Pleasure. Pain. All mine to sample.” His eyes narrowed, the slits contracting. “You may say no once. After that, the word burns.”

My throat dried to dust. “And if I say it now?”

He tilted his head, considering. “I escort you down the mountain. You’ll starve or freeze before you reach the tree line, or your own people will stone you for a failed sacrifice who broke their precious pact. But the choice, little spark, is yours.”

Outside waited cold, shame, and a village that had served me up trussed. Inside—him. Fire. A fate written in languages older than my bones. A strange, thrilling ember ignited in my chest. It wasn’t just survival. It was a terrible, magnificent curiosity.

I stayed silent.

He smiled, slow and wicked. “Good lamb.”

---

He fed me first—bread that steamed when he tore it, berries that burst into spiced wine on the tongue, water kept liquid by the cup resting in his palm alone. My stomach filled; my nerves stretched tighter. I watched him move through the cavern, pretending not to watch: the flex of calves, the lick of firelight across a sculpted back, the heavy weight tracing the inside of his thigh when he turned. Even in human form, the dragon was hung like legend.

“See something you crave, little spark?” he asked without turning.

Heat flooded my cheeks—and lower. “Just… wondering what happens next.”

“Next,” he said, facing me, “you learn the cost of your curiosity.” He didn’t move closer, just held my gaze. “The others wept. They pled. They tried to bargain with gods I’ve watched turn to dust. You stand there, smelling of fear yes, but also of… potential. It is a fragrance that has been absent from this mountain for a thousand years. It makes me wonder what a mortal flame feels like when it is not snuffed, but fanned.”

“I’m not a flame,” I whispered.

“Aren’t you?” He took a single step forward. “Everything you are is combustion. Brief, bright, hungry for air. I am a conflagration. Eternal, patient, and vast. Tonight, we will see what happens when a spark meets the forge.”

The declaration hung in the heated air. This was no longer about a sacrifice. It was an experiment. A communion. The terror of it was almost sweeter than the fear of being eaten.

He crossed to me in three strides, knelt, and parted my knees with insolent ease. “Now,” he said, “I taste what’s mine.”

His mouth covered mine, and the world inverted. Flame poured down my throat—not pain, but pure consuming warmth, a distillation of power and age that stole my breath and gave it back as steam. I moaned into him, fingers finding his horns. They were hot iron, grounding me. He swallowed the sound, angling deeper, tongue coiling in slow, ancient patterns that made my legs jerk. I kissed him back, a clumsy, human mimicry of his artistry, and he growled approval into my mouth.

When he broke the kiss, my lips throbbed, swollen with dragon-fire. He studied them, satisfied. “Now the rest.”

He peeled my gown away like bark from a sapling, baring every secret I owned. The cavern air, hot as it was, raised gooseflesh on my skin. I tried to cover myself; he shackled my wrists in one hand above my head.

“Don’t hide,” he growled. “I want every flush, every tremor. I want to see the map of your surrender.”

With his free hand he charted me: collarbones, the slope of breast, the tight peak of a nipple that he rolled until I gasped, the dip of navel, the wet evidence already painting my inner thighs. Each touch branded. When he circled my clit, I arched, a cry echoing off the stone vault.

“Sensitive,” he purred. “And honest. Good.”

He slid lower, spreading me like wings, and licked—one long, devastating stripe from entrance to apex. My hips bucked; his rumble vibrated through me, a dragon’s purr shaking my very bones. He devoured me slowly, lazily, as if centuries provided ample appetite. Fire danced beneath my skin, pooling where his tongue flicked and probed, coiling tighter with every lazy suck, every graze of a fang that promised ruin. He explored me like a new continent, learning the rhythms that made me shake, the spots that made me sob. I was begging in languages I didn’t know, words reduced to pleas and sighs.

“Please—”

He lifted his mouth, chin glistening, eyes molten. “Say my name when you shatter.”

“I don’t know it.”

A flash of teeth. “Kaelith.”

He returned to my cunt, thrust two fingers deep, curled them just so, and his tongue found my clit again. The orgasm ripped through me like a storm breaking over the peaks, blinding and deafening, and I screamed his name to the stalactites, the sound raw and triumphant.

---

I expected taking after tasting. Instead he wrapped me in furs that smelled of sun and stone, held me while aftershocks quaked through my limbs, whispering in draconic—words of smoke and promise that wound around my soul. I drifted, cheek to his chest, listening to a heartbeat older than kingdoms, a slow, tectonic drum.

When I woke, he was across the cavern, arms crossed, studying me as though I might vanish. A low fire crackled in a pit, and the crystal veins in the walls pulsed in a slow, sleepy rhythm.

“Why?” I asked, voice raspy with sleep and spent passion.

“Why spare you? Or why make you come so hard you wept?”

“Either. Both.”

He crossed to me, knelt so we were eye level. “The taste of fear bores me. It is the same in every era. But curiosity—ah, that ages like mead. It ferments. It intoxicates.” He brushed a strand of hair from my face, his touch surprisingly gentle. “And you, little spark, burn brighter than fear. You asked ‘why.’ You looked at me, not just at your death. That is a flame worth tending.”

“For how long?” The question felt dangerous. “Until you grow bored of this vintage too?”

His thumb stroked my lower lip. “Dragons do not bore easily. We collect experiences. Yours is… singular. A mortal who chooses the fire instead of fleeing it.” He paused. “Your village’s pact was a shadow of an older one. My kind once walked among yours, sharing knowledge, sharing… more. That trust was broken. The tithe was the scar left behind. A punishment. You are the first in an age who makes me consider if a scar might heal.”

The confession hung between us, vast and heavy. He was not just a beast of appetite; he was a being of memory and immense, lonely history. I was not just a victim, but a participant in something ancient.

I leaned into his touch, boldness blooming where shame should root. “Your turn.”

A raised brow.

“You gave me fire,” I said, sitting up, the furs falling to my waist. “Let me return the gift.”

Surprise flickered across his face—then something hotter, hungrier. He rose, a magnificent statue of muscle and might, and undid the simple leather tie at his hips. The fabric fell. His cock jutted, thick and flushed, veins ridged like rivers of lava leading to a broad, weeping crown. I swallowed, nerves sparking anew. I’d seen lust in village boys, fumbled in barns—but this was of a different scale, a different danger. This was an instrument of a god.

“On your knees, Elara.”

I obeyed, the stone cool through the fur beneath my knees. He guided himself to my lips, brushed the bead of pre-come across them like war-paint, salty and potent. I opened, and he slid in—slow, inexorable, stretching my jaw, stealing my breath. Flame pulsed under his skin, a contained inferno, as if his very essence might be molten. I sucked, my tongue tracing the ridges, my hands bracing on thighs of marble heat. He groaned, fingers tangling in my hair—not forcing, simply claiming, feeling each withdrawal and surrender.

I found a rhythm, lost it to the overwhelming presence of him, found another guided by the subtle flex of his hips. His growls ricocheted off the walls, syncing with the pound of my own heart. The cave seemed to grow warmer, the crystal lights brighter. When he thickened, a telltale tension coiling through him, he gently tugged me free.

“Not yet.” His voice was gravel and embers. He lifted me as if I weighed nothing, laid me back on the obsidian ledge, and parted my thighs with a knee. “I need inside you when I burn.”

He pressed in—inch by scorching inch. My body resisted, then yielded, my sheath molded to dragon steel. Pleasure blurred with stretch, a borderline pain that melted into incandescent sensation as the fire in him licked where we joined, soothing and exciting all at once. When he bottomed out, we stayed still, joined completely, breathing one steam-cloud into the shimmering air.

“Look at me,” he commanded.

I opened eyes I hadn’t realized were shut. His irises were furnace-bright, slit pupils blown wide with desire, reflecting my own flushed, awestruck face.

“You feel that?” he asked, rolling his hips in a slow, devastating circle. “That is mine claiming yours. Not as property. As territory. As a hearth I choose to light.”

Words left me—only moans and whimpers remained. He moved then, his pace building from that deep, possessive grind to powerful, driving strokes. Each thrust dragged flame along every nerve ending. The cavern glowed brighter, the crystal veins blazing as if our coupling fed hidden forges deep in the mountain’s heart. He lifted my leg over his shoulder, angled deeper, and the world narrowed to the drag of him, the slap of skin, the musk of fur and sex and smoke.

A second climax built, vaster than the first, a tsunami gathering in the deep. I clawed his back, sure I drew blood, not caring. His wings unfurled in a shimmer of heat-haze—great, shadowy membranes of iridescent scale and bone that filled the chamber with their span—then vanished again as he fought for control.

“Come for me, Elara,” he growled, the words vibrating through my core. “Milk my fire. Let me feel you burn around me.”

He thrust once, twice, a third time, and bit the juncture of my neck—not to break skin, but to brand. I exploded, inner muscles clenching in frantic waves, vision whiting out into pure sensation. He roared—a sound pure and inhuman, of triumph and release—and poured into me, heat flooding so intense and profound I felt branded from within, filled with a liquid sunlight that seeped into my very marrow.

---

We lay tangled for an eternity, his wings ghosting into nothing while afterglow smoked around us like morning mist. My cunt throbbed, dripping evidence of dragon spend that felt more like a sacrament than a violation. I should have felt conquered. Instead I felt… seen. Worshipped, as if the mountain itself knelt. A strange peace settled over me, threaded through with the hum of his power now living under my skin.

He traced idle patterns on my shoulder. “The others,” I said softly, later, as we shared more of the magical bread. “The tithes. Did you ever…?”

“Take them?” He finished the thought. “No. Their fear was a pall. It extinguished any spark. I offered them service or sleep. Most chose sleep.” He looked at me, his gaze inscrutable. “You are the first in centuries who has shared my fire. The first who has kindled it.”

“Why?” I pressed, needing to understand the chasm between me and those other girls.

“Because you are still here,” he said simply. “Asking questions. Your defiance was not just stubbornness. It was life, fighting for more life. A dragon respects that above all else. We are creatures of immense life. To see a flicker of that same will in something so brief… it is captivating.”

Days blurred. He showed me parts of his domain—a hidden hot spring where steam rose in plumes, a library of stone tablets inscribed with lost histories, a high ledge where the stars seemed close enough to pluck. He spoke of ages past, of flying on wings that blotted out the sun, of watching empires rise and fall like campfires in the night. I spoke of my small life—the stifling piety of the village, the hidden dreams I’d whispered to the goats, the feeling that the mountains were not a prison wall but a calling.

The intimacy between us deepened, woven with words as much as with touch. The fire he had seeded in me did not fade; it simmered, a constant, low warmth in my belly, a connection to him that thrummed when he was near.

Hours later—or was it days?—he took me again, bending me over a basalt bench polished smooth by time, his hands gripping my hips as he pounded into me from behind, torches guttering in the wind of our motion. And again under a cold blanket of starlight near the cave mouth, the waterfall mist hissing to steam against his superheated skin as he pinned me against the rock, my cries lost in the roar of the falls. Each time was different—fierce, tender, demanding, playful—but each time the fire inside me grew, and the bond between us, unspoken but palpable, strengthened. I learned his body’s rhythms, the places that made him shudder, the draconic words he gasped when he was close. I learned that my pleasure fueled his own in a feedback loop of escalating heat.

I understood now: he hadn’t lied. I was his. Body. Thoughts. And pleasure—endless, devastating pleasure. But I was also, in some way he did not yet voice, his companion. His spark in the long, dark night of his immortality.

---

Eventually, a mundane hunger for familiar food outweighed the all-consuming hunger for him. A longing to see the sky from the meadow, to make a choice from a place of strength, not captivity, tugged at me. We dressed—he conjured leathers for me, supple as smoke and warm as a hug—and descended toward the treeline. I could have stayed forever in the heated dark, but stories need endings, even temporary ones. I needed to look at my old life with my new eyes.

At the meadow of the standing stone, he stopped. The rope fragments were still there, bleached by sun. “Beyond this, you’re free.” He offered a small smile, rare and crooked. “Your village will see you alive. The broken pact is my word, not yours. They will fear, but they cannot touch you. Or…” He paused. “You can remain—my mate, my flame-heart. The mountain is large enough for two. Your life will be measured in my centuries, not your decades. You will burn, not fade.”

The village glinted far below, smoke rising from hearths that had offered me up. I thought of my mother’s resigned tears, the priest’s pious relief, the narrow lanes and narrower minds. I thought of a life of gossip, labor, and slow suffocation. Then I looked at Kaelith—at eyes holding galaxies of fire, at the being who had seen my defiance and called it beautiful, who had stoked a flame in me I never knew I carried. I thought of the warmth in my core, his constant presence in my senses, the vast, terrible, wonderful world he had shown me existed beyond the valley.

Choice felt laughably simple. It was no choice at all.

I took his hand, his fingers lacing through mine. “Take me home.”

His grin turned fierce, blazing with a joy that lit up his ancient face. Wings burst forth, real and solid this time, vast sheets of scaled leather and bone that caught the sun, wind battering the grass flat. He scooped me against his chest, caged in living heat and power. With a mighty leap, we left the earth, the cliffs falling away beneath us in a dizzying rush. I laughed—wild, terrified, alive—my hair whipping like banners behind us.

Below, the village shrank, became a meaningless smudge, a forgotten dream. Above, the peaks split the sky, and somewhere among them waited a cavern where fire waited to taste me again and again, to teach me, to hold me. To be my home.

I buried my face in his neck, inhaled dragon, smoke, and something that might have been love, or the ancient, profound echo of it. Inside, his fire pulsed where he’d seeded me, a warmth that would never fade, a promise written in the oldest language of all.

I had come to the mountain to die. Instead, I learned what it meant to burn—and to be the flame that keeps the eternal dark at bay.