Tallana x Zharriev

	"I shouldn't have lost my temper. Gods above, what was I thinking?" Tallana fumed under her breath, berating herself as she slammed her room door open. Through long habit and practice, she paused after entering, allowing Zharriev to follow. Her familiar, who had once been the size of a cat, was now as big as a jackal, and far longer- over three hundred pounds of muscle, scale, claw and fang. Long gone were the days of him riding on her shoulder, or draped over her neck. Idly, she missed that- she recalled enjoying the feel of his scales on her skin, their slight warmth, the faint smell of ozone he had left around her.

	The distraction was momentary, and failed to take her anger from her. Slamming the door with pent up anger, she turned to storm off, before realizing she had nowhere to go. Large as the inn's room was, it was a single room, bed crammed against one wall, chest at its foot, and a desk against the back wall. The remaining room, though quite adequately spacious, wasn't quite enough to pace in without feeling silly, and she already felt like a failure enough as it was.

	"Technically, untrue. And, at a guess, it was something about how hollow his facade was." Zharriev murmured from the bed. It creaked quietly, but was apparently sturdy enough to support three hundred pounds of dragon. He sprawled, taking up Tallana's second choice location for fuming. Annoyed, but hardly surprised, she snorted and spun the desk chair around, resisting the urge to incinerate or smash it. Her temper was what had caused her problems, she wasn't about to give in again.

	"I... But why was I thinking that? He's never done anything to suggest he's trying to deceive me-" Tallana muttered, bewildered but unable to argue. Her anger dimmed as she tried to make sense of her conflicting emotions. On one hand, she did remember an almost girlish excitement, on the other, she still felt a quiet, vehement loathing for her erstwhile date.   "I remember, just last night, I was hoping for today, I couldn't wait to see him again."

	"If I recall, the first thing he ever did to you was laugh at your power. It was not until you, quite literally, saved his life, that he thought you were anything more than a whore trying to con him." Zharriev's voice was a quiet growl, but had an acidic tone he usually reserved for doubting her connection to reality. Given his words, she supposed it might be merited.

	"It was a mistake, though. He-" the half-elf said, resting her head in her hands.

	"-really thought you were a whore? And that's a reason to like him." Zharriev replied caustically. "It's been clear from day one what he wanted. He just happens to have realized he has to go about it in a different way."

	"No, he never-!" Tallana shouted, stopping abruptly. Zharriev was not at all fazed, having provoked the half-elf's anger numerous times before. They were... 'close'. She did not tend to remain angry with him, and he found himself far readier to forgive her than most people. Perhaps it was part of being a familiar, or perhaps they just meshed well. Zharriev thought the latter, though, particularly given his recent ability to escape her control.

	As he grew, so too did his power, and it had reached the point that the ritual a much younger Tallana had used to connect them was not as all-powerful as it had once been. And despite being much more capable of, say, eating her at this point, he had even less interest in it than all those years ago. He'd actually grown quite fond of the sorceress, and felt a certain possessiveness concerning her. And perhaps... No, not perhaps. He was reluctant to admit it, but he most definitely felt a quiet attraction to the half-elf. Perhaps more, considering what had led to the current conversation- his brief distraction proved to his detriment, and he failed to notice her bewildered tone take on a quiet, sinister cast. "It's like I just went to bed dreaming about him, and woke up loathing him, jealous even..."

	"I wonder why?" Zharriev replied sarcastically, before he noticed her gaze had shifted to him. Their eyes locked for a moment, and then suddenly she was sitting up, and he could again detect her smoldering rage flaring back to life through their faint mindlink.

	"You!" Tallana hissed. "You! You hate him, and you spent last night letting that bleed through! It's your damn fault that I woke up as, as some kind of psychotic bitch!"

	"Oh, sure; you begin to notice his flaws, and it's my fault for not being infatuated with the stinking elf-" Zharriev hissed, attempting to brazen out the painfully accurate suspicion.

	"WHY? Zhar, you bastard, why do you hate him- hate ME so?" Tallana hissed, rising to stand before the bed, glaring daggers down at him. "How have I so offended you that you are hell-bent on ruining any happiness I could have?"

	"You exaggerate." Zharriev replied calmly, refusing to be intimated as he stared back up at her. In all honesty, her anger was not all his doing- Even before they met, she had always been prone to violent rages, or unexpected viciousness. Her blood, he had assumed. Somewhere up her ancestral tree, he suspected a dragon- Perhaps a black or a red, both well known for their cruelty and vindictiveness... But then again, perhaps even a blue like himself. "Besides. All I could have done was let you feel my emotions on the matter- I could hardly have caused you to hate him if you did not share my doubts." Zharriev added reasonably, attempting to weather her rage. Her hollow laughter was not promising.

	"Oh, really? Like you did in Tethar? And that aasimar last year? It's so clear now-" Tallana said, voice suddenly dropping dangerously low. It crystallized in her mind, a half-dozen scenes, not all of them as dear as the most recent, but all of them ruined by the viper whispering in her mind.  "-any time in the past year I've gotten remotely close to someone- *threatened* to get close to someone, you've poisoned me against them. Haven't you?" The tip of  Zharriev's tail twitched at the shouted question, but that was all.

	"While I approve of the paranoia you're developing, you may have taken it too far." Zharriev replied, his voice as cutting as he could make it.

	"Haven't. You?" Tallana reiterated, grinding out the words. Zharriev realized he was cornered, and for a moment, considered lying. He could probably do so, even- But despite the circumstances, he was still unwilling to break the trust that had come between them- first, due to his inability to lie to her; more recently, because he had yet to choose to break it. Manipulation, misleading, half truths, all had always been allowed, but he was not quite ready to give outright falsehoods.

	"Yes." Zharriev answered after a moment's pause. He finally deigned to react to her towering rage, shifting and lifting his head off of her pillow, meeting her livid gaze.

	A thousand things passed through Tallana's mind, not the least of which were a hundred variations of  'Why?'.  Wrath, though, was greater. Her blood boiled, and she felt the very magic around her reacting to it, but a gesture away, waiting on her command, her will- a moment's indecision vanished, and she lashed out. The air itself responded to her call, chilling and moving at her command, solidifying into shards of ice, hammering down on her own familiar.

	Zharriev, though, was far less fragile than the tiny wyrmling he had once been. Surprised, but not caught unaware, he dodged left, feeling the majority of the cold shards deflect off his scales as he put the chair in between them. Tallana responded by shooting a beam of fire at him, burning a hole through the chair in an instant, scorching the side of his neck. The perils of staying still demonstrated, Zharriev darted further, surprisingly agile for slab of scale and muscle. A second beam of fire missed narrowly as he reached his aim, half a revolution, Tallana facing him, back to the bed. As she raised a hand, a gesture no doubt intended to bring down another assault, he leaped. His wings fluttered for maximum lift and he shot up at her, catching her full in her buxom chest and driving her back into the wall.

	They impacted with a solid thump, and the bed gave a loud creak as they collapsed onto it in an ungainly heap. Tallana's spell, interrupted by a few hundred pounds of dragon, and Zharriev's landing interrupted by Tallana. Tallana seemed disoriented from the tackle and impact, and Zharriev took the opportunity to disentangle his limbs from her. Shifting quickly, he managed to settle himself down across her stomach, comfortably pinning one of her hands. Tail lashing, he waited patiently for the half-elf to reorient herself.

	As Tallana's mind cleared, she first became aware of the massive weight on her abdomen. It was difficult to ignore. The second thing she noticed was the sound of his tail, rhythmically lashing to her right. Familiar with the sound, she  ignored it. Eyes still closed, she attempted to sit up, hoping to dump Zharriev off the bed. Though Zhar was only on the edge of the bed, he still had sufficient advantage. Even when she managed to loose her trapped hand, she couldn't stop Zhar from calmly seizing it in one of his claws. Defeated there, she gave in, turning to meet her familiar's eyes. Her anger remained, but was tempered. She'd lost control again, and self loathing had taken the place of some of her fury. Shifting uncomfortably, she finally spoke.

	"Why? Why would you *do* this to me?" she asked, voice cracking- Tallana was ashamed, Zhar, mildly taken aback. "Why?"

	"Well. That was the question, wasn't it?" Zharriev thought. He blinked for a long moment, closing his eyes as he attempted to muster the will to tell her. In the end, he failed. He simply couldn't bring himself to say it. He settled for the next best thing he could think of, the truth.

	"Because I do not wish to share."

	"Share..?" Tallana repeated, confused and still resentful. She fell silent, as she suddenly suspected the full depth of the dragon's statement. "You mea-"

	"Do you remember the first weeks after our compact?" Zharriev spoke quietly, his words possessing of an almost sinister tone. "When you were so new to the entire affair. Sharing everything with another, from your room down to your very thoughts." He didn't need to continue, he knew. The color had drained from Tallana's face at his question, and was already replacing itself with an intensifying flush. She was acutely aware of what he was referring to... But his singed neck still stung, and giving into a moment's cruelty, he continued, hammering it in. "I remember your thoughts, those little, private fantasies." Her cheeks were, if anything, redder than they had been at the height of her anger, and he absently noted the pleasant sensation of her chest rising and falling minutely beneath his weight. "If I recall, I had to put an end to them, explaining to you very clearly that I would never be interested in such activities. I was not lying..." Zharriev could have sworn he literally felt her heart rise in her as he held the pause. "...at the time.".

	Tallana stared at him, dumbstruck. His azure cat's-eye pupils stared back, unblinking, and the silence stretched on. It... made sense, though. He *had* changed, changed much, since they first met. She... Well, the ideas he referred to were still there. Her admiration of his agile, powerful form. His scaled body, his fluid movement, and at the time, the raw power even a juvenile dragon exuded. A momentary silent reflection seized her, and she thought of the moments she had held such thoughts recently- scattered, disparate, and always fleeting. He had told her, after all, that he would never reciprocate. Not three weeks ago, she had caught herself watching him with the very thought... Holding it for but a minute before quashing it, and keeping it contained, shielded from him.

	Shock ebbing, Tallana brought her free hand to his neck. He did not react, and after a moment, she pulled him closer- he resisted moving, so instead she pulled herself up, Managing to get herself close enough to kiss him. It was weak apology for trying to kill him, but apparently a welcome one; he returned the kiss deeply, and she felt his tongue pass into her mouth, deftly wrapping itself around her own for a moment, before slipping past. The kiss lasted for only as long as she could hold herself up, though she gasped for air at the end of it. As she panted, she felt Zharriev get up, allowing her both room to breathe and maneuver.

	No further communication was needed; she twisted to lie along the bed, and he moved to remain on top of her as she did. As she reached the desired orientation, though, she brought her hand back up to his shoulder. Not to pull herself up to him, or him down to her- just to feel his skin, muscles rippling beneath scale. As she had always thought, simply feeling him- the heat of his body, the sheer physical power above her, was intensely erotic in itself. Even just feeling him through her robes- she couldn't help but imagine what he would once her clothes were off.

	Zharriev promptly saw to that, though. Lifting his foreleg and extending a single claw, she immediately understood his intent. Though somewhat scared, she remained still as he slipped the razor-sharp claw beneath the collar of her modest robe, ripping a smooth cut down one side of her body, then the other.  Tallana felt almost disappointed as he stepped back, continuing the process down to the hem of the robes. She was quickly distracted, though, as she felt something brush against her leg. Lifting her head with an almost shameful eagerness, she glanced down between their two bodies, and saw the protruding pink member. Her angle was not very good, but as far as she could tell, it was growing rapidly. She could find no wrong with that.

	As Zharriev finished his cutting, he flicked the front of her robe away, revealing her underclothes. They provided even less resistance than the robe had, and Tallana's cheeks blazed as she felt him pause over her panties, the bottom of which was already soaked. He removed them without comment, though, returning to his position straddling her. Tallana fancied for a moment she could feel the tip of his cock, just a breath away from her slit. She moved to look, but was interrupted by Zharriev lowering his head, and kissing her again, deeply. If she thought the first kiss had been intense, this one blew it away- by the time he ended it, she was gasping for air, and would have been worried about suffocation if she hadn't been so obsessed with tasting as much of him as she could.

	"Tallana," He growled. He rarely said her name; he didn't communicate with anyone other than her by choice, so there was little need to, who he was addressing was never in question. Still, it was probably because of the circumstances that she felt a chill run down her spine, intense enough that she visibly shivered. He paused, enjoying the sight, particularly as the tremors shot through her breasts. Her nipples were already erect, and almost idly, he raised a claw, extending a single talon to flick her right tit painfully. Her only thought, though, was that she desperately wanted more.

	"Please, Zhar. Take me, I'm begging you." She breathed, panting beneath him. It was a request he was only too happy to fulfill, but there were certain things to deal with first. That didn't stop him from shifting slightly, bringing the tip of his penis to rest against her slightly-agape pussy. He heard her hiss quietly, slowly trying to move against him.

	"Say you are mine." Again, he growled. His voice was not very loud, but it resonated, and she could feel it in reverberate in him wherever their bodies touched. It was a delightful feeling, but given her state of mind, just about any contact would have been.

	"I'm yours, Zhar." Tallana replied instantly, breathless. "I-" Her words were overwhelmed in a sudden, deep, moan as Zharriev lowered himself onto her. The tip at her lips, already slightly lubricated, slid in easily. The form was irregular, and she felt a series of oddly shaped nodules bump through her, the whole member rapidly increasing in girth. And increase it did; the moan of raw pleasure she had not been able to hold down persisted, but began to grow an edge of pain as he kept lowering himself- first an inch, then another, then two more, then four, all at the same slow-but-inexorable speed- by the time the tip finally came to rest in her, she was stretched painfully wide, and felt painfully full. She would not, however, have traded it for anything. His body lay on hers, skin and rippling muscle, her erect nipples crushed beneath his scales. She could barely move under his weight. It was fabulously erotic.

	Though his entrance had been slow and implacable, his exit was a rapid thing, extracting a deep moan from Tallana as she climaxed on the nodule-studded organ pulling out of her. Zharriev did not seem to notice, almost immediately starting back down. It didn't hurt as much this time, but she was still left with the wonderful feeling of fullness, not to mention being trapped beneath him. Not that she would have left if she could.

	Her companion continued the process, filling her almost painfully full, then pulling out at an almost mechanical pace. Slowly, though, Tallana noticed him increasing the tempo. At that point, though, the only thing she might have cared to do would be encourage him- she was lying on her back, being fucked relentlessly by a dragon, and enjoying it more than anything. She didn't even notice it- shaking in the euphoria of her third orgasm- as Zharriev lifted his right foreclaw from by her shoulder. Didn't notice, that was, until she felt him reach between them, grasping her breast firmly, the tips of his talons just barely digging into her tender flesh. The mounds seemed perfectly sized to fit in his claws, and without anything approaching actual coherency, Tallana accepted it as proof that this was meant to be. She moaned, and managed to gather enough presence of mind to whisper his name, glancing up at his inhuman visage. Only due to her long relation with him could she read his expression, see the naked desire in his eyes, desire she returned whole-heartedly.

	"*Beg* to be mine, 'lana." Zharriev snarled, though obviously with some effort. The relentless pace was obviously getting to him. Tallana wanted nothing more than to obey, but found it difficult to do so, her breath being taken away almost as soon as she could catch it. Realizing the problem, Zharriev brought himself to a halt, drawing out of her slowly, juices and lubricants dripping down his shaft, connecting the two of them. He waited, hiding his impatience, for Tallana to catch her breath,- straddled over her, foreclaw firmly gripping her breast. Perhaps a bit too firmly; beads of blood had welled against the half-elf's pale skin, where the tip of his claws had finally broken it.

	"Zhar- please-" she gasped, "I am- I want to be yours. Please, let me be yours, Zharriev. I want- *beg* to be yours." The words spilled out of her, heartfelt, earnest, desperate. She would have said anything to get him to resume, though she wasn't coherent enough to articulate such.

	What she said was enough, though. In a sudden, swift motion, Zhar lowered himself back onto her, into her, all the way. Though she had thought herself full before, he proved her wrong, sinking in until she could feel his scales wresting against her slit. Agonizingly full, pinned and unable to move in the slightest, beneath him or on him, Tallana shivered in yet another orgasm, finally joined by the dragon. Though he did not shiver, she felt him lock up, releasing his load into her. The seed he shot was unbearably hot and more than she thought she could take- the only reason it didn't flow out of her in a stream was the literal lack of room- Zhar's cock, buried in her, literally left no space, plugging her too tight for any of his cum to escape. Only after a very long minute, when he finally started to pull out, did she feel the bizarre pressure in her belly replaced by the oozing and dripping down her nether regions.

	Tallana rested for a moment, then somehow gathered enough strength to ease herself to the side as Zhar stepped off of her, lying at her side as she made room.

	"I love you... Zhar..." Tallana, with enormous effort, whispered. That was all she could manage, however- she didn't even hear Zhar's low growl in response before she drifted off to sleep, last thoughts focused dimly on the still-wonderful sensation of his scales on her skin. She was not awake to feel his tail wrap around her ankle, nor to feel his forearm stretch out to rest across her breasts. Nor to hear his words-

	"And I,... you, 'lana."