The grand bedchamber of the Draconic Palace was lit only by the soft flicker of a dozen crystal chandeliers, their light catching on Ignis's long, obsidian-black horns like captured starlight. The air was thick with the cloying sweetness of the aphrodisiac—his daughter's "practical joke" gone catastrophically wrong—and every breath felt like molten honey sliding down his throat.
Ignis, The Dragon Lord, The Mighty Dragon Of Night, lay sprawled on silk sheets that had once been pristine. His robe had slipped open entirely now, baring the hard planes of his dark chocolatey chest, the carved ridges of an eight-pack that flexed involuntarily with each ragged inhale. Dark hair clung damply to his forehead and spilled sideways across the pillow. His golden eyes—usually sharp enough to cut through steel—were hazy, unfocused with humiliated heat.
And straddling his hips was Ash.
A human.
Small, infuriatingly charming for a human.
The young man had discarded his own tunic somewhere in the last ten frantic minutes. Sweat glistened along his collarbones, his butter blonde hair sticking up in wild tufts. His green pupils were blown wide, his porcelain cheeks flushed crimson, but the wicked little smile playing at his lips had not faded.
"Your Highness," Ignis snarled, voice gravel-rough and trembling at the edges, "remove yourself. Immediately. Or I swear on every ancestor—"
"You'll chop off my head?" Ash finished for him, breathless but amused. He leaned down until their noses nearly brushed. "You've been promising that since the moment I first touched your tail."
Ignis bared fangs—sharp even in this mostly-human shape. "I mean it this time."
"Sure you do." Ash's fingers traced the line of one gleaming horn, feather-light. "That's why you're shaking like a leaf and your tail is wrapped around my ankle like you never want me to leave."
The tail in question—thick, long, scaled, black with faint rich brown undersides—twitched guiltily and tightened instead of retreating.
Ignis made a strangled sound that was half growl, half something dangerously close to a whine. "That—is—not—voluntary. The poison—"
"Aphrodisiac," Ash corrected gently, almost tenderly. His thumb rubbed slow circles at the base of the horn. "Your daughter really outdid herself. To think she would use the incense I gave her in such way."
" So it was you. I will punish both of you for your atrocity."
" You will? I thought you liked pampering her." Ash laughed—soft, wrecked—and the sound vibrated through both of them where their bodies pressed together. He lowered his head again, lips brushing the sensitive ridge of the horn before he dragged his tongue along its smooth length.
Ignis's entire body arched off the mattress with a choked moan. His claws shredded silk. "Stop—ngh—whatever you're doing—"
"What I'm doing?" Ash kissed the tip of the horn, then grazed his teeth very lightly over it. Ignis bucked helplessly beneath him, a full-body shudder rolling through muscle and scale. "Can't you see? You just... sound really good when you're falling apart, Your Excellency."
Ignis's glare could have ignited kindling, but the flush crawling down his neck and across his chest ruined the effect. "Stop. Didn't you said you were going to marry....my daughter."
" Yes I did. But you see? I've never looked at your daughter like I've looked at you. " Ash grinned against warm skin as he kissed his way down from horn to jaw. "You were the only one in my mind ever since I've first laid my eyes on you." He nipped the sharp line of Ignis's jaw. " So freaking Gorgeous... I couldn't look away. "
"You were just playing with my daughter then—"
Ignis couldn't finish his sentence, Ash cut him off by kissing him properly this time—slow, filthy, thorough. Ignis let out a soft whimper. He couldn't believe he's getting flutters in his stomach by a simple kiss and a tiny human's hinted desires.
The kiss deepened until Ignis forgot how to breathe through anything but Ash's mouth.
It wasn't elegant. It was desperate—teeth clacking once, tongues sliding too fast, too hungry. Ignis's hands—still clawed, still deadly—came up to grip Ash's narrow waist, not to push him away this time but to hold him there, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise pale human skin. Ash hissed into the kiss at the sting, but he only pressed closer, grinding down in a slow, deliberate roll of hips that made Ignis's tail lash once against the sheets before curling even tighter around Ash's calf.
When they finally broke apart, both were panting. A thin silver thread of saliva connected their lips for one obscene second before it snapped.
Ignis stared up at the human perched on top of him like some victorious conqueror—small, flushed, wrecked, and entirely too pleased with himself.
"You…" Ignis's voice cracked on the single word. He cleared his throat, tried again. "You dare."
"I do dare," Ash whispered, forehead resting against Ignis's. I've been imagining this for a long time. Ever since I first saw you. "
Ignis's golden eyes flickered—anger, disbelief, something softer and far more dangerous underneath.
"Liar."
"Truth," Ash countered. He shifted his weight, deliberately dragging himself along the hard, straining length still trapped beneath silk and leather. Ignis's hips jerked upward on instinct; a low, broken sound tore out of his throat.
Ash's grin turned feral. "See? Your body believes me even if your pride doesn't."
Ignis bared fangs again, but the gesture lacked menace now. It looked more like surrender dressed up as a threat.
"The aphrodisiac—" he started.
"Is making everything feel ten times better," Ash finished for him. "Not making you want things you didn't already want." He leaned in until their lips brushed with every word. "Admit it. Even without the incense, you've been watching me. Every council meeting. Every banquet. Every time I 'accidentally' brushed your tail in the corridor."
Ignis's silence was answer enough.
Ash kissed him again—slower this time, coaxing rather than claiming. Ignis resisted for perhaps three heartbeats before he opened for him, letting the human lead, letting himself be kissed like something precious instead of feared.
When Ash pulled back, he rested their foreheads together again.
"Let me have you," he murmured. "Just once. Let me show you I'm not playing."
Ignis's claws flexed against Ash's sides. "And if I say no?"
"Then I'll stop." Ash's voice was soft, serious for the first time. "I'll get off you, leave this room, and never speak of it again. You'll still have your pride. You'll still have your throne. And I'll still look at you the same way tomorrow morning across the breakfast table and hate myself for it."
Ignis stared at him.
At the sweat-damp curls falling into ocean blue eyes. At the way Ash's hands trembled where they braced on Ignis's chest—not from fear, but from the sheer force of wanting.
" I—"
Before Ignis could respond, a pair of soft knock came from the door.
The knock hit like cold water.
Whatever remained of Ignis's dignity—battered, shredded, silk-deep in chaos—snapped back into place like a war banner caught by sudden wind.
His golden eyes cleared.
" Father? Are you inside? I couldn't find prince Asher anywhere so I was wondering if you've seen him."
Seraphina.
One heartbeat of calculation. That was all he needed.
"I have not seen him," Ignis called back, voice perfectly level, the Dragon Lord returning from wherever the aphrodisiac had temporarily exiled him.
Then he looked at Ash.
Ash, who was already reading the situation in Ignis's expression and opening his mouth to say something inevitably charming and catastrophically ill-timed—
Ignis moved.
For a man half-dissolved by enchanted incense, he was still, emphatically, a dragon.
One arm hooked around Ash's waist. The window—tall, arched, conveniently unlatched because Ignis ran warm and the night air had been pleasant three hours ago before everything went sideways—swung open with a flick of his tail.
"Wait—wait—"
Ash did not wait. Ash flew.
Specifically, he flew outward in a graceful arc through the third-story window of the Draconic Palace's east wing, briefly silhouetted against the moon, and landed with a muffled crash in the ornamental hedgerow directly below—the one shaped like a coiling serpent that the groundskeepers were insufferably proud of.
Ignis straightened his robe. Ran one hand through his hair with his shaky hands. Picked a shred of silk off his claw with the precise dignity of a man who had absolutely not just been coming apart thirty seconds ago.
"Come in," he said.
The door opened. Seraphina—a beautiful young dragon, with bright red hair like flames, and golden eyes similar to her father—wearing an expression of profound and unconvincing innocence—peered around the frame. Her gaze swept the room. Rumpled sheets. Overturned side table.
"...Were you sleeping, Father?"
"Meditating," Ignis said.
"Your robe is—"
"Meditating," he repeated, with finality.