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Haze refused to sweat this job. Refused. She’d made it through the whole Alpha Rho campaign, she came back with three limbs and both kidneys. Playing a bodyguard? Practically free money.
Even if it was her first solo job for the Agency.
Even if the client was a dragon.
“Matriarch Neffren will see you now. This way, please.”
Haze did her best not to gape. The Taals weren’t Humanity’s first alien race, but they were definitely the most memorable. Their, well, everything looked like something out of a fairytale. Or, if you were that kind of a person, a comic book. They looked like lizards. They loved gold and jewelery. They had tails. The dragon nickname took humans about five minutes, and stuck like a grav clamp.
“Matriarch, the Human is here.”
“Miss Pelotti.”
The matriarch stood up from the wide, oblong dais, which looked like a jeweller’s idea of a sunning stone. Her bronze-and-cream scales were immaculately groomed; her movements were slow and sinuous— for a two-meter-tall humanoid alligator, anyway.
She smiled. Well, she opened her mouth slightly and displayed her massive teeth. “Welcome.”
Haze picked at the golden bird embroidered on her uniform jacket, caught herself, and folded her hands behind her back. “Thank you for contracting the services of Phoenix Protective Agency,” she recited.
Matriarch Neffren waved her hand. “Pleasure is all ours. Here. A gesture of our goodwill.”
Without prompting, the assistent fetched an ornately decorated box. She opened it, revealing a wide band of intricately wound metal. Matriarch picked it up with her large, clawed hands, and handed it to Haze.
Haze took it. The piece was worth more than a year of her pay. Of course, she wasn’t allowed to sell it - that would offend the whole Neffren family. “Thank you, mistress.”
The matriarch blinked at Haze with her second set of eyelids. Haze froze. Chandra had told her this was the preferred English address for someone in her position. Did the bastard prank her?
Matriarch Neffren tilted her head back and made a deep, rumbling sound that rattled Haze’s bones. “You are well prepared! Good!”
Haze forced her mouth into a grin. The Taal rumble was as unsettling in person as everyone warned her. It was a originally a warning sound; knowing that they chose it to approximate Human laughter did not help even a little bit.
“Now. This is my first daughter, Kath’mere.”
Haze turned her attention to the third dragon in the room. Compared to the matriarch, she looked almost lithe - again, for a lizard with shoulders like a bored marine. “Mother,” the first daughter drawled, “is this entirely necessary?”
“Yes,” Matriarch Neffren said, indulgent but firm. “We want your travel to be as safe as possible.”
“Very well.” Kath’mere measured Haze from her combat boots to her close-cropped hair. “I am looking forward to our shared adventure, Bodyguard Pelotti.”
Come on, Haze. Free money.
Five days later, Haze was… cautiously optimistic?
That, or seriously fucked.
To a Human used to military accommodations, a private dragon ship was the height of luxury. A very hot, damp, and cramped height of luxury. Everything was gilded and decorated, there were no private sleeping quarters, and most spaces were barely wide enough for a single dragon. Not that it bothered her client. Oh no, it did not.
Dear journal, Haze thought, this week I’ve learned that Taals have no fucking concept of personal space.
The heat and the humidity she’d learned to live with. Even if the necessary tank tops and shorts meant Haze was revealing more of her skin than she ever did since her last war. Kath’mere did not comment on the mottled patterns and textures of Haze’s scars. Haze caught her studying her prosthetic arm a few times, but whatever questions she had, she kept to herself.
Haze wondered what would Matriarch Neffren say about that. The whole point of this was for the first daughter to “experience other worlds”, whatever the hell that meant. On their last pub crawl before the mission, Joffre tried to very earnestly tell her about the historical precedent from Human history. “You’ll be the bear-leader!” they’d exclaimed, enthusiastic, and as drunk as a hangar rat.
That set Chandra off, because of course it did. “Wrong gender, Jo!” he bellowed and wrapped an arm around Haze’s neck until she saw stars. “No bears for little Hazel!”
“Get off me you bastard! Boss is gonna fire you for giving the Agency a bad name.”
“Not me,” Chandra grinned beatifically. “I’m a Senior Employee.”
“And he’s fucking him,” Joffre piped in.
“And I’m fucking him.”
“What are you doing?”
Haze jerked and almost fell out of the dragon-ass-optimized pilot seat. “Reviewing the itinerary for tomorrow,” she told Kath’mere. Well, she did have the tablet in her hands, it ought to count.
Kath’mere hissed - the dragon approximation of a sigh. “Is it in your job description to be such a bore?” She rested her forearms on Haze’s shoulders and leaned in to look at the tablet.
Haze shivered. “Are you cold?” Kath’mere asked.
“No,” Haze said through gritted teeth.
Oh, yeah. The constant body contact was… a problem.
You do not want to fuck the dragon, Haze told herself. You really don’t. As the rumors went, the Taals’ mating could get… intense. And when Taal sex got really spicy? Someone might loose a leg. No, thanks.
The dragons proudly showed off their replacement prostheses, especially if the mating resulted in offspring. Haze wondered if that would make her look sexy to a Taal.
….she did not want to fuck the dragon, dammit.
The Viridian Rose Sanctuary was a tourist trap. Kath’mere had a sarcastic remark for every part of it, and while Haze tried to stay neutral, she had to sympathize. The only saving grace this place had was how the green flowers set off the color of Kath’mere’s scales and the billowy dress she’d chosen to wear.
“Mistress Neffren!”
Haze winced. And then there were these guys.
“Mistress Neffren! Mistress Neffren!” The pack of Johens ambushed them in the middle of the promenade. Clever, that: both exits were too far away to reach unless they wanted to run, and while the promenade windows were large and not too high above the ground, landing in a rose bush was nobody’s idea of fun.
“Would you like this exquisite golden bowl? Just fifty nine cals! Mistress Neffren! This ring! Perfect for your coloring! Mere ninety nine cals! Mistress Neffren!“
The Johens were originally pack-hunting predators. Evolving into a sentient, space-traveling species did not really wean them off of it. They just exchanged “kill and eat” for “force to buy a heap of useless, overpriced crap”. Haze pushed at the nearest Johen, who ignored her and pressed themself back into the huddle surrounding Kath’mere. To a human, they looked like a gaggle of tie-dyed meerkats… if you crossed meerkats with spaceport peddlers.
Kath’mere raised her arms with a look of utter disgust. Haze had been looking at that expression since morning, she knew what those narrowed eyes, curved neck, and half-open mouth meant.
“Mistress Neffren!!!” One of the Johens stumbled and fell onto Kath’mere. They faceplanted into her stomach and wrapped their arms around her waist to keep upright.
Kath’mere tilted her head, inflated her throat, and started to rumble.
Oh, fuck. That? That was not a laugh. Haze picked up the nearest Johen and pushed them toward the exit. “Run, you idiots!” She stepped between them and Kath’mere. “Hey, how about we—“
Kath’mere swept her away with the same ease Haze had been pushing around the Johens. She looked at the - finally! - fleeing sellers, Haze saw her muscles tighten—
“Nope!” Haze backed up three steps and with a running start launched herself at Kath’mere.
She hit her mid-jump. The force of it threw them both against one of the promenade windows. Whatever that thing was made of, it had no chance against the combined weight of an angry dragon and panicking ex-marine. Something cracked, and they were falling.
“That was idiotic.”
Haze looked up from where she’d been smearing antiseptic gel on her scrapes to glare at Kath’mere. “Loosing your shit because a bunch of sellers were slightly irritating? Yes, it was. Mistress.” That probably wasn’t the proper behavior for a bodyguard. Haze did not give a fuck. She’d had to do a lot of groveling for the officials to let them go, and she’d been picking splinters out of herself for at least half an hour.
And the only place to do this was the main cabin, so she had to strip down to her bra with Kath’mere a bare arm-length away. Haze turned her back on the dragon and tried to get some salve somewhere bellow her left shoulderblade. If she had a splinter there, it would have to make its way out on its own.
“Do you need help with that?” Kath’mere asked.
Yes, but she didn’t want it, dammit. Hmm, could she put in her prosthesis the wrong way round, and reach her back that way?
Kath’mere hissed. “Really.”
“Oh, alright,” Haze groaned. She handed the dragon her tube of salve.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the cool, slick slide of a finger over her skin. Haze shivered.
“You keep doing this. You’re not cold,” Kath’mere mused. “And you’re not afraid of me. Then what is this?”
“Sexual attraction.” Oh. What the fuck. Had she hit her head back there!?
Kath’mere shuffled and bent to meet Haze’s eyes - or at least try to, since Haze was not looking at her anytime soon. “Really? Fascinating.” The finger on the left side of her back was joined by another at her left; it slid from her back to her side, and Haze shivered again. “They do say humans will fuck anything.”
Haze turned to glare. “Hey.”
Kath’mere rumbled at her. Her right hand made its way to Haze’s stomach, along the waist of her shorts.
Haze grabbed her wrist. “Stop it, unless you’re offering.”
Kath’mere broke her grip easily. She wrapped her arms around Haze’s waist and pulled her in, until she was pressed against her chest. “What if I am?”
Uh.
“I’m supposed to experience other worlds,” Kath’mere went on. “You do count as another world, don’t you?”
Oh, fuck it. “Am I going to lose an arm?”
Kath’mere tapped one blunt claw on Haze’s prosthesis. “I didn’t know Humans did that.”
“That’s not— I got blown up.”
“A battle wound!” Kath’mere exclaimed.
Haze grimaced. “Are you mocking me?” When in doubt, spell it out. She’d had that phrase repeated so many times at Phoenix that she could recite it half-dead or half-drunk. Usually the latter.
“No.” Kath’mere tugged at the bottom of Haze’s bra. “Will you take this off?”
Haze took a deep, unsteady breath. “What do you want?” she asked Kath’mere. “What are your expectations for this?”
Kath’mere made a new sound, one that Haze hadn’t heard before. It was so deep Haze only really knew about it because she was pressed against her. “I’m… curious,” Kath’mere said. “I know Humans experience mating differently than us, more intensely. I’d like to see that.”
“Wait. So you don’t…” what. “Experience attraction?”
“Attraction?”
Great, a lesson in comparative biology. “Desire to mate with a specific person.”
Kath’mere thought it over. “Not as such. Readiness to mate, yes. Interest in a potential mate, also yes. But it being a specific person? No.”
This would all be more interesting if Kath’mere’s hands stopped moving over Haze’s skin. This place was already hot; now, Haze felt like she’d burn from the inside.
She tried to sweep her braincells together. “How do you choose, then?”
Kath’mere rumbled. “Oh, we fight,” she said with relish. “Unarmed combat. The female sets the rules; the one who wins gets to mate with her.”
“Oh.” That explained the limb-tearing, at least. “And, uh. Do you…” how did you ask an alien what they thought of homosexuality? “Do females mate with females, or males with males?”
Kath’mere twisted around her, just to give her a haughty look. “I never said the potential partners had to be male.” She ran her cheek along the side of Haze’s face. “Do you require more explanations, or can we move on now?”
“Hey. If you’re not… if you’re not getting anything out of it, I’m not sure I’m into it.”
Kath’mere hissed. She ran her left hand up and cupped Haze’s breast through the bra. “That’s a lie.”
Haze drew a sharp breath. Yeah, it was.
Kath’mere hooked her claws in the bottom hem of the bra. “Take this off.”
Fuck all of this. Haze pulled the bra over her head. Kath’mere pushed her down to lie on the floor. At least the bare metal wasn’t cold, Haze thought, mostly to distract herself from the huge reptile looming over her.
Wait, on second thought. Haze gulped. No distraction needed. And here was a kink she didn’t know she’d had.
Kath’mere ran a hand over her left breast - that is, her only breast. “You’re so soft,” she wondered.
Haze blinked. She looked down at herself, but… yeah, still looking as if she’d dated a meat grinder for a year. Kath’mere did not look horrified, though. She ran a finger along the uneven terrain of scar tissue on the right side of her chest. “I like this,” she said quietly.
Haze tilted her head back until she couldn’t see her. “Can we move on now?”
Mercifully, Kath’mere got the message. She helped Haze pull off her shorts and panties. Then…
“You have hair there?”
With how closely they were touching, Haze got to really feel the laugh-rumble this time. She lifted her head and glared at her. “I’m not shaving my cunt. Life’s too damn short for that much work.”
“It’s just…” Kath’mere bobbed her head oddly, who the fuck knew what that meant. “Why do you have hair on your head and your cloaca, and nowhere else?”
“We have hair elsewhere, just not that much of it. And it’s not a cloaca, it’s a…” what was the proper word, “vagina.”
Kath’mere ran a finger through Haze’s slit. “It looks like a cloaca.”
Haze choked. Her hips jerked up without her control. “We’ve got one more hole than you. Now come on,” she grabbed Kath’mere’s hand. “You need to put your fingers here, and,” fuck, this should have been a turn-off. This should have been— “oh.” Haze hit her head against the floor. “And now you. You, uh. Move. In and out. There’s gotta be rhythm.”
Kath’mere obliged. “Gentle or hard?”
“Um. Try it?”
She started a bit too soft, bit too slow for it to work for Haze, but somehow she figured it out. She’d started out with one finger, then wriggled in another. It was a lot, Haze usually went with less, but it was… fuck. Oh, fuck.
Her hand skittered to her clit. “What are you doing?” Kath’mere asked. She sounded mildly offended, as if Haze implied she didn’t do a good enough job. If Haze had some brain capacity to spare, she’d tell her not to be. “It’s, uh…”
“Let me.” She brushed Haze’s hand away and went at it with her own fingers. It was awkward for a moment, but then she’d found it and Haze was—
“What the fuck?!”
Something pushed between her butt cheeks. Which hand was that? Her addled brain refused to process numbers. Wait, was that the tail? She didn’t even know it was this flexible!
“So you do have another hole!”
“Wait, don’t— oof.”
It went. Whow. That was. She felt so full, everywhere.
Then Kath’mere remembered to move her hands, and then Haze was keening out an orgasm of the likes she hadn’t had in months.
Kath’mere stopped moving. “Should I continue?”
“Nuh.”
Oh so slowly, Kath’mere pulled out her fingers and tail from Haze’s holes. “…did it hurt?” she asked, hesitant.
“Nuh.”
“Are you alright?”
“Yeah.”
With unexpected gentleness, Kath’mere gathered Haze up into an embrace. She rubbed the side of her jaw against Haze’s.
“Okay?” Haze mumbled. She was too blissed out for proper concern, but this was… weird.
“Yes.” Kath’mere hissed a sigh. “…thank you, Bodyguard Pelotti.”
“Ugh. Stop that. I’ve told you, it’s Haze.”
Kath’mere rumble-laughed. “Thank you, Haze.”
“Uh huh. Thanks, too. ‘t was good.’”
Now she only needed to never tell her friends.
“You fucked the dragon???“
“Be quiet, Joffre, I swear I’ll—“
“What did you say she did?!”
“I hate all of you.”