Waffles, Lacy Underwear, and a Monster Truck

I am never going back to a sex store if I live to be 10,000 years old. Those places are just too disturbing. I’m jumping ahead again, though.

Jack and I decided to take some time for ourselves. No job hunting and no superheroing, assuming nothing blew up. We needed some us time. Tamara had seen more of Jack lately than I had, and that was starting to worry me. Jack and I both took the opportunity of a free day to sleep in really late, well past noon. It made our former night dwelling bodies feel much refreshed. When we finally dragged our groggy butts out of bed, Ma made waffles with strawberries and bacon for her and Jack, and a bacon and cheese omelet for me.

Ma then announced loudly that she was going to the senior center in Round Rock for an all afternoon quilting circle with her lady friends, her way of telling us that we had the house to ourselves, more or less.

I blew a kiss to Donovan, then switched off the security camera in the living room. He would, no doubt, switch it back on later, but he had the good sense to not bug us about it in the meantime.

We turned on the home theatre projection system, Vlad’s billionaire idea of a TV. While the screen slowly dropped from the ceiling, we snuggled on the couch discussing what we might want to watch. I let Jack have the remote. It was his turn. The TV came on to a random channel. It was some news show talking about the recent local disasters.

Clips of the hospital and highway devastation came on behind the serious news anchorwoman. Liberty let tears stream down her face unheeded as she lifted dead bodies out of wreckage. TakeDown held the hand of a weeping child. Jupiter Joe shouldered aside boulders to clear a path for fire crews.

Then the screen flashed to me in my new purple superhero garb carrying Novak in firefighter gear through the flaming hospital wreckage. I looked pretty cool. The anchorwoman referred to me as “Austin’s newest Protector, the superhero known only as D.”

Jack nudged me in the ribs. “Ooo, can I have your autograph, Miss Superhero?”

“How about you come here so I can give you that personally, pretty boy,” I nibbled on his neck, right behind his ear where I knew it gave him goose bumps.

“Looks like you already gave someone that autograph,” Jack said. His tone said that he was not nearly as amused as he had been a moment before.

I looked up. The screen showed me, passionately kissing Novak, his hand fisted in my hair.

“Um, I was giving him healing venom?” I said, but it sounded completely unconvincing even to me.

“Right.” Jack stood up. He paused the TV on that image. “Dee, what’s really going on between you and White Knight?”

“He’s going through a bad time. I feel sorry for the guy.”

He looked back at the TV. That kiss was clearly not a pity party.

Jack switched the TV off. The screen slowly reeled back into the ceiling. “You’re not obligated to stay with me, you know. If you want someone more like you …”

“It’s not like that, Jack. You’re the only guy I want.” I put my arms around Jack from behind, resting my head on his shoulder. “It’s that dragon chemistry thing. The scent of a male dragon messes with my hormones. I can’t stick my face that close to a dragon and not … feel a pull. Even when it’s a dragon who spent most of his life trying to kill other dragons, and who pisses me off every time he opens his mouth.”

Jack was pretty good with honesty. He saw right through anything less. But if I was honest with him, he could handle just about anything. He was human, though. He had barely a trace of dragon blood. “Do you ever … feel that pull around me?”

“All the time.” I fit my body to his back and inhaled the scent of his hair. Faint traces of the same intoxicating spice that I smelled on male dragons heated up my blood. I closed my eyes and whispered into his ear, punctuating each sentence with a kiss on his neck. “When you tease me and make me laugh. When you hold me after a hard day. When you work beside me like a perfect complement. When you touch me …” I shifted around to face him, and kissed him on the mouth, deep and passionate, a kiss to make him forget I’d ever kissed anyone else.

Jack’s hands slid under my long t-shirt, caressing the smooth scales of my back. “What happens when I touch you?” He whispered against my mouth.

I shivered under his hands. “I want things I’ve never wanted before.”

Things got hot and steamy after that. We made it back to the huge cushy sectional couch. Clothes went flying in every direction.

Jack was my first and only boyfriend. He and I started dating nearly a year ago, and we’ve been living together for about half that. He was the only man who had ever seen me naked. I’d explored his body and he’d touched me everywhere. I could no longer say I was less experienced than the average nun, but I am, still, a 64 year old virgin.

When it comes to sex, Jack and I have some … issues.

Essentially, being a young dragon, most of my body is very well-armored, with bulletproof, impenetrable, metallic scales. When I say most of my body, that includes all the relevant parts for sexual activities. And Jack, being more or less human, does not have armor on those relevant parts, just very sensitive, delicate human skin. Skin that could be badly damaged by said metallic scales. Cross species dating has presented some unforeseen challenges.

It worked okay for my mom, who is mostly human, and my dad, who was a dragon. But dad could do this handy trick where he changed his body to be completely human at will. He died before he could teach me that trick.

Jack and I tangled up on the couch, cool scales against hot sweaty skin, hands and lips touching, breath panting, and I wished, really, really wished with every fiber of my being, that dad had taught me that trick. Jack pressed his hips hard enough against my scaly body to hurt himself. He clearly wished the same thing.

In the middle of a hot makeout session, I got so frustrated, I started to cry.

“Hey, hey,” Jack said softly. “What’s wrong?” He held me close while his thumb stroked a tear from my cheek. “I’d ask if I hurt you, but I haven’t hit you with a car lately.”

I laughed a little, which was undoubtedly what he intended. I sat up on the couch and fiddled with the seam on the cushion between my knees. “I just … I want … I can’t … Damnit, Jack. I wish I was human.” I buried my face in the crook of his neck, and got his shoulder wet. “I would give anything to be a normal right now.”

Jack squeezed me tight. “If you were human, you wouldn’t be you. I love you, Dee.”

“I love you, too. That’s why this is so … grrrah!” I growled a shout, and wished I could hit something without putting my fist through it. “It’s something girls think about a lot, you know, who their first will be, what that first time will be like. I’ve spent half a century wondering if I would ever find that one special guy. Now, I’m completely sure, you’re the one for me.”

Jack pulled my chin gently toward him. He kissed me tenderly. “I’m honored.”

“But I can’t. I want to but …”

He put his fingers over my lips. “It’s okay. There are lots of things we can do …”

“I know. And it’s fun and I like it. But I’ve never … you know, had that moment.”

He didn’t understand what I was getting at. He gave me the lifted Spock eyebrow.

I sighed. Why does sex have to be so hard to talk about? I would rather have fought Bobcat again than said the things that kept swirling in my head. “Imagine how frustrated you would be if we had sex all the time, but you never got to, you know … finish.”

“Ah.” To my great relief, he understood what I was getting at. “Well, we could try a vibrator maybe. Lots of women get there without, um, going all the way.” I got the impression that Jack didn’t find this conversation nearly as awkward as I did. My twenty-seven year old boyfriend was way more experienced than I was in certain matters.

“I’m afraid with my anatomy, I wouldn’t need a vibrator, I’d need an electric can-opener.”

Jack squeaked as he tried to suppress a laugh at my expense.

That made me giggle. A lot of the frustration leaked away. I snuggled up to him. “I feel like such a little girl sometimes. I worry that you’ll get frustrated with my limitations, too. I don’t even have any sexy underwear or anything.” My closet was full of oversized t-shirts and sweats. Nothing lacy or revealing at all. I couldn’t even wear my pretty purple dress anymore now that scales covered so much more of my skin.

Jack got a very interested, speculative look on his face. His eyes raked up and down my body in a way that made me shiver as much as his hands did. “I think we can fix that.”

So, that’s how we ended up at a sex shop.

I had never in my life seen the inside of one of those. I was raised to be an old-fashioned “good girl.” Good girls didn’t go in places like that. It was like entering enemy territory.

As I looked around, I revised that thought. It was full of weird bio-technological devices like something from an Alien movie, except these weren’t half hidden in shadows. They were lit with garishly bright fluorescents that made every latex vein and silicone nipple stand out starkly.

Looking at some of the price tags on these alien items, I thought of another good reason why we had no business there. “Jack,” I whispered, afraid to offend the denizens of this alien land. “We can’t afford any of this stuff.”

“It’s all right,” Jack said. “I’ve still got a fair amount in my savings account. And we’ll get jobs next week.”

I looked at him like he’d grown a new head.

“We’re both scheduled to take the firefighter’s civil service exam next week. All we have to do is ace the written and physical tests, and we’re in.  The written test should be a breeze with our backgrounds, and you should ace the physical with your abilities. I’ll do okay. Tamara has been working out with me.”

“You signed us both up?”

Jack grinned. “Tamara’s idea. I don’t know why we didn’t think about applying to be firefighters before. They always need people with paramedic skills. We can work together again. And we can work with Tamara, too. Won’t that be cool?”

“Yeah, that’ll be great.” That’s what I said out loud. I hope I even sounded enthusiastic. Tamara was awesome, a really great person. She was also a normal. She could do the things with Jack that I couldn’t. They got along like a house on fire, no firefighter pun intended. I knew it was totally selfish not to just let the thing with Tamara run its natural course, but Jack was mine. The idea of losing him made rational thought vanish in a wash of desperate emotions.

Desperate emotions call for desperate actions. I pointed at something shiny and black that would cover so little, it seemed pointless. “Would I look good in that, do you think?”

Jack looked at the shiny black corsetty bikini thing, back at me, and his eyes sparkled with suppressed laughter.

Not the reaction I was going for.

“Only if you had a whip and tall boots to go with it,” Jack said.

Oh. Right. Not quite my thing.

I spied a lacy emerald green one piece sort of bra and panties in one. It looked like something you could wear under normal clothes, but feel really sexy because you had that on underneath. It was a beautiful color too. I must have made a sound when I saw it.

Jack squeezed my hand. “That is much more you.”

“It’s not really me. But it’s the me I wish I was when I’m with you.”

Jack looked like he wanted to kiss me after I said that, but kissing in that disturbing alien land surrounded by disembodied body parts and weird electric gadgets would have ooked me out too much.

We made it back home without getting attacked by any face sucking aliens.

When we pulled into the driveway, there was a huge jacked up black pickup with monster tires parked by the front door.

I tried to push Jack behind me as we got out, thinking it might be more Georgians looking for Vlad.

A six foot four wall of super strong, invulnerable muscle and hair walked out from behind the black pickup with a wicked grin on his face, and I relaxed. It was just Brad.

“Check out my new wheels! “ Brad shouted, bouncing on his toes like a happy eight year old mountain.

Jack whistled in appreciation. “Wow, Brad, you really scored.”

“It’s got a six inch lift kit, rally tires, an eight cylinder 426 hemi, and a sound system that’ll vibrate windows a block away.” Brad actually petted the hood a little.

“That must have put you back a pretty penny, Brad.” I could see my reflection in the shiny chrome bumper.

“Yeah, I got a bonus from my new boss. He says I’m doing really well.”

“Heck of a bonus. What did you do to earn it?” I asked.

“Well, you know, just did what I was told is all.” Brad’s eyes shifted around and settled on the black plastic bag in my hand. “Were you guys shopping? What did you get?”

“Uh, well, just some clothes. Girly stuff. Nothing you’d be interested in.” I fled into the house before he could ask any more questions.

It was ages before Jack finished looking under the hood of Brad’s new toy while Brad pointed out all its wonders. By then, Ma arrived home from her quilting circle, and Donovan showed up to turn the security camera in the living room back on.

No telling when I’ll actually get to wear my new lacy green underwear for Jack. Soon, I hope.

D Dragon