The great blue dragon heaved a heavy sigh. “Truly, you are the most curious human I have ever encountered. Many have come seeking my blood. More – and some few of my own kind – have come seeking my wealth.”

With the outward curve of one obsidian claw, he stroked along the human’s side, where that human lay on the dragon’s own stomach. “None of them – except perhaps one fetching but greedy red, and certainly none of the humans – showed nearly so much interest in my sex.”

Kalen laughed, gliding his hand along the broad expanse of the dragon’s arousal. “I’ve more interest in knowledge and magic than in coin. And I’m young yet. A lover, however temporary, means more to me than a purse of silver.”

Ssarcalagon’s huge blue eyes slid very nearly shut. “I don’t know that I will ever understand humans. But if I’m to be puzzled, I can at least be puzzled and contented. You’re certainly easier to catch a meal for than any of my own kind would be.”

“Even aside from the, mmm, more personal meals you’ve given me, yes.” Kalen’s hand slid along the crown of the dragon’s maleness, then in to its very tip. He shivered a little, just at the memory of the taste of the much bigger male’s seed. At the heat of it sliding down his throat… He gave his head a shake. “Though I don’t know how wise it would be to wish to be a dragon – I wouldn’t want to be competition – I do wonder how it might feel to receive this a little more… thoroughly.” His hand moved lower, tracing the firm ridges that parallelled that crown.

The dragon’s body suddenly went very still under him, and he twisted around to look upward, concerned that he’d touched on some sore topic. But so far as he could read that reptilian face, Ssarcalagon looked more contemplative than offended. His claw, sliding along Kalen’s dusky skin, was no more forceful than before.

“There are… possibilities,” the wyrm rumbled. “How much affinity do you have for transmutation, little man?”

“For…?” Kalen blinked. His magic hadn’t come up since his initial nervous introduction. “It’s my strongest art, I suppose. I don’t think it’d be too much of a boast to say I’m better than most my age, but I’ve not seen thirty summers yet.”

“Have you ever turned it upon yourself?”

“Only for subtle things,” replied the human, unsure where that line of thought was leading. “Giving myself a few moments of speed or strength.”

“Perhaps you need a suitable anchor, hmm? Come, then – let your power touch mine, and merge, and we shall see,” Ssarcalagon hissed, “what we shall see…”

It wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, to meditate on magical things while the dragon’s rigid sex rested against his body, his own pushing against it near its base. While the scent of it filled each breath he took. But he tried – tried to tap into the ebb and flow of power around him, into the mutability of all things, even of himself.

Then the dragon’s magical aura flowed over his – vast, potent, exceeding him as greatly as the sun did a candle. It surged through him, battering his very essence, threatening to rip him apart – but he held. Even as he felt his body shifting, flowing, he held onto his self, his identity – not so strongly as to force the change back, but enough that at least some aspect of himself remained his. And even as the dragon’s power flowed into him, so too did some trickle of his slip the other way.

As suddenly as it had struck, the sense of change released him, leaving him gasping for breath.

“There,” Ssarcalagon hissed by his ear. “You had so much of my essence in you yet, it was actually quite straightforward to blend us.”

It was the nearness of that voice to his head, as much as anything, that shocked him into full awareness of himself. No more was he sprawled on the dragon’s vastly-larger belly, but instead stretched out atop him from hip to chest, held close. The great blue spire that had risen atop him… still was fairly imposing, but now on a much more personal scale; it jutted up over his stomach, still perhaps twice the length of his own, but no longer such a vast piece. Maybe a foot long, going by how it compared to his.

His own… seemed no larger, at a glance, but it was more like the dragon’s in shape; narrowing to a point, its crown more pronounced, with three ridges matching the sweep of that crown along his shaft. It was also a vivid green, darker in some places and lighter in others, like malachite; his skin had thickened and grown emerald scales. His shoulders and his rear tingled, with a welter of sensations that gradually sorted themselves into sensibility – he had wings, now, wings and a tail.

Somewhat unsteadily, he disentangled himself from the still-larger male and rose to his feet for a better look. He was still mostly human in profile, but he had much of a dragon in aspect; his face had lengthened into a draconic snout, and the back of it was surmounted by a pair of smooth horns, rising from sturdy bases behind his temples, curling through a half-circle, and coming to narrow points.

Ssarcalagon had changed rather less, except in size. His forelegs had gained a little more prominence, his forepaws growing more hand-like than they had been, claws shortening a touch; but he still had the stout hindlegs of a leaping quadruped. He surveyed Kalen with undisguised interest, tongue darting forth, one hand-paw easing in to stroke along the brilliant blue flesh that the smaller man had just vacated. “You take to the shape quite well,” the dragon purred. “And yet you still don’t seem very threatening. Little enough that the more pleasant things you’ve done allow me to dismiss it, to be sure.”

“I didn’t know transmutation could do something like this,” Kalen admitted. His own voice sounded strange, much more sibilant; but he made himself go on. “If I can learn from you, not only will I not need to take a single coin from your hoard to make myself a very wealthy man, I might even be able to amass enough of my own to contribute to it.”

“Ah, now you speak a language I can appreciate,” Ssarcalagon purred. “But there’s another such you seemed well on your way to learning. Perhaps you can investigate that one some more, hmm?”

Kalen still ached from the force of the change, but as he looked down on that wiry form, stretched out before him and presenting a very ready manhood, that ache didn’t really matter so much. He licked his lips, except that the gesture translated itself to a flick of his own forked tongue, bringing the other male’s rich, enticing musk to his senses.

He dropped to his knees astride the bigger male’s tail, almost delirious with sudden need. The shaft that he’d been able to wrap an arm around before, he now surrounded with one wide-open hand, tilting it up toward him. His tongue touched its tip, then a bit lower down, then slid upward again; and if the scent of the other male had been engaging, the taste of him was almost electrifying. His tongue danced across smooth skin, defter and stronger now than it ever had been before, control of it growing easier with each stroke. For a moment, he even pushed one fork of it into the very opening of Ssarcalagon’s shaft for a deep taste indeed.

After some while of licking and stroking – he wasn’t sure exactly how much, and it didn’t matter – Kalen parted his jaws and did what he could never have done before: he drew the blue dragon’s shaft into his muzzle. That muzzle had some definite good points: before, he’d have thought he might get half of such a length into his mouth; now, he was able to keep drawing more of it in until his snout pushed against the other male’s scales.

He hadn’t had so much opportunity to do this manner of thing that he’d consider himself an expert, but his reshaped body and especially his stronger tongue gave him some further advantages, and Ssarcalagon himself was delightfully quick to bring to a peak; soon, he arched up and let out a heavy bellow, sticky heat pumping over Kalen’s tongue and down his throat.

When Kalen had swallowed the last of that torrent and lifted his head, the bigger male sent a toothy grin down his way. “Is that the different experience you so urgently desired?” he purred. “You’ve had so much of it already, that seems a touch strange.”

“I haven’t been able to do it right,” Kalen protested, running his fingers along that still-rigid flesh. “Besides, it was the easiest opportunity to take – and as you’ve not gained too much of my shape, I was also hoping, I suppose, that you won’t have gained my need for a lengthy interval.” He gave the blue’s shaft a squeeze. “It seems I was correct there, yes?”

“Oh, you’ve not driven me to fatigue yet,” Ssarcalagon teased. “Perhaps you’ll have a better hope of it now, at least. But so far? Any efforts you’ve made, I’ve been the equal to, little man.”

“That may be,” was Kalen’s reply. He slid forward, sampling the air again, his musk and Ssarcalagon’s now mingled with lingering traces of the blue’s seed. “But perhaps it’s only because I’ve had to exert myself so much more for anything I do with you, hmm?”

“And it has been a fine treat to have you working so hard to pleasure me,” Ssarcalagon hissed. “Still, perhaps we can try some more equal footing, yes? See me as my own kind do.” And even as his hand gathered in his shaft and Kalen’s, bringing them in together, the light suffusing the cavern winked out.

This far beneath the ground, there wasn’t a single wink of light to be had, yet somehow, Kalen wasn’t left entirely blind. He could still see where one thing stopped and another began, right down to the fine detail of Ssarcalagon’s scales – he couldn’t see hue or shade, and with only textures to separate anything, it was briefly disorienting; but he wasn’t completely lost.

Besides, Ssarcalagon’s fingers sliding along his flesh, and the blue’s own larger length under it, offered him plenty of distraction.

Not quite sure what the dragon wanted him to do, he settled into a mostly passive role. He leaned on the larger male’s chest, hands splayed, claw-tips skittering over scales, and he rolled his hips, thrusting against Ssarcalagon’s stroking fingers and slippery pole. His wings and tail largely did their own thing; their weight shifting behind him was strange enough to be noticed, but they moved so naturally with his weight that they certainly didn’t get in the way.

Apparently there was at least one more aspect in which he’d become more draconic. Instead of the slow, steady rise and lengthy plateau of his pleasure, sensation surged through him with swiftly-building intensity. It climbed into ecstasy and kept going higher with each stroke. On some other occasion, feeling that pleasure surge within a half minute, his seed rushing out of him and over the blue’s skin and scales, would have been a little embarrassing.

Considering that Ssarcalagon was only a few breaths behind him, spurt after warm, thick spurt of their essence jetting out and mixing together, all he felt was still-greater excitement.

Even as that shared climax was waning, the bigger male’s other hand slid under his rear, tugging him a little farther forward. “I think I know what you were truly yearning for,” he crooned.

“Better than any human lover I’ve had,” Kalen sighed, moving along with that touch. As he sat up, his tail curled upward behind him as well, wings lifting away from his shoulder, and he quivered in anticipation.

Between the taper of the dragon’s tip, his natural slickness, and the fresh seed making it still slicker, it was so easy. And those ridges tickled Kalen just as wonderfully as he’d known they must – all the way into him, until their bodies met, and then shifting back and forth inside him.

But the dragon wasn’t satisfied yet. Tucking one wing in tight, he twisted to plant the hand on that side behind himself, propping himself up, curling tight. Between his sinuous body and a neck that was even more so, it wasn’t in the least bit difficult for him to get his tongue within range of Kalen’s shaft and start licking their mingled seed off of it.

Gasping, Kalen automatically reached down for the other male’s head. But when his fingers came up against the dragon’s horns, he paused. Would it be comfortable to handle them so?

Before he could carry that thought any further, Ssarcalagon flicked his tongue along Kalen’s shaft once more, then looked up at the smaller male. “Do you think you could do me a harm so easily, little man?” he challenged, driving a little harder into Kalen’s body.

Put off-balance by that sharp thrust, it was a few moments before Kalen could catch his breath. “I thought it might be unwelcome,” he gasped. That was about as much care as he could put into his words with the sensations assailing him. Sweet gods, he could already feel his pleasure building again.

“Hardly. Show me every bit of your pleasure, little man,” the dragon hissed, his breath washing hot over Kalen’s flesh. “I want to feel every twitch, every squirm…” He trailed off, ensnaring the crown of Kalen’s manhood with his muzzle.

His timing was exquisite. Even as those last words reached Kalen’s mind, he felt his flesh jerk; and within a breath of his tip being thus captured, he shuddered and cried out – still a far cry from the dragon’s bellow, but now he gave it no impediment as it ripped out of his lungs. He seized the dragon’s thrice-curled horns right where they met his skull, and he thrust between muzzle and maleness, impaling himself on the one only to sink his bucking shaft into the other the next instant.

The dragon was relentless, keeping him awash in a near-constant tide of pleasure. Again and again he pumped into that waiting muzzle, and even he couldn’t say clearly whether it was one lengthy climax or a score of smaller ones that kept him thrashing. All he knew was that he needed more.

And then, at last, the blue gave it to him, shuddering under him, curling tighter still. Liquid heat pulsed into Kalen’s body, filling what little space the dragon’s hefty shaft had left in him, seeping out of him and around the base of that delightful length. For half a minute they quivered in shared pleasure, their tails twining tight together.

The pleasure receded at last. Ssarcalagon lifted off of him, and he let his fingers trail along the dragon’s neck and chest as the bigger male lay back. Without pulling off of that wonderful hot length, Kalen slumped forward, sinking down against the dragon’s chest.

Any doubts he might have had about the rightness of doing so were eased when Ssarcalagon took hold of his shoulders, wings sweeping up and over Kalen’s back, covering his own along with the rest of him.

“Hah… I’m glad I kept you alive, little man,” Ssarcalagon murmured against his cheek “You’re the finest amusement I’ve known in centuries.”

Yet the offhand, dismissive words didn’t have quite the edge that they had when the pair had first met. And there could only be genuine affection in the gentle way he held Kalen.

Maybe it was as close as Ssarcalagon could come to saying that he was actually growing fond of Kalen. But even without the words, Kalen could feel that fondness now.

It was enough to keep him content. Even if he’d started out as a prisoner here, now he was a lover. The other details, of sex and species and age and station, none of that mattered.

All that mattered was the heat under his new-grown tail and the dragon’s warm embrace.