Chapter 9: Coming Together

Caden awoke to see Kadal peering down at him, the frill that framed her head flushed a vibrant shade of crimson, outlining her eyespots. He felt like he had been sleeping for days, and he couldn’t remember where he was. The blue sky was above him, but he was in the shade, and he was immersed in cool water.

“Hey,” he said, giving her a groggy smile. “Why am I all wet?”

“C-Caden! You are awake!” she stammered, a blend of relief and what might be embarrassment flashing across her scaly face. “You collapsed, and I didn’t know what else to do, so I carried you back to the oasis.”

“You carried me here all on your own?” he asked. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, you’re as strong as a carthorse. Hang on, my staff!”

“Be still,” she said, placing a hand on his chest to prevent him from sitting up. “I brought all of your belongings, they are safe.”

He relaxed back into the water, letting slip a sigh of relief.

“Good, I’d be lost without it. You didn’t touch it, did you? How did you get it here?”

“I know better than to touch your artifacts,” she replied. “I wrapped my hand in cloth before picking it up.”

“Clever,” he chuckled. “Where are my clothes, by the way?” he asked as he glanced down at his naked body. He was nude save for his underwear, and it looked like he had successfully healed his wounds before passing out. “Somehow, one of us always seems to end up unconscious and in the water...”

“Oh,” Kadal mumbled, averting her eyes. “Your clothes were soaked with blood, as were you. I was going to wash them, I wasn’t sure when you might wake up again.”

He reached up to grip her scaly forearm, her hand still on his chest, his touch seeming to surprise her.

“I might have healed my injuries, but without shelter, I would have succumbed to the heat in my weakened state. Thank you.”

“I owe you that much,” she stammered, making no attempt to pull away from him. “Saving my life is becoming a habit of yours.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” he insisted, but that only seemed to agitate her.

“I just watched you duel the Eater of Bones into submission!” she exclaimed, her frill fluttering. “Even after I begged for you to flee! Caden, if you had been killed, then what would become of your quest? What would become of your people?”

“I can’t bring myself to think that way,” he replied, shaking his head. “To weigh the life of one person against the many, to trade one life for another. I didn’t want to persist in a world where I had let you die, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. Maybe that was selfish of me in hindsight...”

“Only you could call self-sacrifice selfishness,” Kadal giggled, running her fingers through his hair. He didn’t object, her affection was welcome.

“What about you?” he continued. “You could have left me there to die. I was at your mercy, but you saved me. Your plan to feed me to the Borophage very nearly worked.”

“After everything that I have seen, I could not possibly think so little of you,” she replied. “I ... I cannot apologize enough for what I did, for what I planned to do...”

She glanced down at the water dejectedly, her frill drooping around her slender neck.

“I’m only teasing,” he said, giving her forearm a reassuring squeeze. “We’re both guilty of misjudging one another.”

“Then let us leave the people that we were behind,” she said, her voice full of fresh determination. Kadal gently cradled his head in her hand as she looked down at him with those amber eyes, Caden’s blood rushing in his ears. How could someone so strong, so ferocious, be so tender and gentle? To think that if he had killed her there on the sand, he would never have come to know her, never had the opportunity to see this side of her.

As Caden lay there in the shimmering pool, a kind of tension began to rise up inside of him. It was unbearable, all-consuming, overwhelming his mind until he could concentrate on nothing else. He had admired Kadal’s strange beauty and her inhuman grace from afar, never daring to hope that she might come to see him in the same light, that he would ever be more to her than an unwelcome intruder from beyond her shores. But now, he could see the concern that she had for him in her expression, he could feel her affection in the way that she lay his head in her cool palm.

He had no experience with women, and he couldn’t even be sure that Kadal saw him as a man and not as some exotic animal. Perhaps he might even sully their burgeoning friendship by overreaching. Even so, his close brush with death had filled him with a new kind of reckless courage, it had put his life into a brand new context. Who knew what the next day might bring when every step that they took seemed to invite ever greater dangers? It was impossible to say how fleeting their time together might be, how quickly this opportunity would pass. He could no longer stand it, he felt like he was about to burst.

“Forgive my impertinence,” he said, reaching up to cup her scaly cheek in his hand. Kadal blinked her eyes at him in surprise, yet she did not pull away. “I feel as though if I let this moment pass me by, I will forever regret it.”

He rose from the water, guiding her closer, Kadal’s frill erupting in a display of red as she followed his lead. Caden didn’t really know what he was doing, this wasn’t something that one could learn from poring over books in a dusty library, so he let instinct guide him. His heart felt like it was about to leap out of his chest as his lips met hers, her touch cool and scaly, yet more inviting than he could have imagined. Just as her harsh, predatory exterior belied her capacity for gentleness, so too did it make the softness of her touch a surprise. She returned his kiss, pulling him closer, her fingers stroking his hair as they embraced in the shallow water.

Elation washed over him like a tide, his eyes closing of their own accord, the world around him melting away like paint being washed from a canvas until she was all that remained. When they broke away, his face was just as red as her frill, the two staring at each other for a few moments.

The first kiss was followed up by a second, more urgent one, the two traveling companions abandoning all pretense of modesty as they set upon one another with a newfound hunger. Caden didn’t even have time to ponder his good fortune, to appreciate that his feelings were being requited. He was too consumed by desire to spare a thought for anything besides her frenzied embrace. It burned inside him like a fire, growing ever hotter the longer they remained joined.

Their lips were so mismatched, hers were far larger, plumper. They struggled to lock in a way that felt natural, but they kept trying, defying their biology. His warmth contrasted with the coolness of her delicate scales, he could feel them brushing against his skin, smooth and inviting. Her low body temperature was far from unpleasant, it was as refreshing as a cold drink on a summer’s day. As she parted her lips, he noted that even her breath was cooler than his own, her forked tongue darting forth to taste him. He felt it flick across the flat of his tongue, tickling him, the unexpected taste and sensation sending a wonderful shiver rolling over him.

They began to explore one another, Caden’s tongue brushing her sharp teeth, feeling their wicked points as she drew him closer. In return, her questing organ brushed the roof of his mouth, glancing his cheeks as it darted about. It was so unlike his own, longer and slimmer, the two points able to move independently of one another as they mapped him out. His heart skipped a beat every time her wet, cool flesh glanced his own, their organs intertwining in a display of desire that somehow felt right to him.

A thought rose above the haze of his passion, his analytical mind managing to surface for a brief moment, like a drowning man gasping for air. Was this what a kiss felt like? Wet flesh joined, the vaguely metallic flavor of her saliva pricking his taste buds, her leather scent invading his nose. He was closer to her than he had ever been to anyone, both in a literal and a figurative sense. Gods, how he yearned to taste her, to touch her. He had to have more. Caden rose higher, the water sloughing off his torso as he propped himself up on an elbow, stroking her cheek with his thumb as their kiss dragged on.

Was this how her people kissed, or was she just following his example?

Their lips parted once more to leave them gasping for breath, linked by a glittering strand of their shared saliva. Caden was in a fugue, he couldn’t think straight. It was almost like being under the thumb of his staff, but the emotions that assailed him were ones of passion and yearning, rather than violence and rage. He didn’t know what to do with himself, what to do with her. He only knew that he wanted to touch her, to kiss her, to take whatever was happening here further.

“I-I feared that you might see me as nothing more than a monster,” Kadal stammered, “I had no idea that you felt this way...”

“How could I not?” he demanded, rising to kneel beside her in the shallow water. “You’re so beautiful and strong, the way you move, the way your scales reflect the light. I’ve never met anyone like you before. You can be so tender when you want to be, it makes me crazy.”

“Then ... when you were watching me bask that time, it was not mere curiosity that motivated you,” she said. Some of her uncertainty seemed to slip away, a wry smile brightening her face. “Every time that I have thought you weak or incapable, you have proven me wrong. Nobody has ever cared for me as you do, not without wanting something in exchange. Everything that you do is so genuine, unfiltered by pride or ambition. It makes me feel ... something that I have never felt before.”

“Kadal,” Caden began, struggling to find the words. “Would you ... like to...”

“I-I don’t want to be asked!” she blurted. “I like this side of you, assertive, fearless. Don’t stop now.”

That was all the encouragement that Caden needed, and he shuffled closer to her on the wet sand, bringing a hand up to her slender neck. Her frill was raised, almost as if to grant him easier access, an appreciative tremor rocking her as he stroked the smooth scales with his fingers. He leaned in, burying his face in the nape of her neck, reveling in the sensation of her smooth hide against his hot cheek. He couldn’t keep his hands off her, the fine mosaic of her scales was so enticing, its texture beyond compare.

Her frill fluttered as he brought his lips to her shoulder, crawling them up to the base of her neck, Kadal sighing as his tongue flicked out to graze her throat. She seemed to enjoy his mouthing, one of her clawed hands delving into his hair, drawing his head closer as he peppered her delicate scales with kisses. He couldn’t reach much higher, she was far too tall.

“Is this how your kin usually go about this?” she murmured, Caden pausing to glance up at her. He had to crane his neck, her head seemed so far away.

“I must admit that I don’t know,” he replied, his face flushing a deeper shade of crimson. “I just feel like ... I want to kiss you. Am I doing it wrong?”

“Gods, no,” she replied hurriedly. “I like the way it feels. You’re so ... affectionate.”

He pressed his lips against her throat again, Kadal pushing her chest out towards him reflexively, her ample breasts bumping against him through the fabric of her sling. He glanced down at them, admiring the way that the two scaly globes pressed together to create her deep cleavage, quickly realizing that his member was straining against his clothes. A few minutes ago, he would never have dared imagine such a scenario, to do so would be the height of self-indulgence. He felt like he was lost in a dream.

“I thought that we might be too different,” Kadal said, pausing to let slip a low moan as he gave her a gentle bite where her neck met her shoulder. He followed it up with a doting kiss that made her grip his hair ever tighter, as though afraid that he might pull away. It stung a little, but it was an oddly enjoyable sensation. “What is it that you find so appealing about me?”

Caden leaned away from her, his eyes wandering down her torso, brazen now that he had no fear of offending her. Beneath her muscled shoulders were those sumptuous breasts, orbs of impossibly soft flesh that rivaled the size of his head straining against their bonds, swaying with her every motion. They hadn’t looked so large in the context of her lean, athletic build, but they seemed monstrous now that he was but an inch away from them.

Below the shadow that they cast was the toned belly that he had so admired, the twin rows of her abdominal muscles seeming to jump out at him from beneath the glassy scales of her developed midriff. How harsh her life must have been to have sculpted such an impressive core, how much physical demand it must have placed on her, honing her body into what seemed to him an otherworldly work of art. Had someone described her figure to him, the way that her narrow waist flared into hips the breadth of a strongman’s shoulders, the way that her muscles flowed like a stream beneath her immaculate hide, he would have told them that only an artisan’s chisel could produce such beauty.

“I am a scholar, not a poet,” he began as she gazed down at him with eyes the color of honey. “I might speak of how your scales reflect the sunlight like a thousand tiny panes of stained glass, how your eyes sparkle like cut gems, if I thought that I could do you justice.”

“Flatterer,” she giggled. “Say more...”

He slid a hand down the hourglass curve of her waist, tracing the fist-sized mounds of her abs with his thumb, delighting in the way that they tensed at his touch. Unable to resist, he lay his palm on her belly, Kadal’s breathing growing heavier as muscles that felt like stones smoothed by the flow of a river flexed. She could not sweat, she was a reptile, yet her scales were damp with water from the oasis. Beads of it clung to her, sparkling as they caught the sun, making her look like she had been misted with morning dew. Why did it set his mouth watering so?

“I never thought that a woman could be so strong,” he muttered, “yet so lovely.”

As he had told her, he was no poet, and he felt a rush of embarrassment even uttering such things. If he had tried to win a girl’s heart with such talk back in the city, they would have laughed in his face, but Kadal had never been wooed in this way. Her smile seemed to widen at his every word, one of her hands reaching up to fiddle with her frill as a normal woman might fluff her hair.

“I might doubt your sincerity if you had any reason to lie,” she purred, Caden’s eyelids fluttering as she gently ran her claws across his scalp. “But you no longer have any need to sway me.”

She drew him closer, guiding his head towards her chest, pressing his face deep into the shelf of her bosom. Her satin scales glided against his cheeks as her bountiful flesh enveloped him, softer than the most luxurious of down pillows. Caden couldn’t avoid filling his lungs with her sweet scent. It was like wet leather, but somehow womanly, enticing. He felt as though if he had remained there for long enough, he would have been lulled to sleep, so comfortable was her bosom.

Instead, it ignited a fire in him, one of his hands rising to delve into the meat of her chest from below. Kadal gasped in a blend of surprise and delight as he slipped a hand beneath her sling, lifting her breast, its weight sinking his fingers deep into her yielding tissue. It was as soft as melting candle wax, spilling between his digits, draping itself over his hand as it was engulfed up to the wrist. As he squeezed, he felt her fat fill his palm, Kadal loosing a comely gasp as if to encourage him.

“W-where is this aggression coming from?” she cooed, her spine arching as he kneaded her tender flesh like a baker shaping a ball of fresh dough. “You are usually so mild-mannered ... at least, when you aren’t fighting.”

“I just survived a battle with a Borophage,” he replied, his voice muffled by her cleavage. “I am done with hesitation, with uncertainty.”

Caden released her breast, admiring the way that it bounced as it lost its support, his face rising from Kadal’s chest. He placed a hand on her shoulder, easing her into a prone position, Kadal lying down in the sand beside him. The water was shallow enough on the bank of the oasis that it left her only partially submerged, most of her scaly body rising from the pool. She stretched out, just as she did while basking in the sun, making a deliberate show of her inhuman flexibility. Caden found himself transfixed as he watched her raise her arms above her head, her spine creating a beautiful arch as it rose from the water.

Unable to resist, he brought his lips to her belly, feeling those iron muscles tense as he planted a lingering kiss. She writhed in the sand as he moved back up to her bosom, pausing to trace the contours of her abs with the tip of his tongue as he went. There was some base, bestial part of him that wanted to cover her entire body in kisses, to taste every inch of her skin. Why he felt that way, he could not articulate, but the desire was so overpowering that he couldn’t help but indulge it.

He arrived at her chest, not knowing how to untie her cloth sling, resisting the urge to simply tear it off. Kadal began to undo it as he watched, his eyes following the bundles of fabric as they slowly unwrapped like a bandage, revealing more and more of her desert-patterned scales. The moment that her breasts were free of it, they began to spill over her torso, Kadal gathering up the wobbling flesh. Caden watched as her forearms sank into her ample boobs, her biceps squashing them together. If she was trying to be modest, then it was having quite the opposite effect.

“It looks like you have me on my back again,” she cooed, her blue tongue emerging to wet her lips.

Caden swung a leg over her torso, straddling her stomach, feeling her lift him a few inches from the sand as she arched her back again in surprise. He was so much shorter than her that it was the only way for him to reach her head. He brought a hand to her shoulder, running it up the length of her neck, cupping her cheek. She pushed her face into his palm, nuzzling contentedly.

“You’re so warm,” she murmured, “it makes me want to be closer to you.”

Caden drew back, Kadal relinquishing her hold on her breasts. He watched as they spilled from her grasp, gravity parting them, the soft globes quivering as she shifted her weight. He didn’t really know what to do with them, so he just sat there for a moment, staring at them as she waited expectantly. They were so full and round, just firm enough to maintain their shape, a pair of nipples peeking out from between her scales that were the same shade of blue as her tongue.

Caden brought a hand down to one of her boobs, watching his fingers sink up to the knuckle in its yielding surface, her scales providing no more resistance than skin. He took a generous handful of her flesh, feeling her squirm beneath him, a jolt of pleasure rocking her. She had once enduring blows that would have killed a man, but now, she trembled at his merest touch. It was a beautiful contrast.

He began to knead gently, bringing his other hand into play, wrestling with the heavy globe. Her fat was so supple that it slipped through his fingers, molding around his hand, Caden shaping it like a ball of wet clay. One of his fingers glanced her nipple, and he felt her body tense between his thighs, Kadal lifting his knees from the wet sand again as she bucked.

Encouraged, he leaned closer, wrangling her breast to bring her nipple to his lips. He pressed them around it, drawing on it gently, feeling the firm muscles of Kadal’s belly flex against his groin in response. Her tail whipped through the water, making splashing sounds behind him, the squirming reptile digging her claws into the sand above her head.

“Like that, but harder,” she murmured. Caden did as she bade, sealing the nub of flesh between his lips, circling it with his tongue. Her yellow eyes rolled back into her head, her frill flushing with blood, her nipple seeming to grow firmer in his mouth. He lashed it with teasing flurries, pinching it gently between his lips and teeth, her reactions only growing stronger. Her long, sinewy body seemed to wind in the shallow water like a snake, her stout thighs pressing together as her clawed fingers carved furrows in the sand. He squeezed and stroked all the while, reveling in the way that her satin flesh bulged between his fingers, springing back to its original shape when he relinquished his grip. He had never felt anything so soft, so malleable, her scales were as smooth as silk.

He released her nipple with a wet smack, and she brought her head down level with his on her flexible neck, hooking her hand behind his head as she pulled him in for another kiss. This one was even more ravenous than the last, her agile tongue flicking out to stroke the inside of his mouth, its twin prongs crawling their way across his palate. Her full, puffy lips fought to lock with his own, mismatched as they were. Caden brought his hands to her cheeks, and she did the same, cupping his burning face in her scaly palms as their tongues braided together. While his was a slab of pink muscle, hers was a delicate rope of azure flesh, slender and quick. She directed it with such finesse, he could feel her painting his inner cheeks, coiling around his organ like a snake. Their differences should have made things more difficult, more awkward, but the frustration only made Kadal’s embrace more ardent. Caden felt like he was melting into her, her every tender stroke sapping his strength. Ropes of their saliva linked their lips when they broke contact to take brief, gasping breaths, before plunging back in.

She crawled her lips down to his neck, Caden tensing as he felt her sharp teeth graze his throat, followed by a placating kiss that sent sparks flying in his head. It was too much stimulation, too intense, he was so acutely aware of his member straining against the fabric of his underwear as he felt her tongue flick out to sample his skin. She pushed her dull snout into the nape of his neck, nuzzling, nipping at his shoulder.

“I hope you’re not developing a taste for me,” he sighed, Kadal chuckling as she drew on his skin to leave a pink mark.

“Do not tempt me, I’ve eaten larger things than you...”

She gave him another gentle bite as if to illustrate her point, his laughter tapering into a low moan. Caden gripped her wrists in his hands, Kadal batting her eyes at him, enjoying his newfound assertiveness. He wanted to pin them to the sand above her head, then lean in for a kiss, but something strange began to happen. He was suddenly aware of his staff, even as it lay in the ferns a good ten feet away from him, its familiar influence creeping into the back of his mind. Just as it reacted to emotions of fear and desperation, so too was its power drawn to his lust, imbuing him with a fresh surge of energy.

Kadal yelped in surprise as her wrists were driven into the sand, creating splashes in the shallow water, his strength far outstripping hers. At the same moment as his muscles were fortified by the staff’s magic, so too did his weight increase to pin her beneath him, her reflexive squirming doing nothing to dislodge him. In an instant, he had completely overpowered her.

He immediately released her, willing his mass to return to normal, already preparing an apology.

“W-what was that?” she stammered.

“I’m sorry!” he began, drawing his hands back, afraid to touch her. “When you were passed out in the cave, and I was trying to drag you to the pool to warm you, my staff reacted without me touching it. It seems ... drawn to powerful emotions, regardless of whether I’m holding it or not.”

There was no fear in Kadal’s eyes, she did not try to wriggle out from beneath him, she merely gazed up at him with a newfound appreciation.

“Is it safe?” she asked. “I mean ... you will not hurt me by accident?”

He reached down and took a handful of wet sand, Kadal’s eyes following it as he brought it back up, her breath catching in her throat as a ball of flame engulfed his fist. Even without his staff in hand, his control over its powers was more precise than ever, the flames barely warming his skin as he protected himself with a thin sheen of water vapor. When he opened his fingers, there was a small, irregular clump of black glass resting in his steaming palm.

“During my fight with the Borophage, something changed,” he began. “I feel ... different. Before, I was always wrestling for control, fighting the staff at every turn. It was like my emotions weren’t even my own. But now, I feel more in control than ever. Its overpowering voice has become but a murmur.”

He let the still-hot lump of glass fall, hearing it hiss as it hit the water.

“You have become even stronger than when we fought,” she marveled, “and who can say how much stronger you might yet become? I never imagined that I would ever meet someone who could overpower me,” she added, chewing on her lower lip lasciviously.

“Huh?” Caden asked, confused by her response.

She sat up, bringing her scaly lips to his ear, her comely whispers filling his head.

“I like it,” she hissed.

Her words stripped him of his uncertainty. He no longer feared this power, it was his to control, as much a part of him now as his own hands.

He gripped her shoulders, commanding the glittering strands of magic, his weight increasing. Kadal resisted him, reveling in the chance to pit her strength against his own, but he soon overwhelmed her. There was another splash as her back hit the sand, Caden pinning her beneath him, the way that her sinewy body writhed and twisted in a mock attempt to escape fueling the fire that was burning inside him. Her squirming mesmerizing, her breasts wobbling, the muscles beneath her gleaming scales shifting and bulging.

He reached down to grip her wrists again, pinning them against the ground, their lips meeting in another frantic kiss. Caden quickly realized that she was trembling, not out of fear, but rather excitement. Was the prospect of being overpowered by him really so alluring to her?

He wanted to explore more of her body, sliding down her torso, pausing to weigh her ample breasts in his hands before proceeding lower. Her head rose up on her long neck, watching him covetously as he planted kisses on her toned stomach, her spine rising from the oasis. Caden noted that she had no navel. The area between her abs and her loincloth was made up of smooth muscle, completely flat.

He moved down between her legs, placing his hands on her inner thighs to push them apart. They were just as firm as they had looked, muscle like iron tensing beneath his fingers, her scales making their surface as smooth as brushed steel. There was a subtle layer of fat that engulfed his fingers up to the first joint as he applied more pressure, Kadal fighting him again. She could probably have crushed a normal man’s head between those thighs such was her strength, they were as thick around as his torso, so packed with dense tissue that his hands would only just meet if he were to wrap his arms around one of them.

Caden was no normal man, however. Strands of glittering magic weaving around his muscle fibers, he gently pried them open, Kadal blinking down at him in surprise. Brute strength was no longer his only option, he could apply exactly as much force as he wanted, and not an ounce more.

The reptile loosed another gleeful trill as he gripped her wide hips, lifting her lower body off the sand, repositioning her to his liking. It made his knees sink deeper into the sand, but her considerable weight could be as light as a feather if he so desired it.

Curiosity burned inside him. He wanted to know what she was hiding beneath that loincloth, and there was still a lingering uncertainty lurking at the back of his mind. What if they really weren’t compatible? He might not know anything about love or courtship, but he knew how reproduction worked, how different separate species could be from one another.

Her thighs were irresistible, quickly capturing his attention again. The muscle that allowed her eight-foot frame to leap and dance as it did made them feel like they had been hewn from slabs of marble, her glittering scales just as smooth, the doughy flesh that clung to them making them even more inviting. Caden slid one of his hands from her knee to her groin, the droplets of water that clung to her flush hide making his palm glide, the individual scales barely perceptible.

Her loincloth rode low on hips that easily exceeded the breadth of his shoulders, the brown fabric blending with the desert patterning of her scales, draped over her mound to preserve her modesty. He had thought it to be a simple piece of cloth that hung from a leather belt, but it actually came up from below, doing a better job of covering her that he had imagined.

Her thighs rising up to either side of him like a pair of pillars, he leaned down to plant a kiss just above her belt, feeling her muscles flex beneath her silky hide in response. Caden wasn’t sure how to unfasten the garment, but Kadal wasted no time reaching down to help him, unwrapping the length of cloth. She tossed it into the ferns somewhere above her head, Caden glancing down at her nakedness, his cheeks flushing pink as he beheld her womanhood for the first time.