#My reins are also a touch long and he’s a bit low in the poll - could’ve used a little more leg

[dressagecow]

Here’s 1-1, 66.2%. There’s some stuff I’d like to clean up for next season - contact is a bit shaky, canter is a bit unbalanced, stretchies could be stretchier. But overall I’m very pleased with how we did!

[monstersandmaw]

Embers - Male dragon shifter x reader, Chapter Eight (v. light nsfw)

Friday means it’s dragon shifter romance day!

Last time we learned that Mikaeïl's late partner was also an artist, and that made us feel a bit wobbly and insecure... This time we finish our dinner date with him and make one or two steps forwards...

One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven

“So you see why I was reluctant to talk to you about him…” Mikaeïl murmured softly after he’d risked a glance up at your face. “I would have told you, I’m sure. My past would have come up sooner or later, but…” he murmured, his nostrils flaring with frustration. “Ah, that’s just the face I didn’t want to see,” he said as he glanced up and caught sight of your stricken expression.

You tried to hide it behind a smile, pretending to brush it off. Whoever this long-lived creature had been, he had clearly been unfathomably dear to Mikaeïl. How could you even begin to compare with that? With a hundred years of love? What could you offer him after all that time in each other’s company? “You’re right,” you said with an overly bright smile. “It’s not first date talk. I’m sorry I pushed it…” you said, fighting the way your throat closed up around the words.

His shoulders relaxed just a little, but he still had his jaw clenched tight as a goblin’s metalwork vice. He swallowed thickly and said, “Alright, but let me just say that my attraction to you isn’t some vain attempt to rekindle something that was lost a long time ago. You are an artist, and so was he, but there the similarity ends.” The light that glowed in his eyes was like a fire burning low, the coals smoldering red after the bright heat of flames had exhausted itself. In truth, he looked suddenly very tired, and every bit his two hundred and sixty odd years old.

While you could still taste that bitterness on your tongue from the self-doubt that had swirled through you like a rip tide and stripped you of your confidence, you tried to be brave. Mikaeïl suddenly looked thoroughly miserable, though he was hiding it behind his usual chilly facade. On impulse, you reached your hand out to his where it now lay quiet as a corpse’s on the wooden tabletop. The chill of his pale fingers always surprised you, but you squeezed his strangely delicate hand and smiled at him.

“Come on,” you said. “We were doing so well. Tell me about how you know the goblin who owns this place… I didn’t catch his name…”

“Kiriavin?” he said, his throat working again as he swallowed and sighed, trying to push his pain aside. A wariness still lingered in the corners of his reptilian eyes, but he clearly appreciated your efforts at moving things along. He chuckled then. “I taught his wife at university, if you can believe it.”

“I keep forgetting how old you are,” you snorted, which made him roll his lovely eyes. “I wondered if you knew him through your music? Lidaë back at Stickybeak’s cafe mentioned that there was a goblin in your group…”

He opened his mouth, but before he had the chance to go on, Kiriavin returned with menus and two glasses of sparkling wine in elegant flutes. “You drink, I presume?” the goblin asked you before setting your glass down on the table, and you nodded. “Very well. This is a sparkling wine made from grapes grown just outside Starfall Springs. And in a moment I’ll bring some nibbles out for you as well,” he added with a sharp, hungry grin that briefly made you wonder exactly what a goblin might consider ‘a nibble’…

“Thank you, friend,” Mikaeïl said and something wordless passed between them in the space of a heartbeat.

Kiriavin nodded once, and then left with a distinctly softer smile.

Attempting the same kind of silent eloquence, you tilted your head curiously at Mikaeïl and he smiled the first true smile since his late partner had been brought up. His lips curled slowly and then drew back to reveal his white teeth, the canines more pronounced than on a human. You wondered fleetingly what else about him might differ, but reined your imagination back in as he spoke, shaking his head slightly. “That sly old goblin knows exactly what just happened between us, and he’s sorry for it. I think we might be expecting even finer wine with the meal…”

“He doesn't have to,” you said guiltily, but Mikaeïl waved his hand.

“Trust me, you can’t make a goblin do anything else once they’ve got their mind set on something. It’s quite literally impossible.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” you said. “Cheers,” and you held up the delicate flute of sparkling wine.

The expression on his face was a strange one as he regarded you in the candlelight of the restaurant. It reminded you of the way someone looks at a painting in an art gallery that they’ve only seen in books and reproductions before. He stared at you as if trying to fix the lines and shapes of your face in his mind, as though he would sculpt you later from memory. It only lasted perhaps three seconds, but it was so powerful that you nearly didn’t react as he gently chinked his glass against yours. “Cheers,” he said, the word very softly enunciated.

Even the way he drank was elegant and he held you transfixed as he sipped, the very tip of his tongue just sampling the little tide-mark that was left behind on his upper lip after he’d swallowed. When his eyes met yours again, his gaze clouded and he frowned quizzically at you. “What?”

Taking a deep breath, you grinned and said, “Are you honestly telling me that after two and a half hundred years, you have no idea how good looking you are?”

The flush began at his collarbones and crept up his cheeks to his slightly tapered ears, obscuring the golden dusting of very faint freckles on his cheekbones.

“Come on,” you pressed playfully.

He licked his lips. “I… I have been told as much, yes, but… it’s… it’s always embarrassing to me.”

“To be attractive? Mikaeïl, people would pay millions to look like you!”

The red in his cheeks darkened and he took another sip, looking away.

“I’m sorry,” you said, still laughing that somehow you of all people had managed to make a powerful creature like a dragon shifter blush furiously.

The meal was incredible, the wine heady and rich, but perfectly matched to the food. Mikaeïl and you soon moved past your initial awkwardness and settled into an evening of playful banter. As you shared a gorgeous dessert, you asked him about his family, and he said that his sister Caerelia was the only family he had left now. “She’s very… protective of me,” he murmured, going pink in the cheeks again. “She’s been asking me a lot about you.”

“Oh?”

“Mmm. I told her to mind her own business though. I’m not a hatchling anymore… But she’s never going to change.”

“As long as she’s not… you know…” you shrugged, “Overbearing…”

“Oh, she’s overbearing,” he laughed. “But I know what you mean. She means well, and nearly always backs off if I ask her to.” Inhaling deeply, he leaned back in his seat and said, “I can’t eat any more.”

“Me neither,” you groaned. “That was so good.”

Twenty minutes later, he was walking you along the road towards the taxi stand in the centre of Old Trollbridge. You held his hand and murmured, “Thank you for tonight. I… I had a lot of fun.”

“So did I,” he said, his feet falling still as he turned to look down at you. In a barely-audible whisper, he asked, “May I kiss you?”

“Yes.”

Letting go of your hand, he placed his left hand on your hip, drawing you close with his right, the fingers of which he placed just below your chin, tilting your face up. His eyes glowed in the dim light, and your heart rate soared as he brushed the backs of his fingers across your cheek before cupping the back of your head and coaxing you further into the gesture. His lips touched yours in the briefest ghost of a kiss before he returned and began to kiss you more confidently, as though he now believed that you did want this after all.

You let him set the pace of the kiss, his grip tightening suddenly on your hip, but after what felt like only a moment or two, he drew back, his breathing a little ragged.

“Mikaeïl?”

His eyes really were glowing golden, and he ground his jaw again, stepping back and closing his eyes before laughing. “Apologies,” he murmured. “I got a little carried away there…”

It hadn’t been that fervent a kiss… “I didn’t think you did - oh,” you breathed as he raised his lip up on one side in a little playful snarl and showed you that his canine was significantly longer than it had been, almost like a vampire’s. A deep, low-frequency rumble rolled off him too before he turned it into a laugh.

“You do remember that it’s been a while for me…”

“Yeah, but, oh… When you said you hadn’t been with anyone in that time, you meant… at all…?”

The blush was back in his cheeks and he shook his head, his red hair dancing in the lamp light. “It… I didn’t… It wasn’t something that I…” He took a sharp, shaky inhale and smiled awkwardly. “Does that bother you?”

“Not at all,” you said gently, pressing your palm to his cheek and watching as his eyelids fluttered closed and he leaned gratefully into the touch like an affectionate cat.

“Thank you…” he said without opening his eyes. “Come, let me take you home.”

You ached all over to stay with him that night, but you sensed he needed more time, to move at a slower pace, and it was probably for the best anyway. With a nod, you and he continued to walk side by side down the cobbled street, and in another grateful gesture, he briefly squeezed your fingers in his without looking at you.

Part Nine

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