“I am quite pleased to hear you say that.” He kissed me again, and suddenly, my body was bathed in fire, inside and out, and for a moment I panicked. Heat consumed me, boiling my blood and crawling along my flesh, pushing me to the point where I was going to explode in a supernova, but just before it became unbearable, suddenly it became my fire. It twisted through me, turning my psyche into one blazing inferno of desire and need and power. I poured the fire onto the man before me, my mouth nipping and teasing and tasting his all the while my hands were frantically unbuckling his belt and working his zipper.

It was as if the fire had pushed me past the point of sanity. I threw caution to the wind, deciding my previous rules about hopping into bed with the first demigod I met were foolish. The First Dragon’s hands were everywhere at the same time I was desperately trying to get him out of his pants, until at last we fell onto the bed in a tangle of arms, legs, and fire. I sat up, finding myself straddling his thighs, his belly under my hands. I was panting, my heart racing, the air almost crackling with static electricity.

“Do you ... you’re a god. Is there anything different about how you do this?” I asked, unable to keep from sliding my hands up his belly to his pectorals.

“Different? Like this, perhaps?” His eyes were now molten gold, but thankfully, the pupils were normal. I made a mental note to ask him about why his eye color changed, but immediately forgot it when he smiled, and suddenly, I sat astride a dragon. Beneath my thighs, translucent scales shimmered, the colors in them moving and shifting along the spectrum, never just one color, but all colors.

“Holy shit!” I screamed, and would have leaped off him if the dragon hadn’t disappeared and the man returned, his flesh wonderfully familiar and normal. I slapped both hands on his chest. “Don’t you ever do that again!”

“Never?” he asked, humor and heat and passion in his eyes. “It is one of my forms, just as this is.”

“What you do in your own time is your own business, but I’m very much a human form sort of girl, so if you expect me to impale myself on this really outstanding example of a penis—hoobah, that’s really ... godlike ... isn’t it? The word heroic comes to mind—then you are going to stay like you are right now.”

He pulled me upward to claim my mouth again, an act that set me afire again. I wiggled against him, reveling in the feeling of his body beneath mine. He might be several centuries old, but he had the appearance of a man at the very peak of his physical prowess, and my body was singing its own siren songs to lure him into my depths. “It shall be as you desire.”

“Good.” I leaned down to lick the two little nipples that hid in the soft brown hair of his chest. His hands were busy touching and teasing and stroking my breasts, leaving little trails of fire that absorbed into my skin, and drove my inner inferno even hotter. I paused to slant a glance upward at him. “There’s just one thing.”

His eyebrows rose in question.

“What we’re doing is just a case of mutual itch scratching. There’s nothing more at stake.”

He stared at me for a moment as if he couldn’t understand the words. I didn’t want to come right out and tell him not to fall in love with me, because that was presumptuous to the nth degree, but at the same time, I didn’t want to risk him losing his immortal state.

“Do you itch somewhere?” he finally asked.

“You know what I mean,” I said, tapping my fingers on his chest.

“Yes,” he agreed.

“Good. The second thing is that I can’t make love to a man whose name I don’t know. It’s bad enough I’m jumping your bones a few hours after meeting you, but I’m putting that down to the fact that you’re a god, and I haven’t been with anyone in several years, and you’re so incredibly hot that it makes my girl parts clamor for you. But I draw the line at doing it without knowing your name. I’ll tell you mine first, since I dislike hypocrites: my name is Charity. Charity Doe, and yes, it’s like Jane Doe. I don’t know who my parents were. Now it’s your turn, and please hurry, because my girl parts are screaming for me to stop talking and start with the action.”

He smiled again, his eyes now more silver than gold, but still bright enough to almost glow with desire. He positioned me where he wanted me, my thighs astride his hips, and urged me down. My breath caught in my throat at the feeling of his intrusion into what were, by now, highly anticipatory parts, ones that welcomed him with tiny spasms of a million little muscles.

“My mother called me Avval,” he said, his breath hot on my neck as he licked a path over to a spot behind my ear that made me weak. “It is Tajik for first.”

“Fitting,” I said, my body quivering around his as I worked out a rhythm that came close to making my eyes cross. His back arched beneath me, his fingers, which were now on my hips, digging in until they felt like claws. He breathed fire on me, bathing me in it, his body positioning into me, going to depths I hadn’t known existed. And just as I trembled on the edge of an orgasm, he pushed me into it by suddenly twisting, flipping me over onto my back, my legs still gripping his hips. He said something in a language I didn’t recognize, his voice hoarse, my entire being falling into an explosion of a thousand little pieces of ecstasy.

His mouth was hot on mine, kissing a path upward, his tongue lapping fire at a spot above my eyes before he suddenly relaxed on me, my brain too stunned by the power of the orgasm I’d just had to do more than desperately try to get some air into my lungs, and hope my heart wouldn’t stop with the joy of it all.

“That ...” I was a bit surprised to hear a voice, then realized it was my own. I opened my eyes to find Avval draped across me, his breath steaming my neck. “That was the most spectacular orgasm of my life. Possibly that ever existed. If this is what it’s like to be a god, then goddess above, you are the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

He lifted his head, shifting his body so that he was propped up on his elbows, his eyes now iceberg blue, but they were anything but cold. “I would agree with your statement, but you would likely misinterpret why, so instead, I will simply ask if you would sing for me.”

I stared at him. “You want me to sing? But ... why?”

He brushed a spot on my forehead. For a moment it stung. “Because I like music, and yours comes from your soul. Will it displease you to do so?”