Amethyst Storms (Primordial Protectors #1)

5. Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Alex

Holy shit, the hot water felt wonderful. It was easier to focus on the feel of it sluicing through my hair than to think about the elephant no longer in the room but definitely bright and glaring in the back of my mind.

Okay, so much bigger than an elephant.

Dragon.

Five of them.

Holy shit!

This was a dream, right? I’d slipped on something, smacked my head on a rock, again, knocked myself out and was now having the craziest dream since the time I’d woken to find that I wasn’t really a dwarven prince on a quest to recover the lost pieces of the moon.

Only I’d never had bruises in my dreams before.

A dark one almost the size of my fist marred my thigh from where I’d banged into a rock, and a long scrape ran down my left side, already turning the skin an angry red along the edges.

I might need to ask for some peroxide to pour on that if it didn’t look better in the morning.

Not a dream then.

Which meant dragons were real, they could change into people, and I was about to sleep in the house of one who smelled like molten sex on a stick.

Fuck, no, not gonna think about that. Not gonna think about that at all. In fact, it was time to change up the water. I rapidly shifted it from warm to cold and nearly yowled when the icy spray hit bits of me that were in no way prepared for such a sudden shift in temperature.

Shivering, I doubled over, rubbing soap over my skin as fast as I could while staying huddled in on myself, hopping around and nearly falling over.

With my luck I’d crack my fuckin’ skull and big, archaic, and sexy would come stomping up to scrape me off the floor and grumble about me dripping all over the place.

His dragon seemed really cool, though. Even when we’d been nose to nose, I hadn’t felt anything to fear from him. Those bright purple eyes had been beseeching, as if the dragon needed something from me.

Soulful. Sad.

Those eyes.

I could have lain awake staring into them all day, just to see how the light from the shifting sun shimmered in his gaze. Hell, how cozy would it be if he cradled me with his tail and gently rocked it like a swing? Or a hammock. A cozy dragon-tail hammock with room for a blanket and pillow.

Oh my God, would he let me sing “Puff, the Magic Dragon” to him, even if Puff wasn’t real? Or read him some of the stories I’d loved back when I’d believed dragons were just fairy tales? The human I couldn’t say the same thing for. I bet he’d just scoff if I told him I used to dream about racing through a storm on a dragon’s back, the air around us crackling with ozone and the sizzle of lightning flashes.

Silly human.

That shit only happened in fantasy novels.

And okay, maybe I’d read my fair share of them in between manuals on cave exploration and discovery and scouring the blogs and websites featuring the latest in spelunking gear and pristine, unspoiled spaces.

Take nothing but photos and memories, leave nothing but footprints behind. That was the creed I lived by, and I couldn’t wait for a tour of the cave system in the morning, though the thought of facing the human and not the dragon put a damper on my enthusiasm a little.

Stern and unapproachable.

I could practically hear the reproach ringing in every other word he said to me, and there was the way his nose wrinkled when he glared at me. Like he was trying to keep from choking the hell out of me while bellowing at the top of his lungs.

Too bad a bit of choking only ever managed to get my engine revving. No lessons would be learned in that state, unless it was on how to conjure frozen underwear out of thin air, ‘cause I would sure as hell be needing them.

Fuck! Come on, Alex, get it together.

When I was too cold to stand it any longer and about as clean as I was gonna get while trying to hug some of my body heat in place, I turned off the overhead spray and reached for the towel on the bar just outside the shower basin. The damn thing was carved from rock with several holes in the center to act as the drain. It was actually a really cool mix of natural and modern that I couldn’t help admiring as I wrapped a giant towel around myself.

The fucking thing covered me from chin to ankles as I made my way to the bed and peeled the covers back.

Talk about soft.

Crawling naked between warm, comfy sheets felt absolutely amazing and I sighed and wiggled around in the wide bed. Soft moans and murmured sounds of contentment spilled from me as I realized that no matter which way I lay, my hands and feet couldn’t touch both the sides. Giggling, I bounced in the center of it a little, feeling like all ten of the little monkeys, though I wasn’t quite brave enough to stand up and jump on it fully. Not when the lecture was liable to be as stern as the man who’d spent most of the meal glowering at me from the other end of the table.

Wasn’t my fault his warts, or whatever the hell he’d called them, had failed and allowed me to pass into their cave. Maybe he should think about stepping out of the dark ages and investing in a top-of-the-line modern security system.

Even as I thought it, I was reminded of the way my GPS had failed and the grim look on Gramps’ face when he’d been shaking his head at me after I turned down his offer to help refresh my land nav skills. If he ever learned that my refusal had nearly led to me being turned into what would have amounted to a chicken nugget to those big beasts, he might never let me out of the house unsupervised again.

Oh my God, though. I’d face those glittering eyes and massive tails again in a heartbeat if it meant winding up on a mound of fluffy awesomeness like this.

Tired, and finally feeling some of the aches of a long day climbing over rock and wiggling around in holes, I pressed my head to the pillow and let out another moan as I drew the blankets up around me, then thought better of it, knowing all I’d be doing by getting warm was reminding my body that a particular portion of my anatomy had grown very warm and very, very achy the moment I’d gotten near those dragons.

I fell asleep imagining what it would feel like to run my fingers over those scales. Would they feel like plated armor beneath my fingertips or would there still be a rippling softness to them that I could rub my cheek against?

Waking before the sun came up was something I’d done since I was a small child. Gramps used to say that it was curiosity that woke me, because I was too afraid of missing anything to sleep through even the most boring parts about getting ready for an outing. No matter how early Gramps got up to make sandwiches for our day out or to simply enjoy his morning cup of coffee in peace, there I was, nearly spilling half a pot as I attempted to pour a splash in my milk. I loved the flavor of coffee, but my body hated having the jittery, energy-fueling elixir coursing through my veins. It left me too edgy to focus, which also equated to being too edgy to realize when I was dangerously close to making a fatal mistake.

My shoulder twinged at the reminder of that little bit of folly as I scrambled from the bed, rushed to take a quick shower despite my long one the night before, then scurried off in search of my guide, hoping it was the rumbly, almost purring dragon I found and not the grumbly, grouchy as hell human.

Maybe someone switched his coffee to decaf, and he hadn’t figured it out yet.

Did dragons even drink coffee?

They sure as hell ate a lot. I was never a breakfast person and if he tried feeding me a pile of scrambled eggs that looked like something the size of a pterodactyl had laid them, I would surely wind up vomiting egg bits all over his shoes during this little cave tour.

Of course, the snarky voice in the back of my head picked that precise moment to point out that it might be the only surefire way to get him to shift into his dragon form.

Decisions, decisions.

Fortunately, no heaping plate of eggs greeted me when I scurried into the kitchen, just the man, seated at the far end of the table with his newspaper in front of his face. He lowered it enough to quirk an eyebrow at me as he inclined his head toward a chair.

“There is no reason to hurry, the caves have been there for eons, I don’t see the continent shifting enough in the next few minutes to seal them off.”

Was he trying to be funny or was he just admonishing me again for being, well, human and curious and excited to see something new. It was hard to tell when his eyes just stared, and his lips remained a flat, grim line before he turned his attention back to his paper.

My shoulders slumped and it was hard to sit still in my seat and not bounce while he finished whatever the hell he was reading. I resented it, too, the grumbly, angry little gremlin in me waking and scowling across the table at the back of his newspaper. I was just about to let the gremlin take a crack at getting his attention when he heaved a sigh, and the paper rustled as he folded it and set it neatly in front of his spot.

Expecting it to be time to go, I started to come up out of my seat, only to have him pin me in place with a glare before he left the room.

Dammit all, now what?

Swinging my feet, ‘cause it’s not like they could even touch the ground when I was seated in that chair, I pouted for a good two minutes before the most delicious waft of maple and vanilla scented air I’d ever smelled drifted past me, following his return to the room. The plate he sat in front of me contained two layers of French toast with bacon sandwiched between them, a sweetened cream and syrup topping off the whole confection. I dove in like someone had flipped a switch inside of me, finishing the whole plate when at most, I’d have only eaten half before eagerly deeming myself full enough to head out the door.

Oh my Goddess was I full by the time I finished.

And if I happened to waddle, just a little, when we started out on our tour, then at least I was behind him where he couldn’t see me pause every now and again to rub my tummy or lick my lips in the hopes of tasting the essence of maple and vanilla lingering there. Being behind him also meant that he couldn’t see the other reason I was waddling as I followed him into a winding tunnel that led toward the base of Satan’s Shaft. No wonder I hadn’t been able to find it. From the look of things, and the feel of the direction which we were headed, the shaft itself ran through the center of the mountain, almost like a volcano only there was no volcanic system here nor did the rock bare any traces of having been fused by the heat of lava flowing over it.

I’d have had to climb to the very top of the mountain to access it and face uncertain terrain. It really wasn’t the safest peak to try to navigate alone.

I’d have still attempted it, though.

Probably.

Stone amazed me in how complex its textures could be. Course layers woven between smooth ones, mineral built up on one another and compressed by the weight of the stones on top of them. The many layers of warm and cool, some almost seeming to soak up the heat of the sun while others were unfazed by it, fascinated me, and I paused several times to study the change in colors that shimmered in every layer.

I let my fingers trail over every stalagmite and quartz formation I could reach, felt the sharp edge of obsidian in one spot and marveled at the whirls of jasper and agate that wound in a long band along the edge of a deep gray boulder.

Anything…

…Everything…

To keep from thinking about the way the air in the caverns no longer smelled stale like it had been trapped there for some time. Instead, it smelled like him. Like fuckin’ alpha pheromones! Every nook, every cranny, even my clothes and hair were beginning to become saturated by the scent.

Fuck!

I adjusted myself in my pants because holy shit, everything was rubbing the wrong way and I just wanted to take them off so nothing was fuckin’ chaffing. Fucking alpha pheromones were always a struggle not to fall to pieces over but holy shit! Dragon alpha pheromones needed to be bottled and sold in stores. They could call it Instant Erection and I guaren-damn-tee you that they’d provide far better results than those little blue pills.

Think cold thoughts. Think cold thoughts.

Or better still, hope there was a pool of icy, underground spring-fed water somewhere along the way to Satan’s Shaft, ‘cause I was stripping down then, and climbing my insolent, betraying body right into its freezing depths before the little chaos gremlin in me came up with inventive ways to get his dragon to come out and play.

Insolent.

I mentally giggled at the word, recalling the humans use of the word nefarious the night before. If I didn’t watch it his stuffy way of speaking was gonna rub off on me and leave me abandoning my beloved f-bombs.

As if.

Puking that fantastic breakfast was firmly off the table, though, holy shit that was an amazing fuckin’ meal. There were other, less extreme means of getting his dragon to peek out, I was sure. All I needed to do was think and fuckin’ pick one of them.

And yes, yes the word of the month was still fuck, with an extra dose of fuuuucccccckkkk ‘cause damn, oh my Goddess, being around this big ass fuckin’ dragon smellin’ the way he fuckin’ smelled was gonna be the fuckin’ death of me.