Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
Christ. Ash dragged in a shaky breath as Race vanished into the darkness, her pulse still racing from waking up wrapped around his naked body. How on earth had she gone from sleeping beside his tail to practically tangled around him?
She fanned her hot face with her hands, still feeling the solid weight of him against her.
The man was a walking sin, all heat and hard muscle. And not a hint of body hair anywhere. Of course, she looked. What woman with functioning eyes wouldn’t take a peek there?
He was impossibly hot, infuriatingly confident—and far too lethal to ogle. So, why couldn’t she get that wretched dragon out of her head? It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen a naked man before.
Because he isn’t a man—he’s bloody sin on sticks. That’s why.
Even his brutal feeding last night didn’t seem so terrifying or bile-churning in daylight. He was a dragon—
Damn it, of course. The maddening man must have deliberately shown her his savage side to keep her at a distance. The absolute swine.
No matter how bloody hot he was, she wasn’t throwing herself at him. Or anyone. End of story.
She finally dragged her attention to the dimly lit cavern around her. In the center, pools gathered, fed by a cascading underground spring. The air here was cooler, moist, and fresh.
Her clothes stuck to her skin, gritty with cave dust and, well…dragon slag.
But first things first. Nature called.
She hurried behind a cluster of boulders and took care of her need. Back at the small series of rippling pools, she glanced at the empty passage, bit her lip, unsure of how long he would be.
Oh, sod it.
She tore off her clothes and slipped into the nearest one, shivering as the chilly water enfolded her.
“Brrr…but damn.” Her eyes drifted shut in pleasure, the spring soaking into her aching muscles, washing away the grime and tension. Her scrapes from that sky-high cave stung faintly, but the cold water soothed them.
With no soap, she washed up as best as she could before floating for a bit. Then she sighed, unable to fully enjoy the moment, not when Race could appear at any moment.
She climbed out, water streaming down her body—
A clatter of pebbles broke the silence. Boots scuffed on stone.
Ash froze.
“Are you—”
“Crap!” she yelped, slapping her arm across her chest and her hand over the V of her thighs, glaring at Race. “Don’t you bloody dragons knock?”
His low chuckle rolled out, rich and unhurried, sending tendrils of heat through her veins. “In a cave?”
“Turn around.”
“Nothing I haven’t seen before.”
“That’s not the point,” she hissed, eyeing her clothes. Of course, they were on that stupid boulder, several feet away.
Ugh. Straightening her spine, and with all the dignity she could muster, Ash stomped to the boulder, snatched up her clothes, then risked a glance over her shoulder to find him watching her.
But his eyes… Christ. Dark claret burned with something she didn’t want to name but felt the heat of it in every inch of her.
Her pulse thudded hard.
Oh, no, no. Not even going there.
“Get dressed. We’re going to the village,” he said before sauntering off with that lazy grace.
Ash scrambled, wrestling her grimy clothes onto still-damp skin. Everything clung in all the wrong places, like it had a personal vendetta. By the time she’d shoved her feet into her boots and tied the laces, she was panting like she’d run miles.
She hurried in the direction he’d taken in the dark, letting her palm trail along the cold, damp wall as a guide to the main cavern.
Race stood at the narrow entrance, bathed in morning light, staring out into the forest. “It’s better to get in early, not too many people about.”
“To do what?” Ash asked, finger-combing her damp hair and stopping beside him.
“You need clothes. Food.”
Yep, definitely needed both.
Without so much as a glance at her, he grasped her hand, and the world distorted. That horrible, gut-lurching sensation hit her again as he dematerialized them.
One second, they were in the cave, the next, elsewhere.
Forest closed in around them as they reformed, but it was unlike any Ash had seen. The trees rose tall and narrow, their gray trunks spiraling upward like twisted columns as the gray morning lightened further. Needle-like foliage fanned out in shades of deep burgundy.
No sunlight in this place.
Through the narrow gaps, Ash caught sight of dark, hulking buildings a short distance from the treeline.
Not houses or cottages. The nearest one looked as if it had grown out of the ground, its walls a fusion of black-veined stone and thick, gray vine wood.
It crouched low beneath the mist, draped in moss and shadow, blending in as if it preferred to go unseen.
At the side of the building, clothes hung on a taut metal cord strung between carved posts, fluttering in the morning breeze like scaled banners.
In the grassy field beyond, six-legged animals resembling scaled bovines, larger than any cow she’d seen, grazed in lazy arcs, steam curling from their nostrils in the cold morning air.
Ash frowned, her gaze fixed on the eerie building. “This is the, er, village?”
“No. Wait here.” He vanished like an apparition.
Ash shivered, no longer swathed by his incredible heat, and waited in trepidation. Unease crawled through her as the silence grew, broken only by the occasional…mooing. She almost laughed at the familiarity.
A figure shimmered beside her.
“Dammit!” She stumbled a step and groaned, a palm pressed to her chest. “You’ll give me a heart attack, I swear!”
Race flipped back the hood of a dark cloak he now wore, a gray tunic under it, and dumped a bundle of clothes into her arms. “Put these on.”
“Did you murder anyone for them?”
“No. Borrowed them.”
“Borrowed?” She lifted a pair of dark leggings with overlapping reinforced seams. “Without asking? That’s called stealing where I’m from.”
“Where would you prefer I shop? The local dragon store?” He gestured to the rolling hills and forest around them.
She scrunched her face. “Well, when you put it that way…”
“I left gold.”
“Ah, a considerate thief. How very Robin Hood of you…” Awareness of him pressed against her skin, so damn tangible that she looked up and stilled under the weight of his stare. Her breath caught. Those claret eyes burned into hers, molten with heat.
For a heartbeat, the world narrowed to the space between them—just him and her. The urge to move closer tugged at her.
She forced herself to move, to breathe, shoving the moment aside. “You do know who Robin Hood is, right?”
“Men in tights,” he murmured. “Might as well be naked.”
Ash bit her lip, hiding her smile at his seriousness. She held the faded cotton tunic against her chest. “I’m sure this is not what female dragons actually wear.”
“No. They prefer scales. But those…” he nodded at her bundle, “are flame-resistant. These people are non-shifters, so they rely on their clothes for protection.”
“Oh, that’s good for me, then.” She examined the rest of the clothes. “The tank top’s practical enough. At least it’s not leather. Or I’d melt.”
“The fabric breathes.” He looked up at the sparse, leafy canopy above, letting in the morning light. “Change. We need to move. Wear the coat at all times. It’ll conceal your human essence.”
“I know you can conjure up trousers, why not the rest of your clothes?” she asked.
“It’s a limited ability. Unfortunately.”
Right. She ducked behind the trees, quickly stripping out of her grimy clothes and pulling on the leggings, tank top, and tunic overlay. The leggings were long. But then, these were dragon people.
Her boots on and laced up, she grabbed her dirty clothes and stepped out. Race turned, his gaze sweeping over her. “Good, they fit.”
“Did you happen to steal—pardon, permanently borrow any hair ties?” she asked, pulling on the long, forest green coat with one hand.
His mouth twitched. He took her dirty clothes, his brow furrowed. “Do you need these?”
“No—”
He blew out a stream of fire, and the clothes turned to ashes.
“Why did you do that?” she asked, shocked.
“No point in carting around something that smells strongly of human in this realm.”
When he put it that way…ugh, she didn’t want a target on her back.
“Here.” He pulled out a black elastic band from his pocket.
“Thanks.” She took the band, her fingers brushing his, and a jolt skittered through her hand like lightning. She jerked back as if burned.
He clenched his hand.
“It’s just my abilities,” she muttered. What could she say anyway? When she didn’t even understand this pull between them. She gathered the top half of her hair, away from her face, and secured it at the back in a small ponytail. “I’m ready.”
He gave her a once-over. “Tying your hair back doesn’t help. Still on the delicate side. Your eyes might look draconic, but you don’t exactly blend in—it’ll have to do.”
Blend in?
The words hit like a slap, and she flinched, her breath hitching—
She was nine again, uncomfortable in her stiff school uniform, a snooty mum’s voice cutting through the chatter at noon pick-up.
“She’s lovely, but doesn’t quite blend in with us, does she?”
Old wounds surged, slicing through her chest like blades. The sky cracked open. Rain dumped in a furious sheet, drenching her, but she barely felt it as more memories tumbled free.
Invites for her seventh birthday had been sent out to her whole class, but only five showed up.
“Your friends did turn up, darling,” Mum whispered, hugging her, but the pain of being ignored swamped her.
“Ash—Ashaya?” a low voice rumbled.
“Shut up, shut up,” she gasped, shoving away from him, the rain lashing down at them harder. “Leave me alone—”
“Ash, stop, dammit!” Race’s voice thundered through the storm. He grasped her shoulders, his touch steady and firm. “You need to bolt down your mental shields. Now! You’ll draw attention we can’t afford, do you hear me?”
Trapped in a manacle of pain, she squeezed her eyes shut, willing her newly burgeoning powers to quiet, but nothing could calm them—not with old wounds torn wide open, raw and bleeding again.
I will never be good enough.
“You can do it, Ash,” he coaxed. “Come on. Go deep within yourself, find where it starts. Lock it down.”
With a shuddering breath, she shut her eyes, searching within. There, she found the spark, the burning red heat under her ribs—and caged it, sealing the storm within.
The rain stopped, but they were both completely soaked. She exhaled a trembling breath and wiped her wet face.
“What was all that about?” he asked quietly.
Ash could feel his searching gaze, but she refused to meet it. “Nothing.”
Schoolyard cruelty, shunned by so-called friends, then her ex, Paul’s mother’s blatant dismissal of her. All of it came down to the same thing—she didn’t fit in with their idea of who belonged.
It cut deeply.
“Ash, look at me.”
His low command cut through the fog. She blinked, the forest sharpening around her.
Unable to tell someone like him how inadequate she sometimes felt, she pulled away and deflected. “What do you mean, ‘I’ll draw attention we cannot afford?’ Is it from Skaldr and those two who cornered us at the abbey?”
He watched her for a beat longer, sweeping back loosened strands of his wet hair from his face. “If the usurper king’s enforcers see me, they’ll kill me on sight.”
His words were like a punch in the ribs, making her forget her own pain. “What—bloody—why?”
He was quiet for a beat, then, “My only priority is getting you back to Earth. That means staying beneath the radar.”
Okay, but why are you in danger? Ash tried to read him, but there was nothing—no flicker, no tell—in that maddening calm of his. Her curiosity about him only deepened. “Why do those three shifters want you back, then?”
“Because they think I can make a difference.” His gaze held hers. “What triggered that downpour?”
Ash hesitated, then blew out a rough breath. “Childhood memories. Not the good kind. They follow you into adulthood, it seems. People who look like me don’t exactly fit in with the elite. We…” She swallowed hard, her eyes burning. “We belong in the background.”
Well, my ex’s mother thought so.
He stepped closer, brushed back her hair, and caressed her damp cheek with his warm fingers. Her breath caught. A gentle wave of heat flowed through her, and her clothes dried.
“It’s on them if they can’t see you.” He gently cupped one side of her face, his hand warm and calloused. His gaze traced her features. “Your face. Those eyes… You are stunning, little vixen.”
The space between them vanished. His lips settled on hers, a whisper of heat and need as they glided against hers, soft, searching, unbearably tender.