Chapter 21
Liz
Igot through most of my shift by setting plates down in front of people and going through the motions while my brain was somewhere else entirely.
Beck asked me twice if I was okay. I told him I was great, and from the look on his face, he didn't believe me at all.
I wasn’t... not okay. I was just occupied.
The kiss had replayed itself on a loop since last night.
The way Lucan had asked first, his voice careful, like he already knew what my answer would be but wanted to give me the choice.
The way his thumb had rested against the skin behind my ear.
The way my fingers had curled into his shirt on their own, with no input from the part of my brain that usually vetoed that kind of thing.
And then the texts.
How about I kiss you somewhere no man has ever kissed you?
I stared at my phone screen in my trailer with my hand pressed over my mouth and then laughed until my eyes watered. He walked it back so fast. The correction had been almost as good as the original message.
I thought about the texts during my entire shift and was still thinking about them when Beck handed me my car keys and told me Lucan had dropped them off.
I found my car parked in the far corner of the parking lot, the overhead light catching the shine of it from twenty feet away.
I stopped walking.
It looked cleaner, and the tires looked different too. It took me a second to realize why. They were new.
I walked the rest of the distance and unlocked it, sliding into the driver’s seat. The interior had been cleaned too, and on the passenger seat sat a single sheet of paper.
I picked it up and unfolded it.
It was an itemized invoice. Alternator. Battery. Belts. Brakes. Brake fluid flush. Transmission flush. Coolant flush. Oil change. Four tires. Full tank of fuel. Interior and exterior detailing. The list ran almost the length of the page, and the total at the bottom was zeroed out.
I sat with the paper in my hands for a long moment. A couple of cars passed on the main road. Someone laughed somewhere behind the building.
The pressure built in my chest before my eyes went blurry.
I tipped my head back against the headrest. One tear slid down my cheek, and I let it go. Another followed, and I let that one go as well. Then I pressed my lips together and stopped it before it could become something that involved swollen eyes and snot.
There would be none of that tonight.
Because tonight I was going to fly on a dragon.
Lucan swung off the ATV as if his legs hadn’t been rattled for ten minutes on a dirt trail and helped me off. He kicked off his shoes as he grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head in one motion.
He turned to look at me, his eyes sweeping over me. “Are you good?”
“I’m good.” My voice came out normal, which was a miracle considering my heart was doing double time.
The thought of flying on a dragon was terrifying and thrilling all at once. I’d imagined what it might be like ever since I was a little girl reading fantasy novels under my covers with a flashlight.
Now I was here, about to do something impossible. No amount of reading or dreaming could have prepared me for standing on the edge of this moment.
“Stay here while I shift. Don’t forget the backpack.” He handed me a bag. “Unless you want me to stay naked when I shift.”
I swung the bag onto my shoulder. “I wouldn’t complain about that.”
He ran a hand down his face and then reached for the button on his jeans. He held my gaze for another second, like he was giving me one last chance to change my mind. I didn’t.
“I’m going to take my pants off now.”
“Yep.” I turned my head and stared hard at a very interesting patch of bark on the nearest tree.
Fabric rustled, and then footsteps crunched through the grass. I tried not to look. I genuinely, sincerely tried. My eyes had other plans.
They tracked him as he walked into the open space, and I got a full, unobstructed view of his back.
The muscles along his shoulders shifted as he moved, and lower, his waist narrowed into hips that framed an ass that was ridiculous.
It was as if someone had sculpted it on purpose, specifically to ruin a woman’s ability to think.
I dragged my gaze up to his head and kept it there. Mostly.
He stopped a safe distance away and looked over his shoulder at me. A smirk was there, one that said he knew exactly where my eyes had been and was deeply, annoyingly satisfied. “Ready?”
I straightened my shoulders and gave him a thumbs-up, trying to project confidence. My skin tingled with anticipation, and part of me wanted to laugh at how absurd this was. My brain was still trying to tell me this wasn’t real.
His smirk softened into something warmer. Then he faced forward and shifted faster than last time. His skin rippled with scales for an instant, and then the transformation was complete. He was a dragon, and wings unfurled with a sound like a sail catching wind.
His eyes found me immediately, and he lowered his head until his chin nearly touched the ground. A low rumble rolled through the clearing. He lowered one wing to the ground and waited.
I stared at his wing stretching down to the grass.
This was my invitation, literally laid out in front of me, and suddenly the enormity of what I was about to do crashed over me.
This wasn’t a carnival ride or a theme park attraction.
This was a dragon. A real dragon. And he was waiting for me to climb aboard.
I approached and ran my hand along the edge. The surface was warm under my palms and solid as rock. I climbed, and it was surprisingly easy, especially when he lifted his wing like a kind of elevator.
At the base of his neck, a natural dip formed a seat, perfectly sized for me. There was also a curved spike shaped as if it had been designed specifically for gripping.
I settled into place, wrapping my fingers around the spike. With the way the seat dipped, I felt as secure as one could feel on the back of a dragon.
Lucan turned his head, one enormous eye finding me and waiting patiently. I held on to the spike tighter and squeezed my thighs before nodding.
He surged forward.
The world dropped away so fast my stomach lurched into my throat. His wings beat down, and the trees below shrank at a dizzying rate, their tops blurring into a sea of black. Wind tore at my face and ripped my breath away.
I held on.
He leveled out, and we were gliding instead of climbing. The mountains spread out below us, and the lake caught the moonlight and sparkled.
“This is—” I dissolved into laughter and couldn’t finish the sentence. There was no word for this. Nothing in my vocabulary or anyone else’s could capture the feeling of soaring through the sky on a dragon.
Lucan’s wings shifted into a slower rhythm, a lazy, rolling motion that rocked me gently, and the tension drained from my shoulders.
The wind was colder at this altitude, sharp enough to make my eyes water, but the warmth from Lucan’s body wrapped around me like a blanket. I leaned forward slightly, pressing my chest against the back of his neck.
He banked left, and the world tilted. I gasped and gripped the spike again, but the movement was controlled, not frightening. He wasn’t about to let me fall.
We flew in a wide circle over the mountains, and he banked toward a narrow break in the rock. The gap looked small, a jagged split in the mountainside that couldn’t possibly fit a dragon. But he tucked his wings in tight and dropped through it like he’d done it a thousand times.
The wind eased as the space opened up around us. We were in a basin, the walls rising on all sides like a fortress built by time and geology. The moon lit the ground below in patches of silver, and the air smelled cleaner than it already had.
Lucan circled, and then he descended in a controlled glide. His claws touched down on a flat stretch of ground with barely a jolt, and his wings folded in against his sides with a rustle that echoed off the rock.
I loosened my grip on the spike and shifted my weight forward, testing my balance. My legs were shaky, whether from adrenaline or the cold or both. I couldn’t tell. I swung one leg over and slid down his wing as he lowered it for me, my shoes hitting solid ground.
The basin was quiet, and there was no wind or rustling trees. The walls trapped the stillness and made everything feel smaller and more intimate.
I stepped away from his wing and turned to face him. He was watching me with that same intensity he’d had in human form, the kind that made me feel like I was the only thing in the world worth paying attention to.
I reached out and pressed my palm against his chest, above where his heart would be. “Thank you.”
He rumbled again, and a second later, Lucan stood in front of me, my hand on his bare chest.